Ha! You fell for my disguise!
Oldest trick in the book.
Wait. This may have been a bad idea actually.

He kills the man much faster than he'd have expected, for a high-level paladin.
They'll attack everyone around them, and make a big fiery hole in what passes for defenses around here.
Collectively, they can kill more than a dozen adventurers in a surprise round, and severely injure a dozen more.

Is that maybe going to reduce their morale a bit?

No? All those people you just killed are other people, not even my party members. How easily they die has no particular bearing on how likely it is that I, the main character, will also die?

Mudball!

What, it hits a lot of the time and screws him over until he can wipe it off next turn.

Everyone ready?

Apport Object!

Four barrels of Holy Water, each of which contains around 20 pounds of Holy Water at a cost of 500 gp each, appear in the space immediately above the pit fiend.
They've got Explosive Runes on them. Just ordinary ones. One each.
The force damage won't hurt the pit fiend, he's got Spell Resistance. It'll absolutely destroy the barrels though.
80 pounds of holy water, if it all hits, at 2d4 damage per pound, is 400 damage. They're pretty sure it's enough.

A lot of it splashes in the wrong direction, and makes a puddle on the floor but otherwise misses him.

He takes ... 332 damage.

And then I shoot him with my Silver Arrows, from my Holy bow!

Wow, I killed him! Aren't archers the best guys?

Fuck you.

What did I do wrong?

I just came here to make friends...

Long ago, Asmodeus sold to the forces of Good, at a great price, that His devils on the material would act only on the orders of mortals, even if those orders are dumb. He would offer them the obedience of powers greater than themselves, and those who took the offer could be damned for it, but there would be no devil-ruled empires. Always at the top would be some mortal monarch, who got there only on their own choices. Always the devils would obey some higher power, such that the evils committed on the material would remain the result of mortal free Will. He's just helping them do what they wanted to do already.

A devil can be a general, can command with creativity if it is ordered to. But it'll be no wiser than the orders it was given. It won't lead in a way surprising even to its overlord.

Tet was not around, when He signed that compact, but He agreed to the immigration rules too and now He gets to live with the consequences.

Zon-Kuthon's outsiders are not without constraints, but they are differently constrained.

Soltaxin didn't come here to obey the stupid orders of some mortal with delusions of grandeur and less than a decade of military experience.
She came here to inflict suffering, misery, and death to things of fleeting beauty.

She Shadowwalks into the city. She can do that at will, and at a hundred miles an hour.

She wields an enchanted mace.
She wields it using Telekinesis, from a thousand feet away. She hides in a building nearby.
If someone strong approaches her she can just shadowwalk away.
If attacked by a group, she'll telekinetically grab the weapons of the fallen and throw them at everyone else.

She carries two permanencied Symbols of Pain. She'll intends to move them around with her, placing them in chokepoints and leading people into traps.

Most of those she kills directly will be by Inflict Critical Wounds, which deals 4d8 + 20 damage and which hardly anyone here is likely to be able to resist.
She can use that at will, too, or the mass version thrice a day.

She's not going to attack the strong, because she's not in some contest for domination of this city. She's going to pick her battles, because she's old enough to know what she can win. She's going to attack the weak, because their suffering is just as real as that of anyone else. She's going to attack the many, because there are many of them.

The best adventurers are seeking glory at the front and the rest of them can have her, instead.

With the pit fiend deployed, she can release the dragons.

Her Polymorph Any Objects, cast to turn a low-level paladin in shining armour into a conceptually very similar silver dragon*, last up to a week.

She has 9 of them, cast over the last 3 days. They get to keep their paladin class-levels.
She couldn't get any elf paladins who were up for it, but found some dwarfs sworn to Torag each over 200 years old.

They're Mature Adults, by dragon standards.

Burying the whole combat zone in fog won't impede them, because they can see through it, and their breath weapon is a paralyzing gas.

