Assault on Glantri scenario
by Hervé MusseauI think a scenario that James suggested a few days ago, though it seems odd at first, isn't that much when you look closer at it, and it would allow to patch the holes in WotI.
The scenario is that of the Grand Council teleporting outside Glantri and progressing toward the city, rather than appearing directly over Glantri.
IMO it would make sense, considering both the rules of teleportation and the protection against that spell, that they would indeed teleport outside the city. Since most large cities (and especially, I assume, Glantri's) are protected against direct teleportation, they can't teleport directly into it. Because they must teleport to a place with solid terrain and not in mid-air, they can't teleport above and fly down (otherwise, the protection form teleportation would be pretty useless in the first place).
Thus, they teleport outside the city, and start attacking there, progressing inward from the suburbs to the city proper. Because they are chaotic, impatient Alphatians (and probably angry, and not especially happy to have to come do that), they would tend to cast spells a-plenty immediately, torching every last farm and killing every Glantrian peasant in an obvious overkill. Then they would make their way toward the city, at different paces (I doubt there is much cooperation or coordination). Depending on how many of them you want to save IYC, any number may have exhausted their spells blasting the unimportant farmsteads in the outskirts of Glantri City before the WWM occurs and they are trapped in Glantri (vs teleporting back to Alphatia and sink, and later be restored, with it). Then the Immortals' battle would start and the Doomsday Device be activated as a result, and magic would stop, trapping the remaining wizards in Glantri. In that scenario, these wizards have a higher survival chance than if they were over Glantri City, as those that were still behind in the countryside would have better chances of escaping with their lives, as they would face only peasants (assuming their are still some alive around them after they showered them with their deadly spells) rather than city guards and angry townsfolk, and they can hide more easily: they can travel a foot a little (they won't like it but hey) to one farm they didn't torch, kill the peasants (a 36th level wizard with a now non-magical dagger is still a capable fighter, compared to a family of peasants with forks) and eat the farm's food until magic returns; they can even sleep and relearn their spells if they brought a spellbook, and in the meantime be really worried (though that won't kill them) at what they'll become now that magic is gone (since they have no reason to guess it'll last only a week).
I don't see any holes in that scenario, it works well with the rules and canon, and allows a degree of latitude concerning the ratio of Alphatian wizards that are killed in Glantri / drowned and resurrected in the HW / left behind on the surface.