Entmoot I: National Emergency

[Prince Myshkin]

"hmm lembas lembas and more lembas... sounds like a good trip. So out we set Tabby, Orthil and myself! unless anyone else wants to come? We should also grab a little something to drink. I think I left some tea in the fridge." "Mrowr" "and some water for Cringer"

[trolls' bane]

"Very well then," Tabby says, passing insanely high-powered weapons and high-tech surveillance equipment out to everyone that no one will actually need.

Tabby proceeds to lead the way out of the barricade, and down alleyways and across greenbelts, until they are across the moat from the Green House.

[orithil]

"Ah, i hate lembas..who invited the elves?"
Orithils eyes darted around the street "its clear, comon i'll cover you" orithil said seeming somewhat paranoid.
"tch army boys" said tabby under his breath
The party stepped outside hearing the sounds of battle coming closer as the remaining entmooters retreated from the outskirts and the battle commenced in the streets.

[trolls' bane]

They slowly make their way accross the street, and into the bushes on the other side. First task: to cross the moat. Second: scale the wall. After that, they should be home free. Tabby sets up a small camera and transmitter, with something to scramble the code and send it to the Teacup Cafe, now going under the designation CQ. (Tabby's task force's designaiton was 2X-2L.)

The big decision facing them now: how to cross both obstacles without being seen? The wall was heavily guarded.

[orithil]

"Ok heres my idea, i lead a group of soldiers and we cause i distraction by trying to draw the guards away into a fire fight after that you should be able to sneek through, hows that sound?"

[trolls' bane]

"An excellent plan. You head back to the Cafe and pick up the militia, which should have arrived by now. Then send a telegram to Gondor and Rohan, in case we need reinforcements."

Tabby thought for a second.

"Split the militia into two units. This guy is smart. Make a small-scale assault on the south gate, and move in with the largest part on the east side to make it appear as though that is the surprise attack. Send a unit to our side, the west side, after a few hours or so, to make it appear that we (the Prince and I) will be moving in on the north side. Meanwhile, we will already be inside, so they will concentrate most of their internal guards over on the north side, waiting for us."

[Rían]

*drinks more chai*

[orithil]

"sounds good" Orithil hands tabby a peice of paper and says... "I will forget everything you just said ao please write it down" Tabby hurridley writes down the information and Orithil dissapears into the distance and returns with a force of entmooters, they huddle "ok...go!" the entmooters run fowards shooting and yelling...the other force approaches from the east and engages enemy forces Orithil fights in the middle yelling orders.

[trolls' bane]

"Now, we wait."

Two hours pass, and the fighting only gets more intense as townspeople join the fight with any object they can find. Nurvi shows up as well, and proceeds to beat down fifty guerrilla soldiers with a fish.

[trolls' bane]

Then, when the battle appears to be at its highest, Tabby prepares to scale the wall. Getting a high-tech grappling hook gun, he fires it to the other side of the moat, and ties the other end around a tree, then does the same for another somewhat lower. He moves across, then grips onto the wall with a special tool. The others follow suit. He then climbs up one pick at a time, and reaches the top. Once there, he lets down a rope, for everyone else to follow him up to the top of the wall. He shot the end of the ropes tied to the tree with a silenced pistol, and they sprang back and fell into the water. No going back. He pulled the rope up, and let it down the other side of the wall. They all climbed down into the bushes.

[Prince Myshkin]

Myshkin thinks to himself, "This guy is smart? If he was smart he'd be attacking something with resources. maybe this is a diversion for something else... oh well up we go". While Tabby and the others are scaling the wall and Orthill leads the hordes in their diversion Myshkin prepares to climb the wall, and falls into a sinkhole in the midst of a badly constructed tunnel.

"Hmm, this seems like it could be useful, I wonder where it goes c'mon Cringer." Myshkin and Cringer make their way down the tunnel in roughly the direction of the Greenhouse. As they move further down the tunnel, the path curves and angles down. The air gets colder and damp as if they're walking into a winter fog. Cringer utters an alarmed noise and Myshkin reaches over to calm him. When his hand tounches Cringers ear, he's alarmed with the droplets of water coating his tigers hide. and for that matter his own cloak and hat. "Where does this go? And what is that smell?" Despite the dank tunnel there's a slight stench of sulfur.

[tolkienfan]

tolkienfan slipped outside for some fresh air after post #15. She was beginning to forget there was anything going on at all when she saw an enemy sneakily trying to break into the back of the Teacup.
So she crept up behind him with a large branch and took him down. Luckily he had a nice light sword.
She went inside with her new sword and was just sitting down for some tea when orithil came in asking for volunteers. She decided to put her new sword to use and went to attack the east wall.
(What kind of creatures are we fighting anyway, people or orcs?)

[trolls' bane]

(People. This is not really a Tolkein-style world per se, but more of an Entmoot styled world--at least, Entmoot as I've always pictured it, with Star Destroyers and Vulcan nerve pinches and guerrilla armies fighting in the foothills above the capital city, Isengard and such. Think of the invaders as a modern revolutionary army with diverse weapons. Our job here is to become a sort of guerrilla army in return, using unpredictable tactics and perhaps less effective weaponry to get the job done.)

