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[NUKE9.13]

Guys
RTD
It is happening.
6 peoples. No more.
This RTD is Serious Business. So a one is a failure and a six a success. No Crazy Shit going down here, no siree.
The starting situation:

You are a soldier of the empire of Darkfort. All though, now, you are more of a soldier of the principality of Darkfort. On account of how the mysterious Resistance has conquered the rest of the empire.
Let us consider the history of the Resistance.
A year ago today, when you joined the army, conveniently, a comet struck the hills in the north. There was a big explosion and stuff, and with dust clouds covering the sun for a few weeks. When the clouds cleared, however, an army came marching south. Rebels. The northern garrisons went to quell the resistance. They were never heard of again. The rebel army grew, and started taking over towns with amazing speed. Any attempt to reason with them failed. Any attempt to stop them failed. Their army grew and grew. And now they are here, at the capital. Undefeated. In vast numbers. They outnumber you 5 to 1. And they have been known to defeat armies three times as big as them, so make that 15 to 1. At least.

You would love to continue your musings but your sergeant is yelling at you to grab a crossbow and get to the battlements.

More plot: As uncovered!

To join, post a name (serious) and choose a speciality. A bio is not required as you (the player) do not know anything about you (the guys)
Medic- You have talent with healing magic. Not enough to get trained as an actual medic, but you can heal minor wounds in yourself and allies, and slow bleeding and health loss in moderate wounds.
Sharpshooter- You have a steady aim. You aren't a professional archer, but you are better at archery than your fellow soldiers.
Innovater- You like new things. You aren't very good at mechanics or magic though, so you have to contend with getting used to 'new' things faster.
Dueller- You are better at swordfighting than the rest of your unit. Not great, but better.
Leader- Your voice is loud and people respect you. For some reason. You are not a military genius, but you hold the rank of corporal.

Ready...
Set...

[Nirur Torir]

Nirur Torir, medic wanna-be, reporting for duty.

[Rashilul]

Hywel Williamson, Sharpshooter, Ready

[CJ1145]

Reed Fievel, Leader. Standing by.

[alfie275]

Alfie (just alfie, no surname), innovater reporting for duty!

[Jetsquirrel]

Grindar,Dueller,Waiting for commands

[dragnar]

Dragnar, Innovator, ready to fight!

[NUKE9.13]

I didn't even say go D:
Oh well.
You each grab a crossbow and from the rack and run out the door. You enter a wide corridor made of dark stone. It is lit by torches set into brackets into the wall. Not that you care, as you have seen it many times before. You run down the corridor, together with dozens of other soldiers. You come to a huge spiral staircase, which you swiftly climb. Eventually you reach the landing. Sunlight filters in through arrow slits in the wall. Some other soldiers run to stand in front of them. Others climb further to higher regions of the tower, but you leave for the battlements.
You step out into the bright sunlight. You each run to your place, and load your crossbow. Then you look around.
Behind you rises the imposing bulk of the fortress. It is black and spiky, and the highest three towers make a skull shape. Within is housed the government of Darkfort, the army of Darkfort, and, during a siege, all of the population of Darkfort.
The black and spiky walls you are standing on are linked to the fortress. There is a courtyard between, far below, but it receives two hours of sunlight a day and no one uses it, except for night training exercises. During the day. The walls are three meters thick and thirty meters tall.
In front of you is the main courtyard. There are some buildings down there, empty now. The 'streets' between them have been blockaded.
Then there are the front walls. They are black and spiky, three meters thick, and fifteen meters tall. You can see hundreds of soldiers lining the walls there as well. Just like you.
Both walls contain huge gates, and the front gate is protected by a huge drawbridge spanning a wide, deep moat. The drawbridge is currently raised.
In front of the front walls is the Resistance army. Giant pearly white siege towers, huge trebuchets, and even what look like cannons tower above the ranks of troops. You can see the rebel banner flying proudly from their standards.

Spoiler: Rebel banner (click to show/hide)

You have no idea what that is supposed to represent. Four tentacles sticking out of a teapot?
You certainly know that you do not have anything like that attached to your body. The very idea!
You are a healthy guy, with two legtacles, two armtacles and a head. To each legtacle you have two toetacles, and to each armtacles, two fingertacles. Your head has two eyes and three facetacles.
You do not know why such an obvious thought wasted your time when you could be admiring the scenery. You are facing north, where the rebel army is. They are standing in the smouldering ruins of Darkfort city. Further to the north lie forests. To the the north west, hills. To the north east, forests. To the east and west, sea. To the south, sea.
So yeah
You probably would have run away, but, you know.
You can't.

