Sable Company marines carry four hundred arrows each.

That’s ten times what’s listed in Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to Korvosa.

The book's wrong. 400 is the correct number.

That's sixty pounds in arrows.

Thanks for reminding me that the hippogriffs all wear Muleback Cords.

And they carry a thousand arrows, plus all the mundane gear Paizo’s ever printed.

Does that mean I can fly back down into my second range increment?

It does! And you absolutely should. If you want to be eaten by shadows.

Fair enough. I'll stay up here with all my Strength.

Round 78 (12:07:48)

It has been 96 seconds since the tooting of Verik Vancaskerkin's horn.

Korvosans don't waste time.

The half-dozen Sable Company marines on the wing within 3,000 feet of Bridgefront are now on the scene shooting at shadows.

They won't turn the tide.

But 176 of them startled awake[1] and now streaming from the Great Tower might.

-

1. 96 seconds is a comparable nighttime turnout time to Earth firefighters[2], who get fancy poles to slide down and don't need to wrangle sleepy hippogriffs. ↩

2. Clackamas Fire Department was averaging 89 seconds for nighttime turnouts in 2003: https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/pdf/efop/efo36539.pdf ↩

The Great Tower is directly across the Narrows from Bridgefront. Leaving their aerie they're already on the scene.

183 hippogriffs and 183 marines against 255 shadows.

Rutio uses the stats for an "elite" Sable Company marine (with some modifications like swapping out his shortbow for a better weapon and changing his hippogriff out for a Bestiary 1 version[1]).

It'd be pretty strange if two percent of Korvosa's adult population were sixth-level rangers with thousands of gp in gear.

However, the Guide to Korvosa doesn't give us the stats for non-elite units. So, whatever, everyone's an elite.

In an open, well-lit demiplane without anything to hide behind, this fight would last about four rounds.

But they're fighting for the slums of Korvosa at 12:07 AM.

Shadows on the ground have +25 to stealth, and are effectively invisible unless they jump someone in plain view.

If shadows wait ten rounds between victims, the rangers too must wait.

Trigonometry and Korvosa's tall buildings prevent focused fire; walls block line of effect, and without Mounted Archery they're unlikely to hit with any of their attacks on a round that their hippogriff repositions. Only marines near enough to directly above can even take a shot. Further: if the shadow jumps into a packed street, the crowd provides cover: +4 AC and Korvosan collateral damage. This reduces the marines' average damage per round to 3.9 points of a shadow's 19 hitpoints[2]. Six rounds to drop a shadow. And at any time that shadow can just leave, ghosting through a wall or into the ground.

The Company is playing catch-and-release, and while sometimes they contribute damage to a shadow caught by someone else down the line, damaged shadows can also just stick around indoors or under eaves, or ghost away to a different part of the city. A shadow is as fast as a tiger at the hundred meter dash over level terrain; at overland travel they outpace even hippogriffs.

If in the next minute and a half every ranger had five rounds with a visible target, and if every single point of damage deal by a Sable Company marine were perfectly allocated, they could kill at most 33 shadows.

Instead they'll kill five.

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1. Pathfinder and D&D 3.5 do animal companions in very different ways and I don't care to make the conversion. (Paizo already took a stab at converting it but you can't actually ride the thing until level 6 or 7 and it takes a gazillion feats.) So I'm just using hippogriff stats from the Bestiary, and saying the rangers took the other option for Hunter's Bond instead of an animal companion. ↩

2. 3.5 damage with Deadly Aim. ↩

You can't have Mounted Archery back, you traded it out. It's my feat now. Have fun with Deadly Aim.

This is curtains for Korvosa, right? We can call it here, eight minutes into the attack?

Don't count your chickens yet.

Round 78 (12:07:48)

It has been six minutes and eighteen seconds since Beri Ellen set out for the Temple of Asmodeus. She has since arrived.

The temple is an incredibly tacky building shaped like a pentagram, painted garish white and red like Saint Nicholas's candy-cane workshop with a big red stained-glass dome in the middle. My best guess at the proximal cause is the architect was secretly a Caydenite.

Round 78 (12:07:48)

It has been one minute and twelve seconds since Vassus left for the Bank of Abadar. He has since arrived.

The temple towers over surrounding buildings, made of gleaming marble and bronze. A windswept griffon looks out of place patiently perched on the steep stair.

Round 78 (12:07:48)

It has been one minute and twelve seconds since Sostens left for the Grand Cathedral of Pharasma.

...

He's working on it, okay?

It's clear on the other side of town.

In the first printing of Curse of the Crimson Throne: Seven Days to the Grave, F. Wesley Schneider wrote, “Page 138 of the DMG presents a way to determine how many characters of each class reside in a city. According to this method, the average population of a large city like Korvosa includes 3 12th-level clerics, 6 6th-level clerics, 12 3rd-level clerics, and 24 1st-level clerics.”

