Capital Parkland - Part 10 - Coliseum District - Part 01 - The Wound That Sings

“If you’re lost, you’re probably where you’re meant to be.”

The Coliseum District squats in the heart of Ed-Town like a half-remembered dream of empire: cracked stone ribs, floodlit arches, and corridors that do not line up the same way twice. What was once a sports complex, event center, and civic monument has been claimed—inevitably—by the Minotaurs.

To outsiders, it is a venue.
To Minotaurs, it is a wound in time that sings back.

The Coliseum is no longer a single structure. It is a knot of arenas, tunnels, service corridors, collapsed parking levels, and repurposed maintenance halls that form a loose, shifting labyrinth. Walls vibrate faintly even when no music is playing. Sound travels in impossible ways—guitar feedback echoing before the string is struck, drumbeats arriving seconds early or late, depending on where you stand.

Minotaurs say the place recognizes them.

They are probably right.

“Built once by the city. Built again by the music.”

Before the Hodgepocalypse, the Coliseum district was already a place defined by reinvention, stalled futures, and arguments about what the city should be. The original Northlands Coliseum—opened in 1974 as a modern replacement for the aging Edmonton Gardens—was a monument to civic ambition, labour struggle, and compromise. Built on a compressed timeline, plagued by strikes, and finished just in time for its first Oilers game, it nonetheless became one of Edmonton’s most recognizable gathering places.

And then, like so many big promises, it fell behind.

By the early 1990s the Coliseum no longer fit the league it helped build. Luxury boxes, revenue models, ownership battles, and relocation threats hollowed it out long before the doors finally closed in 2017. Long-term redevelopment plan, and envisioned demolition, transit-oriented housing, mixed-use towers, and an urban village that would finally “activate” the space.

Those plans never survived the Hodgepocalypse.

The Fall of the Old Coliseum

In Hodgepocalypse terms, the original Coliseum did not explode, sink, or become haunted overnight. It simply stopped being maintained at the worst possible moment. Infrastructure failed. Security evaporated. Temporary shelters, scavenger camps, and black-market exchanges spread through the surrounding Northlands grounds.

Then came the Minotaur Arrival Event.

Whether the Minotaurs arrived because the Coliseum already resonated with echoes of crowds, ritualized conflict, and collective emotion—or whether reality bent after they arrived—is still debated. Minotaurs, when asked, tend to shrug and say “both, man-o.”

What is agreed upon:
By the time the dust settled, the old Coliseum was unsalvageable.

So the Minotaurs did what they have always done.

They built a new one.

The Minotaur Rebuild (Or: Replacement Through Riff)

The current Coliseum District does not occupy the exact footprint of the original Northlands Coliseum.

It occupies its emotional footprint.

Using scavenged concrete, rebar, transit pylons, collapsed parkades, and fragments of Minos that arrived with them, Minotaur Bands rebuilt the space as a living performance labyrinth. Portions of the old arena were dismantled and reforged. Other sections were left buried, sealed, or incorporated as sublevels that do not obey conventional geometry.

To city planners, this means the original building is gone.

To Minotaurs, this means it was finally finished.

Axel Thunderpipes has described it as:

“Same gig. Better acoustics. Fewer lawyers.”

The Coliseum’s Reputation

“Yes, something came through. No, we’re handling it.”

In Ed-Town, summoning incidents are categorized by location.

If it happens in a lab, it’s an experiment.
If it happens in a ruin, it’s archaeology.
If it happens in the Coliseum, it’s Tuesday.

The Coliseum District is notorious—locally, regionally, and in several timelines—for being the single most reliable place in Ed-Town for things to arrive that were not invited by consensus reality. This is not because Minotaurs are reckless. Quite the opposite. It is because the Coliseum is one of the few places sturdy enough—physically, culturally, and musically—to survive the consequences.

Shows get loud.
Crowds synchronize.
Echoes of Minos resonate.

And sometimes something answers.

What Comes Through

Summonings associated with the Coliseum are rarely deliberate in the classical sense. No chalk circles. No chanting cultists. Instead, manifestations occur when emotional resonance, volume, and crowd intent hit a critical threshold.