The only easy option is to dispel the polymorphs.

Some of them were cast on a ley line, some with prayer beads, using though it made her very upset Death Knell, sacrificing each time a chicken.
She hopes she doesn't lose any of her moral credibility as a vegan, for that.

The only people with a realistic chance of catching them in the air and dispelling the polymorphs in this warzone are Aspexia, Abrogail, and the Pit Fiend.

Aspexia is holding a Gate open. The Pit Fiend is dead.

*Footnote: The spell text says "This spell functions like greater polymorph, except that it changes one object or creature into another". Some would claim that this means the many restrictions of Greater Polymorph still apply, so that instead of turning you into an actual dragon it just makes you sort-of dragonlike but not really, by functioning as Form of the Dragon 1. Those people are wrong. The spell clearly says that it function like greater polymorph, except that it actually changes one object or creature into another. This means that if you turn someone into a dragon, they actually turn into a dragon. 

Yeah, yeah she gets it. You've gotta do everything yourself or the whole world turns into the abyss.

But if she does ...

She has had thoroughly drilled into her, at this point, that combat for archmages is Rocket Tag.

Even with all her defenses, if Morgethai gets the opportunity to prepare appropriately and then at any point knows her exact location, she should expect to immediately lose.

Her personally leading the attack on Almas, their best shot at disabling Andoran's government before the war properly started, was only permissible because Morgethai wasn't properly prepared. They could only know that because Lord Asmodeus personally told them, by Commune, after expensively checking in a brief moment where Morgethai was not herself Mind Blanked and Private Sanctum'd. Asmodeus is not now telling them that she is unprepared. The opposite, if anything.

She has been told that now that she's an Archsorcerer, she will be expected to have Mind Blank up at any moment that she's not inside a Private Sanctum, herself, along with Invisibility if there's the slightest threat of an attacker, and that she must otherwise refrain from any action to reveal her location to within more than a few hundred feet.

The church of Asmodeus, through it's Most High priestess, told her this.

She doesn't entirely believe it.

It's the overly rules-focused behaviour of a theology that lacks the creativity to win by itself, and needs monarchs like her to win for it. Her duty is not solely to do what she is told, it is to think for herself. She will still be Mind Blank'd, and Invisible, and she will still spend scrolls of Dimensional Door between every spell cast like they grow on trees, but if the only way to win is to use the spells Asmodeus spent so much giving her, then she will do that and she will fight it out.

The obvious solution is Dispel Magic. It's certainly Morgethai casting the polymorphs, so you need a powerful caster to undo it, don't you?
You could try catch one in an Antimagic Field but it'd fall out of it immediately.

She could have spent thousands of gold and weeks of her own time penning scrolls with her unbuffed caster level, and she could then give them out to lesser wizards to cast. She has in fact prepared Dispel Magic scrolls at her caster level, along with many other utility spells, but it's an expense to use them, and even a 7th circle would have only a 75% chance of casting it successfully, and still wouldn't have a guarantee of dispelling Morgethai's dragons. If she does it herself, she can stack the effect of a Bead of karma, and have much better odds per spell cast.

It's probably a DC of 32 to dispel each dragon, assuming Morgethai bothered with a prayer bead and a Death Knell every time but is bluffing and couldn't use a ley line, not having had enough time to attune to one in the past three days of harassing the army on the march.

Abrogail, with the same prayer bead but no death knell because she needs to move fast, makes that exactly half the time.

A 7th circle wizard, without prayer beads because there aren't enough to go around, only makes it 15% of the time. With prayer beads he makes it 35% of the time. With one of her scrolls, they'd succeed at using the scroll 75% of the time, and the scroll succeeds at the dispel 35% of the time. About 25% overall. Not enough of a bonus to be worth the cost of the spell. Every second time they fail, the dragon can have moved out of range and they have to try again, or else while they're trying that they're sitting ducks for being assassinated right back. She can probably trust each 7th circle she has to get one dragon each, maybe.

