He wakes up and is on his feet half a second later. :Wha– oh: He looks around at the closed portal and the crowd of terrified civilians. 

Yfandes is still trying to say reassuring things to them, although possibly a weird voice talking in your head is not inherently reassuring. What level of panicked do people seem? 

Well, see, they live in a state run by Asmodeus whose secret police will have them tortured to death for disloyalty and an hour ago they were told that there was a conquering army arriving and they should prepare to fight and get their families evacuated straight to Hell, and then the conquering army arrived and claimed to be led by Aroden, the Chelish god who died a hundred years ago, and then they were trapped in a magic forcefield and mind-controlled to leave Hell and come back and then the archdevil of the second level of Hell showed up and now weird voices in their heads are reassuring them that the conquering army isn't going to kill them, which it admittedly looks disinclined to do for the moment. 

So pretty panicked.

Aroden gives some orders and his troops and mages back off a little, leaving a corridor clear for the civilians, while the Companions send a quiet message that they should, if they wish, return to their homes. (It'll mean having them out of clear sight, and possibly soldiers will hide with common citizens and plot resistance, but also they should really have the noncombatants out of the streets for this, and they'll probably panic less as a result.) 

Leareth orders some of his mages to raise a couple more concert-Gates back to the garrison in Rahadoum, so he can bring over another five thousand of his troops to occupy the city. 

And he Mindtouches Vanyel. :We just had a close call and it occurs to me that if you had been in sight, the Archdevil ought have gone for you, not me. All of my people have a voluntary compulsion in place to stop taking any actions if under enemy mind-control. Would you and the other Herald-Mages accept this precaution?: 

Oh. Gah. Vanyel thinks about it for several seconds–

:Yes: Yfandes sends for him. 

So Leareth can do that. Meanwhile his Farseers scan the city, looking for pockets of organizing resistance. 

There are a bunch of those; this city had more time than Egorian once they learned the news.

Leareth divides up the rest of his mages with the newly-arrived soldiers and sends them out in groups, first to prevent those groups from spreading out and taking over more ground, then to try to drive them out of the areas they already control. 

Vanyel stays put, but once he's had his protective compulsion set up just in case more devils turn up, he can provide distance-casting support, using his Farsight to aim, and block the Chelish troops' movements with mage-barriers or try to take out their wizards and clerics, nonlethally if possible. 

People show up in Egorian - mostly not support troops in the war, but adventurers and observers for other countries, trying to figure out what's going on. They pick roses from the field of them and try to stay away from the soldiers and stop by the palace to see what the situation there is.

The Palace still has a lot of locals in it, but not really any resistance; the important people mostly teleported out before Aroden's troops moved on it, and the remainder are sequestered into particular wings of the Palace, held there by a mixture of weird magical barrier-walls and some mind control. A dozen of the strange not-sorcerers and a smaller number of high-level wizards are methodically combing through the Palace, disabling the traps laid by the fleeing forces as they find them. 

In between watching the entire city and directing troops toward any signs of resistance in the less-occupied corners, Taver contacts the observers from other countries, helpfully informing them that Aroden is alive and has returned to take back his country. 

They heard that. And saw the field of flowers. They have some questions. How is Aroden not dead. Can Aroden prove it's him. Where is the army from. Are people allowed to grab Chelish relatives and acquaintances and flee the country with them. Does Aroden want the help of Andoran or Galt or Taldor. Is Aroden also responsible for the Worldwound being closed now. Why can't Aroden's clerics get spells from him, if he's not dead. 

Taver has Aroden's advance permission to answer all of those questions. 

Aroden isn't dead because he was immortal as a human even before his ascension (this is public record) and because of that he was able to come back as an immortal human when he died as a god (Taver does not give any details on how). But he is still human, right now, albeit an extremely powerful caster for a human, and that's why his clerics still aren't getting spells from him. Aroden amassed his army in Rahadoum over the past century, in secret, so that he could catch Asmodeus and Cheliax by surprise when he was ready. He also has some allies from 'elsewhere' (Taver does not specify). 

