The legate is also pretty pleased by this development! Less than he would be if he could get information out of them too, so he'll have some translators talk to them in the vague hope that someone with a noble's education will be able to speak something comprehensible, but it's still something.

With a closer look he might have seen more of the problems with their facade as definitely aristocrats, but he's busy running a battle here and anyway you don't expect foreign nobles to perfectly match your expectations after being captured and escorted a few miles at spearpoint. Besides, if they turn out to just be rich burghers it's no skin off his back. 

Obviously they're going to do their best to cooperate with the alien probably-linguists! It's not as good as them being able to communicate off the bat and convincing the aliens to call off the attack, and their methods of language learning are incredibly bizarre, but it's in the 80th percentile for expectations at how well this is going if their counterparty is also interested in bridging the language gap to do some diplomacy.

3 hours and 36 minutes after the first sightings of the gateway in Schelling Point (nearly 16:00 local time, though they aren't actually waiting for that to begin), enough dath ilani soldiers have entered the city for them to transition from a point defense to establishing a full cordon. As best they can tell, they outnumber their enemy counterparts two to one in combatants, and preliminary engagements have been suggestive of their equipment providing a significant advantage whenever they are not sufficiently outnumbered and a decisive one on anything close to an even playing field. The wyverns remain a more difficult target, but long distance sparring with Civilization's missiles has whittled down their numbers and steadily degraded the combat capabilities of the survivors; they're still a threat wherever they strike, but they've become increasingly unable to actually uproot any dug-in positions and the amount of anti-aircraft weaponry each company is supplied with has only been going up in the intervening time. Nor will they be without air cover of their own, with a number of autonomous close air support platforms and helicopters to support the operation.

The primary load-out for their fire support is (mostly) nonlethal weaponry, since they're at a point where they think their odds of victory in these clashes is high enough that it's worth paying some amount of efficacy to limit the number of people irretrievably true-killed, but they've got heavier munitions as well in case of another surprise like the wyverns showing up or of course the wyverns themselves. They've also got a number of vehicles out and running, for taking hard points and moving heavy objects and ferrying more any supplies awkward to transport via subway line. The first task is to set up mobile barriers on the main streets, to anchor the defensive lines.

All told it's a nearly forty kilometer perimeter, and despite the river largely handling a third of the line (there have been intermittent attempts to ford it or try the surviving bridges, but none sufficient to seriously threaten the blocking forces) that's a fairly monumental task. It's extremely fortunate that their surveillance systems are sufficient to rule out needing to sweep most of the buildings, and that the invaders seem unaware of any need to interfere with their functionality. 

Some of the cameras get smashed carelessly, and a handful more taken out to take back home, but for the most part they're ignored as not particularly valuable. They're looting so they can get rich, not destroying things at random.

Regardless of the reasons, the manpower it saves is very helpful.

At the same time, though, neither is an unprecedented issue. The early empire's lack of magical institutions gave it severe problems until the collapse of Arrun in the first century, and it did not claim the premier position in such fields until Rondel was induced to negotiate a vassalship agreement nearly three centuries later. In each case, the disadvantage proved a significant hindrance until it was solved, but superior strategy, tactics, and discipline allowed imperial legions to overcome the advantage it supplied, and in the end it was they who triumphed in the conquests. Divine issues are if anything even more predictable, as the list of imperial campaigns that have been jeopardized due to a commander displeasing or failing to maintain the favor of the gods could fill entire pages. An intervention of this magnitude is perhaps more unusual, but Legate Kleonike's ill-fated sack of Bellnagho in the third century civil wars famously resulted in a quarter of his forces dead to one of Hardy's apostles before the woman in question was persuaded to quit the field. There may not be a simple solution to this sort of problem, but that doesn't mean they are without options.

