Vandals strike again at Cape Breton live action role-playing site

The co-owner of a live action role-playing business in Cape Breton says its location has been the repeated target of vandals.

Jeff Bushnik of Underworld LARP Cape Breton: Tempest Grove, which is on private property at Gillis Lake, said the most recent incident happened Monday.

"What I found was 18 or 20 of them, they had come with their girlfriends, one of them was carrying a bat, one of them was carrying a club, they had a dog with them," Bushnik told CBC's Maritime Noon on Wednesday.

"And the situation suddenly went from a couple of teens coming up and destroying our stuff for fun to suddenly what looked like an army descending upon our town."

Bushnik said his business, a franchise of Underworld Global, is "a fun combination of acting and exercise and improvization ... kind of like Game of Thrones on Gillis Lake."

He said his business has attracted people from across Canada who enjoy real-life role-playing games.

Prior to this incident, Bushnik said he's witnessed six teens at a time coming up to the site to destroy things.

Photos of the damage showed a spray-painted bench that said "F--k the wizards," other objects and trees spray painted with a homophobic slur and penises, plastic shelving smashed into tiny pieces, and other furniture knocked over and smashed.

"It's pretty disastrous, I mean we've put hundreds of hours of work up here trying to get it safe and ready for us," Bushnik said.

He said police patrols have been out to look around the site and they've assured him they're investigating the incidents. 

The reason Bushnik thinks his business is being targeted is because it's something some people find strange. Those who participate in live action role-playing often wear costumes.

He said he's thought about shutting the business down if the vandalism continued.

"We don't want to be in an incident where we're playing a game and 18 teenagers show up with weapons," Bushnik said.

"Not only are we going to get hurt, but we have a lot of ex-military people in our group, so the teens are going to get hurt too. And that's not good for anyone."