More than 70 people were armed with daggers and swords in Fairmount Park Saturday. They stormed the field, competing for a replica of Ice, the sword used by Eddard Stark in the Game of Thrones series, in Nerd Union’s inaugural War of Thrones LARP Event.

LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing, a role-playing game where the participants physically act as their imaginary characters.

The event had several game modes that mirrored different aspects of the Game of Thrones Universe. One is the one-on-one champion mode that mirrored the tournaments of the Dothraki People. Another is the White Walker mode, a zombie-like survival mode where the dead came back to life to attack the living.

“We’re all huge Game of Thrones fans,” freshman Chris Jacobs said.

In keeping with the theme, Nerd Union hopes to expand next year to be even bigger and better.

“There are some game modes that we didn’t even get to like a ‘Nights Watch versus Wildlings’ mode that would split everyone into two giant teams, and we’ve talked about adding shields and more weapons next year,” sophomore Colby Camp said. “It all comes down to timing, location and funding.”

Student Activities Council recently ended their gaming committee due to lack of interest, meaning events like LARP wouldn’t be funded by the University, so Nerd Union came up with the idea of involving the Greek community to drum up interest.

“We needed to focus on something that would get lots of members,” sophomore Jordan Youngers said. “In the beginning, we weren’t even calling it ‘War of Thrones,’ we were calling it ‘The Fraternity LARP.’”

The idea was a success, with teams from Pi Kappa Phi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Lambda Chi Alpha joining the fray.

“Wichita State as a whole is nontraditional, and I feel like our fraternities are nontraditional, so this whole mold that people have of fraternities, you know, just playing sports and whatnot, that’s not us,” said Jacobs, a member of Nerd Union and Lambda Chi Alpha. “This whole LARPing thing — this is who we are, this what we want to do.”

Nerd Union meets at 6:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays in Ahlberg Hall, Room 200.