First encounter with historical reconstruction.

Some journeys turn everything upside down. Sometimes it’s painful; sometimes you have to accept it. And sometimes it becomes the engine that drives you for years to come. For Knyaz Club and its leader, it was that third kind. It only takes one well-timed trip far from home for a brewing crisis to turn into a growing pain — a push forward.

Anton Trubnikov: «What did I have for kit? A mail hauberk, a helmet with a chainmail aventail, a decent shield — it would still pass today. I dressed up, brought along Oleh, Tiulen, and Ksiukha. Sent an official enquiry on behalf of Knyaz Club. We became the first club from Ukraine to travel to «Vyborg»! We even have a photo of us proudly standing with the Ukrainian flag.

Then we arrived at Vyborg — and, horror! Everything I had seen in photos turned out to be iron. We had assumed it was well-painted textolite! Spears, halberds, couses — all of it, all iron! And we had textolite swords… Well, we hid those swords fast. When someone spotted them, we said: «You see, customs, all of that… they took our iron swords away, but really we have everything in steel.»

That’s how we arrived for reconnaissance — chainmail worn over jumpers. Mostly we just took photos and walked around in our costumes — what about buhurts?

When I saw a 100-vs-100 buhurt at Vyborg… it wasn’t what it is now. There were thrusts to the face, total chaos. A single marshal with a microphone, no referees, the only commands were «Go» and «Stop combat». The rules: «Try not to thrust at the eyes. And we don’t thrust at the groin.» As if. Reality was something else — I sat there stunned. I took about 500 photos on my film point-and-shoot, and I realised: this is a different universe. I had just been telling you about a longship made of plywood, our first wooden-weapon tournament — and here was nothing but steel. The Berne club was just being born — that was their first year. Everyone was being torn up by the «Livonian Order», PLK, all those mutants from Tula and Pskov in full Gothic plate.

Ihor (Tiulen): Meanwhile, we were quietly being pushed out of the movement. We went to Nemyrivka without you and were told there that we were thugs.

Anton Trubnikov: Right — you realised that being dressed and trained was actually bad, because in some places people start cracking down on you for it.

Ihor (Tiulen): They were afraid of our mere presence.

Anton Trubnikov: With the role-playing games it still wasn’t clear, but what I saw in Russia hit me hard. I came back, gathered our crew — about twenty people showed up. I told them what I’d seen. My consciousness had been flipped. Here I was a terrible person, my padawans weren’t being let into games because they were too rough — and there, I wasn’t just a beginner, I was a nothing in a sweater with a plywood shield. I understood that something wasn’t right. But then we still had the spring of 2004. We prepared more actively, gathered allies.

Ihor (Tiulen): «August 2004 — the game «The Return of Sauron». We stood with Harad. Sort of like darkness, but they were fighting for power. We weren’t the lead — there were main players in the camp.»

Anton Trubnikov: August. A «wonderful» site — apples, puddles on the roads, you couldn’t see anything. And a wonderful crew, and a table made out of four brick-laying trays. I remember I arrived, unloaded all the gear, and just lay there. Looked around — people are walking by. So I said to them — lads, come on, lend a hand. And some friendly hippies hauled all our gear across for us. We thanked them, paid them something. My lads came running back — and all the gear was already moved. And we built a fortress — it was insane.

Valentyn Kalin: From the station we ran to the site. It was a forced march, although a light one. One of ours shouts: «I can’t run any further, I’m going to roll.» There was this gentle slope; he lay down and rolled.

Anton Trubnikov: How the situation slipped out of control I still don’t remember. But I remember one thing. As soon as the game started, we took about five people prisoner. Everyone just walked past us to the GM’s tent — our camp was so conveniently placed.

Valentyn Kalin: Yeah, everyone walked by, and we just herded them into prison in groups of three or five.

Anton Trubnikov: And on the morning of the first day, the whole site came to take us out.

Valentyn Kalin: Because we’d offended everybody. Literally everybody.

Anton Trubnikov: We had a great time there. And that’s the exact game where we had our first buhurt. Ihor Zotov came up with new rules — the first buhurt rules — to abandon hit-counting and fight until you can’t fight anymore.

Valentyn Kalin: I pulled off something I haven’t managed since. Working properly in a pair. Liokha (Perekhidnyk) and I worked together, took down so many people. He’d strike and I’d come in from behind.

Anton Trubnikov: The game was also memorable for an epic 7 a.m. wake-up call and a long siege with retreats and ladders.

Valentyn Kalin: First we went to take over Harad — well, no, to swear loyalty to them, and only then we took the main camp. We came in, Anton started talking, and we positioned ourselves to launch and seize the camp at a moment’s notice. The second he drew his sword — we slaughtered the guards, threw open the gates for the rest of our lads. They even tried to poison us with sweets and water, but we didn’t eat or drink anything. About a hundred metres away was Mordor — they heard that something strange was going on at their allies’ camp and pulled out to take a look. They saw the camp had been seized. We collected all the logs in the camp, threw them across the gates to barricade ourselves in from the inside. Meanwhile we were digging a tunnel to get out of the fortress on the other side. I was holding the gate up — and I caught a battering ram to the back of my head. In the end they killed us all.

