Note: This page is for the conflict that takes place in Ex 5 and is not to be confused for the nonviolent revolt depicted in the events of Brotherhood of Pleiades.
The Ginunhive Armed Rebellion (unofficial name) is an event in which numerous gladiators led by Ubilk rose up and rebelled all across the Gladiator Island Ginunhive. The event took place approximately 7 years before the arrival of Natsuki Subaru into the world, and it is the primary conflict of The Sword Wolf of the Scintillating Flame, later adapted into The Tale of the Scarlet Princess.
With the Imperial Selection Ceremony over and a new emperor crowned, a grand event was held on Ginunhive for the many nobles who wished to visit. However, due to the machinations of one of the island’s slaves, Ubilk, and his supposed intent to slay the new emperor, a revolution was staged in order for the gladiators and other slaves to supposedly vie for their freedoms.
Ultimately, thanks to Priscilla Pendleton discovering Ubilk's apparent goals and revealing them to the gladiator, as well as Aldebaran lowering the drawbridge, they were able to free the hostages and end the rebellion. However, Ubilk still escaped, and this event marked the prelude to Priscilla's life in the Kingdom of Lugunica.
Background[]
The One-Armed Gladiator[]
Approximately 18 years prior to Subaru’s arrival, Aldebaran appeared on Ginunhive. Becoming a gladiator, Al became one of the oldest fighters on the island, always achieving victory despite the odds almost always being against him. During one such battle, six years after his appearance on the island, his feats were witnessed by the Gladiator Empress known as Hornet when they took on a gladiator witchbeast together and were the only survivors against it.
Imperial Selection Ceremony[]
Approximately 7 years before Subaru’s arrival into the world, the Vollachia Empire held the Imperial Selection Ceremony, in which the siblings of the Imperial Family were to fight and kill one another to become the next emperor. In the end, among the siblings who took part in the ceremony, the final two siblings left to compete were Vincent Abellux and Prisca Benedict. However, thanks to Vincent and his aide Chisha Gold essentially threatening Prisca’s life, Prisca’s own attendant, Arakiya trapped Prisca into draining the poison that Arakiya had imbibed, allowing for the two parties to fake Prisca’s death, resulting in Vincent’s ultimate victory in the Imperial Selection Ceremony.
With her death faked, Prisca decided to take on the name Priscilla, after a body double who had died in her place some time ago, and she found herself married to Jorah Pendleton. Vincent, meanwhile, revived the Nine Divine Generals system and named Arakiya, who lost her eye from the poison, Chisha, and Cecilus Segmunt three of them before going on to promote several others to the position, including Olbart Dunkelkenn and Balleroy Temeglyph.
Coronation Celebration[]
For a long time, Ubilk, a male prostitute on the island, had gone around convincing other gladiators to join his cause in obtaining their freedom. One day, after defeating a shinobi using the Poison Hand technique and speaking to Hornet, Al spoke with Ubilk, who informed him of a major event taking place to celebrate the coronation of a new emperor. Believing this to be a chance to take a hostage to demand their freedom, Ubilk attempted to sway Al into taking part in the rebellion. However, Al ultimately declined the offer.
Elsewhere, Serena Dracroy sent her attendants Miles and Balleroy to deliver a letter and invite Jorah and his wife Priscilla to Ginunhive. Although Jorah was hesitant due to Priscilla’s identity potentially being exposed, because of her own insistence, they decided to accept the invitation. Sometime later, Serena arrived after receiving a report from her messengers, and they accompanied Priscilla and Jorah to Ginunhive, gifting them a flying dragon carriage to take them to the island.
Revolution[]
The Offer[]
Hornet appears to confront Al for the first time.
On the day of the event, Al, as well as other gladiators, fought for the crowd that came to watch, which included Priscilla’s group. After Al won his match and returned to the living quarters, he found Ubilk standing above the corpse of the guard he’d befriended, Auran, who Ublik had killed. With Ubilk claiming a revolution was needed and aware that he was a criminal and no match for Al, Ubilk tried once more to convince Al to assist his revolution, which he declined again. Not wanting to kill him, Al decided to sever one of Ubilk’s arms and hand him to the guards, but his attempt was blocked by Hornet, who was convinced to help Ubilk for her chance to fight various people, including Al. Using his Authority to escape Hornet, he ran for the arena, Ubilk still calling out to him to join him. However, when he reached the arena, he found the gladiators taking arms against the spectators and taking them hostage. Afterward, he was defeated by Hornet, and he was tossed into the lake and left to die.
