When I interviewed one of the players about how involved a person could be with Belegarth, he replied by telling me about their knighting system. In order to become a knight, one would have to become a squire for a certain amount of time, while "learning how to build every type of weapon, learning to sew, learning to referee, learning to run events" and also going "through a significant personal journey" (Johns).
Learning about the knighting system only added to my fascination with Belegarth. This sport actually taught these people useful (and maybe some not so useful) skills outside of the battlefield. It also made me wonder what qualified as a "significant personal journey" and how that journey affected the knight.
While I was interviewing this player, another Belegarth player came up. He had a special belt, which I came to learn was called the Chaos Wars Champions belt. It resembled something of a wrestler champion's belt, only it was mostly brown leather with no gold plating on it. I was informed that the belt was the prize given to the champion of the Chaos Wars, and that every champion that had won it had carved their name and the date onto the leather. I did not ask much about the Chaos Wars afterwards, but after doing some research, I learned that it actually sounded like a lot of fun.
The Chaos Wars, according to a Belegarth article, is "an eight day national Belegarth event" held in Hailey, Idaho (Peterson). It is "a chance for realms across the west to come and compete with each other to win titles and championships" where people can interact in actives such as "outdoor dubstep, beer application night, storytelling and gladiator pits" (Hooker). Other events include "pub night, a comedy night, a talent show night and a goblin night during which children can go trick-or-treating to the various camps" (Peterson). After learning more about those different parts of Belegarth, I found myself appreciating the sport even more, not only as an activity, but as a community.
After learning all of this, and getting to experience Belegarth first-hand, I came to believe that Belegarth was a fun place for people who might be considered geeks or even rejects to get together and act like the heroes they admired from their books, movies, or video games. "'For a lot of us, we're able to realize those fantasies we had as kids watching 'Lord of the Rings,' 'Star Wars' or 'Conan,'" said Joe Howell, a College Student [...] "As a kid, you pretended you wanted to be that, and now as adults we can do that in Belegarth'" (Dunn).
Even though Belegarth is a fun outlet for people to become more like their heroes from legend and fantasy, it also develops a close community. Even when I asked my friend Amy, aka Elizabeth, what her favorite part about Belegarth was, she said: "the thing that I mainly like is just the community [...] it's a culture, it's a subculture" (Peters).
During my time at this event, I felt closest to the Belegarth community when it was nearing the end. I was tired and sitting with my two friends on the sidelines, watching the dwindling numbers of fighters battle against each other. One fighter, who was a monster according to the orange and black face paint, came over and began a friendly conversation with me, the newbie. I had seen him on the battlefield earlier; he rushed enemies like a dog chasing after a ball, and fought with the energy of a Monster (no pun intended).
He had commented to me and Elizabeth earlier that we were awesome for braving the front lines and that we were doing it right. We talked about what our favorite books were, and how fantasy books were awesome. It was something to bond over and geek out about and I found myself enjoying the conversation. Soon, another girl joined in and we talked about a famous fantasy series called The Wheel of Time, which was apparently an amazing series.
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