Ethereum Gladiator
"I suppose being a sex toy is preferable to death in battle, though I'm sure I knew a few soldiers who wouldn't think so."—Kyla Valstar
Ethereum Gladiator [dead link] by Nightboy, is an erotic Fanfic based loosely in the Warcraft universe. It has been described by readers as both "flawlessly written" and "remarkably well plotted" and is notable for having already spawned at least one instance of Recursive Fanfiction.
Ethereum Gladiator does a good job not breaking any of the rules of the Warcraft universe. However, in addition to filling in the blanks from canon lore about Ethereal physiology with a lot of his own ideas, the author takes some extensive creative liberties with the Ethereum faction of Ethereals for which the story is named, essentially creating an entire setting almost from scratch for the purposes of the story.
That setting takes the form of a massive floating city full of Magitek out in the white void of the Twisting Nether called, creatively enough, the Nethercity. The primary reason these ethereals wear humanoid form wrought from enchanted bindings, is because they want to be able to have sex. Anywhere and anytime they feel like it. Their whole society grew up around that, to the point that "virtue" is synonymous with "promiscuity" and wearing clothing of any kind is considered demeaning. This Nethercity also has a small population of what the Ethereals call fleshbound which is their word for the flesh and blood humanoid races of the Warcraft universe. All of these fleshbound either are descended from, or are rescuees that the Ethereum's Netherships bring back from nearby worlds, mostly Draenor.
The story, for the most part, follows a low-ranking but battle-weary human grunt from Azeroth named Kyla Valstar as she is rescued/captured and introduced to Ethereum society as an indentured gladiator consigned to the Colosseum, where elaborate sexual contests draw vast crowds. Kyla takes to this new way of life like a fish to water, which raises a few eyebrows from the Ethereals who are used to having to spend months on psychological work, or even coercion and behavioral deconditioning, to get a new acquisition ready to participate as a gladiator.
Ethereum Gladiator is currently on-going and more than half finished, but updates, while rare, are usually massive. The story has taken a major plot twist and Word of God is that the upcoming ending is in fact planned out in detail.
As an alternative to the above link, the first chapter of Ethereum Gladiator can also be found here.
- Aliens Made Them Do It: And how. Reconstruction of this trope is the entire premise of the story.
- Alien Sky: The ever-present white void of the Twisting Nether.
- Bloodless Carnage: Averted. In the beginning Kyla is wounded badly and is bleeding severely.
- Calling Your Orgasms: Averted completely. However, during gladiator matches orgasms are measured on a giant real-time holographic scoreboard.
- Coitus Uninterruptus: Subverted. In the Nethercity, this is normal, appropriate behavior.
- Cuffs Off, Rub Wrists: Kyla does this a few times, though only once do the cuffs actually come off. Justified in that the restraints the Ethereals use are designed to be comfortable.
- Curb Stomp Battle: Kyla's first female vs. female match. May also count as a Noodle Incident.
- Dance Battler: Cedric Ravenreed may be a type 2.
- Decontamination Chamber: New gladiators are put through a Cleansing that removes all of their hair from head to toe and also sterilizes the skin, removing things like rashes and pimples.
- Do You Want to Copulate?: Enforced. Sexual inhibition is regarded as mental illness.
- Earthshattering Kaboom: How Kyla gets blasted into the Nether in the first place. Only a minor example, since only the entire battlefield is blown up, not a whole planet.
- Energy Beings: The Ethereals, obviously.
- Ethical Slut: The Etherean ideal. Kyla in particular is all about this.
- Some readers have complained that in the first chapter, Kyla is too uninhibited too quickly.
- Exotic Equipment: Ethereal genitals are shaped just like humanoid genitals, but they don't have an explicit surface, because they're made of living forcefield.
- Fan Fiction: A rare example of fan fiction of fan fiction where another author wrote Ethereum Gladiator fan fiction.
- Fantastic Arousal: These Ethereals deliberately designed their bodies to respond powerfully to the mildest stimulation.
- Fantasy Contraception: All gladiators and every female receive neural implants which are capable of completely halting the menstrual cycle.
- First Kiss: In an odd twist, the one thing characters in this story don't do is kiss. According to Word of God, the ethereals messed up a little when they formed the fleshbound society, overlooking kissing because they hadn't bothered to put mouths on their artificial bodies. As a result, kissing is actually considered far more intimate than any other physical act, and is only done by couples and very close friends.
- Which is why it's significant that Kyla and Cedric kiss at the end of Ch 4.
- Free-Love Future: Enforced.
- Gender Bender: Ethereals, as energy beings, don't have natural genders, and get to choose which sex they want their body to be when they commission it.
- Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: While male-on-male events take place in the story, they're not actually described, whereas girl-on-girl events are. Somewhat excusable since the protagonist is female.
- Happiness in Slavery: Deconstructed. Some of the gladiators actually are happy, but the majority are merely complacent, and there are a small few who would leave if they could.
- Technically this gladiator situation is indentured servitude, not outright slavery.
- Hot Chick with a Sword: Kyla starts out with swords while she's a bit grimy, and after she loses her swords she gets cleaned up and turns out to be hot.
- "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It": Subverted and Invoked. The ethereal Lonji forces himself on Kyla, but he's a professional and is very careful not to hurt her and is only doing it to gage her reaction. Kyla ends up subconsciously invoking this trope herself when she can't work up a sincere objection to Lonji's attentions.
- Le Parkour: To a small extent all the gladiators learn a bit of this. Kyla was already good at it before she got there.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Subverted. In the Nethercity, there's no such thing as an inappropriate place to have sex.
- Male-to-Female Universal Adaptor: Justified. The Ethereals' bodies are artificial.
- Mangst: Shandel.
- Naughty Tentacles: Reconstructed. Gladiators don't have beds in their dorms. Instead, they sleep in the embrace of a nest of artificial tentacles that are controlled through voice-recognition and can be ordered to pleasure their occupant in a myriad of ways. Needless to say its usually enough to keep gladiators from ever getting bored.
- According to Word of God the lubrication secreted by the tentacles is specifically formulated to be mildly antiseptic, so mild that permanent exposure is safe, but just stringent enough that gladiators rarely have to bathe.
- Also, the Trilophlorus.
- Porn with Plot: And mixed gracefully.
- Sexy Mentor: Each gladiator is assigned an Ethereal Handler who's job it is to act as a combination of coach, therapist, lover, and guardian.
- Shower of Love: Sort of. Not really in the story itself, but Word of God is that the ordinary method of showering for average fleshbound citizens is a sonic cleanser, the vibrations from which usually cause inadvertent orgasms.
- STD Immunity: Justified. The Nethercity is a tightly controlled community and no new biological entity is admitted without being completely cleansed of contagions.
- Too Kinky to Torture: The character Zylesen Starslip is sort of this.
- Unwilling Suspension: This happens fairly often to gladiators-in-training.
- Zero-G Spot: There's no gravity outside the Nethercity's ecodomes.