Hey everyone, I'm new to forum posting, although not new to Belegarth. I fought with Salamandastron in Santa Cruz for the two years I spent at university, and attended 2 or 3 events in California (including the 2010 Battle for the Ring, though sadly not the 2011 BftR).
While fighting with Salamandastron, I was a regular fighter, although I was content to mostly stick with face-to-face interactions with our local group. After all, we had plenty of experienced fighters that would bring news, techniques and knowledge from the broader Belegarth community, and I'd always be able to become more active at a later time, right?
Of course, now I'm in New Zealand, and it appears that I AM the experienced Belegarth fighter in the area. Likewise, the Internet is going to be our main point of contact with most of the Belegarth community. Now I wish I'd made more of an effort to get rides to BftR 2011, or at least one Chaos Wars/Armageddon. But, oh well, live and learn.
At this point, I'm in the process of starting up a local realm with some friends. Planting Belegarth's flag in one more country, as it were. We've been able to locate suitable weapon materials without much hassle, which is good.
I also imagine that we'll have some interesting interactions with the local foam fighting community - from what I can tell, they're all the light-hitting LARP type, so we'd be the only heavy-hitting group in the area, at the outset. And apparently the only group that accepts being physically knocked over as a potential part of combat. I'd like to be on good terms with the local LARP groups, of course, although I'll have to make sure that any of our guys who try crossgaming don't injure or scare them.