Ok, I haven't posted in a long time but I found a really cool unused dialog that lets you recruit rescued prisoner exiled lords into your party as companions. So for this to happen you need to be in the very late game, where lords are starting to leave Calradia because all faction leaders hate them.
What they don't tell you, however, is that when a lord "goes into exile" they aren't completely disappeared from the game immediately. From my experiments with indicting all lords for treason after conquering all of Calradia, if they have an active party, they become part of the "outlaws" faction, and when you defeat them, they simply never respawn again.
But if an exiled lord somehow ends up a prisoner of a town, castle, or another lord, perhaps due to being captured after turning outlaw, or due to being indicted for treason and exiled whilst being a prisoner of war (dang that sucks) then if you defeat the captors, it enters this weird unused dialog where you can either A. take them prisoner yourself, which makes them your prisoner for awhile until they inevitably escape and disappear forever, B. let them go, which makes them disappear forever, just instantly, or C. an interesting option, where you ask "Would you like to join me?"
From inspecting the modsys, unfortunately it seems there's only a 33% chance (random number 0-2, returns true if random number = 0) of the lord accepting and joining your party, with an eager "All right I will join you." otherwise they say "No, I want to go on my own." and disappear forever.
If the lord says yes, then that's where things get really interesting.
I had an insanely borked game where I skipped to day 4000 with cheats, then turned cheats off and tried to play from there. When I started to "play" for real, the Nords had somehow completely annihilated all other factions except for the Sarranids, who were on the back foot with only about 3/4 of their territory remaining. I had the brilliant idea of finding the Sarranid claimant Arwa, use her claim to woo over the Emirs and conquer what's left of the weakened Sarranids and then tell her to piss off once I had all those precious fiefs under my control, making me sultan.
After conquering one of the Sarranid castles, I was greeted with Jarl Olaf thanking me for freeing him. I think he was a loyal Nord jarl, but after being captured by the Sarranids while fighting for the king, his ungrateful liege decided to banish and exile him when he was imprisoned!!! So as aforementioned, I asked him to join me, and passed that slim 33% check. Awesome! I could do all the things with him, check out (read: steal) his equipment, skills, and when I asked him for his story, right to rule support, or connections, he would spit out either "NO STRING!" or some other unrelated string. I was thinking of testing to see if sending good old Olaf on a right to rule mission would work, but I was too scared it would bug out and I would lose this precious one in a million companion lord, so I just made him a fighter.
So I took Jarl Olaf along with me for awhile, as I toppled Sarranid castles, he would fearlessly charge straight into the walls and clear the way for my troops with his bloody great axe. Once I took the last castle, I quickly kicked Arwa to the curb and declared myself the new Sultan!!! Hahahaa!!! But then I wondered if I could give Jarl Olaf a fief, now that I was the sultan? I decided to ask him, "Would you be interested in holding a fief?" and granted him a castle. For some reason he took on King Ragnar's Nord banner, probably because of his culture. When I visited him in his newly granted castle, no doubt as thanks for returning him to power, he wanted me to meet his daughter (I was not married yet) but both his daughter and his wife were bugged out and I couldn't talk to them because they were stuck on the dialog "We will shortly depart (castle). It is good to know that some people in this world retain a sense of honor." Good thing was that Jarl Olaf is noble, so no one minded his reinstatement into the nobility.
After that, he became basically a normal lord, leading parties, raiding villages, just like everyone else! Hah, imagine that. Jarl Olaf, exiled and disgraced while imprisoned, rescued by me, and by my hand, returned back to nobility!
What they don't tell you, however, is that when a lord "goes into exile" they aren't completely disappeared from the game immediately. From my experiments with indicting all lords for treason after conquering all of Calradia, if they have an active party, they become part of the "outlaws" faction, and when you defeat them, they simply never respawn again.
But if an exiled lord somehow ends up a prisoner of a town, castle, or another lord, perhaps due to being captured after turning outlaw, or due to being indicted for treason and exiled whilst being a prisoner of war (dang that sucks) then if you defeat the captors, it enters this weird unused dialog where you can either A. take them prisoner yourself, which makes them your prisoner for awhile until they inevitably escape and disappear forever, B. let them go, which makes them disappear forever, just instantly, or C. an interesting option, where you ask "Would you like to join me?"
From inspecting the modsys, unfortunately it seems there's only a 33% chance (random number 0-2, returns true if random number = 0) of the lord accepting and joining your party, with an eager "All right I will join you." otherwise they say "No, I want to go on my own." and disappear forever.
If the lord says yes, then that's where things get really interesting.
I had an insanely borked game where I skipped to day 4000 with cheats, then turned cheats off and tried to play from there. When I started to "play" for real, the Nords had somehow completely annihilated all other factions except for the Sarranids, who were on the back foot with only about 3/4 of their territory remaining. I had the brilliant idea of finding the Sarranid claimant Arwa, use her claim to woo over the Emirs and conquer what's left of the weakened Sarranids and then tell her to piss off once I had all those precious fiefs under my control, making me sultan.
After conquering one of the Sarranid castles, I was greeted with Jarl Olaf thanking me for freeing him. I think he was a loyal Nord jarl, but after being captured by the Sarranids while fighting for the king, his ungrateful liege decided to banish and exile him when he was imprisoned!!! So as aforementioned, I asked him to join me, and passed that slim 33% check. Awesome! I could do all the things with him, check out (read: steal) his equipment, skills, and when I asked him for his story, right to rule support, or connections, he would spit out either "NO STRING!" or some other unrelated string. I was thinking of testing to see if sending good old Olaf on a right to rule mission would work, but I was too scared it would bug out and I would lose this precious one in a million companion lord, so I just made him a fighter.
So I took Jarl Olaf along with me for awhile, as I toppled Sarranid castles, he would fearlessly charge straight into the walls and clear the way for my troops with his bloody great axe. Once I took the last castle, I quickly kicked Arwa to the curb and declared myself the new Sultan!!! Hahahaa!!! But then I wondered if I could give Jarl Olaf a fief, now that I was the sultan? I decided to ask him, "Would you be interested in holding a fief?" and granted him a castle. For some reason he took on King Ragnar's Nord banner, probably because of his culture. When I visited him in his newly granted castle, no doubt as thanks for returning him to power, he wanted me to meet his daughter (I was not married yet) but both his daughter and his wife were bugged out and I couldn't talk to them because they were stuck on the dialog "We will shortly depart (castle). It is good to know that some people in this world retain a sense of honor." Good thing was that Jarl Olaf is noble, so no one minded his reinstatement into the nobility.
After that, he became basically a normal lord, leading parties, raiding villages, just like everyone else! Hah, imagine that. Jarl Olaf, exiled and disgraced while imprisoned, rescued by me, and by my hand, returned back to nobility!
