Magical gatherings: Welcome to The Realms, a medieval live action role-playing game held throughout New England

By EMILEE KLEIN
For the Valley Advocate

Ken Crowley, Kaitlin Haslam and Ally Crowley are just like any other Granby family. But when they cross a wooden bridge by a willow tree somewhere in the town’s forest, suddenly, Ken, Kaitlin and Ally are no longer.

But on this September day, in their place, honorable knight Miracle Max, powerful healer Skylar Keasilis and noble fighter Kaninzi enter the clearing. Max and Kaninzi, adored with chainmail and dark metal armor, are swept into the chaos of battle, blocking attacks with their shields before taking swings with their swords.

Protected by a barrier of fighters, Skylar holds one of two dozen magical artifacts gathered during a previous quest. She and her comrades must correctly pronounce Latin and Aramatic words and kneel in the correct order to complete the puzzle. It takes careful coordination, as any hesitation means failure.

One can barely hear the ancient words over the slapping sounds of foam weapons and calls of warriors.

“Arm 1! Arm 2!” someone shouts, communicating that they sliced off their enemy’s arms.

“Piercing!” another bellows, indicating their weapon went through the opponent’s armor.

“It suits you little wolf,” one enemy mutters as he injures Adam “Tulkhan” Blaisdell, a warrior cloaked in furs and a wolf skull. Tulkhan lunges on the ground at the legs of his enemy with his enchanted weapon, putting them on an even playing field.

The fights last mere seconds before the enemies drop to the ground. The knights, however, have little time to recover before a new wave of foes approaches.

Welcome to The Realms, a medieval live action role-play (LARP) game held at numerous sites throughout New England. Loosely based on northeastern geography, The Realms is a world of magic, monsters and mayhem that is only limited by the imagination.

“It’s the perfect juxtaposition of epic and ridiculous,” Kathy “Makhta McKrye” Fey said. “We fully know that we’re running around in the field, hitting each other with plumbing supplies and getting all worked up about it. But at the same time, we are experiencing real threats and our friends are in trouble.”

Fey adds that while it may be a game, the significance of conquering evil and making mischief reverberates into the real world. The players of The Realms work their bodies, running for hours from enemies and refining their sword skills. They learn decades-old crafts, like tanning leather or fashioning chainmail for their character’s armor. Perhaps most importantly, the players find community and build friendships that last two lifetimes.

“It’s a very tight knit community, and many of the players here have been here a long time,” said Maria “Liselle Silvermaple” Carr from West Springfield. “I’ve been in this game 27 years. We have people who are going on 30 plus years, and then we have newbies. Once you get into it, you tend to start giving back.”

What is LARPing?

Live action role play is similar to table-top role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, where people embody fictional characters, but instead of limitations and successes decided by dice, players rely on their physical abilities and the obstacles of the real-world. Athletic aptitude decides if someone outspeeds, dodges and successfully kills their opponent. Weather and natural terrain add tangible obstacles to the existing metaphysical ones.

The goal of the game depends entirely on the type of event. Tournament events test player’s fighting skills in individual or team battles. Feasts center around political-minded puzzles and challenges. Quests, like the “Exotic Items, Creatures, & Wares” event the Crowley family attended, are fantasmic adventures with their own objectives, like saving a royal figure, defeating a demon or recovering a treasure. Events last between eight hours and several days, sometimes running for 24 hours straight.

Travis “Sir Elwin O’Bearikin” Wilcox, event organizer of “Exotic Items, Creatures, & Wares,” said that The Realms is a very open world. Rather than a single organizing body running half a dozen events a year, The Realms has more than 70 event holders that forge their own ideas, plots and lore. Nearly every weekend from spring to fall is booked for an event, each run by a dedicated team of volunteers.

“Generally all the storylines are divided up amongst the different nations,” Wilcox said. “So my nation being Stonewood, we have like this ongoing ‘Diablo’ type plot. When people come into my nation, they’re expecting that type of thing to be kicking around. When I go into Chimeron events, I generally would expect to deal with fairies because that is their thing.”

Fey calls The Realms a “boffer campaign LARP.” A boffer is the type of foam weapon used in role-play fights. Campaign-style games last multiple sessions, sometimes for decades. Yet unlike other combat-heavy LARP groups in New England, the Realms is skill-based.

“Most of them [LARP groups] are, like, numbers based. You start off, you swing one point of damage with your sword, and after you’ve been to like eight events, you swing five points every time you swing,” Fey said. “But we don’t do it like that. You’re as good as you are. You can go to practice and get better, and if you get better, you will be more effective, because now you can actually swing a fake sword better.”

This type of combat is “Barbie doll” style, according to Fey. The body is divided into seven sections: two arms, two legs, front torso, back toros, and head. If someone gets hit on their leg, they lose that leg and must now hop around à la Black Knight from the 1975 British comedy, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

Every player in The Realms starts out as a fighter with armor to absorb blows, and acquires spells or enchanted weapons at events. However, death is nearly unavoidable. Players die and resurrect dozens of times during an event.

“We all started with a single sword, no armor, just hitting each other with sticks,” said Matthew “Traveler” Mueller, member of the Society for Medieval Arts and Sciences at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “Then as the club progressed, they introduced armor, spells, combos, group strategy … and then on top of the really good strategy mechanics that the game provides, you add all the role play opportunities.”

