Students, local residents stage fights in medieval-style battle games

Bodies clothed in medieval garb littered the Bryan Park battlefield Sunday afternoon in the wake of the most recent battle.

Fighters, many dead just moments before, stood up and rearmed themselves in preparation for the next conflict. But the battle was temporarily put on hold, as the herald, or referee, held up a set of keys.

“Has anybody lost their keys?” herald Ben Samuelson asked. “A new issue Chevy?” A man raised his hand, and once the keys were returned, Samuelson yelled for the battle to commence.

This particular battle marked the spring opener for the Bloomington Battle Games Club. Composed of students and community members interested in medieval style combat, the group meets from 1 to 4 p.m. every Sunday at Bryan Park, weather permitting.

Teams of four rushed toward each other with foam-padded weapons and savage energy.

Angel Patterson, of the Numenor realm, picked off fighters from afar with green foam-tipped arrows that nonetheless packed a punch.

“I usually always get some bruises, no matter how safe the weapons are,” said Cyrus Cunningham, a member of the Bloomington Battle Games Club and a recent IU
graduate.

He wore the yellow sash of the herald over his hand-sewn garb, a black tunic with red trim, and goes by “Hash” on the battlefield. He held his sword in his right hand and his shield in his left, adorned with green and white, the traditional colors of Rhovanion, his realm. The name comes from the wild ungoverned lands in which most of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” takes place.

The club was founded three years ago by then-IU graduate student Jeff Sartain, who had been involved in medieval-themed combat since he was 14.

He stressed the difference between the Battle Games Club and LARPing, or live-action role-playing, as seen in the film “Role Models.”

“All we do is fight,” Sartain said. “There’s really no role-playing or characterization ... it’s like rugby for nerds.”

The term “nerd,” Sartain said, carries different implications with every member.

“Some people are really in the closet about their nerd,” he said. “Some people are very, very fine about whatever people think.”

The rules of combat are simple. All weapons are checked before battle to ensure that 2.5 inches of foam cover any contact area. Weapons include the traditional one-handed short sword and shield, longer two-handed swords, thrusting weapons and missile weapons like spears and arrows.

A hit between the neck and the groin is death. A hit to an arm disables that arm; the same is true for a leg. Two disabled limbs equal death. Head shots are prohibited.

“The swords are standardized, so the costumes and the people don’t have to be,”
Sartain said.

Characterization applies only to the extent that players design their own medieval garb and can choose to give themselves combat names.

Michael Neff goes by Krucifer. The imposing, steel-eyed bald-headed warrior was clad in all black and sported a pentacle on his breastplate and an arm-length death-metal inspired tattoo that took eight six-hour sessions to complete. He’s only been fighting for a year and a half, but Sartain said Neff immediately fit right in.

“Don’t let the archer get me,” Neff commanded his teammates while he dodged Patterson’s onslaught of arrows. “I can’t deal with this archer nonsense.”

One of Patterson’s arrows hit Neff’s chest. Neff kneeled down with his javelin touching his head, the signal for death.

“I hate missile weapons!”

Fighter Cheryl Medley said the sport allows people not interested in traditional sports to participate in a physical activity.

“While we like to be physical we don’t get along with the jock-y set,” Medley said.
One of the more interesting side effects of the medieval-themed combat, she said, is the emphasis on crafts.

“You have guys who want to beat heads in, but they’re sewing.”

The sport creates a bond between fans of both fantasy and physicality.

“You bash somebody with your shield, they’re down and you pick them up and you have a conversation about their trim,” she said.

All but three of the 30 fighters at Bryan Park on Sunday were men. But Medley, along with Morgan Prestage, who is in her 10th year of fighting, and Allison Rook, who goes by Artemis in battle, don’t have a problem being the minority.

“A lot of girls who do it, not all of them are big like me,” Medley said. “The smaller ones are either really fast or do archery.”

“Friar” Steve Coppess, 54, in a brown robe and holding a plain white cross, sat above the battlefield and watched his son fight. A former Civil War re-enactor, Coppess said he feels that women fighters definitely rise to the challenge.

“In my experience, the girls are a lot tougher than the guys,” Coppess said.