Community
27 September, 2024
LARPers descend on Pombo
KNIGHTS, mages, elves and dwarves have descended upon a property in Pomborneit for the annual Swordcraft Quest this week.
Swordcraft is Australia’s largest medieval battle game and live action roleplay (LARP) event, with players from across Australia attending the event this week.
Event manager Leigh Haren said this year’s event has been going “pretty well” over the week.
“We had a number of people rock up from the Saturday and start setting to get ready to build the immersive experience within town,” he said.
“Players started arriving on Saturday and Sunday, and the game started on Monday.
“The weather has been hitting us a little bit – a lot of people aren’t as used to camping as we’d like, but they’re learning.”
Players and event organisers alike put a large amount of effort into Swordcraft, with many players sporting detailed costumes which include warpaint and pieces crafted by their own hand.
Players and event staff act out a fictional story set within this lore to create an immersive expericence for the live action roleplay event.
Mr Haren said a large story team works each year to build on the lore involved in events such as this, as well as work behind the scenes to improve the experience.
“This has been something that has been building for years, and they’ve gotten a lot more people to volunteer to get involved to make it more in-depth and exciting for people,” Mr Haren said.
Throughout the week, players have been participating in fights, rituals and battles over resources.
Some players also featured tartan into their character outfits in a nod to the Celtic history of Camperdown.
“So far, people have had a little bit of a run-in with some necromancers, which has been a theme that has been alluded to in past events – this is the big bad that’s been developed,” Mr Haren said.
“They’re hoping to unite against the necromancer, or there’s some unsavory people around the town who may be willing to work for the necromancer because they might benefit from it.
“There’ll be more resources coming into town, there’ll be incursions from people who worship dark gods, as well as more forays from underlings for the necromancer.
“It’ll all end up culminating into one big battle on Saturday – that’s typically how we like to finish the event.
“It’ll sort of decide which company gets the final say in how we proceed forward into the next event.”
Mr Haren said this year’s Sudenburg ‘township’ had been moved to the front of the property and hopes this new location will form a “blueprint to build upon”.
“In comparison to previous years that we’ve run, we’ve had similar sorts of issues but at the same time we’re having less of them, which we’re quite happy about,” he said.
“Due to a change the way we structured the event, and with a different permit that we applied for, we moved the event out to the front just to make things a bit easier.
“There’s less concerns in regard to fire safety and destroying vegetation and habitats out in other areas.
“The hope is to get electricity at the front of the site, and that’ll also help us so we’re not relying on generators and it should just make running the event easier overall.”
Mr Haren said, while the camp and the ‘town’ of Sudenburg were full of lively characters, numbers were down on the previous year.
“Turnout is a little bit less than last year, and although that is unfortunate we understand it’s things like cost-of-living as well as other events being available – people don’t have as much time to make it to these,” he said.
“We’re hoping that, as we build the event more and we have a bit more consistency in the layout and how we’re doing it, it’ll encourage more people to be able to find the time and participate moving forward.
“We’re quite happy with the number of people – it’s more than enough to run the game.
“As long as people are having fun, interacting with people and enjoying the experience, then we’re winning in my books.”
Mr Haren encouraged residents who may be curious about LARPing to give it a go.
“If people have ever picked up a stick when they were young and pretended it was a sword, or if they’ve ever wanted to pretend to be another character, events like LARP is something that really lets people express themselves,” he said.
“A lot of people find themselves in these sort of events, and I’d encourage people to, as weird and as strange as it sounds to wear a bunch of medieval or fantasy stuff and hit each other with fake swords, I highly encourage people to try it out.
“It’s a lot of fun and there’s a really good community behind it.”
