Through the harsh crackle of the loudspeakers overhead came the monotone voice of the Influencer. We stood in the street square, huddled shoulder to shoulders, like swine, listening... A few moments passed until He spoke.

"Operation GENISIS-7 is now in effect. All resistance will be met with death." A short blip of a wail, then another passage:

The rain hasn’t stopped since the machines took control. Perhaps it’s nature’s quiet protest, the tipping of the scales in our favour. It’s an easy revenge, watching the deformed creatures fold themselves under tarpaulins and old cloth rags, rattling under corrugated iron shelters and cowering against the steady downpour that floods all of the south village.

An android programmed for gladiatorial combat and modeled after the very demigods of Greek mythology themselves, Veles is a "legend writ large." He is a champion of the Blood Games: a brutal revival of Rome's most violent and exhilarating spectator sport. However, with the advanced biorobotic technology of the distant future, death no longer offers amnesty to the defeated. Forced into a hellish cycle of slaughter, death, and rebirth, the synthetic gladiators (glads) are pushed until their artificial minds are shattered beyond repair. All the while a bloodthirsty society watches on in morbid ecstasy.