Agrum Blood Orange cuts a menacing figure on the battlefield, but as he carefully passes his ice cream cone from hand to hand and scabbards his battle axe, he explains that appearances are not always what they seem.
"I pillage, rage and plunder," Agrum says.
"I have a bone axe and a devilishly cultish sword; I wear a lot of tribal stuff. And I love trinkets.
"This is my crab that I keep in case I need emergency food," he says, pulling a small bag from his war belt, inside of which is a spongey crab. "I dunk him in water every night because I'm a responsible orc."
It's hard to tell how old Agrum is. His leathery bald head is covered in battle scars, and his armour is intimidating, but there is a child-like innocence and wonder in how he sees the world around him.
"You look at an orc, and you think you know immediately who he is," Agrum says. And he is a wild orc. But he just wants to see people better ... even if he has to kidnap a few people to do it.
"I want people to come to me and think, 'Oh, he's not a mindless idiot. He's just a bit of an idiot.'. He's not a wild or crazy killer, he is just really curious about the world and wants to see more of it and be a traveller."
Agrum Blood Orange is named after the soda flavour, and he is the creation of nine-year LARPer Desmon Smith from Wallsend. At Lake Macquarie's second pop culture festival, Pop Bam, at the weekend, Smith explained how he created his live-action roleplaying character and built much of his intricate and detailed costume himself.
"I fell in love with the sport because the idea of running around with my friends and sometimes beating them up is just a whole lot of fun," he said, beaming.
As the band of LARPers took the field at Rathmines in a showcase of their sport, Agrum found himself challenging brutish barbarians, noble knights, a half-orc giant called Nibbles wearing a wreath of severed fingers, and the nimble goat-masked mage Ciris.
Tara Clark, Ciris' creator, had the character fully prepared as she counted down the months until she was old enough to join the band. Ciris is a magic user, and Tara has a wicked aim with her bag of spells on the field, but for the weekend's show, she was armed with a quarterstaff. There is a moment before the warriors clashed when the Army band playing at the barricades broke into the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army when Tara slipped fully, gleefully into character. The band couldn't know it, but Seven Nation Army is the group's battle anthem, and as the boys beat their swords on their shields in time, Ciris tapped her quarterstaff on her mask to the beat.
"We've got all these massive dudes with shields, and I thought, I can do that too!"
Although Tara only took up the sport earlier this year, her undeniable passion and commitment to her craft seem to soak into the atmosphere around her.
Simon Wait, the city's renowned cosplayer and creator of a room full of intricate pieces, was almost indistinguishable in his Predator creation. He is perhaps best known for his Ben Affleck Batman armour, but he had the whole collection on display over the weekend.
Wait takes his inspiration from his favourite films and tells the Newcastle Herald that his craft has seen him through some of the most difficult times of his life. But the reward was seeing how they brought people together.
As he pointed out the ideal spot to capture the Predator in its natural habitat, a young cosplayer in full kit stopped to tell him that the franchise was one of their favourite movies. "They're mine too," he said happily beneath the hyperrealistic mask.
After a hearty battle, Nibbles - the half-orc who had terrorised the Swordcraft LARPing battlefield with his great sword - lifts his helm to reveal his true identity.
On the field, Nibbles is a gleeful villain - the heel to every hero - a crowd favourite and big showman, but beneath the armour, Josh Ewen is just elated to be surrounded by friends.
"Nibbles is fun because, in our universe, he's everyone's bad guy," he says. "He's always good fun. It's amazing, honestly, that feeling of hearing the crowd, but for me, it's more working with everyone on the field. I'm here to have fun - so, we fight, and we have games where it is win or lose, but at the end of the day, it's just having fun, and everyone else had a blast as well."
It took Ewen close to two years to put together Nibble's intricate costume of worked leather and plate armour, but compared to some of his other creations, the half-orc is almost new. Others have been with the creator for years. Like all of the players, he develops his characters on the field as they battle and interact in a big collective storytelling adventure.
"The entire community is a family at this point," he says.
"We're always out there for each other, so when one of us falls down, we help them up.
"Getting out there on a day like today where everyone's gone to the races with all their kit. It's so much fun."
Steady rain over the weekend that waterlogged the grounds but wasn't enough to stall the excitement for the region's second instalment of the fan culture event, which sold out in its inaugural run in 2023, prompting the move to the larger venue at Rathmines Theatre.
Lake Macquarie Council organised the inclusive, all-ages festival, which featured nods to the best of fan culture from movies, TV, comics, music, and more.
