Many of the newcomers were far from ordinary people. Quite a few had once been elite officials with ranks and titles, and they were not easy people to deal with. In Earth terms, they were a bunch of political prisoners, losers in political struggles.
There were mages and rangers among them, and nearly every profession was represented, but there were no Arcane Knights, Spellbreakers, or Dragonhawk Riders. On reflection, that made sense. Those three professions had always been firmly in the hands of the Royalist Faction. They were the backbone of the Royalist Party and fiercely loyal. Why would they so readily pick a fight with it?
The High Elf nobles and their followers arrived in batches. On their first visit to the Hinterlands, the sight of fifty or sixty Gryphon Riders patrolling the skies left them dumbfounded. They found it even more astonishing when they learned that there were only a little over a hundred elven knights here, yet more than a thousand human and troll soldiers. They could not understand how Baron Bloodhawk had managed to keep over a thousand soldiers of other races under his control for so long with only a hundred-odd Elf Soldiers.
Quel'Danil had ballistae, cannons, an air force, and soldiers to defend it, but no civilian population engaged in production. It could hardly be called a city now; it was purely a military fortress. Yu Lin Bloodhawk still had not decided how to settle the people who had come seeking refuge with him. Their numbers were about to pass two thousand, and he was frantic. With no other choice, he recalled all the Gryphon Riders for a meeting.
The Gryphon Riders unanimously opposed letting the newcomers move up to Quel'Danil. Their reasoning was that these people had originally been nobles. They had merely