She could just kill them, instead. They're supposed to be weak to fire, although the enemy could have defended against that. They'd be hard to hit at range even for her, and they won't go down quickly, and it'd be a lot more spells overall.

She really needs most of her high-level fighters for fighting the enemy army.

This is a magic problem. Dispel Magic is the correct answer.

She can afford to stick stronger wizards on some of them, it'll help the problem, but she's going to have to do a lot of it herself. If she is to bring a bodyguard of any kind, or even just a weaker wizard to cast her dimdoors for her, they'd need a Mind Blank too, or else would give away her location immediately to See invisibility. She doesn't have so many spellslots as to freely waste them protecting lesser casters.

If she does not respond to this threat personally, enough of her army will be paralyzed as to present a credible risk of, not defeat by itself, but a step on a path towards defeat.

She should be expecting to have to cast twice, on average, for each dragon, plus another round for moving between them. An expected 3 rounds per dragon. She can use Quicken Spell Metamagic off of two lesser rods to turn some of the repeats into swift actions, and save 6 rounds. It's not worth a 7th circle slot to quicken it herself. She can use 2 of the 3 teleports off of her boots to save another 2 rounds, but shouldn't use the third because running out of teleports on her boots can be a trap too. Maybe she'll get lucky and a few dragons will be close together or dodge the wrong way, and she won't need to move every time? But maybe she'll get unlucky and need more dispels than she'd expect.

Suppose she expects to take out 6 dragons herself. Thats 12 3rd circle Dispel Magics, and probably 4 4th circle Dimension Doors, using two uses off her boots for any dragons more distant than the others. She only has 8 3rd circle slots, so she'd expect to cast 4 in all her remaining 4th circle slots. She's got no wiggle room at all unless she wants to use even higher circle slots than that.

It's plausible that she can do that.

Given that this is clearly optimised to require her personal response, it is clearly a trap. How does the trap work?

The range is, at her caster level, 380 feet. It's not so small a volume that you could find her in it quickly, without divination magic and through her invisibility. She could increase it with Enlarge Spell metamagic, but would be spending 4th circle slots or yet another rod. She's already planning on doing 4 out of an expected 12 times, so she can have those 4 be Enlarged.

The dragons themselves are likely to have blindsense up to 60 feet, natively. They could also have had Invisibility Purge on them, If they're polymorphed clerics or inquisitors, though at a mediocre caster level it would only extend around the same 60 feet as their blindsense. If she gets within that, it'd suppress her invisibility and if Morgethai spots her she'd get to throw a free hit. Maybe there's some other tactic known to Morgethai but not Abrogail, with a greater range.

The dragons themselves can move at 200 ft through the air, but don't have the best maneuverability. The obvious choice would be to move to a location around 200 feet in front, and 120 feet above, trusting that she'll be outside its range of invisibility purge but inside her range of attack no matter how it moves before she can get off a dispel. By being above instead of below, she also avoids being caught in any random attacks at ground level, though at the price of being very obvious if she does become visible.

Would Morgethai be waiting at approximately that point, with her own Mind Blank, Invisibility, and some spell to reveal her? She can't cast Invisibility Purge herself, she's not a cleric. It might be a subordinate, but they'd need their own Mind Blank and Morgethai doesn't have infinitely many spells either.

Could it just be a very stealthy summon? A Small Air Elemental is very difficult to spot and is very fast in the air too. It can't cast Invisibilty purge either, but if she's polymorphing dragons maybe she's turned a few clerics into air elementals too. One of them could have Invisibilty Purge on it and still not be seen because seeing an air elemental hundreds of feet in the air against a backdrop of more air is a challenge at the best of times. She can squint, if she wants to, but there's a lot of space to search and she can't immediately see any.

Maybe they just think they can guess more precisely where she'll go, if the dragons make leading attacks and there's only one way to get two dragons with one teleport?