Anton Trubnikov: We had a breather in the «mortyak» (the dead-zone) and then went to Mordor. And stole their gates. At first we tried to storm them, but they did exactly what we’d done — barricaded the gates. So we approached behind shields and simply tore the gates off. And at night we picked on them some more. We had two night sorties.

All in all, everyone loved us. I remember when they came to take us out in the morning — the delegation was led by Vanya Padre. We asked what the substance of their grievance was — and got silence in reply. I said: «Well, if you want a war — fight.» And we started swinging. After that we kept harassing Mordor with night sorties, especially after the siege failed. When we came back at night yet again, Sauron threw a tantrum: he only plays until 7 p.m. There were a lot of interesting moments, in short. Finally I woke up the GM early in the morning and announced that we were storming Mordor right at the start of the combat window — at 7 a.m. I grabbed Minihan and a few others, geared up and went. We ran so fast that we started the siege at 7:15 and took Mordor very quickly, in one go.

Valentyn Kalin: We simply walked in, grabbed all the weapons, hid them — and by the time they woke up we’d already taken the camp.

Anton Trubnikov: Right. Camp taken, Sauron throws his crown down — «I’m not playing if it’s like this» — everyone in hysterics — and we’d only just done our intro. The political game ended for us at that moment. And after that —

Valentyn Kalin: We were drilling shield-wall formations. Zotov would charge at us, and we had to hold him.

Anton Trubnikov: In short, we fought for the first time under the original buhurt rules; for the first time it was actually interesting. That’s how our 2003 ended, epically. Then we started preparing for «Witcher 2004».

Ihor (Tiulen): I remember the marketing for that game. They were promising the impossible — shuttle buses, several taverns; we read it and started salivating. But it didn’t work out for us somehow.

Anton Trubnikov: One way or another, we prepared properly. New recruits joined; preparation went smoothly. We didn’t introduce anything special — maybe a couple of new mail shirts and some duralumin swords. But the duralumin bent, so they were more pretty than practical, and instead of gambesons we were still in sweaters. We thought we were cool and well-equipped. We arrived at «Witcher» and so did Kyiv and Odesa, who had been doing more-or-less proper 14th-century kit for about two years. We realised it was time to change. That’s the classic problem in 14th-century fighting versus 10th–11th — we got our nose bloodied. They mopped the floor with us in the field. On top of that there was serious chaos at the game that led to serious injury. Real misunderstanding and hate began.

Ihor (Tiulen): The buhurt rules effectively spread across the whole site, and Kharkiv wasn’t ready for it.

Anton Trubnikov: Well, we had to work with this somehow. We started thinking. We fought with battering rams, came up with various tricks. Finally there was the siege of Cintra, where again at first they wiped the floor with us using archers and heavy fighters. By then I had already seen Vyborg — I understood things, but we couldn’t actually do anything yet. The second siege of «Cintra» was very rough — injuries, people losing consciousness in the line, heat, crush, a meat grinder. You could describe it for hours.

By the way, we had our tavern at this game too, although it didn’t trade very well. I drank enough «rum and cola» to last me a lifetime — I don’t want to see another one.

Valentyn Kalin: And we even had a real uprising, a real conspiracy. «Witcher» — that’s the Middle Ages, intrigue — we figured we’d do likewise.

Anton Trubnikov: Yes — I walked into the camp, and they were overthrowing me. Anyway, then we came back and started thinking about re-arming. After that we went to Poltava, but it was full chill — a good easy game, we rested. And then 2004 turned quiet. By winter 2004 we’d all drifted apart, barely talked. I’d moved out of my family home, had my own problems, and wasn’t doing anything with the club at all.

Valentyn Kalin: In 2004… it all started with the stepfather of one of our clubmates driving us out in an old van — a «bukhanka» (loaf).

Oleksii Perekhidnyk: It’s like an old ambulance — you know, the old green ones with two benches inside. About twenty of us, packed in.

Valentyn Kalin: I don’t even understand how, but somehow we got in, wonderfully arranged ourselves; our gear travelled with Anton in another vehicle, something like a «Gazelle» van. We somehow crammed into the «bukhanka» — twenty of us, then six more got in. Can you imagine how many of us were in that thing in total? It wasn’t built for that, so we travelled in stacks. Whoever got in last was the winner — he rode on top of everyone. Mid-trip, police pulled us over. Obviously you can’t carry crowds like that. So it was like in the «Field of Miracles» game show — take some money and don’t open the black box. We got lucky — the officer was tempted, and on we went.