Hostages[]
After Al’s match, Priscilla and Balleroy accompanied Jorah for fresh air, where they noticed that the drawbridge had been raised without anyone noticing. Deciding to return to Serena, they instead found that the gladiators had taken up arms and began taking the audience hostage, demanding for Serena to show herself in exchange for the other people’s lives. Interested, despite Jorah and Balleroy intending to protect her, Priscilla decided to proclaim herself Serena. Despite the skepticism of her due to her age, she managed to convince the man who spoke to her, Ghajit, of her identity and went along with him, bringing Jorah along as well when he spoke up. Soon, Al appeared in the arena, where he was defeated by Hornet. As for Balleroy, Miles knocked him out to prevent him from acting on his own and ruining whatever Priscilla had planned. After Priscilla was taken away, Miles and Balleroy met back up with Serena and began planning their next move.
The Mastermind[]
They took Priscilla and Jorah to the office of the island chief, whose corpse stained the floor. Afterward, they met with Ubilk, who claimed his goal was to free the slaves on the island and give the island independence. However, Priscilla noted that Ubilk realized that such a rebellion would not work and that the emperor would send the Nine Divine Generals to the island instead. Though the gladiators were frustrated, Ubilk quickly calmed them. Talking with Jorah, Priscilla came to the conclusion that Ubilk was too smart not to realize what they had and that he had a different goal in mind.
After some time, Ghajit questioned the truth of her claim of the Nine Divine Generals coming, to which she agreed and told the men of the options that they carried. Afterward, she joined Ubilk on the balcony of the building at his invitation, where he pointed out the encampment of soldiers beyond the raised drawbridge, discussed his men, revealed himself as a member of the Evil Eye Tribe, and realized her identity was not Serena. Soon enough, deciding the best course of action was to keep her somewhere separate from Jorah, he had her escorted away, mentioning the trump card of his forces in passing.
Mutiny[]
After some more time, Priscilla waited for her reinforcements to arrive, to which Ghajit, accompanied by Balleroy, appeared and killed the gladiators guarding her. Deciding to make her own move, they escorted and cleared paths for Priscilla after she left the room, explaining Ubilk’s most likely goal being the emperor’s head and his likely strategy of bypassing the Nine Divine Generals to reach him. This angered Ghajit, who realized he would have become an accomplice to an attempt on the emperor’s life and essentially receiving a death sentence, and he decided to attack Priscilla for it, only to be defeated swiftly by the newly arrived Miles. Afterward, deciding to quell the rebellion, Priscilla moved to inform the gladiators of their situation via a broadcasting device, inciting the rebellious gladiators to prevent their own executions by turning on Ubilk.
Following the announcement she made, the gladiators split into two groups and began arguing and fighting against each other. Deciding to retrieve Jorah, Balleroy and Miles cleared any enemies in their path on the way to the room he was being held in. After arriving, she tossed a vase hard enough to move Jorah out of the way, allowing for Balleroy to attack the rebellious gladiators and slay most of them with ease. While the last gladiator attempted to take Jorah hostage, Miles called for his flying dragon Gaius, who burst through the ceiling and killed him. Realizing that Ubilk was nowhere to be seen, Priscilla speculated that he had escaped the island via some unknown teleportation device.
Suppression[]
Learning of the incident on the island, the emperor sent a force of approximately 2000 soldiers sent to exterminate the gladiators. After arriving at the island, Olbart and Arakiya, their commanders, discussed how to get onto the island with the drawbridge raised. Deciding to bypass the aquatic witchbeasts in the water, Arakiya devoured a lesser water spirit, stripped down, and turned her body into water to cross the lake, intent on lowering the drawbridge. Along the way, however, she discovered Al, bloody and defeated, lying on was little more than an island-like patch of rocks. Deciding to get information from him to better understand the situation, Arakiya decided to give Al first aid, even if it was rather crude and inexperienced. Deciding to assist each other, Arakiya used her abilities to take Al to the island with her.