An hour passes in boredom. The rebels move around a bit. Finally they appear ready.
...
Suddenly, you hear a strange crackling noise. It appears to be coming from the rebel siege towers! Then you hear a terrifying noise. It isn't a voice, it isn't a note, it is just pure terror in sound form. Thousands of shrieks join it, including one from your own mouth, and, you realise, the rebel soldiers. You are about to puncture your own skin and scratch out your ears, when you hear something else. Silence. You stop screaming, and see others stop as well, radiating out from the fortress. You look behind you. The skull on top of the fortress has a glowing red face superimposed over it. It speaks;
"No. You aliens will not cheat yourself to victory this time. Your terror sound ends now."
The voice inspires you in an indescribable way. Any residual fear from the, yes, terror sound, dissapates. Then the face disappears. The noise does not return.
Another voice does issue from the siege towers, however. It speaks in a strange tongue. A foreign language, perhaps? An odd one. You can't understand a word it says, but you grasp the basic idea. Who are you? Who are you? What happened? What happened? The same questions, with more anger. Then a brief pause. And then, an order to attack. You are pretty sure of that, on account of how it is followed by war harps singing out and the rebel troops crying out, and rushing forwards. Your sergeant yells for you to aim crossbows.
You do not require telling twice! You take your crossbow, and aim it upwards, so that it will arc over the soldiers on the front walls.
The order to fire comes, and you pull the trigger. A cloud of bolts rises from the battlements, arcs over the front walls, and rains down upon the rebel troops. You quickly reload. You fire again and again. After a few shots the rebels reaches the front walls, and the sound of battle comes to your ears. You continue to fire. Between shots you watch in dismay as the rebels gain foothold on the walls, and work towards the gate. The troops on the front walls put up a good resistance, but you can see they don't have a chance. The rebels reach the gate, and soon you hear the drawbridge crash down, and watch the white tide flow into the inner courtyard. The order comes to shoot straight down at the rebels. They move from barricade to barricade, and eventually they reach the walls.
The walls on which you are standing.
Two grappling hooks fly over the walls near you, and soon a ladder crashes against it. You join the nearest five others in firing straight down at those climbing the ladders. But you can't fire fast enough, so soon the pushing pole comes to pass. But soon enough a soldier grabs it off the pusher and throws it down, and you get your first good look at a rebel.
Huh.
He's just an ordinary guy with a white helmet.
Grindar stabs him, and he plummets to his death.
You fight at the ladder for a while.
Eventually some other soldiers come to you, hack through the supporting cables, and together you push the ladder away. It crashes backwards. You briefly catch the eye of the soldier who had almost reached the top. His eyes tug at your heart, but you cannot help him, as he, still hanging onto the ladder, plummets backwards. You imagine you hear a *squish* when the ladder hits the ground.
Oh well.
No time to lose! The soldiers who liberated you tell you to go to the gatehouse. You and your five pals (you guess?) run along the walls. You run through towers, ignoring the men fighting on the stairs, but to chuck your redundant crossbows at the rebels. After running through three towers you arrive at the gatehouse. The door is locked. Three other soldiers are standing around the door. One of them is holding a torch. He touches it to a piece of string on the door, and yells "Get back!"
You back away, confused. Suddenly, the door explodes! Gunpowder, woah!
The door has been blasted of it's hinges, and a surprised rebel soldier is picking himself off the floor behind it. The torch-bearer runs forwards and burns his face. He screams, briefly, before the second soldier stabs him.
The three run inwards. You follow them. You quickly catch up, as they are dead. Three rebel soldiers, and a fourth dead soldier, are standing in the corridor. You and your five fellows surprise them, and quickly kill them. You enter the Gate Mechanism room.
The room well lit by torches. There are lots of interesting beams and bits and bobs around the walls. There are four doors; the one you came from, which leads to the walls, and it's counterpart across the room, and two leading to the two counterweight rooms. The Gate Mechanism itself consists of a two giant vertical gears, joined by a huge wooden beam. These turn the two giant horizontal gears which open or close the gates below. The gears are each a single piece of cast metal. Right now the vertical gears are turning anti-clockwise. So the gates are being opened. Very, very slowly. The gears are turned by means of two power sources; counterweights, which are finely balanced so that they alone cannot open or close the gate. However, it requires only minimal effort to close the gate. It can be done by one man turning the big horizontal wheel in the center of the room, which turns the linking beam by means of yet more gears. Opening the gate requires more effort. Right now eight rebel soldiers are straining to turn the wheel. Four more are standing guard. Against, it would appear, you six.
The four guards are all standing close to the eight pushers. They are armed with short swords. So are you. They have armour. So do you.