Aroden did personally close the Worldwound once it was clear enough, and is responsible for turning most of the demons to stone so that the ward-stones could be moved in. Actually clearing the area around the interplanar tear enough that he could close it was nearly all the work of his allies from elsewhere, with support from Osirion and from Nefreti Clepati and presumably Nethys. 

People are definitely allowed to evacuate their Chelish relatives and acquaintances to other countries if they want. Especially since they believe Asmodeus has been ordering civilian evacuations to Hell in other cities, which Aroden is currently trying to head off.

Aroden will accept help in garrisoning the conquered cities from other countries if they're offering it; currently that's just Egorian, and they should run numbers past Taver first and then plan on arriving in designated areas. Aroden would also, at this point, be delighted to welcome the clerics of Good or Neutral gods to help with healing casualties and providing clean water, and other logistical aid and supplies like food or blankets for displaced people. When the battles are over, Aroden's allies can even help with transporting supplies and volunteers, so if people want to start organizing departure points in their own countries, they can run that by Taver too.

(Taver has an eidetic memory, but his attention is also very stretched, so he's passing all of this on to a soldier acting as his clerk, who's writing it down.)  

There's a flurry of teleportations and then several neighboring countries can give him estimates of how many people they can send and how soon. Does Aroden have some way to transport large numbers of people? There were rumors of Gates that lasted for ten minutes or something ridiculous like that...

Aroden does! They have limited capacity right now since it requires the same people who are currently fighting in other cities and clearing the Palace in this one, but can do a couple for the most urgent transport. They'll need someone to teleport in who has a clear memory of the place where the Gate needs to go, but if they do that, someone will show up in the designated arrival area and can do the spell using their memory.

(The weather is getting very disrupted in Egorian, from all the Gates; rain is fine, it'll put out any remaining smouldering fires, but several of Leareth's mages have been reassigned to weather-work to head off a more serious storm.) 

Andoran is the fastest to have forces ready to go to help garrison Egorian, and lots of Good clerics who want to volunteer to help on the front lines.

Then a Gate can be raised between Andoran and Egorian and held to let their soldiers and clerics cross. Taver thinks it's very likely that Aroden is willing to have Good clerics on the front lines as well as in the already-conquered areas, since they're not exactly going to go off and work for Asmodeus, but had better pass a message to him and check. 

One of Leareth's mages contacts him with the communication-spell to ask, and receives confirmation, and they cast a smaller, briefer Gate to Ostenso. 

Then he will no longer be the only cleric on this side of the war who has been a cleric for longer than three days, which is good, because that's very stressful. They're making progress in Ostenso but if they're going to have to take Cheliax city by city it'll take a very long time.

Aroden would prefer not to take Cheliax one city at a time, but they're going to have to keep doing that for today at least. 

He orders Leareth's Farseers to check on the other two cities where the trumpet archon was dispatched, to see if evacuations have been successfully stopped and how much Cheliax's forces are digging in. 

Evacuations are continuing! There is only the one trumpet archon and it can't keep people paralyzed for very long if it's not staying right there, which it also can't do because Hell is trying very diligently to kill it. Some soldiers have started killing civilians who are not cooperative about evacuating which is sure making the other ones cooperative about evacuating, insofar as they can be when most of the are paralyzed whenever the archon shows up.

Ostenso is being divvied up and taken in segments, in a pretty orderly fashion, so Aroden can duck out for a bit and take care of that. 

Greater Teleport lets him bring along six others for free, so he takes five of Leareth's mages, and Nayoki.

He Teleports them to Corentyn first, invisible, and immediately starts killing the most powerful of the devils. 

Three of Leareth's mages enthusiastically help him (they are not a fan of devils or of Hell, at all), while two others focus on blocking the civilian evacuation, via mage-barriers and mind control. 

And Nayoki focuses on throwing moderately subtle Mindhealing set-commands at the commanders. Very shortly they're going to get some strong evidence that Aroden is here, and at that point she wants them inclined to surrender, or at least drag their heels on the preparations, since Aroden's full army will be here very shortly and entrenching themselves further will just mean a bloodier battle where more of their soldiers die and go to Hell.