A centuries-old ritual born from a vision seen in smoke. The hunting of human prey. Not for pleasure. Not for profit. Magna Venari is performed to answer a simple question: Why do some survive when others do not?

Those charged with answering this question would be known as Kallipolis.

After 17 days of fighting, the conflict was over. The Soviet soldiers began the macabre task of burying the dead. When the mass graves would not suffice, they piled them in heaps and set them ablaze.

In the rush to be done with it all, no one noticed the small boy.

Sergei Kalimnick, the lone survivor of Erangel.The boy who would one day become the Godfather of the Battlegrounds.

Taego, South Korea. With the flip of a switch, a cadre of murderers, arsonists, and mobsters, were set loose. All of them had all been promised the same thing: Kill notorious mob executioner, Kangjae Ma and gain their freedom.

The ensuing riot - and Ma’s escape - was caught on the prison’s closed-circuit TV security footage.

These ‘Gulag Tapes’ became a hot item on the black market, generating enormous sums of money from sociopaths, internet collectors, and organized crime lords.

Until the day the tapes drew the attention of a different group...

One hundred would be chosen. They would be dropped onto an island. Left to scavenge for weapons. They would fight - fight until only one remained. Vir Solidarius: the lone survivor.

There would be more games. Games held on the frozen island of Vikendi. On the sun-bleached sands of Miramar. In the dense jungles of Sanhok and the ruins of the once-prosperous city of Taego.

This was the golden age of Battlegrounds. Kallipolis was able to acquire wealth and influence. Indeed, it was a time of prosperity for much of the world.

That prosperity would not last...

One hundred years in the future, our world scarred by war, economic collapse, and environmental ruin. Here the rich live in sovereign island nations known as Retreats. Reaping the benefits of advanced technology, their life spans have stretched well beyond the norm.

Outside the Retreats, a crush in the surrounding mega-slums, the poor fight for scraps. The only chance to escape poverty is to get your hands on a Combat Visa. And the only way to earn a Visa is by winning the Battlegrounds.

Yes, the Battlegrounds remain. Legal and public - and every bit as brutal...