An idea : characters the player helped, for example freeing them from dungeons or giving them writs of exemptions, but weren't recruited or left, can be saved and might show up later; either providing help, asking to join, or asking for something.

Additionally, freed characters in dungeons which aren't kept as slaves might offer to join only for the current dungeon.

It depends on how much stuff we should keep saved. With the current save file structure keeping everything can lead to insane save file sizes.

Right, characters can be saved. Few should, and they should be deleted after a while if not used. I just thought it would be nice to get new events and give a reason to help people.