After returning to the island’s waste disposal site and giving Arakiya something to cover herself with, they confirmed where they needed to go to lower the drawbridge, and they discussed how they should handle Hornet. Because of Al’s insistence on Hornet’s strength being too much for the two to handle, Arakiya devoured a lesser wind spirit to become invisible, figuring it would be best to avoid fighting her. Before leaving, at Al’s suggestion, Arakiya crushed the body of a shinobi that he killed, allowing the poison within it to carry in the wind. Then, deciding to make their way through the island, they passed through several gladiators which Al promptly silenced, picking up a dagger along the way. Eventually, they made it to the control tower, where Hornet was waiting. Believing there was nothing he could do about her, he told Arakiya as much, to which she thanked him for his assistance, baffling him.
Attempting to bypass her, Arakiya moved forward, only for Hornet to notice her and attack her. Realizing that she was quickly becoming cornered, Al began to question whether he would simply abandon her. As she managed to strike down Arakiya, making her visible, Al, disgusted by seeing her silver hair stained in her blood, decided to step forward and prevent Arakiya’s death. After a short conversation, their battle began, and Al was quickly forced to use his Authority repetitively.
Priscilla speaks to the gladiators.
Amazed by Al’s surprising handling of Hornet, Arakiya attempted to put strength into her limbs, using the powers of a water spirit to speed up her self-healing, though Hornet kept an eye on her as well. As the fight progressed, the voice of Priscilla could be heard across the island, informing everyone of the situation they were in and inciting them to rebel against Ubilk. With a lull in the battle, Al questioned Hornet’s motives and came to the conclusion that she wanted to challenge the Nine Divine Generals, to which she did not deny and even claimed to want to fight everyone else on the island, regardless of their status. Picking herself up, Arakiya decided to assist Al in the fight, having healed herself into considerably better shape than before.
Avoiding a combo attack from Hornet, Al used earth magic to catch her off guard while Arakiya attempted to charge her while clad in flames. Dodging, Hornet spun with her large weapons embedded in the ground, tearing it up and destroying her opponents’ footing. Arakiya avoided falling by kicking off of the wall, grabbing Al, and stabilizing themselves at the deepest depths of the island. Confronting Hornet who was in front of them, Al began talking about his experiences in the battle thus far and that she managed to kill him 792 times that day. Excited, Hornet tried to lunge, only to fall, succumbing to poison from the dead shinobi’s Poison Hand. After explaining that to her, she felt genuine fear of him and asked him to finish her, though he declined to do so in the event that she had another trick up her sleeve. Before long, she finally died. Afterward, Al and Arakiya lowered the drawbridge, allowing Olbart and the rest of the Vollachian forces to enter the island and clean up the situation.
Aftermath[]
In the direct aftermath of the rebellion, Al met Olbart with Arakiya, where Olbart mentioned a possible reward for Al, though he decided not to take him up on it, instead deciding to remain on Ginunhive. Sometime later, he faced off against Ghajit, slaying him. At an unknown point after this, having been inspired by saving Arakiya and the words spoken by Priscilla to the gladiators, Al gained the courage to leave the island. After being given his signature helm by one of the jailers, he used his Authority to swim through the witchbeast-infested lake, and, becoming the first person to escape the island, he set about chasing the trail of the Witches.
Numerous uprisings appeared around Vollachia after the rebellion, and each one was quelled by the Nine Divine Generals, thus providing Ginunhive with new gladiators. However, Ubilk had seemingly vanished, apparently never intending to target Vincent’s head. However, at some point, he became a Stargazer, and he eventually strolled into the Crystal Palace, where he proved himself valuable to the emperor and was given an official position. This would eventually lead to his speaking with Vincent about the coming Great Disaster.
Priscilla’s group ultimately left the island, and having met with Serena, it was pointed out that Serena owed Priscilla a favor. After Priscilla returned to the Pendleton Estate with Jorah, Goz Ralfon was sent to eliminate her and Jorah, who were framed to have been conspiring against the Empire. With Jorah giving his life to protect Priscilla, she ultimately escaped, and with the assistance of Serena and her men, they were able to smuggle her into the Kingdom of Lugunica, where she would go on to have seven more marriages and eventually become one of the Royal Selection candidates.