Kill the pushers, stop the pushers pushing some other way, sabotage the mechanism, just do something to stop them opening the gate! Opening the gate would be bad!
...
GO!

PS: Huge Walls Of Text will not happen very often. Only when necessary. Most turns will be normal.
PPS: No magic. If you are not a medic, you have no magical ability at all. If you are, you can heal people a bit. That's it.

[Rashilul]

Stay behind a shoot a bolt at one of the guards

[CJ1145]

Unsure of how to proceed, I decide to shout a bit of noncoherent gibberish to intimidate the invaders.

"Cthulhu fhtagn!"

I then charge the closest one, chop off his hand and take his sword as my own.

[Nirur Torir]

Fire a bolt at one of the pushers, hopefully in such a way that he clogs the mechanism.

[alfie275]

I assume the wheel is a large horizontal one with a vertical axle?
I run forwards, reaching out with my left arm I grab the axle and swing round it whilst lashing out with my sword in my right arm, as to hit all four pushers at once.

[dragnar]

I throw something into the gears, rendering them useless.

[Jetsquirrel]

i slice anything open that wants to use the mechanics to open the gate

[NUKE9.13]

Stay behind a shoot a bolt at one of the guards

You quickly fire a shot at one of the rebel soldiers. The bolt flies true, but the guard ducks just before it hits him, and the bolt glances of his helmet.

Fire a bolt at one of the pushers, hopefully in such a way that he clogs the mechanism.

You fire your crossbow, but mess up the shot, and the bolt doesn't go anywhere near the guards. Or pushers.

Unsure of how to proceed, I decide to shout a bit of noncoherent gibberish to intimidate the invaders.

"Cthulhu fhtagn!"

I then charge the closest one, chop off his hand and take his sword as my own.

You shout some gibberish. The rebels are unfazed.
You then charge the guards. You slash through the guard's armtacle, severing it. You grab his sword before it hits the ground, whilst swinging your sword round and cutting his neck open. You are now wielding short swords in both hands.

i slice anything open that wants to use the mechanics to open the gate

You charge forwards and swing at a guard. You bring your sword round in an arc and lop the guard's head off.

I assume the wheel is a large horizontal one with a vertical axle?
I run forwards, reaching out with my left arm I grab the axle and swing round it whilst lashing out with my sword in my right arm, as to hit all four eight pushers at once.

You run forwards. As you run past the guards but one of them lunges at you. He cuts your left armtacle. You jump back to defend yourself. You have sustained a minor wound to your left armtacle.

I throw something into the gears, rendering them useless.

You grab a convenient metal bar from the floor and stick it between the vertical gear and the horizontal gear. A moment later it catches, and the gears stop with a clunk. The pushers look up, confused, and two of them abandon their pegs and draw their swords.
Roll to hold: The metal bar is a good piece of solid steel, and it has become firmly stuck in the mechanisms. It isn't going to break any time soon.

Fight the Darkfort soldiers!

Guard one strikes at Reed, but reed easily knocks his sword away. Reed follows up by severing his right armtacle. The guard screams and falls unconscious.
Guard two strikes at Grindar, and the two exchange blows, but the guard has the upper hand. The guard lunges at an apparent opening, but Grindar sidesteps the blow and parries, and the exchange of blows goes on unabated.

Nirur and Hywel fire their crossbows at the guards as Reed, Grindar, and Dragnar rush forwards. Nirur messes up his shot and the bolt hits the wall; Hywel's shot bounces off one of the guard's helmets. Reed and Grindar lunge at the guards, and blood sprays from open necks before the guards can react. One of the guards lunges at Alfie as he runs past, and catches him on the arm. Alfie backs away. Then the remaining guards attack Reed and Grindar. Reed easily overpowers his guard, cutting off his arm. Grindar's guard is more challenging, and the two exchange blows.
Meanwhile, Alfie grabs a metal bar from the floor and jams it between the giant gears. The bar catches, and the gears stop turning! Two of the pushers stop pushing and draw their swords. The rest strain to push the now jammed wheel.