Movie Monday: Darkon

If I had the chance, I think I'd probably LARP.

LARPing, or Live Action Role Playing, is often seen as pretty dang high up on the ladder of geekdom. As such, it would be hard for me now (with all of the coolness points that I have amassed over time) to be able to truly enjoy LARPing without feeling self-conscious all the time.

Turn to the documentary Darkon. These people have no qualms with diving fully into their fantasy alter-egos. For this, I can honestly envy them. Every other part of the lifestyle going on at their weekends/adventures in Darkon, I'll gladly pass up for some regular tabletop D&D.

The movie follows the members of a LARPing community that is based around their world of Darkon, and the ongoing battles that are taking place both within the world, and some of the troubles that they face when they have to return to earth. To put it quickly, they go out to a forest over the weekends, camp out, fight with foam covered weapons for pieces of land that exist on their map, then go back home and return to work.

The escapism of their community is really nice. They get to abandon all thoughts of their regular life and immerse themselves completely into this imaginary world of elves and magic for a couple of days. I like the thought of it, but I think I would rather just go camping and beat up on someone with a stick without rules about how long I have to stay dead.

In honor of the movie and the members of the Darkon community, here is my imaginary world: Rethuaga.

Rethuaga is a primarily tropic world. The main race is a mix of tauntauns and ewoks, so they are both cute and easy to ride. Humans have been enslaved by the taunkwons and those that are free are being led by the charismatic Brakkatoa (me) who gets a critical hit with every swing of his flail.

Brakkatoa's encampment lies to the west of the great lake Huron (I'm running out of creativity) and they attack the taunkwons in the dead of night. They've slowly been growing in power as they reach and free more and more of the human slaves. Will they be able to finally free the humans from slavery? Only you can decide....