Originally Posted by
Super Dickmann
The book isn't very good. Don't buy it.
That aside, they are high-ranking officials managing the capital of the Forsaken and were doing so to a pretender to Sylvanas's throne. The whole bit about coming back to the wall is the main ambiguous part. Depending on how you interpret events, Sylvanas killed anywhere from eight to just one innocent, with the rest being defectors. We know for sure that one of them was legitimate and reaffirmed her trust in Sylvanas but was killed because Sylvanas wasn't privy to the conversation and saw her talking with Calia, assuming it to be defection, and that four others were confirmed defectors.