The jubilant and lively royal banquet in the capital came to a hurried end amid Joyce's interference and the tumult over crowning a successor. However, for most nobles, the dispute had only just begun.
As the leading supporter of Prince Harold, Duke Rickman boldly announced after the banquet that he would heed the call of the gods and personally lead his troops to the Earl Joyce's territory to suppress the rebellious miners!
The other nobles who supported Harold also responded in kind, and in order to save time and avoid being preempted by Prince Hattar's men, more than a dozen major nobles decided to assemble their private soldiers. By adding conscripted serf soldiers from the southern part of the kingdom, within a week, they could muster an army of fifteen thousand strong.
An army large enough to crush the rebelling miners into dust!
What surprised everyone, though, was that Hattar, a strong contender for the heir, didn't make any significant moves.