Common categories include:

·       Audience Echoes — entities formed from expectation, applause, or unfinished performances

·       Minos Remnants — architectural spirits, labyrinthine predators, or memory-constructs wearing stone

·       Sound-Elementals — beings of distortion, feedback, or rhythm given temporary mass

·       Tagalongs — things that followed something else through and now refuse to leave

Minotaurs refer to these events collectively as “aftereffects.”

Dealing with the Aftereffects

Ed-Town does not panic when something emerges from the Coliseum.

It mobilizes.

Standard response usually involves:

·       Minotaur Bands containing the situation with controlled performances

·       Thunderpipes Clan logistics (crowd control, evacuation, gear deployment)

·       Freelancers and adventurers are being quietly hired to “walk it off” outside city limits

·       Axel Thunderpipes explaining, calmly, that “this is why we don’t shut the place down.”

Some aftereffects burn out within hours. Others linger, becoming:

·       Local hazards

·       Urban legends

·       Or regulars at the Pipeline who tip well and never blink

The unspoken rule is simple:
If it came through the Coliseum, you don’t pretend it didn’t happen.
You figure out how to live with it—or how to escort it somewhere safer.

Civic Acceptance (Through Experience)

City Hall no longer asks if the Coliseum caused the incident.
They ask:

·       Was it contained?

·       Is it still singing?

·       Do we need to reroute traffic?

There are emergency binders labelled “COLISEUM-RELATED ANOMALIES”, each thicker than the last. None of them includes instructions for demolition anymore.

Axel Thunderpipes once summarized the policy as follows:

“Look, man-o. You can have random summonings all over town…
or you can have them in one place that knows how to clean up afterward.
Your call.”

Why It Keeps Happening

The Coliseum isn’t a weak point.

It’s a release valve.

Minotaurs believe that if the music stopped—if the shows ended, if the crowds dispersed, if the labyrinth fell silent—those summonings wouldn’t stop.

They’d start happening somewhere less prepared.

Ed-Town, having seen the alternative, quietly agrees.

GM / Author Hook Notes

This lets you:

·       Justify recurring weirdness without escalation fatigue

·       Explain why Ed-Town survives when other cities don’t

·       Introduce monsters, NPCs, or plot threads as “aftereffects”

·       Keep Minotaurs framed as containment specialists, not liabilities

Final Note: The Equation Holds

For Minotaurs, the Coliseum is proof that even in a broken world, the equation still works:

Road + Music + Band + Fans = The Life

The stone may crumble.
The maze may shift.
The future may already be gone.

But as long as the amps still hum, Minos is not entirely dead.

Famous Coliseum Incidents

(As Recorded, Misremembered, and Loudly Argued About)

The Feedback Seraph (Year Unknown, “Late Era”)

During a sold-out triple-band showcase, sustained guitar feedback reached a harmonic resonance, manifesting a winged, luminous entity composed entirely of sound pressure and light.

·       Sang in perfect fifths

·       Shattered every piece of glass within six blocks

·       Ascended when the crowd hit the chorus just right

City Hall still classifies this as “meteorological.”

The Minos Staircase Incident

A service stairwell behind Arena Node C briefly unfolded into a descending stone labyrinth that should not have fit inside the building.

·       Five people went down

·       Six came back

·       All reported “great acoustics”

The staircase sealed itself after someone played a bass solo at the bottom.

The Pit That Wouldn’t Empty

A mosh pit collapsed into a gravity anomaly approximately three meters deep.

·       Crowd surfed into it

·       Crowd surfed out of it

·       One audience member returned with a drumstick carved from unfamiliar stone

Pit Things have been sighted there ever since. It is now marked “Advanced Only.”

The Double Encore Paradox

A Band played an encore so emotionally charged that the crowd experienced it twice.

·       Once live

·       Once retroactively

Half the audience remembers being there.
The other half insists they skipped the show and still know all the lyrics.

The Night the Drums Answered Back

A visiting percussion-heavy act triggered a call-and-response with something beneath the sublevels.

·       Drums answered in a rhythm no one taught

·       Tempo increased without player input

·       Stopped only when the crowd sat down together

City records list the incident as “seismic testing.”

The Tagalong From Track 4

Something arrived mid-set, unnoticed, and followed the crowd out.

·       Spent three weeks hanging around the Pipeline

·       Paid in coins that don’t exist anymore

·       Left politely after being asked to stop humming

No hostile actions recorded. Tips generously.

