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.
Then when the spells land, rather than enemy mages jumping over to their side the enemy mages just stand there! It's still a decent way to take them out of the fight but this is an unusual and frustrating result and Cheliax's wizards are frustrated.
Also they are running low on spells, though their opponents have to be running low on spells as well.
Someone Sends Aroden that Hell extends an invitation for him to visit and discuss terms and thereby avoid his obliteration in open war.
Leareth loses a few of his mages that way, when no one else is in range to cover them with a shield and buy time to grab them, which is very irritating. He yoinks a few by dint of opening very fast Gates right under them. Unfortunately, actually breaking enchantments is risky to do by the low-powered Velgarth method, and the spells to do so are limited, Leareth's other mages can refill spell slots for wizards but it's eventually tiring for them to cast more than their usual spell allotment. Mostly, though, they can hold their own, and his mages aren't running low on spells, they'll eventually get tired but they're well trained and there are nodes that no one else on either side is using as much.
Second contingency-order. If an enemy soldier is wounded, they get a compulsion to stop fighting and instead get out of the way, pretend to be dead and avoid notice from the enemy. Ideally one of the subtler ones, where it's not obviously distinct from their own desires, though not all of Leareth's mages are skilled enough for that.
Leareth asks Taver to alert him directly when higher-level casters are wounded, because he's very good at subtle compulsions and also seems to be better at getting past the weird local equivalent to shields.
High level casters with access to magic healing have very little margin between 'not injured enough to impair them in fighting' and 'dead or dying' but there are some. Their own side's clerics can use a spell to distinguish the injured from the dying or the dead, but, well, there aren't enough of their own side's clerics.
Someone orders a withdrawal from Egorian.
Probably someone also ordered it torched because it sure is on fire now.
Fortunately Velgarth magic is really good for putting out fires, even at a relatively low power cost. Reverse weather-barriers go up, keeping the fires from getting hot enough to spread without otherwise being too obtrusive, then chilling them until the fire loses momentum and goes out as soon as the casters have withdrawn.
Withdrawing forces from a city is never the most organized process and Leareth can take advantage of this, throwing compulsions at casters and then at as many soldiers as he can reach to get 'lost' and not make it out, or, if he thinks he can get away with it based on their thoughts, to be seized by sudden doubts and fears and decide they would rather be Aroden's prisoners than fight the rest of this war on Asmodeus' side.
Some of them are in fact in enough doubt (it's not Aroden, it can't be Aroden, but whoever it is Asmodeus hasn't crushed them like a bug yet -) that the compulsion can drag them to a terrified surrender. - presumably he'll kill them and then they'll go to Hell and it'll be so so much worse for having ended like this -
Nobody is getting killed today.
As soon as the city is enough under their control to make it safe, he Gates in all the Healers he was able to rustle up from Velgarth on short notice, which is about fifty of varying Gift-strengths. Aroden has some druids for Healing; they generally won't participate in battles but they're willing to show up after the fact and treat casualties.
Velgarth Healing isn't as nearly good as cleric healing for battle wounds, but it's very good for triage, and can be used sparingly yet to great effect to reduce deaths from wounds that would otherwise fester or slowly bleed out, even if the recovery process will still be a lengthy one.
The critically wounded on his own side come first, of course, but after that, the Chelish locals are triaged alongside the invaders. Anyone who could plausibly still pose a threat at all gets a compulsion that prevents them from trying to harm anyone around them, because Leareth isn't stupid.
None of that work is very high-power, but Leareth is still tiring. He casts Lesser Restoration on himself, which brings him back to full energy; he saves the innate reserves replenishing spell for the next iteration.
And then Vanyel's mind reaches out and brushes his, via the emotionless interface of the communication spell. <We are almost ready to close the Worldwound. Aroden ought arrange to be there in nine minutes. Does that work>
<Yes> If it were still the middle of the fight he would have to ask Aroden, but this isn't bad timing at all.
There are lots of hidden people, shut away in their houses waiting for news - whispering about the roses - most of them too scared to even do that, even if this is Aroden's invading army it's an invading army and that's always, always bad news, and if you're likely to be in Hell by the end of the day it doesn't matter, really, who this is or what they want.
Aroden does not particularly expect this to be believed. He prepares to teleport himself to the Worldwound, leaving Leareth behind to manage in his absence, which will hopefully be brief.
Vanyel clears the area around the Worldwound one last time and ten seconds later Nefreti finishes her True Resurrection and brings him back to life among the Heralds defending the wardstones and five seconds after that Aroden arrives.
Nefreti is a red dragon circling the wardstones, lighting demons on fire with her breath and now that she's done with True Resurrection flinging Fireballs at them as well, from her front talons.
Aroden spends ten seconds orienting, scanning the area with his eyes and all his various permanent magic-senses.
Then he takes out another diamond, Dimension Door's across to the other side of the ward-stones barrier, and casts Wish. A wording he figured out nearly fifty years ago, actually, when actually making it close enough to close the Worldwound was a distant dream.
It takes only seconds.
....well, that's that, then. "I think I'm going to go to Cheliax, meet up with Mahdi and Hagan," he says to Vanyel and Yfandes.
Vanyel nods, seriously. "Thank you so much for staying. I really appreciated you being around even if I was mostly, er, racing back and forth between exploding and being dead and not actually talking to you. I might Gate over later - tell Leareth he can contact me if I need to do something ridiculous over there, but for now I'll stick with some nice civilized demon fighting."
"I'll let him know." He looks up at Aroden and decides he is way too intimidated to ask if he can hitch a Teleport back to the battlefield and goes to track down the pharaoh's people who were shuttling Vanyel, instead.
Aroden doesn't wait around, anyway; he scans the fighting one final time, notes that it seems to be pretty under control now that the demons have no source of reinforcements, and teleports back, having been gone from Egorian for barely a minute.
The pharaoh's people will take him back to Sothis and from there he actually pings Mahdi, because the pharaoh doesn't want forces that directly serve him involved in the war in Cheliax.