1. no, the gear you use is the gear the 'attacking' or 'attacked' player/town provides for the fight
2. given enough time you COULD attack a town, but better hope you have some friends or alot of extra gold to pay mercenaries
3. yes, if you attacked or got attacked by someone, that would be the equipment available for you to use in the battle
4. no
5. find a clan or allied faction. Sell your troops for cRPG money. Theres been talks of an independent player faction if you read the strat forums.
If you click on the 'battles' button at top of your crpg page, it shows upcoming battles. you can apply to fight on either side. I would suggest not charging anything or people may not hire you. You need to make a name for yourself and build a dedpendable record first.
Make sure you have your time zone set correctly in the 'settings' part of your crpg page. The default timezone is german time, which is GMT+2. So if you are NA, the offset would be -7 for CST, figure out the rest yourself.