Absent an easy way to distinguish the two possibilities, the legate elects to prepare for both. On the far side of the gate, a grand sacrificial rite is hastily assembled in the honor of Flare, and the legate delegates enough of his work to subordinates to make an appearance himself. With luck, the sun god will object to the slaughter of his holy dragons regardless of if the cause is divine or mundane. He can arrange some other sacrifices as well, but attending them personally is contraindicated; showing up to them would weaken the show of devotion to Flare, and it's his aid that the legate is most hoping for today.

If on the other hand it is war wizards that are the problem, he cannot count on his own mages to triumph over them in the fight. There are archmages in Rondel that could take out wyverns given the proper preparations, but he has only a handful he'd trust with the task actually with the army and they wouldn't remotely be able to match the mobility or stamina on display here. Sending them out to match spells might save the dragon corps, but only at the cost of their own lives. Instead he elects to pursue a more cautious strategy. The lesser part of imperial wizards are sent out to do their ordinary work so as to not arouse suspicion about his complete lack of magical support, but they are deployed cautiously to those locations most in need of their assistance, and hopefully secured against any barbarian ambush. The greater part go about preparing an ambush, for their counterparts in expectation and for other barbarian elites if the wizards don't materialize.

They've also gotten some static defenses put together. It's normally neither feasible nor worthwhile to put together real fortifications in a hostile city, but the Gate gives a specific target worth defending and allows them to bring their stockpiles straight into the heart of Schelling Point with vastly reduced time and effort. It's still a bit of an awkward fortificiation, what with having to work around the unhelpfully shaped surrounding buildings and how they still haven't found a good way to get through the streets in a hurry for the foundations, but imperial legions can work quickly when there's a need and the idea of having walls between them and any barbarian apostles (the legate has not officially made any announcements on the subject, but in the Saderan army rumors tend to take on a life of their own) is a very tempting one. At the core of the construction is a wooden palisade, but due to the difficulties of anchoring it in the concrete it's backed by cartloads of earth and stone, and while they can't exactly dig a ditch in front of it they can use the surrounding buildings as platforms for archers or even just dropping heavy objects. It's less than optimally secure, thanks to the need to keep a constant flow of soldiers and wagons moving in both directions, but it won't take much warning to change that.

They can see all of that, just like how they can see all the streets where soldiers are marching and all the tunnels they barred, but it's several kilometers too far off to do the outlying looters any good. There are about 200 Saderan soldiers between their first and planned second perimeter, split between three different groups; ideal for testing their methods in practice. It's unfortunately not practical to ask for their surrenders, not when the aliens wouldn't understand the words, but with any luck most of them will survive any way. Each group is set upon by a barrage of tear gas and high pressure water from a safe distance, with guns aimed and at the ready but currently silent; this might end a little badly if they're wrong enough about the alien's biology being basically like humans but they seem similar enough to make it worth trying. 

Aaagh!

Infantry centuries would have real shields to turn aside the water blasts, but this close to the edge of Saderan control it's mostly cavalry and it's not a priority in their kit. The soldiers respond about as quickly as could be hope, running and crawling and stumbling away from the blasts and into cover, but it's hard to breathe in the choking alchemical fumes and their eyes are watering and their skin is burning and mustering the focus to make optimal decisions, much less communicate them, is difficult. Rather than act as part of a unified strategy, the soldiers scatter to pursue their own individual safety. Or at least, the ones for whom it's possible; some of them are caught out in the open without any possibility of getting away from the attack, while others on horseback are unlucky enough to fall off or have their horse collapse, and often mostly not in a shape to go much of anywhere on their own power. 

It's just not practical to subdue them with superior numbers and hand to hand. They've got nets and stun guns and rifles that they'll be careful to avoid the head with, and cryogenic technicians with mobile equipment standing by. Only three of them get away from the initial attacks, and none of them get far before they're brought down by gunfire. The engagement has about 15% immediate lethality for the aliens in question and no casualties on the part of Civilization, which they hope but don't remotely expect to be able to maintain. 

