UCCS’ Very Own LARP Club Woefully Unprepared to Fight Dragon

The Gaiwan Wargamers are a student group on the University of Colorado campus where interested students can meet like-minded individuals and engage in live action role-playing, or LARPing.

Members of the Wargamers, as well as LARP organizations, convene in knight and wizard costumes together to stage elaborate fantasy battles, wherein participants are bound to arcane combat rules. LARPers take great pride in the forging of homemade swords, assembled most often from duct tape and PVC pipe.

Though he was well-versed in armed conflict since joining the Gaiwan Wargamers his sophomore year, having won the Scepter of Valor in the battle of Breckenridge House, UCCS senior and 12th Level Paladin Gareth Spitzke was nevertheless overmatched when a fire-breathing dragon attacked the Cragmoor area of campus. "I was at the Dusty Loo Bon Vivant, or whatever that theater's called," Spitzke began, "looking for discarded props to add to my armory. That's when I heard a screeching that reminded me of the wring-wraiths. I ran outside and saw the hillside swallowed by flames." Spitzke paused for a moment and fiddled with the gauze wrapped around his various burns and injuries.

"‘Twas a fearsome and odious beast," Spitzke began again, though now he spoke with the wobbly English accent of his LARPing character, Lord Hellthorne. "‘Lo,' I cried to my brothers in arms in a heroic text blast, ‘our hallowed campus has fallen to Dragon's Breath. Let us defend the Kingdom with our lives!'" Spitzke coughed as the emotional tenor of his story increased. Then a heartbreaking look crossed his face and he mumbled "The treachery that followed stings worse than the third degree burns that now scar my visage."

In a final bit of irony, the Dragon was ultimately felled not by the sword, nor any of UCCS' militaristic student groups, but rather by the Students for a Sensible Drug policy, who earned the beast's clemency after a conciliatory bong session.