PATUXENT RIVER STATE PARK, Maryland—For four days, the Darkon Wargaming Club took over a section of a park outside Upper Marlboro that once served as a grass airfield. Temporarily, it became a combination of festival encampment and battleground. The event was the second edition of Bellum Aeternuthe club's invitational event for live-action role-play (LARP) and combat, open to participants from across the medieval-themed LARP community.

As I described in my feature on the first Bellum Aeternus last November, Darkon is a live-action combination of fantasy tabletop role-play (like Dungeons and Dragons) and wargaming (like Warhammer), combining a full-contact battle sport with a strategic land warfare game and scenario-driven adventures. Darkon is an offshoot of the "boffer" combat gaming community that originally sprung up in Maryland, Washington DC, and Northern Virginia. Unlike the Society for Creative Anachronism's armored combat, Darkon and similar combat games use padded weapons for safety and to allow unarmored (and occasionally barely dressed) participants.

Unlike Dagorhir, from which Darkon and most of the other US fantasy combat LARP games evolved, Darkon incorporates a magic system that has spellcasters throwing beanbag "fireballs" and "lightning bolts" in combat. Participants also use other magic to avoid taking hits in battle or rendering opponents' defenses useless. And unlike Amtgard, another fantasy LARP, Darkon allows for some serious full-contact combat—using tactics such as "shield bashing" to knock opponents over and allowing the use of bows with pad-tipped arrows. The combination of archers and spellcasters drives some of those from other, larger game communities to distraction. It changes the balance of the combat game from pure martial beatdown to one where players with a wide range of physical abilities can take part.

Darkon's participants can join teams representing virtual "countries" within the larger fantasy Darkon realm or come on their own as "nomads" and join up with others on a pick-up basis. Some of the countries have been around nearly as long as the game, with a few having more that 20 years of history. Let this representative of Ched Nasad explain:

A member of Ched Nasad gives a brief overview of his country's history and how he was drawn into Darkon.

The turnout for this weekend's event—a bit over 300 participants—was not quite as large as the inaugural Bellus Aeternum. That might have been partly because of its timing. With the Otakon conference the weekend before, Dagorhir's Ragnorok event just a month and a half ago, and the Maryland Renaissance Festival just a few days away, fantasy-themed social calendars have been a bit packed. The first two days of the event (a Thursday and Friday) were a campout and role-play event, which may not have appealed to the pure combat clubs.

Still, the event drew a larger variety of merchants than the first—leatherworkers, costumers, and even a hair stylist specializing in period-appropriate braidwork were among those on hand. And with casino games and gladiatorial "pit fights" to gamble on and campgrounds to retire to, the revelry at the end of the more family-appropriate portions of the days' entertaiments went to an entirely different level (though the park is a "beer-and-wine-only facility"). I spoke with The Bard, the head of Darkon's "entertainment" guild, about his part in the event:

Riggs, AKA The Bard, describes the duties of the Entertainment Guild and how he became the Bugsy Segal of Darkon.

The day in pictures