None of the other Saderan units spot this happening directly. They advance forces targeted are separated from the rest of the army by enough that they're out of eyesight from any other groups, and while guns are loud they'd not so loud as to be unmistakable - not to mention the fact that most of the Imperials aren't particularly aware of their existence. The same goes for the screams - a few of the closer groups can hear that something is going on, but they don't know what. At least this once, the operation has concluded without significantly effecting the tempo of the imperial invasion.

Excellent.

Twenty minutes later the new perimeter is setting up half a kilometer further in, and they prepare to follow it up with a second operation.

None of the Saderan detachments have a good sense for what kind of numbers they're up against, but they can hear the vehicles and see the fortifications start to go up, especially in areas where the streets ensure clear sight lines further out. They'll mostly pause on the looting to link up with other groups in the area; ideally to drive off the locals but at the very least to do better in the upcoming fight. Them showing themselves this openly means a sizable concentration of force, enough that they feel good about their chances, and while they're probably overconfident you can't get rich if you're killed by barbarians

It won't be quick enough to stop them from finishing. They would have set the new perimeter further out if they wouldn't get it done there in time to fend off any attacks, and indeed they did in areas where the Saderan sightlines were enough better to give more warning. Either the invaders make their attack in small groups and get defeated in detail, or they consolidate and the army has time to finish setting up. Either way the concentration of force at each point in the line should be more than enough to deal with whatever tries to break through it, and they have a rapid reaction force just in case that prediction is wrong. It's of course also possible that the invaders will respond to the provocation by fleeing, but what they've grasped of the psychology at work here suggests it's unlikely, and indeed the imperials mostly choose the latter option. Everything is securely in place by the time the defenses are actually tested.

(In fact, this is true by a fair margin. Civilization's operations planning largely underestimated how long it would take the invaders to link up, though they executed each individual action involved competently enough. The aliens seem to either have some unknown set of limitations or are significantly worse than average at coordination problems for some reason).

The defenses are pretty weird and foreign looking. The imperial army has no real idea what to make of all the plastics and the vehicles and the transparent materials, other than that they probably aren't glass because why would you make defenses out of glass, but that's visibly a wall with a lot of guys and some heavy equipment on the other side. Possibly it's related to whatever kind of incredibly dangerous missile fire some of the other soldiers reported running into earlier? They don't have to know the exact details to realize it might be a little less than smart to just go charging in. Instead they're going to test the waters first with some missile fire of their own from a safe distance, and see what the reaction looks like before they commit to storming a fortified position - if nothing else it should hopefully soften them up a bit, and any information could be helpful.

Arrows and slings don't do much to riot shields and body armor even without an actual wall to help keep them from even making contact. Here and there it causes some bruising, but even by Falmart's standards this is not a particularly impressive attack. They can do this all day without more than minor injuries, not that they have to or that that's actually the plan.

They've also got sufficiently good trigger discipline that it doesn't make them start firing early.

If we're being honest we were kind of expecting that.

Not the fire discipline, that's actually a little surprising, but the whole point of shields is that they're pretty good at blocking attacks and they probably wouldn't be carrying them around if they didn't work as shields. Nothing for it, then, they're going to have to actually attack. Four hundred some odd imperial infantrymen gather in formation, array their shields, and then march out of cover and up the street towards the barricade.

The water cannons and gas launchers open up. Every second, 200 gallons of water under 30 pounds of pressure shoot out the barrel towards the advancing soldiers. Choking gas fills the air. Sonic weaponry, previously held in reserve for reasons of being very obvious, opens up with loud shrieks. 

The guns and drones still hold their fire, for the moment.

They advance through the streams of water. It slams into shields, staggering people, but imperial soldiers are fit and their shields are in fact actually good at dealing with blunt force. It's hard to advance against the pressure of the water, but they can hold their ground, and while the water isn't going to run out there's not enough flow to remotely stop the entire advance. It would be an exaggeration to say they are used to it, but it is not a wholly surprising means of attack. Elementalism is one of the most common kinds of wizard specializations, and if water is less common on the battlefield than earth it's still often readily at hand.

