(A/N): I guess you can call this one big ol' writing exercise. I need practice doing character studies and what better way to do that than by attempting to personify characters that aren't your own under the watchful eye of the very person that created them? To those of you who read/are reading the Blood of the Beast, don't be mad at me for starting up another project! I can't really go without writing; it just has to be the right thing for the right time and this should help me get over my weird hill with that story.

Anyway, since FF seemed to massacre all the SYOT's a week or two ago, I'm pretty nervous about putting up a form. So if you have a tribute you want to submit, PM me for the details. The basics I'm going to need are of course: Name, Age, and District. But I'm looking for detail; make these guys so real that there's nearly no blanks I have to fill in. Give them their own little stories. The more you include, the more I have to work with. It's not first come first serve so take as much time as you need.

Thanks to everyone who submits someone! Can't wait to see what you guys can create.

As of 8/12 NO SPOTS ARE OPEN. We are offically closed, everybody!

Foreward

We want you to know the nation had seen monsters long before Coriolanus Snow. We want you to know that before Katniss Everdeen there had been terrors; irreversible terrors that continue to haunt the darkest cervices of our devastated cities and even the purest of air that gushes past your face. Your parents can tell you of these horrors. Be thankful you will never have them manifest before your very eyes; because believe us when we say they will never leave those who lived through them.

There are things you must know. There are stories that must be heard lest they die and fade into oblivion with the forgotten. If they are forgotten, they seize to exist. And this would be just fine wouldn't it? Why bring the blood back to surface?

Because you are all still human. Because all it takes is just the right person and the right time for all the progress you believe you have made to crumple into nothing and soon you'll find yourself deeper than you were.

Fourty years before Katniss Everdeen held out berries for the cameras in the arena of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games- starting a fire she had no awareness nor control over that would one day burn all the world had known to the ground, two men stood in an open field bathed in sunlight and surrounded by an inconceivable amount lavender plants swaying in the wind that carried their words. They didn't face one another but there were smiles spread across their lips as they observed the landscape many would call breathtaking, because to them it was going to soon become a slaughtering ground.

"Well, Acanthus?" whispered the president, who had confided in the man for both his two years as leader of Panem. They used to say you could see the hunger in his eyes as he sent out the orders to peacekeepers to hunt down those he saw as potential betrayers to his government- as if he would have rather done it himself.

The president was a monster. Every day he reminded himself of that. He wanted that. He wanted to be feared.

But the man who loomed beside him, silent with his black eyes focused straight ahead, was far worse than the president. He was entirely apathetic. He had no regard to how people saw him. He was the Head Game Maker and considerably young compared to the rest. However he did his job very, very well. And this wasn't because he was forced.

It was because he wanted to.

"It is perfect," Acanthus said.

"I hope this year isn't a disappointment," the president sneered, because both men knew it wouldn't be. It never was.

Acanthus was undeniably unusual in his deaths- his run so far had been a collage of children entirely covered with blood as they bled out from every pore in their skin, strange insect hybrids that only ate away eyes and left the victim alive for hours before they died, broken teeth and black vile spewing from the opened, screaming mouths of the tributes who had played in his last two games. But to the president, that was what made his games so very-well, entertaining.

The hover craft was suddenly above them both. The president immediately moved toward its latter, but Acanthus stayed among the lavender plants for a moment more, smiling.

Contrary to the belief of the president who observed him with curiosity, thinking that the man was imaging his strategy, carefully playing out how these games would go- Acanthus's mind was almost completely blank. Only one thought had ran its course through the blackness.

Let the Games begin, children.

We tell you of these men because we want you to see, we want you to understand. At that time, all it took was a name to be drawn from a glass bowl for a gruesome, terrible fate to be sealed.

Before you hear this story, we want you to know that even the people of the Capitol wanted to forget the Thirty-Fourth annual Hunger Games.