Suppose Abrogail did the obvious reponse, and it narrowed down her location enough that, whatever Morgethai does have planned can identify her location. Morgethai would have cast Message on all her allies in advance, and whoever is responsible for spotting her spots her, and the hit-squad would have readied actions to teleport on top of her and Trap her Soul?

If multiple casters are dispelling dragons, how does morgethai tell her apart?
Negative Information. Everyone else would show up to an easy divination like Detect Life or See Invisibility, except her. The strategy makes Mind Blank into a weakness, if you're trying to pretend not to have it. It's still not enough of a weakness to justify turning it off though, because that also immediately gives her away.

Could it be any other kind of trap? Abrogail's not seeing the options here. It might not be that exactly, but it'll consist of something in that shape:
Dragons attack army, only Abrogail can stop them, Abrogail stops them, A surprise twist happens where doing that leaks her location, they teleport on top of her and kill her.

It's a respectable plan. Really. She respects it. Watch how respectful of her opponents she is being right now.

There's no way the hit squad doesn't have Morgethai in it. It'd probably have half a dozen other powerful casters too, but it has to have Morgethai. They're arch-nemeses, at this point. Nobody else is getting through her spell resistance and will saves except for one of a handful of other archmages in the world none of whom care enough to show up except Morgethai.

So what they're expecting to observe is, A dragon gets dispelled, Abrogail is invisible and Mind Blank'd nearby, whatever mechanism they have to detect that detects that, and then Morgethai and some of her favourite hit-wizards appear at the location of Abrogail's choice.

The bait doesn't have to be her, obviously. It just has to be someone with Mind Blank up who looks like her. There are divinations that can beat polymorphs, but they're divinations so they can't beat the Mind Blank. It's almost better if it doesn't look like her, since they'll assume Alter Self anyway. It just has to be someone with a Mind Blank, and with equipment real or fake that looks fitting for a queen of cheliax in battle.

Morgethai's likely to have Spell Resistance of her own, so Abrogail needs to be ready her own hit-wizard squad nearby, getting the jump on them a round early.

If it lets her kill her arch-nemesis. it's worth it to spend a scroll of Mind Blank on setting some bait.

She probably doesn't want to be in the air nearby, and she still needs to be nearby enough to cast the Dispel that sets the trap off. There's places to hide on the ground, in that she can mix herself within the rest of her soldiers being attacked and still be in range. She might then get hit by something by random chance, but she's a powerful sorcerer and isn't going to die of it. There's less volume to hide in, if you're guaranteed to be on the ground, but volume doesn't help against sensors with a high range, and it's much harder to pick out a target at a distance on the ground compared to in the sky, if she makes a bare attempt at stealth.

She probably can't be on the ground with her whole hit-wizard squad present, since their movements might also give her away. She can have them nearby but seperate, and ready to attack at the same moment.

Suppose she uses an extended dispel magic on the first dragon, and has a decoy ready, and nothing happens?

Possibly only half of the dragons are actually trapped, and the numbers are just to ensure her minions can't handle them all without her? The decoy would have to dimdoor themself, so they'd need to be someone with enough dimdoors to handle that, and they'd have to coordinate by Message continuously to keep the trap ready to spring while still clearing dragons. It'd be difficult to pull off, and take some time to organise. She doesn't have a huge amount of time to respond.

She could probably find a way to take out the dragons without triggering the trap, maybe casting from underground using Earth Glide and See Through Stone, for example, but removing Morgethai would be a big win and she really needs one.

What she's going to do is, she'll send a few 7ths on the more distant dragons and commit to do the middle ones by herself. She'll decide an order in advance, and follow her decoy who will be 200 ft ahead and 100 ft above each dragon. She'll cast from inside the ground directly below her decoy, and have a few other mid-level casters ready at a distance to be her hit-squad when Morgethai takes the bait. She's already got a plan how to do that fight, once she gets the drop on her, though there isn't much time to go over it with the minions.

