WotBS The Mad King's Banquet Invitations

I'm puzzling over how to run the actual banquet. I still need to figure out how to make the banquet go on after I mistakenly let the heroes find evidence of the meal being poisoned. However, what this post is about is the list of occupants in the room. The list shows eight nobles plus the king, plus his adviser and bodyguard.and Duke Gallo's chaplain. Other than that, there are eighteen "Steppengard soldiers" listed as part of the participants. Are these soldiers presumed to be the bodyguards and/or halfway guards, or are they supposed to be standing in as attendees? I can see it either way, although the numbers roughly fit the apparent number of seats at the banquet. If they're not the attendees, who else is in the room, and why aren't they listed? Are they simply too puny as combatants to be worth the ink? I can't see leaving a bunch of tables empty -- someone besides the nobles have to consume the poison, just in case some clever spellthief figures out how to reactivate the Eight Lands' Boon!

Thanks,
Bill

I decided that the layout for my banquet was as follows:

The 9 nobles sitting at three tables at the top of the map. Then I had 2 tables on each side (each leg so to speak) downwards, with 3 people on each side of the tables. At these four tables there will be room for 24 people, meaning that I had each noble bring 3 people in their retinue. For Duke Gallo the three persons were the party. And finally Gallo was allowed his chaplain, just as the king is allowed his bodyguard.

I had all the nobles be level 6 aristocrats ( I think the stats are in the adventure).

As for the soldiers, I had them stand guard at the walls, and close to the doors, being on more or less on parade showing off the King's might (which turned out to be not so mighty). I had Nina Glibhammer stay in the shadows, she is not a noble, and as such not invited to the table - but she is present. I thought of her role being the ceremonial toastmaster at the gathering.

I did roughly the same as Mrpereira.

Each noble had his or her proxy present for counseling (so losing them to a Red Madness killing spree would have been really damaging for Dassen). Duke Gallo had his new knights invited (2 PCs + Torrent), one seat was reserved for Malkan, one for the royal guard. Nina was not present, as the party had demasked and killed Madness during their "assault" at Malkan's bunker. The guards stood, well, guard in a pretty decorative way in front of the the walls and nest to the doors of the dining room.

My party did find the poison in advance, but suspected the Master of Ceremonies or the Castellan to be the culprit after Steppengard managed to display her calm diplomacy during the tournament.

Thanks, both of you. I like the idea of bringing the proxies, and having Nina be Mistress of Ceremonies really fits well with my scheme to have the poison-detecting cleric removed from the banquet. I think my players will be suitably appalled at her MC'ing; they think no one should be subjected to that gnome's voice!