Then, in the very next game, using the same custom sovereign, I came across arussa again. She still had the baby-cradle picture.
She also had 135 essence. as far as i am aware, all wandering recruitable units have 0 essence. In my previous game, my sovereign had imbued spouse-arussa, so she had a large amount of essence. It seems for some reason, this had bled over into the new game.
I had something similiar happen.
I played the same custom sovereign in a new game but in my case, the "carried over" character was one of my sovereign's kids.
I think that kid hadn't grown up, yet, in the previous game but not entirely sure.
The name was identical for sure and the fact that she had essence.
She ended up as a wandering, recruitable champion with 15 essence.
I hadn't been able to reproduce it, yet, so I was holding off on a report because it might have been bad voodoo, a corrupt sector/pointer on the HDD, or whatever.