Aroden pops into place next to them a few minutes later, takes Vanyel's arm, makes him disappear from sight and mage-sight, and transports him to the second-to-final spot next to Leareth. 

Then he's back, using a Pearl of Power for one last Teleport to bring Leareth himself into position. 

Leareth doesn't probe the camp, it might be noticeable if they have the right kind of defences, but he does passively open his Othersenses, as he reaches out to form a cautious Mindspeech link with the mages on either side of him in the circle, slipping into concert-rapport. 

There's a lot of magic in the camp; the soldiers are being equipped with items that keep them alive and make them stronger, and with magic swords that can cut through shields, and with use-activated items that will let them fly or deflect spells. Most of them are asleep but there are plenty of sentries; some pass quite close.

It all looks quite well-organized and competently done, and he's going to have to move fast so as not to give them time to react when the Gate goes up. Fortunately, if he does this right, when he does his collapsing into a puddle there won't be any Chelish forces left in this plane, except for maybe a few sentries who happen to have been outside their perimeter. 

:Yfandes: he sends. :Can you give us the cue: 

:Of course: And she can find each mind belonging to a Velgarth mage, and only those minds, and include them in a private Mindspeech countdown that won't be detectable to anyone inside the camp unless they have a lot more telepathy-detecting magic than she thought - and even if they do it'll be about two seconds' warning. 

:Three, two, one - NOW: 

It takes about a second and a half for the mages, linked in a concert-meld and all Adepts experienced with Gates, to fling up an enormous threshold. Which is very detectable as powerful magic, and also visible as a strange white glow to the naked eye, though its casters are still invisible. 

Leareth reaches for Nirvana, and for the anchor-stones he left there, throwing his mind toward the destination, profligately pouring energy into the spell as Vanyel feeds him from a node. It takes maybe two seconds to find it, and he frantically builds the destination threshold, as soon as it's complete the spell will snap into place and dump the entire army there where they can't do anything about it -

The army noticed this and is freaking out! Some people Teleport out immediately. Some try Dispel Magic. 

Well, they were never going to do it fast enough to catch the wizards with good reaction times. Dispel Magic rips at pieces of the threshold on their side, but it's very stable once up, and there are a lot of mages to rebuild it. 

The instant he dropped Leareth, Aroden Plane Shifts himself to Nirvana, and from his random arrival point, Teleports to the mountain beside the valley, grabbed from Leareth's memory. He draws out a diamond for his Wish, to extend the Dimension Lock spell to cover the entirety of the valley and everyone inside it. He worked out the wording for it as a contingency decades ago, trapping a large number of people in a given plane is useful in many circumstances, and it's a pretty safe use case anyway. 

Leareth's vision blacks out a little as the power drains through him, not replenished quiiite fast enough by all of Vanyel's efforts. 

- and then the Gate completes and snaps into place, and the ground is suddenly gone from under the army's feet, replaced by different ground somewhere else entirely. Thanks to the placement of Leareth's stones near the walls of the valley, for most of them it's a drop of somewhere between three and ten feet. 

A lot of confused people crash to the ground! They're mostly not badly injured and they do have decent healing on hand.

There is a lot of chaos on the ground as they reorganize themselves and try some spells to figure out where they are. Some people take flight to scout invisibly.

Aroden doesn't have a great way to stop people from flying out of the valley to where they can Teleport or Plane Shift again, aside from using See Invisibility and striking at them individually, but nonetheless he would really prefer they not! 

He casts Mage's Decree and announces to everyone within the valley, tersely given the word limit, that they are now prisoners of war in Nirvana and he is promising not to harm them if they stay put but makes no promises otherwise. 

- this gets the scouts to at least land while they wait for orders from whoever is in charge. 

The people who are in charge are trying to do triage on people who took unusually bad falls and figure out the supply situation and establish communications with Cheliax. They do some Sendings home. They tell people to stay put for now. They are so confused. 