(In that very book the player characters slay no fewer than seventeen cleric cultists of Urgathoa, but presumably they don’t count.)

Korvosans aren't a terribly religious bunch[1]. Nonetheless, they're better favored by the gods than the Dungeon Master’s Guide V 3.5 would have you believe. Plenty of clerics don't directly work at any of Korvosa's seven temples - we won't count them against the city's 47. And because the Pantheon of Many is a silly place, neither will we count its 17+ clerics. 

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1. Guide to Korvosa, Page 45.↩

Korvosa has seven temples. Starting at the top of the city and making our way down:

Old Korvosa: the Temple of Aroden[1]

North Point: Bank of Abadar, Sanctuary of Shelyn

The Heights: Temple of Asmodeus, Temple of Sarenrae

Midland: there are no temples in Midland

East Shore: there are no temples in East Shore

Gray: Grand Cathedral of Pharasma

South Shore: Pantheon of Many

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1. This one isn't marked on the Redditor's map. ↩

The crumbling temple of Aroden in Old Korvosa has three “pitiful” old clerics; they still hold services but don't have any magic.

Abadarians in North Point include 13th-level (7th-circle) Archbanker Darb Tuttle and 9th-level (5th-circle) Arbiter Zenobia Zenderholm, who doesn’t work at the temple and doesn’t against Korvosa’s 47. To them we'll add 2 6th-level clerics (3rd-circle), four 3rd-level (2nd-circle), and eight 1st-levels (1st-circle).

(Though since 6th-level is a boring level for clerics, we'll drop one down to 5th (still 3rd-circle) and bump the other to 7th (4th-circle).)

The Sanctuary of Shelyn is noted for its slight size; they'll have a 3rd-level cleric and a 1st-level.

The Temple of Asmodeus hosts 11th-level (6th-circle) Archbishop Ornher Reebs – one of Korvosa's three most powerful divine spellcasters. We’ll also give them a 6th-level (3rd-circle), two 3rd-levels (second circle), four 1st-levels.

The Temple of Sarenrae, we'll give a 7th-level (4th-circle), a 3rd-level (2nd-circle), and 3 1st-levels.

Pharasma’s Grand Cathedral has 13th-level (7th-circle) Bishop Keppira D’Bear, tied with Tuttle for most powerful cleric in Korvosa. We’ll also give them a 7th-level (4th-circle), a 5th-level (3rd-circle), four 3rd-levels (2nd-circle), and eight first-level clerics.

That makes 47.

The Pantheon of Many is rather an odd building. The city's newest temple, and by some measures its grandest, is situated in South Shore - the city's newest district, inhabited mainly by Korvosa's nouveuau riche. The giant building has shrines for 17 of Golarion's most popular gods:

Erastil,

Iomedae,

Torag,

Shelyn,

Sarenrae,

Desna,

Cayden Cailean,

Abadar,

Irori,

Gozreh,

Nethys,

Pharasma,

Calistria,

Asmodeus,

Zon-Kuthon,

Norgorber,

and

Urgathoa

all under one roof.

Each shrine is attended by a cleric who holds services for the faithful and performs ceremonies under the watchful eye of “a pair of impartial observers”. Logically there must be at least seventeen clerics who work at the temple, though it's got to be an atypical cleric that takes the job and I’ve seen no indication that any of them are particularly high level. Let’s call it a 6th-level, four 3rd-levels, and twelve 1st-levels.

The clerics of Asmodeus sleep in the temple. They already heard the horns and were disturbed, so when Beri Ellen arrives at 12:07 AM they're awake and ready to receive her.

A knowledge (religion) check identifies tonight's terror from its description - undead shadows.

Unlike Korvosa’s less overtly sketchy religious organizations, Asmodean clergy pray for spells at dusk, and have plenty of magic in the tank.

Useful magic, they’ve in smaller supply.

Like most clerics who sell their spells for a living, the Asmodeans don't fill all their spellslots in one go – most are left open for whatever spell someone comes in willing to pay for. An empty slot takes fifteen minutes to fill, there won't be time for that.

They do have some spells prepared - ones that they might need in a hurry, or that were commissioned in advance. Shadows aren't much inconvenienced by spells like make whole and remove disease, but cure wounds can hurt them.

At least a little bit.

Until the Asmodeans run out of those spells.

After three or four rounds of casting.

But the forces of Lawful Evil will have to make do with what paltry positive energy they've prepared, and any scrolls that they happen to have on hand...

As it turns out, they have rather a few scrolls on hand.

Here's 10,000 gp in subsidized high-level scrolls for every Korvosan temple with a cleric as can cast from them. And anyone who manages to burn them all defending the city tonight can expect a cash bonus as would palpitate a dragon's heart.