We spent a long time looking for the spot, but the most wonderful moment was when we started unloading from the van in front of an astonished public.

Perekhidnyk: We climbed out one after another. The first five were nothing, but then onlookers started gathering to see what would come out next.

Valentyn Kalin: We walked to the camping spot on foot. There were countless people. With us also came Oleh Yurchenko, Maks, Sviatoslav Malanov (also known as Tiulen)… they were 21–22, but when we were 16 at the same time — you understand, they felt like older uncles to us. Actually they were like celestial beings — they’d started out with Anton. They’d bought themselves big-shot duralumin swords and looked fantastic in shiny new gambesons, but one strike bent the swords. We were in whatever we had, some in sweaters… but in good helmets, because the head matters more than anything. The camp had two other teams besides us — including our very old allies. They were «Hedgehogs» and another splinter group that had broken off from «Hedgehogs» and started their own team. We had a lot of archers with us, although it turned out archers weren’t needed there — the war was harsh. We were late for the line-up at the opening ceremony, because we were busy building the camp — the fortress and our regular tents. We were dressed in proper style — no bags or trainers, kirza boots.

It all started when we went out to soothe Anton’s ego — we came to the Kyiv camp. They tensed up — who’s this, coming up to a camp and forming up in front of it? The head GM wasn’t there, but some assistant GM started getting nervous. We explained we’d come in peace, Anton talked to the locals, and we went back to our camps.

Oleksii Perekhidnyk: …but when the hundred-kilogram lads ran out, they just scattered us.

Valentyn Kalin: …scattered us, trampled us, yes.

Oleksii Perekhidnyk: …it was the same under the walls of Cintra. A Kyiv player would run at you, sword tucked through his belt, grab your leg and toss you, that’s it. The shorter ones got neutralised that way in particular. While I watched my friend fly, I’d already been grabbed too.

Valentyn Kalin: …and we entered Cintra dead and lined up there. There was a moment… one of the fighters broke the rules, ran across the virtual stage line (that mega-white string), and hit me on the head.

Oleksii Perekhidnyk: It’s better to take a halberd to the head now than to take the thing that hit Valentyn that day.

Valentyn Kalin: Cintra was never taken, and we went back to our camp. We started making a battering ram. The lads brought the first log, and at that moment I and another guy were on watch duty. Then Oleh Yurchenko proposed staging a mutiny — to keep things from going too smoothly. I had no idea what it would lead to, I was a newbie. And what they were planning was — no big deal — to overthrow Anton. I had to back the mutiny — I was the junior rank.

Oleksii Perekhidnyk: Meanwhile, I was standing there with a log, I was the last one carrying it, and I had no idea what was happening. I just realised we were stuck at the camp entrance and suspected nothing. Since carrying was tough, I pulled a kind of troll move — and brought the whole log into camp in one charge.

Valentyn Kalin: I’d been standing watch for so long that I was unbearably hungry. I was ready to kill and overthrow anyone, just to eat. The mutiny went nowhere… we all still had to build the rams.

Oleksii Perekhidnyk: The whole point was — Anton was also coming with the next log, and the goal was to keep him out of camp. That was the mutiny. But it didn’t work.

Valentyn Kalin: All night we made those rams, my arm was falling off. A guy named Bober said he couldn’t do it anymore — and went to sleep. So I went to keep working alone. I couldn’t do that now, but back then I must have been seriously motivated — imagine. In the morning there was a siege at Cintra. The rams were tied to the cross-beams of the fortress, swung back and forth, and slammed into helmets. I don’t know what was inside those helmets — I don’t think it was brain. But the attackers kept coming, kept breaking into the «corridor of death», catching rams, and coming back again.

Oleksii Perekhidnyk: Well, they had a good level of armour. You wouldn’t be embarrassed to walk out in those European helmets even now.

Valentyn Kalin: I don’t remember how that siege ended, or whether it ended at all.

Perekhidnyk: They labelled those battering-ram tactics «Kharkiv sniperism», using it as a charge against us and pointing at Anton as the one who came up with it.

In general the level of battle kept rising in a geometric progression — toughness was rising, injuries were rising. But the level of kit stayed the same. That was very bad for everyone, because no matter how brave and strong you are, when a heavy blow lands on a thin helmet — you’re not fighting anymore.

Valentyn Kalin: That was our last role-playing game. From that moment on, we didn’t want to go to LARPs anymore, and we still don’t. We only do historical festivals.

This is where people often hit their personal «crisis of the genre», and interest in history gets replaced by something else — more sporting, or more academic. But not in this case. Knyaz Club entered the mid-2000s as a fairly ordinary fighting club, but with an unusual determination to keep growing in the chosen direction. And here is where the most interesting part began. Because to learn anything new at that time, you absolutely had to travel a lot. It’s still very important today — but back then, you simply couldn’t find anything even close in level to what opened up once you crossed Ukraine’s border. And we had to cross it.