The Silent Set (Never Repeated)

One experimental act attempted a full silence performance.

·       No amps

·       No vocals

·       No crowd noise

Silence lasted exactly twelve seconds before the Coliseum produced a sound on its own.
The Band has never been seen again, though their merch still occasionally appears.

The City Planner Incident

During a daytime council inspection, a doorway briefly opened onto a cheering crowd that was not present.

·       Applause lasted 47 seconds

·       No source identified

·       Axel insists it was “just a warm-up crowd”

The inspection was concluded early.

Political Reality

The City of Ed-Town officially classifies the Coliseum District as structurally compromised, historically irretrievable, and culturally complex beyond existing frameworks. These assessments are technically accurate and functionally irrelevant. No department is eager to be responsible for displacing the Minotaurs, whose continued presence has repeatedly proven less dangerous than the alternatives. Over the past decade, concerts in the Coliseum have absorbed multiple psychic pressure events that would otherwise have spilled into residential zones, defused at least two faction conflicts before formal mobilization, and once interrupted a Multitude incursion mid-chorus without civilian casualties. No redevelopment proposal has demonstrated equivalent results.

Axel Thunderpipes attends City Council meetings not because he seeks authority, but because someone must translate outcomes. Zoning maps no longer align with the physical city, inspection reports fail to account for emotional load, and several streets technically lead somewhere they did not yesterday. Axel’s role is to explain why this is not a failure of governance, but evidence that the system is still working—just not in the way it was originally designed to.

The original Coliseum was built to contain crowds. The Minotaur Coliseum exists to focus them. It operates simultaneously as a ritual space, a negotiation chamber, and a controlled battlefield that prefers guitars to artillery. The structure that once anchored Edmonton’s past could not survive the future that arrived. So the Minotaurs gave it another one.

Excerpt from City of Ed-Town Records

Public Infrastructure & Redevelopment Committee
Agenda Item 7B: “Coliseum Demolition Permits (Revisited)”

Attendance incomplete. Recording quality poor. Smells faintly of ozone and beer.

Planner H. Whitcombe:
Mr. Thunderpipes, with respect, the structure on record was condemned. It no longer exists in a form that meets any recognized safety standard.

Axel Thunderpipes:
Yeah, man-o, that’s the point. If it still met standards, it’d be boring.

Planner H. Whitcombe:
Our maps show the original footprint here—
(papers rustling)
—and your… facility extends well beyond it.

Axel:
Emotionally or physically?

Planner:
Physically.

Axel:
Ah. Then emotionally too.

Planner:
You’ve constructed load-bearing walls without permits.

Axel:
No, no. We played them into existence—totally different department.

Planner:
Some tunnels are not on any plan.

Axel:
Correct. Those are optional.

Planner:
You can’t just rebuild a demolished arena because it “felt right.”

Axel:
Buddy, if cities didn’t do that, we wouldn’t be sitting in this room.

Planner:
This section—
(points)
—appears to move.

Axel:
Only during encores.

Planner:
What about these sublevels? There’s no record of excavation.

Axel:
Oh, those came with us. Checked baggage.

Planner:
Mr. Thunderpipes, this document says the building’s interior volume exceeds its exterior.

Axel:
Yeah. Killer acoustics.

Planner:
And what exactly is this designation?
(reads)
“Minos Echo Containment / Do Not Bulldoze (It Wakes).”

Axel:
We’re still workshop-ing the phrasing.

Planner:
If we approve this permit, we’re acknowledging that the structure violates zoning, physics, and three different eras of building code.

Axel:
Look, man-o. You can deny the permit. Totally your call.

(leans in)
But the show’s booked either way.

Planner:
Are you threatening the city?

Axel:
Nah. I’m inviting it.

(Unidentified council member coughs. Someone hums in the background. The lights flicker.)

Planner:
…If we reclassify this as a “temporary performance installation”—

Axel:
Been temporary for fifty years. Very on-brand.

Planner:
—then technically demolition would require environmental review, cultural impact assessment, and—

Axel:
—and a really good opening act.

Planner:
(sighs)
Fine. Conditional approval. No expansion without notice.

Axel:
Of course.

Planner:
And no more… summoning… during office hours.

Axel:
No promises before noon.

Motion passed. Recording ends abruptly when feedback overwhelms the microphones.

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