meteordust | "This is the hour when we draw swords together!"

Being an account of my first Ragnarok Online experience defending a castle under siege.

After Saturday's less-than-stellar RO session, I had mixed feelings about logging back on the next day. On the one hand, I felt like I could use a break. But on the other hand...

Sunday was War of Emperium day.

For the first time, Shin Ravenloft had a castle of its own to defend. Rival guilds would be coming for us, seeking to take the castle for themselves. And we had to hold against them.

Crappy as I felt, I would have felt even worse if I piked out on this battle. Besides, I had been looking forward to the siege for a while, and I didn't want to miss it.

In any case, sleep cures many ills, and I was feeling better by the time morning rolled around. The siege was due to start at 2:00 PM and end at 4:00 PM. If we could hold out for those two hours, we could keep our castle for another half a week, until the next WOE session.

I logged on at around 1:30 PM. After stocking up on arrows and traps, I headed straight to the castle. Most of my guildmates were already there, as well as our allies in Slaughtered Souls. I joined them in the emperium room, which would no doubt see the fiercest fighting. Above all else, we had to stop anyone from reaching and destroying the emperium.

The melee characters - knights and assassins and blacksmiths - waited at the portal to meet whoever dared enter. The wizards stood further back and higher up, practising their Storm Gusts and Fire Walls. The priests stood with them, refreshing support spells on everyone and ready to heal whoever needed it.

Part of the job of hunters like me was to keep the staircase that led up to the emperium snared. Anyone who got that far would be delayed until they could break free. After setting our traps, we took up positions on the stairs, our bows and arrows ready.

Tension filled the air. We waited. And waited.

It was like Helm's Deep. It was like Minas Tirith. Except we couldn't even see the enemy. All we had were reports via guild chat from Lunakitty and the others positioned outside, monitoring enemy movements around the castle.

At 2:00 PM, the battle started.

No one immediately came through the portal to attack, but our wizards maintained their spell-spamming. After a while, news came of the first castle to be taken - Britoniah Guild 3 conquered by XGMR.

Things remained ominously quiet inside the emperium room, and our priests began casting Ruwach, in case cloaked enemies were trying to sneak through. Then reports started coming of over fifty people gathered outside. If they stormed us all at once, we could be in trouble.

More news - Britoniah Guild 1 had fallen to Exodus, the previous owners of our castle. Well, well. It seemed like they wouldn't be coming to take it back after all. But that didn't mean we could relax. An assault came at last, as the first attackers emerged from the portal, only to be met with spells and steel. We succeeded in repelling them, and those who followed after.

By this stage, there were apparently a significant number of people camped outside the emperium room, and the people in our guild who were also outside couldn't get back in. Tobei, who was among those stuck there, began reeling off to us a list of the guilds which were gathered.

The attackers continued to charge through the portal, and we continued to fend them off without too much difficulty. I shot at anyone who entered and reset traps when necessary. At 2:45 PM, Cyrus joined us, giving a boost to our strength and morale.

This was timely - not too long afterwards, a lone priest, NewWookie, broke through the wall of melee fighters and made a rush for the stairs. Despite being bombarded with spells and snared in traps and hammered by other attacks, he made it onto the upper level of the staircase - dangerously close to the emperium - before getting killed.

From the gamewide GM announcements, it seemed like there was heavy fighting in Geffen, with many castles changing hands. But there were other concerns to occupy us. Our numbers were dropping one by one as people vanished, disconnected. The line grew thin - especially in terms of wizards and priests.

At 3:17 PM, a massive attack was launched against us, with a horde of melee characters charging up the stairs. They killed many of us before our defences had a chance to stop them. I ended up dead and back in Prontera with most of the others.

At 3:18 PM, the announcement came through. "The [Valkyrie Realms 3] castle has been conquered by the [addicted] guild."

Our castle had fallen.

I made my way back to the entrance, where the others were already regrouping. There was a certain degree of confusion, with some people going back in straight away, either individually or in assorted groups. I remained outside, since past experience had proven to me that charging in without a plan was bad. We had over half an hour to retake our castle, and one of Shin Ravenloft's strengths was strategy.

At 3:30 PM, we went in. But another guild was camped on the other side of entrance portal, and they Storm Gusted us as soon as we stepped inside. Instant death.

We regrouped again. This time, with the assistance of our allies from Playmates, we managed to fight our way inside the castle and all the way to the emperium room. At 3:42 PM, we stood outside its doors, ready to storm the place. When we did, we got hit by another Storm Gust and were wiped out.

During all this - especially when we were trying to regroup - many of us were distracted by Touya, a wizard who was a recent recruit to our guild. He kept yelling at us on guild chat to attack now now now, pushing us to charge straight back in. To me he sounded stressed and not thinking clearly. Also, having more than one person giving orders was obviously going to cause confusion and chaos, and he didn't seem to realise he wasn't the one in charge. From the responses of the others, it appeared he was getting on their nerves too.

At 3:45 PM, we made our third attempt, but we didn't even get inside the emperium room this time. I was Storm Gusted on the stairs just outside. Dead again.

At 3:56 PM, Touya quit the guild in a temper since no one was following his commands. No one expressed sorrow at seeing him go. And Lunakitty, with less than five minutes of siege time left, decided we should finally call it a day. Most of us had to admit there wasn't enough time left to retake the castle, but those who were already on their way back there, like me, took satisfaction in dying in the attempt anyway.

We all gathered at the restaurant in Prontera for the debrief. I was tired, but at the same time still humming with adrenalin. And even though I was sorry we had lost the castle, I was pretty sure we had done our best, and there was satisfaction in that.

According to Lunakitty, in the post-mortem, it was the disconnects that got us. And then afterwards, we couldn't retake the castle because our opponents were simply stronger than us. Still, we held for 80 minutes - two thirds of the siege time - and without the aid of guardians. Not too bad for a guild which won its first castle so unexpectedly.

For the time being, we'll be levelling the guild and helping our allies with their own castles. But someday, perhaps someday soon, Shin Ravenloft will go to war again under its own banner, and our flag will fly above the castle walls once more.