Tabby turned around, and realizing that Myshkin was gone, he was all alone. Great. Back to square one. He shook his head. Ironic that he should bring a task force, have an army attack from three sides and expend immeasurable calories by his thinking efforts to strategize and coordinate these people to get him inside whilst making it appear as though he was not getting inside, all to be where he was when he first left. He might as well continue, as there was no sense in starting all over again. First thing was first, to get by the guards around the Green House, and get on top of it, and then repel from the glass ceiling. Simple as that. Minus the simple part.

First, though, he headed to the communications center, where he sent a coded message to his homeworld. He could only hope it got through...

[tolkienfan]

(okay, okay, SOorrry. )
Oh right, the battle. tolkienfan screams as a guerrilla soldier falls dead next to her. She charges wildly at another one, hacking with her sword. "I like this new sword." she said to herself as the battle raged.

[Earniel]

Meanwhile, somewhere within the swamps that pop up randomly around the Teacup Café, the repetitive sound of 'ddzzt, dzztt' can be heard. An enemy soldier has heard it too and decides to follow it to the source, which turns out to be a woman on knees and elbows photographing various amphibians in the ponds.

"Alright," the soldier says, "stand up and come with me, you're now a prisoner."

Eärniel looks up and gives the soldier a look. An eyebrow is raised in disdain. "I'm trying to work here, don't disturb my frogs." She then turns her attention back to the pond.

The soldier, not satisfied with the answer, draws his sword. But before he has the chance to prod her threathingly with it, a plastic gecko suddenly appears in Eärniel's hand and she wallops him on the head with it. The soldier, not particularly hurt (except in his pride), looses his balance and stumbles face-first in the pond.

Eärniel stands up and twirls the plastic gecko. "Unfortunately for you, I'm not Archimedes. And...uh-uh."

The soldier looks around from his seat in the pond. Around him several frogs have emerged on lilly-leaves and from between the reeds. They don't look impressed. They look... slightly disturbing.

With one un-froglike roar the lead frog launches itself at the soldier. The other frogs follow suit. Eärniel, being of the wussy variety, turns around and whips out a notebook. As the trashing and screaming subsides behind her, she writes down: NOTE: May have found out what happened to all the herons. Improbability field from the Teacup Café has... interesting, albeit slightly worrysome effects on amphibian population.

She risks a peak at the carnage behind her back and then continues: "Current state of affairs may eventually cost us PG-13 rating."

She closes the note-books and pockets the plastic gecko. "Right," she says to no-one in particular but she thinks it looks cool, "looks like we've got another Entmoot-invasion on our hands. Well, that leaves only one option available: let's see if there's any chocolate left in the Teacup Café..."

She then leaves the ghastly scene in pursuit of chocoholic happiness. While somewhere among the reeds of the ponds she leaves behind, a frog burped.

[orithil]

"Scale the walls, Scale the walls!!!" Orithil yells in the midst of the fighting.
Entmooters on bamboo sticks get pushed up against the wall and the fighting uprupts in the wall..."get that battering ram over here" yells Orithil as he shoots someone at point blank range and kills another with a swing of his sapara.
The entmooters run up with the battering ram and slam it against the gate.

"Hold our left flank, Mcluskey how's our right flank looking?''
"OK sir but we cant hold out for long their bringing in reinforcements" says Mcluskey
"I see send i coded message to tabby that we will begin the retreat in two hours after that hes on his own, we are taking losses and we might need every person we can get in the following weeks, or months" Orithil said under his breath.

[trolls' bane]

And the answer came. At first, a faint bluish apparation appeared in the sky, and not five minutes later the sky began to downpour with rain.

It rained fire. Large chunks of something were falling in at high speeds, only to slow exponentially and stop. All along the northern part of the Gap of Rohan, large Martian freighters supported by an Airskipper escort were landing in groups of three.

[orithil]

The battle stopped and people looked to the sky some people ran, others just stood still staring at the sky.

[trolls' bane]

Tabby, however, continued at his task, as this is something he had been seeing since before what most of these people, save perhaps the elves, considered pre-history. The Martians belonged to a very old civilization, one that, in its early days, held vast territories. Since it had dwindled, as had the planet as it dried up a bit and the people moved to areas of limited aquifer sources. The time drew nigh, though, for their expansion again...

But not now. The Martians were invading, or rather, counter-invading. He ignored it. There were more important things to worry about. He nerve pinched a guard, and scrambled up the framework of the Green House, until he was on top.

Meanwhile, outside, people went back to fighting, although indeed everyone was distracted.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

A small thump on the floor of the tunnel caused Prince Myshkin to turn around. He saw a package wrapped in green cloth and approached cautiously. A familiar head was silhouetted against the sky above his sinkhole. Siscuz waved, and the smell of baked goods rose from the bundle.

"Lembas" she muttered. "Dust and ashes, it is. This should be better. I put in something for your buddy there, too." Cringer made a pleased little 'churrup'. Siscuz started to turn away. " Careful with that package, Prince. There are a couple of 'non-food' items that might come in handy." Hard to tell, the light being the way it was, if Siscuz winked.