Okay, I think a lot of my misunderstanding comes from my assumptions about the number of townsfolk and bandits in this RP. I read 'town' in the description (and missed 'village') and assumed it to mean several hundred people living there (as opposed to a village's few dozens), therefore meaning that for the bandits to fully threaten to take the town, they would number +100.

To (hopefully) clear this up, how many people live in and around Nehlm and how many bandits did you plan on there being? I may have to adjust the numbers of my NPC followers accordingly to make Kareth definitively a minor commander.