Exotic Items, Creatures, and Wares

Before beginning the game, each person crafts a unique character with its own style and perspective. Animal pirates and thieves, valiant human knights, and triad wizards are just a few of the adventurers who arrived in the Granby forest. While character profiles do not provide any advantages, Mueller said they “flavor” how a character performs certain actions.

“For instance, you heal by planting feet and saying 20 words, but how that actually happens is up to you,” he said. “Are you just very good with healing arms? Are you calling upon a god? Do you have a bag of limbs and you just pull out an arm?”

On this day, more than 30 of these characters have gathered in the nation of Stonewood for one goal: defeat the rogue Archangel Urzael and restore peace to the land.

After completing the puzzle, adventurers ran into a forest of roped-off paths simulating tunnels. Characters begin to struggle against their enemies, losing an arm here and a leg there. Some are smote, putting a fist or weapon on their head to signal death. Magical casters pull their bodies out of the tunnels to heal them before bellowing back into combat.

At the end of the path lies a cursed skull artifact that may be the key to defeating Urzael. The Archangel has already descended on the party, throwing fireballs and absorbing all the hits like water off a duck’s back.

It is in these moments that role-playing comes alive. Warriors go between fighting Urzael and pleading with him to rethink his philosophy. Others stand back, prepared to heal or support the character risking his life to quell the dark being.

“The onus of creating those character moments generally falls to an event holder. At any given event, I try to hit 15 to 20 people who have that special moment where they get to shine,” Wilcox said. “Players have a very strict rule set that they have to follow for things that they can and cannot do, where, as an event holder, sky’s the limit. I can do whatever I want.”

Craig “Stewhart Namir” Blais, for instance, received one of these moments at the first part of the two-part quest. He wields the sword of justice, a weapon he persuaded another archangel to give him.

“Travis was like, ‘All right, you earned it! Make it,’” Blais said. “Pretty much everything that I’m wearing, I made.”

A studded leather tunic, leather and faux-fur shoulder pads and even a viking helmet adorn Blais. Many of the player’s intricate pieces are crafted themselves, spending days on chainmail tunics, leather cuffs or fabric bags. Sheathed swords, satchels, skulls and spells written on fabric strips embellish belts. While shields and weapons are limited to specific materials for safety, armor and accessories are up to the player’s creativity.

Leather work is not something Blais learned overnight. He first learned about The Realms when he saw his classmates at Easthampton High School crafting swords in art class. Over the last 20 years, he’s grasped how to create his own.

“Growing up I was very quiet, sheltered, kind of an outcast,” Blais said. “Coming into this has really helped me become a person. It helps people grow. It can help push boundaries in a healthy way. There’s a bunch of knighthoods in the game that are about helping people become a better version of themselves and I enjoy that a lot about the community.”

A game with real consequences

Blais found The Realms the same way many players do. They started attending The Realms because they enjoy Dugeons and Dragons or they heard about the game through high school and college friends. The game was not only fun, but easy exercise for young fantasy-lovers.

“You get to let out your aggression, which your [college] classes can definitely give you,” Justin “J’orsta” Thibeault said. “It gives you cardio, and when you’re not someone that does a recreational sport, it’s nice to get in that amount of high intensity exercise two times a week.”

LARP combat is so active that WPI counts the Society for Medieval Arts and Sciences’ club practices for physical education credit. Andrew “Elithris/Cholsrea” Kenny stuck with The Realms when he learned he could clear off a graduation criteria for “hitting people with sticks.” He now aims to master a duel-weapon style of combat while playing twin characters.

“Most of the people that are playing are coming from every aspect of life, from a grocery store worker to a doctor to lawyers. It also means you have every fitness level out there,” Wilcox said. “For some of us that have been fighting like this for that long, just like any sport, it is rough on your body.”

The variety of ages and careers also brews professional opportunities. Networking for jobs happens naturally during breaks as college students and new graduates rub shoulders with mid-career professionals. Thibeault said he’s not only gotten jobs from his connections at The Realms, he’s given others jobs.

“Even if you are enemies with another player, if your car gets a flat tire on the way out of an event, they’ll stop and help you,” Tom “Sir Avendar” Gallagher said. “There’s a difference between in game and out of game.”

It may be just a game, but The Realms have changed lives. People create decade-long friendships and even meet their significant others at events. Carr, for instance, met her husband Nate “Aelias Softshadow” Carr through The Realms. Nate’s best man at his wedding was Gallagher, who also met his wife at an event. Gallagher has two kids, one of whom now plays alongside him.

“They’re basically our family,” 13-year-old Ellenora “Flora” Gallagher said. “Most of my aunts and uncles are here.”

Ellenora is nearly brand new to the game. She’s only attended two events, and even with her father’s years of experience, she’s still getting her feet wet. Wilcox said that players do not need to know all the rules to pick up a sword and get started. Just show up, and you’ll be welcomed to The Realms.

“You get to experiment with things that you normally can’t do in real life. Like, you know, facing monsters, acting like a knight, going on adventures,” Gallagher said. “Most people just get to go to the bar and watch the game, and I get to do this. So I kind of feel bad for them, because this is way better.”