They advance through the smoke, even as their eyes water and they start to have trouble breathing. The water helps a little with it, the droplets binding to the tear gas and lessening the impact, but it's still a significant impediment and they have no masks or eye protection to go with their shields. Whatever alchemical concoction is in use is more choking than smoke, and they possess it in such absurd quantities as to make even the great sages jealous, but as long as the army can fend off the projectiles that spew it and trust in their discipline, it can be managed. They do not need to see well to advance, and for everything else teary eyes will suffice. Their comrades to the rear will warn them if that changes.

They advance through the agonizing bursts of sound, even as it threatens their balance and starts to cause bleeding. They cannot even cover their ears to mitigate it, not without giving ground to the water or opening up themselves and their comrades to whatever other weapons are at hand. Sonic magic is not unknown in Falmart, but it has never been more than a niche occurance in warfare - the effective range is always short, which limits how it can be used, and in practice it is rarely the optimal solution. For a mage who stands alone against an army it is almost never sufficient to carry the day against soldiers who will march through the pain, while for those who fight alongside soldiers of their own they always risk doing harm to their own side more than they ever do to their foes just on proximity. Somehow the barbarians seem to have overcome the latter issue, for their own soldiers seem hardly to wince at the blasts of piercing noise.

They advance anyway. 

The smart money in the markets was that this would work. Not that this sort of effort would be sufficient to fully drive them out of entrenched positions or suffice to end things without casualties, of course, and they had expected their foes to have some sort of countermeasures in reserve in their forces with which to escalate back, but they had thought if it ever came down to this many soldiers against repurposed riot gear* it would prompt a withdrawal. It's not that it's not working or they have hitherto unseen protective gear either, though there had been some guesses that the alien genetic engineering would extend to tear gas or sonic protections; the aliens are just fighting through it.

And at this rate it's not going to be that much longer before they start getting into range to use their spears on the soldiers manning the barricade, which means its time for more drastic measures. Open fire.

*Lit: Gear for rioting

High speed bullets join the much less deadly sprays of water as the army's guns begin opening up. 

It's hard to make a positive identification through the water and smoke and watering eyes, not to mention all the auditory distractions, but some of the soldiers are able to notice that this matches the reports of the local missile barrages that so bedeviled their comrades in earlier encounters. It's not a perfect match for the descriptions other groups reported encountering, but they're also not idiots, and the right move is the thing they're already doing anyway. All across the formation, the solders have been readying their defenses even as they advance. 

Their shields cover nearly the entire cross section of their bodies, and with the tight formation there's almost no room for an attack to go between them without Palapon's own fortune. These attacks - whatever they are - will have to not only get past a sturdy iron shield boss, but also penetrate the treated leather outer shell and then nearly an entire inch of solid wood behind it. Nor is this their only defense, for beyond the shield each soldier has heavy armor of their own. This is not the cured hides or soft bronze of a poorer or more primitive nation, but steel scales, smelted in the great crucibles and furnaces of Duncan's church. Outside of a handful of elite battalions and Dwarven shock troopers, the imperial heavy infantry are the most sturdily armored force in all of Falmart, and many a time have unsuspecting armies tried to take them out with arrows or other missiles and found their efforts sorely lacking. 

There are a lot of relevant differences between bullets and arrows, but there are a few that stand out in these circumstances. A trained archer can shoot ten arrows per minute, perhaps even a dozen if they're sufficiently skilled or willing to tire themselves out. A soldier equipped with one of civilization's standard service carbines can manage forty times that number without even having to try hard. And while a heavily armored infantry unit like this would have little more to fear from archers than delays and harassment, the heavy steel slugs are moving fast enough to punch straight through the shield, penetrate the armor, and still have enough energy left over to give their target a very bad time. They're typically not instantly lethal, especially with the soldiers doing their best to aim center of mass and avoid any head shots, but there's still only a handful of seconds between when the soldiers open fire and the Saderan vanguard ceasing to exist as an coherent entity. If the aliens are going to continue advancing, it'll have to be over their corpses.