Just curious, what happens, hypothetically, if we surrender?

Breaking the spirit of Andoran's people, our spies report, is likely to be very difficult.
It's cheaper to just kill anyone who offers the slightest resistance, and enslave the rest.

We don't want to have to deal with enemy natives forever, because they can hide in the woods and use a strong social network for organising more resistance, so instead we'll move our new slaves back to Cheliax and replace the farmers with the second and third sons of loyal chelish peasants.

Nobility who fail to compact and cross sides fast enough will be executed and replaced by new nobility raised from the knights of Cheliax who most bring glory to their empire through their conduct. It's the only way to properly motivate officers towards conquest, in a society where every individual is only looking out for himself.

Nevermind, then. Elysium sounds better.

Give us a minute to think about this.

How much wealth does a typical commoner have? 260 gold?
No I don't mean in goats and agricultural equipment. How much cash on hand?
What do you mean it depends on the day of the week? Are you seriously telling me the median Andoren, the day before payday, does not have even one weeks wages in his pocket? If his boss is late, what, does he go into debt? Gods our economy is stupid.

How many wizards are there in the city, versus the rest of the Inner Sea?
How many 3rd circle wizard spell slots?

So Augustana has, on any given day, give me a second...
... around 900 3rd circle wizard spellslots?
... and around 1500 3rd circle cleric spellslots? No a lot of those clerics are still out in the villages, they haven't had enough warning. A quarter of that, probably, unless we can gather them up fast.

Far more at lower levels and far fewer at higher ones, obviously.

And you said we had 3 days to prepare?

Cheliax's Abrogail's army reaches Augustana.

Most of the population aren't there any more.

The hundreds of naval vessels and confiscated galleys that once filled the harbour are departed.

Many rural civilians have stubbornly refused to leave their farms, but taking the local hub is higher on the agenda then tyrannising them into obedience, so they'll attack here first.

They can flee if they want. It's fine. If we capture all their ports they'll have nowhere to dock, and then we can hunt them down and retake control of the Inner Sea.

Scouting with imps reveal they've only evacuated non-combatants. The walls still have men on them, and movement is seen in some buildings and along the streets. A few imps are shot down scouting, but it's not a real loss.

The gatehouses have had tons of rubble and stone piled against them, blocking access completely unless you're ever heard of Stone Shape or Move Earth or Disintegrate or a few similar spells that just completely negate the effort of doing that.

She moves her infantry in company sized pieces, with 100ft gaps between them. Morgethai isn't here right now but it's just a matter of time. She'll keep her cavalry even more spread out than that, and everyone at least a five minute run from the walls edges, out of range of most seige engines or the threat of enemy forces sallying out to try defeat them in detail.

Her cavalry can move faster, and is further out along the road.

She moves her secret units in secret. Secretly.

This is, she assumes they assume, the part where she sends in an elite force to create an opening for the rest to flood through.

She wants to know how they've prepared for that.

The Inner Sea is more connected, socially, than you'd otherwise expect at this level of technology.

Even though almost nobody can teleport, the few who can bind together a much larger society than could exist without them.

A monster in the hills can injure an adventurer enough that the whole party teleports to escape, and as often as not they pick the square just in front of the starstone cathedral in Absalom, because it's got the most different places to get healed, and while they're there someone will ask what happened and a story will start and that story will spread.

People in the Inner Sea know eachother, and when adventurers want to move to a well-known major city they don't measure commute times in hours or days, they measure it in people per spellslot.

Mail can be delivered internationally in only two days, if both sender and reciever are in major cities.

Trade functions as a single economy for all goods worth moving by teleport, even as peasants in one region have a bumper crop and others are starving because you can't cheaply teleport enough food to feed a million people.

Even if most peasants only know their village, adventurers tend to have many distant connections and little care for national borders. It's like there's a whole separate economy that only has rich people in it, that overlaps the common ones and is united across the whole Inner Sea, or at least the Free and Good parts of the Inner Sea.

There are a lot of adventurers who, if a trusted cleric tells them of an opportunity to hurt Cheliax, will show up given a day to prepare. The list of high-level adventurers in Augustana isn't what it was three days ago. They aren't even all Andoran. A lot of them are expecting to lose, and planning to teleport back out after getting some cheap hits in, but it still pads the numbers.

Still, not everyone is brave enough to stand this close to the action. A lot of former adventurers want to retire to a more peaceful life. Some of those adventurers are wizards, and a lot of those can cast Explosive Runes.

A few different churches have the coordination needed to organise an international campaign with zero warning. pages of Explosive Runes can be delivered from across the Inner Sea be teleport, bags of them at a time. They're not asking for any money, just some spell slots.
They'll hire some blind people, to do the sorting.

Most of the defenders have an Explosive Rune carried on their person. Many have two.
Some of them are locally produced, although there's no clear way to tell the difference.

Suicide is preferable to capture, the locals believe.

Escape is never more than six seconds away, the volunteers believe.

But what's the overarching plan of your defence?

Overarching plan?

We just went around telling people that the Chelish army was going to be here, and a lot of them decided to show up.

There's over a dozen different sub-factions who've guessed what the others are planning, and formed their own plans in secret to steal all the glory.

Codwin I is nominally in charge.

That's a stupid way to defend a city.

What exactly is stopping some Chelish units from teleporting in, dressed as foreigners, and pretending to be on your team?

... alignment detection?
There's a lot of paladins and inquisitors and the like here, someone will see them.

Undetectable Alignment exists? It lasts all day and is only 2nd circle.
We'd just claim they're Nethysians or something.

Usually every group has an empowered follower of a Good god, or at least one party member who detects Good and can vouch for the others? And different parties who have worked together in the past can also often vouch for eachother.

Otherwise, some of us are like, really good at discerning lies.
So far there's only been like a dozen fights between groups accusing each other of being spies?
And 3 of those times, upon investigation by inquisitors, one of the groups actually were spies!

Twice a cleric was forced to cast Burst of Radiance, declaring her intentions to stab anyone who looked like they took damage from it, but nobody took any damage.

Psst. Don't tell anyone, but that guy over there wearing an Iomedaen necklace? It's actually a Talisman of True Faith. He's taking people aside who act suspicious and making them wear it for a few moments, because it can beat effects that hide alignment. It's important that nobody knows that's what he's doing though or they might try to hide it with an illusion.

I know you, I know you're still on our side despite the whole worshipping Nocticula thing. Just make sure you've got a good illusion prepared.

This is why free will was a mistake.

She'll just keep hiding here, for now, and see if anything happens.

Eventually they'll hear the noise.

They hear the noise. There's a grinding, below the walls. It's not loud, but a lot of them have good hearing. There's a few of them. They're moving around.

They're trying to undermine the walls with dire badgers.