The gears (and boat winches) of war

In bigger battles, such as sieges, more and bigger weapons are brought into play. One night last August, I found my son and his roommate searching for sources of surgical tubing. "We're building a ballista," my son explained.

"And how are you building this thing?" I asked dubiously.

"Oh, we found plans for it on the Internet," he told me. "It's totally safe."

Siege weapons have been part of Darkon since its early days, as have bows and crossbows. All of the projectile weapons used in the game must fire missiles that have been thoroughly checked for safety. And bows and crossbows are limited in power to a 30-pound draw, for instance. While siege weapons, such as catapults, trebuchets, and ballistae can be much more powerful, they typically launch foam bolts or beanbags.

Totally safe—except for the operators. "The first ballista in the game that I remember had very safe missiles," Machate told me when I recounted my son's abortive effort. "But the device itself could kill the operators. It was in my group, in fact. A ballista is a giant crossbow, and the crossbar of this one, the bow part, was the leafspring of a truck. The string was twisted wire cable, and you had to use a boat winch to get it into place. So the missiles were safe, and it had a hell of a range, but the device itself was... not the best design."

Hollingsworth had his own harrowing experience with building his first siege weapon. During testing, part of it shot off and put a hole in the side of a barn. He and his friends wisely decided to go back to the drawing board.

Machate said that the attitude early on was that the safety of the operators was their own problem—if they got hurt using their weapon, it was their own fault. But with the group's incorporation and concern about liability, siege weapons that are brought to the field today get a much more critical eye.

Battle for the crown

As combat ended for the day, the action moved indoors where the new high king, Calen, was to be crowned. The coronation was the culmination of another recent major Darkon event—the game's first "crown war."

“But the reality is, we had 22 knights of the realm on the field, and each one of them is eligible to be king. There could have been backstabbing and cheating.”

The nobility in the game have often been viewed as something separate—a sort of club for "elite" players, with a squire system that allowed only a select few to gain entry. But Darkon didn't have its first high king until 1997. "The rank system existed within the nobility," Machate told me, "but no one had ever achieved King before. So my friend Rob reached that point and was like, 'I want to be king.' So they made up rules for him to become king by combat."

Under the old rules of nobility, whenever players reached the point where they qualified for the title of king, they would challenge the existing king and fight for the title. The first king held off all challenges until 2006, when he finally was unseated in personal combat.

Four years ago, the rules were changed to add another option for succession: a crown war. "It's an opportunity for every knight in the realm to have a chance to be king," Machate explained. Rather than the fight being restricted to the king and his challenger, the successor is determined by who can raise an army and defeat all others who would claim the throne on the field—in other words, Game of Thrones style. "Whoever won the first battle was the challenger, the true challenger," Machate said. "Then the second fight is a siege battle against the king—it takes a long time, and it's a battle of attrition."

The crown war rule had never been invoked until this year, when Calen lost in personal combat against the king and chose to go to war. "For people from outside it, it looks like it was Calen and [former king] Slindar," said Machate. "But the reality is, we had 22 knights of the realm on the field, and each one of them is eligible to be king. There could have been backstabbing and cheating."

What there was, instead, was a great deal of politicking among the countries of Darkon—and a lot of in-game currency trading hands. The succession became not just an excuse for a couple of epic battles, but a huge driver of the virtual fortunes of every player in the game.

"That was the purpose of the rules," Machate said. "It was to take this thing that nobody else cared about and bring it into the club as a whole so everyone could have a say and participate. There could be a country out there that has no knights that could decide to be kingmakers—'You're going to be our king, and we're going to back you, and if you suck we'll get rid of you.' It's more fun for the game to involve everybody instead of having a separate thing for people who are 'special,' or think they are."

Now that the crown war option is available, it's bound to become the preferred route to the throne. "Now that Pat [King Calen] has won, any time a new king takes the throne he's safe for a year," Machate said. "But most of us agree that we'll probably see this as the norm—there won't be many fights in the ring. It'll be whoever gets their buddies together and beats their enemies."

It's that sort of thing that keeps Darkon's unique spin on combat-driven LARPing so interesting—and keeps new players coming back for more. It gives the game life beyond the battlefield and gives every padded sword-swinger a chance to be a hero in something epic. It's no wonder it continues to grow. And with events like Bellum Aeternus, Darkon will probably spawn generations of foam heroes to come.

Back to reality

With the coronation over and the sun set, most of Bellum Aeternus' combatants had retired from the field and headed home so they could recover in time for work on Monday. Some remained, gathered in a barn-loft meeting space turned for the evening into a tavern. A belly dancer performed and a band prepared to play medieval tunes. Others set off to set camp for the night and prepared for the evening's in-game entertainment—gladiatorial "pit fights," in which players take each other on in single combat, and other role-play debauchery.

I gathered up my companions and headed back to Baltimore. As we drove, my son Kevin and his roommates recounted their exploits of the day, and told me about some of the in-game and out-of-game politics of Darkon. Kevin has been to about 25 Darkon events so far—and he believes it will take another 50 before his mage character is really worth something in a fight. He keeps a second character, a "warrior-mage," for events where sword-swinging is more important. But in events where his country is involved in role-play, he has to take one for the team and play the full mage, since he's the only one Asaheim has.

Darkon, in a way, literally got my son Kevin out of the house. He is a student at Towson University, and he works as a lead salesman in a high-end consumer electronics store. While he was taking a philosophy class about a year ago, a fellow student spotted a kindred spirit in him and got him to come out for a Darkon event. It was through Darkon that he met his roommates and found a larger community—something he had been missing at Towson, with its student population made up mostly of off-campus commuters.

Kevin tried to get my younger son, Jonah, to join up as well. But after two rain-soaked campouts ("It's a tradition—every time we have a campout it pours," Kevin said), Jonah decided he really didn't want to spend his weekends that way. The immersive experience of Darkon clearly isn't for everyone.

But as I dropped off the trio of warriors, re-entered the real world, and bid them farewell, I couldn't help but envy them a little. Maybe it was the idea of having something with such an epic sweep, with such ridiculousness and unbridled geekiness always there to turn to. Or maybe it was my latent desire to build a trebuchet.