mundane and fantasy themes and personas. A typical Dagorhir battle might involve Roman Legionaries and Saxon warriors locked in a battle against Orcs and Undead. Dagorhir is strictly a weapon combat game, with no concept of "magic". Dagorhir also eschews the use of character classes in combat, instead allowing fighters to create and define their own styles of combat. Fighters are free to choose their types of armor, picks of garb, choices of weaponry, and styles of play. Realms and Chapters are organized by geography, and can range from between a handful of participants to several hundred. Typically a chapter will organize a battle weekly or monthly, with the various units participating, with occasional supplementary activities such as feasts, overnight camp-out battles, and even annual inter-chapter meetings. The largest annual Dagorhir gathering is known as Ragnarok. It is an annual Dagorhir tradition and in years of late, it has reached heights of nearly 2000 attendees during its week-long duration. The original chapter of Dagorhir, founded in 1977, is based in the Washington, D.C. area, and is known as "Dagorhir Aratari" after the founder's persona, Aratar. History Bryan Wiese watched the movie Robin and Marian while reading The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. He had never heard of medieval reenactment, Live Action Role Playing Games or even Dungeons and Dragons but he wanted something to capture the spirit and adventure that could only come from wielding sword and bow. As 1977 rolled by, Bryan ran ads on the local radio station WGTB. Bryan then became "Aratar Anfinhir the Stormbringer" and Dagorhir was born into its first incarnation (as yet unnamed). The club grew and in 1980 a Washington D.C. community TV show PM Magazine ran a half-hour episode where the host of PM Magazine spent a day at a Dagorhir battle game. After that point interest in Dagorhir exploded in the D.C. Area. The explosive growth of Dagorhir took its toll on Bryan Wiese. Bryan, who had coined the game as “Dagorhir Outdoor Improvisational Dark Age Battle Games”, had a more theatrical bend to his dream. The new flood of players had an attitude that was more sport like. In order to combat this change, the Dagorhir Handbook was formalized. This included costuming requirements in an effort to encourage the players to think of it more of a theatrical game. In the early eighties, a young man