Now there were lords of Malagentia and among them was one who this same lesson learned: Lay not thy boffer upon the head of thy foe.

When the folks at Portland’s recent comic convention offered Kevin Muske one of their foam weapons and a chance to spar, he took it.

“I looked at that little thing and thought, it’s just foam,” Muske, of Portland, said. “It’s not going to hurt anybody.”

Muske goes by the name Lord Michael Acrensis in the worlds of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and he’s accustomed to armored battles.

With actual weapons.

As a participant in one of the world’s largest groups of historical re-enactors, he spends many weekends wearing 45 pounds of leather, chain mail and armor and fighting with heavy swords made of metal and rattan. That’s the kind of weapon that may not kill an opponent, but most certainly will dent his armor and could leave him bruised and battered.

So foam swordplay — called boffing, and a popular diversion at comic conventions like last month’s Portland PortCon — seemed pretty harmless. Muske faced his opponent with little concern.

“So he did this little flippy thing with his wrist,” Muske said.

Muske’s battle-wizened eyes saw an opening and he took it, pushing forward and locking his opponent’s weapon under his shield.

“His eyes got real big, and I brought my sword down on his head,” Muske said.

The assembled crowd, spectators and experienced boffers, howled in protest.

Boffers, Muske learned that day, do not go for the head. It’s one of the cardinal rules of foam sword boffing.

“In SCA fighting, the only rule is, I take the pointed end and hit you with it,” Muske said. “If you’re going to leave me an opening like that, I’m going to take it.”

SCA fighting — fully armored with battles featuring more than 150 warriors per side — will take center stage in Hebron this week. It’s the 27th Annual Great Northeastern War, the signature camping event for SCA practitioners in southern Maine, which is known among the worldwide society as the Province of Malagentia.

From July 11 to 14, it’ll be four days full of sweat, chain mail, leather, heavy swords, mead and camaraderie. No foam swords.

“What we do requires a lot of work and a lot of skill. A guy can walk out with a boffer weapon and he’s going to be hard pressed to hurt someone. But with a rattan sword and a metal basket hilt on it, I can break bones — no problem. That’s why we have the armor. It’s why we have to be authorized to fight,” said Muske.

Forthwith it comes to pass that we learn of the Society and how it grows in great friendship, and what does draw these good gentles together.

The Society for Creative Anachronism got its start in California in the 1960s — a good-natured protest against the 20th century. It grew quickly from a few festivals and celebrations to kingdoms in every corner of the globe — including a floating shire aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S Nimitz.

Members work to recreate the lives of people who would have lived in Europe between 700 and 1600 AD as accurately as they can in the 21st century.

The Eastern Kingdom, which runs from Delaware north to Prince Edward Island, Canada, began in 1968. The kingdom is divided into 72 smaller groupings — shires, baronies, provinces and cantons.

Maine itself is broken into four groupings, including the Province of Malagentia, which covers much of southern Maine.

The Great Northeastern War, which is the annual festival for Malagentia, is located at the Hebron Pines Campground and begins Thursday.

Folks unfamiliar with the ways of the SCA are welcome to attend the events for the day, according to Abbey Davenport. In Malagentia, she goes by the name Ro Honig Von Sommerfeldt and acts as the provincial chatelaine — basically, the medieval version of a public relations contact and welcome wagon.

Mundane folks should pay a small fee and attempt dressing for the period — think “Spamalot” and “The Princess Bride.”

“But they don’t have to be exact,” Davenport said. “They just need to try to be period. If they’re really bad, someone will help them.”

Davenport, Muske and their friend Josh Sucidlo — a hulking viking named Sir Ivan Ulrickson in Malagentia — were among the SCA re-enactors asked to attend Portland’s PortCon, the Maine comic convention, last month. They put on a martial display — with full armor and swords — and then sat for a question-and-answer session.

Their group is easy to mock, they admit. People who don’t understand it imagine it’s just adult dress-up — a Dark Ages version of getting in costume for a comic convention or a Renaissance fair taken way too seriously.

There’s a definite kinship with the comic convention goers and others who dress in costume — a pursuit called “cosplay,” Davenport said. But what she and her SCA peers do is different.

“We love the cosplay kids, but they want fantasy,” she said. “The fantasy part appeals much easier to a younger generation. It’s much less of a monetary and emotional investment.”

For the SCA, it’s a matter of commitment. Members craft a period-correct alter ego and nurture it to life. That means living at times like they would have in Middle Ages Europe. They read period books, study period philosophy and science, learn period skills and try to master period arts and crafts.

“Any aspect of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, we have somebody doing it,” Sucidlo said. “Scribal work, period food, people weaving and building catapults, optics, art — somebody does it.”

