Didn't Need An Army

[ecarden]

They were nearest to Azure City when they came out of the caves.

High level spellcasters. Distance does not matter.

This is the same Xykon who sat for how long in Gobbotopia doing nothing while Redcloak organized the hobgoblins? I find this particular objection to contradict what we have seen in comic.

Right, because he had people to murder and a paladin to torture. If he's doing that here, he's probably given the game away.

The most important thing is that TE will not want to stay and rule the city. They will take what they want and leave Kubota to rule.

And why would he believe that? He's a paranoid, treacherous, evil megalomaniac. Of course he's not going to believe the Goblin and Lich just want to 'borrow his throne room' for a month or two!

More broadly, I'm not the original commenter, but you seem to be sliding between a couple of arguments in a manner I find confusing:

1) It is possible for a group of characters with TE's abilities to capture Soon's gate without use of an external army by internal subversion, or some other means, assuming things break their way.
2) TE could have captured Azure City by slow subversion in the universe as we see it.
3) If TE had chosen another route, or never found an army, then something else would have broken their way because due to authorial fiat they are going to capture the gate.

1 and 3 are sort of transparently true, but don't really reflect anything interesting about the Gate's defenses. A high-enough-powered band of PCs can, if they have a permissive DM and are willing to be creative, take over a city and rule it from the shadows. But that's because, especially in 3.5, a high-enough-powered band of adventurers with a permissive DM can do almost-literally anything. The author can do literally whatever they want.

2 seems fairly absurd to me. The moment TE somehow sneaks into the city and starts acting up, they're in the heart of their enemy's power, with no reliable support. Frankly, the most likely thing is that Kubota uses this to undermine Shojo/Hinjo and betrays them instantly to the Saphire Guard and his own forces (which isn't terribly likely to succeed, but blows the whole 'sneak around' plan out of the water. But even if that doesn't happen, Xykon wanders off when Redcloak is asleep and massacres and orphanage, or whatever and this also requires Redcloak to be able to be in this city without losing his **** and starting to murder paladins the moment he sees them.

But more than this, we see that the city's defenses are actually fairly well set up. It takes quite a bit of effort to sneak up on them, even from the hinterlands and they are spotted eventually (forgot this was deliberate, to try to locate the gate...which I'll point out they didn't know the location of, so they don't know they need the throne room at all and the only parties who know its location are Shojo and the leadership of the Saphire Guard). Trying to do this from within the bastion of their power strikes me as very silly. Moreover, even if Xykon and Redcloak can effectively and unlimitedly protect themselves from any surveillance, they won't necessarily be looking for them, they'll be looking for the murderer of a bunch of nobles...which seems pretty likely to lead them to Kubota, given the presence of a Seer/Diviner.

Then Shojo 'accidentally' mentions that to the heirs of the dead and suddenly Kubota's dead from 'accidentally stabbing himself thirteen times in the back' and this whole plan fails.