With the announcement of free gear, nearly everyone in the crowd swarmed to the armory, trying to get their hands on the best gear before it was all taken. Taking pride in the fact that he had either made or earned every piece of equipment he had, Roark simply walked up to one of the castle guards.
"I'm assuming that we'll be allowed to claim some travel rations from the castle kitchens some time between now and when we set out?" he asked of the guard.
"Aye," the young man said, "you'll be given access to the larders shortly before your departure."
"Good, my boy. That'll be all," Roark replied with a grin before returning to approximately where he'd been standing during the king's brief speech.
As he waited, he decided to test the calibration of his gear, using the fingers of his right hand to flip open a small latch that was covering a set of minute resonance stone fragments in the palm of his right gauntlet. Pressing a quick sequence of different combinations of the stones triggered several mechanical commands via the other fragments of the same stone embedded in the machinery of his rucksack.
First, his shield sprang out far enough to his left for him to grab, allowing him access to the fragments (and non-resonance buttons) on its main handle. Second, he pressed one of the buttons on the shield, causing a spike to protrude from the bottom, which he then stuck into the packed dirt of the courtyard directly in front of him, allowing his shield to stand on its own. Next, while a heavy repeater came forth on a mechanical arm, stopping just above, and slightly forward from, his right shoulder, he grabbed his shield's central handle, which he then rotated, causing one slot on each side of his shield to open. Clicking his right crossbow into place in his shield, he also triggered a repeater to come out on his left side, which then went into the corresponding slot on the left side of his shield. After testing the pivot of the spike, and checking the calibration of the clear crystal view port directly above the central handle, he gave a satisfied grunt, then began triggering the recall commands (ejecting the repeaters from the shield, which were then pulled back to their starting points by their respective mechanical arms, then reattaching the shield to it's arm, which drew it back into its place within the rucksack.
Finished with the test of his ranged equipment, Roark finally began paying attention to the people around him starting to return from the armory, having made their selections. Interestingly enough, it looked like the timid girl who he'd stood next to had been back for a while, carrying nothing more than that with which she had started. Seeing that people were already starting to group up, he debated who seemed like someone worth working with. After a brief deliberation, he decided that, since he knew nothing of anyone here, and most everyone had seen his equipment test, he may as well wait a moment to see if anyone approached him about teaming up before he would go to anyone else himself.