After some testing and further "investigation",
a) talking to the heroes seems to mitigate the de-spawn of them,
- though spending the first month rushing through the pubs of fair calradia, talking to random heroes and marking them in the encyclopedia to track your progress ain't a ton of fun;
b) every now and then some kind of repopulation-agent? [got no freaking clue about the evil machinations of these pesky machine-spirits] generates new heroes around the start of each season OR existing heroes reemerge, so sandboxing around without special/essential wanderers (the quest-related folks) should be possible,
- but seriously foils any party-role management, should RNGsus decide to let you down. This particular procedure or function is a fickle maiden;
c) still can't get my head around the phasing heroes and whatever triggers this atrocious code snip to hunt those poor buggers out of the pubs,
- even after spending the evening trying to circumvent such undue behavior on part of the code.
A manageable workaround would be nice.
Anyone found something?