Knight Club
Live Action Role Players duke it out medieval style
Photo: Emily Jourdan
The Grand Duchy of Darkwater is fighting in the Kingdom of Neverwinter. Apollo draws back on his bow, steady in his arm. He releases the arrows as precisely as he can while squinting under the glaring sun. Barbarians and warriors from both sides of the kingdom charge the battlefield, clashing swords and scurrying behind gong-like shields. A healer rushes to the aid of a scout wandering blankly under the bard’s spell. Before too many precious minutes pass, she breaks the spell with her own.
“Petrify, petrify, petrify, petrify, petrify,” a druid chants. He launches a spinning ball across the field and hits the healer in the shoulder. She freezes and turns to stone.
The scout wards off several warriors with the help of a highly skilled assassin. A monk brings the healer back to life. The battle is nearly over. And almost everyone is dead.
The spell balls may slow her down, but they don’t hurt. What turned her to stone resembled a balled up pair of old socks. A fireball, specifically, looks more like a red dish towel wrapped around a loose jumble of rubber bands.
Soft and bulbous at the tip, Apollo’s arrowheads make the same loud popping noise a marshmallow does when it hits something hard. In this case, the target hid behind a shield or a big, round foam disc about the size of a small coffee table.
In Neverwinter, swords don’t scrape—they thwack. Made from graphite golf clubs wrapped in Funnoodle and packing tape, a regular nylon covers the whole “blade.” Shaped more like a bat, these swords weigh less than five pounds.
Every Sunday, the Duchy of Darkwater resurrects itself to battle again. This is a game to them.
Darkwater is one of eight Amtgard chapters across Florida. Amtgard is a non-profit, nonsectarian group dedicated to recreating elements of medieval life and combat. This is not your typical game of Dungeons and Dragons, nor does it resemble other Live Action Role Playing Games like Vampire and Werewolf, where conflicts can be resolved with a roll of the dice or a quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. LARPs, Live Action Role Players, who play Amtgard, progress in the game by actually striking each other with foam weapons.
All players must be over 14 and sign a consent form. Darkwater is comprised of men and women of all ages.
Barry Guetin, 45, is the President of the Board of Directors of the Amtgard society in Florida, and currently reigns as King over the Duchy of Darkwater. When Guetin, a father of two, is not on call as a technician in the cardiology ward at Shands Hospital in Gainesville or working as a civil engineer collecting research at the University of Florida, he serves on the battlefield as Bjorn the Viking.
For most people, he says the draw to playing the game lies in the chance to be a hero in your own story. In Amtgard, you can create any character you wish despite a few restrictions. The game prohibits players taking the persona of actual historical figures, but characters should be loosely based in medieval, pre-technological societies.
“If you want to be an elf, you can be an elf,” Bjorn says.
Bjorn the Viking is part of an anti-terrorist group from the future who got thrust back into the past to an area of Russia under Viking control, where technological weaponry was of no use to him. As he wandered across the world, he spent a lot of time in Japan before ending up in the Kingdom of Neverwinter. On the field, Bjorn wears a khaki fishing hat, black chef’s pants with a fiery chili pepper pattern and a black T-shirt. Over his pants and shirt he wears a long white tunic of Asian influence, belted with bulky shin guards—a preventative precaution Bjorn is compulsive about after a serious knee injury during in a battle involving other kingdoms in Valdosta, Georgia.
“There are two important things in this Universe,” says Bjorn, “Duct tape and a mother’s love. Those two things can fix anything.”
Bjorn has been playing Amtgard for nine years and has progressed through nearly all of the 12 classes. He has accrued 457 credits combined; 94 in Barbarian, 32 in Monster, 65 in Archer, 63 in Wizard and the list continues. In any given day, a character accrues one credit or more for playing with the abilities granted by the class chosen for that specific game. Divided into two equal teams, games range from a quest or traditional battle game, which plays like a very intricate “Capture the flag,” to “Ditching,” which is strictly fighting. Within that game and class, a character has four lives.
“The Vikings always believed you couldn’t be heroic unless you died doing it,” says Bjorn, who was backstabbed by the smallest players in Sunday’s game.
Bjorn’s Amtgard philosophy is chivalrous in that he believes in playing the opponent more so than the game. Remaining true to character is sometimes more important than martial skill. A spell-casting character can thrust the game any which way, he says.
Ash Pheonix, 23-year-old, red-haired Anna Thomas, is one of the best role players on the field, says Bjorn. Her quick-witted spells and spunky attitude make her notorious in the class of Bard. Known for turning players into chickens, Ash also can make a warrior have bladder problems.
“Wee, wee, wee. Pee, pee, pee. Now you must wee, wee, wee all over the tree, tree, trees.”
If a player hears these words, it means he or she must pretend to wiz on every tree in the area. The spell works best deep in the woods, she says.
