An adventuring party recruited from Osirion teleports into Azir on the 8th of Desnus. Rahadoum's recruiting contact in Osirion wrote ahead to note they were expected. Couple of guys he's known a long time - a wizard, a ranger - and a new guy, sorcerer, probably to replace the cleric they usually travel with. They spend two days in Azir getting oriented and head out to the front. The ranger wears an unusually high quality amulet of Nondetection; the sorcerer wears a headband for intelligence, which is a bit unusual as sorcerers usually don't need it to cast, but some variants do; they are otherwise unremarkable. Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, no reading, which could mean neutral or 'hiding it'. They work quickly and effectively, manage resources reasonably well, get recommended to higher-ups for a closer look on that account.
:Apparently Balor sometimes explode when they die so you'd better shield them if you kill it: Yfandes warns him.
They gallop around, it's no longer far enough to be worth a Gate, and Vanyel wards Sandra and Kilchas, the Herald-Mages in charge here, and flings a shield in front of them and then hits the Balor with the most hideously overpowered levinbolt even he can manage.
What is she up to - (it's such a beautiful, captivating spell to watch) - also she turned into a dragon, this world's magic is insane and he's never going to get tired of it - he's not even dead, though, and there's nothing worth Final Striking for right now. Oh well, surely if she needs him to do something, she'll know whether or not she has to inform him of it. He'll keep helping the defenders here. this
He's not sure how clear Aroden needs the area in order to close the gap, but - the demons are looking pretty dissuaded, he bets that if he does it one more time they'll be a while emerging. So maybe his best bet is to wait a bit, contact someone - probably Leareth with the communications spell, it's the fewest steps - and tell Aroden or whoever he's sending to deal to be on standby while he does one final round. After checking that Nefreti is saving a True Resurrection for him. He'll wait to see what she's doing now.
:Oh, er, all right, of course. Um, does he - know - to come here, or should I pass a message?:
A snow-white stallion with silvery hooves that ring like bells on the street, and piercing blue eyes, is at his side.
:Aroden is alive. Aroden is here to reclaim his land and his people:
The voice is strange and alien, cold-blue-steel, and it speaks into the mind of every person in a fifty-mile radius.
(This triggers some compulsions and some geases and Mindhealing set-commands).
Leareth, well-rested, waits on the other side of the Gate and speaks briefly to the pharaoh via his mirror. "If Hagan and Mahdi still wish to join, they can come to..." and he describes a location that was in the book of detailed pictures, and which they've now confirmed is still the same.
And then Leareth follows his army through the Gate. He stays to the back, mostly reaching past them to skim surface thoughts, gauge reactions. Check some of the compulsions he laid before.
The Chelish response to the invading army that is - absurdly, falsely, it has to be falsely - claiming to be Aroden's is being substantially hampered by the number of important people who have said "oh, it's Aroden. We can't fight Aroden." or "We had better surrender." or other similarly useless things. In some cases it's been determined they've been Enchanted; in some cases it hasn't; wizards are being marshalled to get that fixed as soon as possible.
Everyone is terrified. The invader says he's Aroden, but that doesn't make any sense, and is probably a lie, and maybe the whole thing is a spectacular trick to test their loyalty to Asmodeus, or a faction dispute within Hell, and it's not at all clear what you do here to avoid being executed.
Some groups of them have managed to conclude that probably what you do to avoid being executed is flee. Others have managed to conclude that probably what you do is start shooting at the army which is probably an illusion or something anyway, an illusion of an army pouring through a Gate is much more consistent with what is known to be possible than an actual army pouring through an actual Gate.
Some people are preparing to go kill the claimed-Aroden, which is probably the cleanest way to end this.
Leareth suspects they're going to have a pretty hard time with that!
With both, really, his army is really well shielded, and Aroden's is not quite as well equipped with Velgarth artifacts (there wasn't time to make that many) but they've got their own Golarion-style magic items, and are very organized.
He passes on warnings of what people are up to, though. Lots of other Thoughtsensers are doing the same, relaying via Taver who has the attention span to combine their info.
Aroden passes the fields, Taver still announcing his presence to literally the entire city.
(He takes out a diamond and casts a spell, but he isn't very obvious about it.)
The once-white roses are now white again.
Most High Aspexia Rugatonn, the grand high priestess of Asmodeus in Cheliax, cannot get out of bed and cannot cast spells and cannot talk and none of the spells her subordinates are trying are fixing this and they start slaughtering human sacrifices on the altar of the temple to get a devil or a miracle capable of fixing her.
It would really preferable if, instead, they didn't do that! He directs some people that way.
Nayoki, flanked by a couple of Adept mages and quite a number of well-armed, well-armoured soldiers, gets within range, taps a node to boost her Mindhealing with mage-energies, and set-commands everyone in the building to please :STOP MOVING STOP DOING THINGS: and then directs in some of the Healers to see if any of the would-be-sacrifices can still be saved.
- someone is cheating. Most of Asmodeus's attention is dedicated to sweeping through the past several months now that He knows what to look at, figuring out how they cheated, what He can do in response -
On the altar a Gate to Hell opens and a devil charges through and tries to fix whatever that was with Dispel Good, and when that fails with Dispel Chaos, and when that fails by hammering the person responsible with an astonishing amount of lightning
A different devil charges through and checks whether Break Enchantment will do it.
Two Adept mages are covering Nayoki with shields and she's also running as fast as she can in the other direction because why would she stick around after doing that - when it looks like their shields might not hold it off she raises a Gate on the nearest shop-doorway and dives through it, catching herself in a roll and coming up on her feet back near one of the initial Gates. Or where it was, the troops are through now and they've taken it down before anyone can figure out that blasting Gates works.