Iron Monarch

Name bestowed to an infamous event run by Kitirat around 1997 in the effort to get the various florida groups to cooperate in forming an Amtgard Kingdom, which they would eventually do with the Kingdom of Neverwinter.

He invited officers (monarchs, chancellors, regents, champions) from the various parks at the time in Florida: Silverwater, Falling Fire, Darkwater East, Bloodstone and Emerald Coast. Someone from the Wetlands (a Rogue, at the time a squire) who was visiting the area also attended.

Kitirat picked a nice central location, at Wekiwa Springs state park in the Orlando area.

The campsite selected was normally used as part of a canoe trip, halfway on the canoe trip. The park service helpfully provided a map of the hiking trail route to the campsite. It looked close by to the parking lot. Apparently Kitirat missed the fine print on the map that said "not to scale".

Everyone found the parking lot and unloaded stuff to haul it to the supposedly nearby campsite. Tents, lawn chairs, coolers, cots, all manner of gear. And set off on the trail.

Google Map of the area the campsite was in. Out there somewhere.

Almost 4 miles later we found the campsite, a small clearing near the river. Everyone was pretty much exhausted as this point, and several people had even planned originally to go back for a second trip. We set up tents... and then proceded to hike the 4 miles back to the cars, and went to a Chichi's Pizza joint nearby for dinner. We then hiked the 4 miles back to the site, and in the light of a lamp we talked about various rulebook disagreements the groups had and came to some common agreement on some of the issues. Not that much work on the overall topic was really done as everyone was too tired. The next morning we packed it in and hauled all the stuff back out. A few went and played at Bloodstone, then located in the far west of the Orlando area, in Apopka, at Magnolia state park.

As a result of what happened at this event, another event was scheduled, this one held in a nice hotel in Gainesville. This event was called Plush Monarch, and a lot of hammering out of the future Neverwinter corpora was begun there.

But those who were at the event will never forget... Iron Monarch.