By day, Ash works at Gourmet Rodent breeding snakes. She has three of her own at home including a 4-foot Burmese python named Damion.
As the Region of Darkwater, she organizes feasts and other annual events including inter-kingdom tournaments and her own wedding.
Ash met her fiancé on the field. Lord Icefire, 28-year-old Kevin Woods, is the current Duke of Darkwater. During a political meeting of the court after a battle game last Harvestfeast, Ash called Lord Icefire down to ask for his hand in marriage.
“I turned as red as her hair,” he says, working another metal ring onto a patch of chain mail with a pair of pliers.
Icefire and Ash both make their own armor, including traditional chain mail pieces and other garb like loose, long pants that tie at the foot. Holding a political office on the Darkwater Court also means you must participate in the Arts and Sciences associated with the game.
Icefire wears his ring on a chain around his neck, a blue and grey flamed tunic and black pants. His name, based on the idea of opposites crossing, doubled as a pen name for Kevin’s poetry in high school.
“They used to call me a lot of things in high school,” says Icefire, flattening the goatee around his mouth. “I had, like, seven other nicknames besides Icefire.”
Occasionally, he still writes poetry for Crown Calls or meetings where they give out awards to players for excelling in different aspects of the game.
Ash sews costumes for herself and others on her team. However, one of her favorite pieces is not something she made, but a foxtail she bought at a medieval fair that attaches to her belt. When she walks the field, the brown furry tail bops back and forth.
“Now we have to convince our parents to come out and watch us run around in funny clothes and get married,” Ash says, smiling out of one side of her mouth.
The two are scheduled to marry in November at Harvestfeast next year. While some find love on the battlefield, it is still a battlefield, where risks and perils are commonplace.
Amtgard injuries are rare, but possible. Icefire remembers the worst injury he ever witnessed. Darkwater was battling another kingdom at Dragon’s Keep in Texas. Two members of opposing teams went at each other with the same move while carrying large shields, which were made of a heavy snowboard-like material. Both shields caught the opponents just under the eye. Talon of Darkwater, who suffered from a previous motorcycle accident, got hit in an already sensitive place. The muscles around his eye relaxed, and his eyeball wobbled from its socket.
“He said he was looking forward and seeing the ground,” Icefire says.
Talon’s opponent suffered only a bad bruise. Though fully restored to his former self, others often call him Cyclops on the field.
The court of Darkwater sets forth the safety standards for weaponry. Swords and daggers range from three to six feet in length, always safely padded. However, using these weapons requires a great deal of martial skill on the player’s behalf.
Bobo, 22-year-old Phil Ashford, earned a total of 338.6 credits mostly in the fighting classes of Amtgard. Each Sunday (at least one credit each game) comes to about six years of playing. Bobo, a dark-haired, slender guy more than six feet tall, uses two swords on the field and is acrobatic in action. His tunic is maroon on his left side and blue on his right. There is a silhouette of a light blue moose head in the center on his chest and a smaller one on his belt. He wears black karate pants to move freely and quickly. His wrists are covered by brown leather, silver-studded cuffs and he wears a pair of tattered, black hockey gloves that have a hole in the palm from gripping his sword.
“I just like to come out here and beat people with sticks,” Bobo says fixing the bandanna on his head.
Bobo says he is less interested in the role-playing aspect of the game. However, as a wizard he earned a whopping 63 credits (the max), which proves him a master of magic as well as of the sword.
“The game requires skill and athleticism,” says Bobo.
There is an art to fighting. Bobo admits to watching Amtgard tape of other battles to perfect his form. Less martially skilled role players tend to get discouraged by the game, he says.
“Just because you play a badass, doesn’t mean you are one,” Bobo says.
“Bobo is the type of guy people either love or hate,” says a grinning Havoc Silverheart, making a playful swat at Bobo.
The current members in Darkwater are mostly veterans who have watched the kingdom grow and shrink over the years. At one point, the field reached about 150 players.
In the past, they have relied on the Hogtown Medieval Faire to recruit new players. Last year, they set up a drink booth, staged some demos and fought in a live battle game. They made about $200 and broke even. A couple of new recruits came out to the field, but stopped after a couple of months.
“People come out and then lose interest, have problems with certain people or just get busy with work and life,” says Pom Pom, 16-year-old Will Sanders, who admits that when he joined the game there were a lot of pretty girls.
Many of the players agree people can become overwhelmed on first attempts at playing Amtgard. Reading up on the rules and abilities of each class before playing is a part of newbie preparation. The annually updated rulebook can be confusing even for more experienced players—especially when a newbie uses a new spell Darkwater veterans don’t know.
“It’s good for taking out your anger in a somewhat safe environment,” says Pom Pom, who plans to join the military one day.
For now, Darkwater relies on members like Pom Pom to bring friends to join the games.
“You don’t have to be fast, you don’t have to be strong,” Pom Pom says. “It’s for everyone really.”