What if this is, itself, the trap?

Then they both get to show up at the same place, at the same time, in all their best buffs, and duke it out. Abrogail's not afraid of a fair fight. She's been training for unfair fights all her life. She's got the world's most powerful magic crown, she's got the best sorceror bloodline, she's got the best possible will save. If Morgethai wants to fight on equal footing, she'll take her up on that. Everything she's done in her entire life has just been for the chance to fight Cheliax's enemies on equal footing.

She doesn't really believe that she's as easy to kill as Aspexia seems to think, that the instant her location is known she'll somehow be immediately destroyed with zero opportunity to resist.

Abrogail doesn't waste whole minutes thinking about it. At her intelligence level, this is what an immediate snap decision looks like. She gives out orders and requests spell scrolls the same round she sees the dragons appear.

She's watching the battlefield from a safe observation point, naturally. She has See Invisibility up, along with a few other divinations, and can spot even at a distance a visible Mind Blank'd creature from the absence of additional auras.

The dragons are going down now, one by one. It took them about 4 rounds to get their act together, from which she infers Abrogail's got the sort of response planned that takes only 4 rounds to set up. There are a few powerful casters, with Nondetection but not Mind Blank, who appeared by some infantry and are just standing there. She can't actually see they're magical at this distance, but the shapes of their clothes and gear are a giveaway, really. Sometimes she scries Cheliax's installations at the worldwound, and she thinks she can remember a few faces. It's against the spirit of the worldwound treaty to do that, it's using their willingness to help against them, but she doesn't follow agreements with Cheliax when she doesn't feel like it.

They're obviously the hit squad, though abrogail isn't with them. The bait is where they're looking, and it'll be that dragon next.

Truly amateurish. Does she think just because she's an 18-month old Archmage, Morgethai won't be any better than that?

Time Stop (9th).

Limited Wish (7th):
A thin cloud of blood-red, snow-like, artificial matter, weak and impermanent like that created by Prestidigitation centered on the dragon itself.
She is able to extend it 500 feet in every direction before the finite power of the spell and the diamond she is sacrificing to power it give out.

A moment of artificial time passes, and the cloud she has created sits in the air.
The particles that touch creatures stick onto their surfaces, and because those creatures are outside the artificial time.

She dispels the effect, but the dust that has touched a living creature cannot be effected by her dispel until the timestop ends. It's not unattended, any more.

An invisible, Mind Blanked person, floats by themself in midair, highlighted by the red dust against a blue sky.
She casts Glitterdust on them, directly. It can't take effect until the timestop ends.

If when the timestop ends they seem unblinded by it she'll know they passed their will save and are probably Abrogail, but if when the timestop ends it succeeds she'll know they're a decoy.

The timestop ends. He's covered in glitter.

Readied Action: -

She sees what can only be the effect of some custom magic held in secret, not known to her.

It's a terrifying spell. For the briefest of moments, a fraction of a second, she sees every single person, invisible or not, mindblanked or not, glow with a dusty red outline. It disappears too fast for any but the sharpest of minds to notice, except for Abrogail's decoy, left floating in midair, who remains coated in golden dust as per glitterdust.

It's a very weird spell. Some higher version of glitterdust designed to persist only on those with Mind Blank active, but which technically isn't a divination and so can't be blocked by it? It can't have been targetted at her, can't have used any property of her to target itself, because then it'd be a divination and just fail. It looks for Mind Blank with some negative information effect, just like she predicted.

Morgethai assumed she wouldn't guess she could do that, because she's never told anyone she could. Abrogail's guessed correctly because the trap wouldn't make sense if she couldn't.

Morgethai's fallen for her trap.

She sees 2 wizards appear behind the bait, with just enough of a gap to fit a third. They're invisible, but she can see through that even at a range. They seem to be casting spells at the bait wizard.