Meanwhile, one of Aroden's wizards has just Plane Shifted Herald-Mage Savil, who didn't participate in the Gate and isn't exhausted - or, rather, she's had four candlemarks of sleep and is certainly tired but has lots of magic left in her and is waking up thanks to some stimulants. Once in Nirvana, they Teleport over to the mountain to join Aroden. Savil stays out of sight behind the ridge, just in case the army decides to lob some fireballs. 

Kellan starts on a longer announcement, since he's not word-limited. He's not Taver and can't hit tens of thousands of people at once, but he can get around a quarter of them, who can hopefully inform the rest. He tells them that food and supplies can be delivered if needed, and even clerics if they need more healing than they have capacity for and the army promises them safe passage. However, Aroden has blocked them from Plane Shifting and Teleporting out, and anyone trying to leave the valley will be intercepted. 

(Kellan can notice anyone doing this pretty easily, by watching for minds - unless they're using a lot of magical protections, but Companions are hard to fool.) 

What are the people thinking? 

They're mostly exhausted. They marched way too far yesterday, helped out by lots and lots of powerful magic, and then they were interrupted in the middle of the night by something that should have been outright impossible, even with some Wishes you can't just - kidnap thirty thousand people in a way that permits no spell resistance and no shielding and no defence -

- it's kind of got to be Aroden, right, if it's not traitorous to think that, who else could possibly -

Aroden gets a Sending. "This is Queen Abrogail Thrune. We would like to have a channel open for negotiations. Do you have any proposals?"

Aroden does, in fact, have a proposal! He had already selected and assigned some of his people as diplomats, and proposes a neutral location in Axis. (They know little about the details of his war planning or strategic assets and they're not that important to the war effort itself, though he's definitely going to raise them if they die doing this. They're also not authorized to do much without his approval, but they can at least serve as a channel of communication.) 

Great. Cheliax will get some people to Axis to start talks with the invaders, then. 

Cheliax's diplomats would like to ask if there's anything at all that could get the invaders to go away?? Maybe Aroden could go be a god again with Asmodeus's support and just leave Cheliax alone?

Aroden's diplomats are sympathetic, having your country invaded is in fact really terrible!! However, sorry, that is definitely not on the table as something Aroden would be willing to do. He has enough strength to take Cheliax one way or another, and intends to; it seems like the options for the future here are a long, messy war where a lot of people die, or a shorter cleaner one where Cheliax cooperates. 

They kind of figured. 

They might be willing to offer to conclude the war shortly if they're allowed to evacuate to Hell anyone in Cheliax who wants to go, first.

Aroden's diplomats aren't authorized to make any promises or sign anything, they have to understand, but - informally, they can say that this is something Aroden would potentially sign off on. Under conditions that he chooses, of course, which are likely to involve the evacuations only happening from specified locations, so Aroden can verify that they're not hauling random people off the street and coercing them into it, and also that everyone opting in will be fully informed of Aroden's future plans for Cheliax and what he can offer them before they make their decision. 

Why don't they get some more specific conditions from him, that might be acceptable.

Aroden is not available right this second, but his diplomats can do a Sending and make him aware that there's some interest in this offer and a request for more specific terms, and he'll probably answer on that later today.

In the material plane, on the battlefield, it's not quite dawn.

Aroden prepared so many Teleports today and ended up using a really absurd number of them before the sun was even up, so he's now asking one of Leareth's mages to Gate him, alongside a yawning Nayoki, around to the outskirts of a half-dozen smaller cities and towns they didn't visit yesterday. Gates are more detectable, but they're choosing arrival locations where the magical signature hopefully won't be too obvious, and Nayoki is going to sense anyone coming when they're still a half-mile away. 

If they can make it in unnoticed, they'll slip into place to lay some mind-control on the local leadership. 

Vanyel arrives back in the Ostenso camp, hauling an unconscious Leareth, and immediately extends his Thoughtsensing to look for any clerics who might be able to cast Restoration on him. 

There are some clerics from Andoran who'd be happy to cast Restoration on him, though, uh, it'd be nice if he'd provide the diamond? They don't grow on trees.