Davenport said that’s where her fascination lies. She couldn’t care less about the battles, but works as a scribe and illuminator, designing authentic-looking scrolls and manuscripts that are given as awards and honors by society nobles and kings.

“The things I’m using to create them, like the paper, not all of it is strictly what would have been available,” Davenport said. “It’s as valid as time and money allow. I cannot prepare vellum or real animal hides. I just can’t afford it, because it all is coming out of my pocket. So we make allowances, but I want my works to feel as close to realistic as they can.”

Each piece can take 40 hours to create.

“I want at least the feel to be like looking at a page from an old, illuminated bible,” she said.

It’s about belonging, too, Davenport said. She moved to Maine five years ago from upstate New York, where she’d been a member of the Shire of Nordenhal in the East Kingdom’s Central Region.

“One of the things that made it OK to come to Maine, in my own head, was talking with the local chatelaine at the time,” Davenport said. “I didn’t know anybody up here. She reached out to me and she’s now one of my best friends. It was like ‘boom: instant community.’ It took a lot of the fear out of the transition.”

Muske, a history major, said it’s also an interesting laboratory for historians. He noted that most historians assumed that the round piece of armor that covered a knight’s shoulder — called a “besagew” — was a mount for a lance, until the SCA came along.

“It’s too high for a lance,” he said. “It’s awkward, and if you tried to use it that way, you’d dislocate your shoulder.”

A few SCA battles showed the piece’s true purpose — protecting vulnerable armpits from the errant blow.

“There are things that historians get wrong, and it’s been the practical part of the SCA that proved that it’s wrong,” Muske said.

And it befell thus that a young man who would learn the ways of knighthood and battle and chivalry, learned such things as are needful to him.

But for all the illumination, scribe work, finger scrolling and mead making, the Hebron event is a war, and weapons are a big part of it.

This year, Malagentia has challenged residents from the mid-Vermont Shire of Panther Vale to be the festival rivals. They’ll compete in several contests Friday, culminating in a final battle and tournament Saturday.

“Saturday is the day to go if you really want to see the show,” Davenport said.

“You will get to see the full field battle, with 300 guys out there,” Muske said. “You’re going to have about 150 people on each side, one group coming down from above.”

The grounds will feature ranges and contests for thrown weapons like spear and ax, as well as bow and arrow.

“We are shooting arrows at people, but they are special arrows with big rubber balls on the end,” Muske said. “There’s no penetration.”

Entire fields are set aside for training, drilling, battles and campaigns. Warriors can be male or female and must be carefully trained so they don’t hurt themselves seriously — or their opponents.

There are several kinds of battle. There is fencing, with light armor and metal sabers with dull edges. That’s Sucidlo’s favorite sport, although he’s mastered the other martial skills — including archery and thrown weapons — well enough to earn the title of “sir” for his Malagentian alter ego.

“What we do is called fencing in the round,” Sucidlo said. “It’s different from Olympic fencing in that you don’t have to wait to attack. In Olympic fencing, you can’t attack if your opponent is attacking. You have to parry, then attack. It’s not how we do it. We attack.”

Then there’s heavy combat — full speed, full contact fighting most similar to a medieval melee. Every inch of each combatants vitals must be covered with a heavy armor and they can carry a wooden sword and a shield, wooden sword and a dagger, or a two-handed wooden sword.

“It takes a lot of work and practice to be a knight in our society,” Sucidlo said. “You can’t just make a costume and call yourself a knight. You have to earn it.”

And for every warrior on the field of glory, several people are on the sidelines supporting them. That includes water bearers, judges, nobles, well-wishers and “chirurgeons,” which is the event’s first-aid and safety staff.

“Really, fighters are only about a third of the group, “Davenport said. “But supporting fighters takes a lot.”

It’s as real as it can get.

“It’s also the draw,” Davenport said. “It is the way that people enter in at first. If you want to watch the fighting or you want to participate, it’s always the first thing that people care about. It’s why we do demos and why fighting will always be the first and largest.”

Muske said it’s the bang and the crash that draws people in, and that was just as true at June’s PortCon. More people lined up to watch the battle demonstration than came for the Q&A.

Muske said one young man came up to him after the martial demonstration and asked to try on his armor.

“He was 100 pounds, soaking wet,” Muske said. “I put it all on him, 45 pounds of leather and metal, and he couldn’t even move.”

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• July 11-14, Hebron Pines Campground, 400 Buckfield Road, Hebron
• Tickets for Saturday’s events for non-members are $15 for adults, $5 for youth 6 to 17 years old.
• Tickets for the whole weekend are $25 for adult non-members and $10 for youth.
• Children 5 and younger are admitted free.
• Attendees should try to dress appropriately.
• For more information: http://malagentia.eastkingdom.org/GNEW