A stage is a location of a battle. Battles can sometimes end on a ring out if the stage has an out boundary. Mostly, each stage is the homeland of a specific character or a pair of characters, like the Distant Marsh of Soulcalibur IV (home to Talim) or the Jurakudai Villa (home to Setsuka). Each stage has its own background music as of Soulcalibur-Soulcalibur IV. In Soulcalibur V character-specific musical themes as well as any of the stage-specific themes can be selected before battle in any given stage.