Ludus the Beastmaster – The Beastmaster (1982) and the Ludus Magnus
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/Creature:Ludus_the_Beastmaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beastmaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludus_(ancient_Rome)
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/gladiators.html
Clementine has asked your wizard and César to free the prisoners. Opening the cages is simple enough, but the watchlions need to be dealt with.
Ludus the Beastmaster has a whistle that the watchlions respond to. Your wizard needs to get the whistle from Ludus so the prisoners can be freed.
The Beastmaster is a 1982 sword and sorcery film directed by Don Coscarelli and starring Marc Singer, Tanya Roberts, John Amos and Rip Torn. Loosely based on the 1959 novel The Beast Master by Andre Norton, the film is about a man who can communicate with animals, and who fights an evil wizard and his army.
Commercially, The Beastmaster was not considered a box office success during its original cinematic run, but later received extensive television exposure and success on cable in the American market on channels TBS, TNT, and HBO. The original film spawned two sequels as well as a syndicated television series that chronicled the further adventures of Dar.
Ludus (plural ludi) in ancient Rome could refer to a primary school, a board game, or a gladiator training school. The various meanings of the Latin word are all within the semantic field of “play, game, sport, training”.
In the background, the Colosseum.
The Ludus Magnus, also known as the Great Gladiatorial Training School, was the largest of the gladiatorial schools in Rome. It was built by the emperor Domitian (r. 81–96 C.E.) in the late first century C.E., alongside other building projects undertaken by him such as three other gladiatorial schools across the Roman Empire.
The training school is situated directly east of the Colosseum in the valley between the Esquiline and the Caelian hills, an area already occupied by Republican and Augustan structures. While there are remains that are visible today, they belong to a reconstruction that took place under the emperor Trajan (r. 98–117) where the Ludus plane was raised by about 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in).
The Ludus Magnus was essentially a gladiatorial arena where gladiators from across the Roman Empire would live, eat, and practice while undergoing gladiatorial training in preparation for fighting at the gladiatorial games held at the Colosseum. The Colosseum was where Gladiators would go to fight their opposition.
Bestiarii and venatores were two types of fighters in the Colosseum that specialized in animal fights. The bestiarii were not gladiators, as such, but fought for their lives in the arena against wild beasts (i.e. Christians vs. lions). The venatores, on the other hand, were specialists of wild animal hunts (venationes). The popularity of these cruel spectacles was such that, by the time they were abolished in AD 523 during the consulship of Flavius Anicius Maximus, tens of thousands of animals had died, and entire species were no longer to be found in their native habitat, all having been captured or driven away.
The current list of all the (known) Polaris references can be found here.
Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.
Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages
Ludus the Beastmaster image is from Wizard101, and is copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment
The Beastmaster film poster is borrowed from the Imp Awards and is copyright MGM
Ludus Magnus image is borrowed from Wikipedia. It is in the public domain.
Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.
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