Disappeared without a trace characters

[Mordovorot]

What exactly does that mean? From time to time I receive notifications about some people arriving at my court. After checking it I see that the guy (sometimes as well as his wife) is dead the same day that he is supposed to be at my court with some explanation like "vanished without a trace". I have noticed that after sacrificing some characters to Satan (one of my rulers once got promoted to the highest rank of the Plaguebearers cult) they have the same description. Does that mean the guys arriving at my court were dispatched by cultists too? The problem is that such misterious characters kept arriving sometimes way before the latest LDC (with its satanists stuff etc. was published (like in october 2016 when i played CK2 last time before the latest M&M DLC). So any explanation about that "vanishing"?

[Ryuz4ki]

societies tend to abduct people, sooooooo probably abducted xD

[Ragdollintothewall]

mostly they seem to be sacrified to satan inside a bronze bull

[Yargo]

If you invite someone to your court through the intrigue tab (Invite Holy Man / Noble to Court, Present Debutante), you get an event with the option to dismiss that person if you don't like them. Those dismissed characters are also marked as "vanished without a trace".

[Michael]

Originally posted by Mordovorot:

What exactly does that mean? From time to time I receive notifications about some people arriving at my court. After checking it I see that the guy (sometimes as well as his wife) is dead the same day that he is supposed to be at my court with some explanation like "vanished without a trace". I have noticed that after sacrificing some characters to Satan (one of my rulers once got promoted to the highest rank of the Plaguebearers cult) they have the same description. Does that mean the guys arriving at my court were dispatched by cultists too? The problem is that such misterious characters kept arriving sometimes way before the latest LDC (with its satanists stuff etc. was published (like in october 2016 when i played CK2 last time before the latest M&M DLC). So any explanation about that "vanishing"?

I think some of them are just straight up bugs. I keep getting a husband and wife that arrive in my court out of nowhere and 'vanish mysteriously' at the same time. The wife is always a weaponsmith, or goldsmith, etc.

[Mordovorot]

I didn't invite anybody. Sometimes people just come to my realm out of free will.
Michael - yes, i had that kind of wanished goldsmith too. Very strange.
I have a feeling - maybe the developers are going to feed us some Zombie DLC at last? Just kidding.

[MattStriker]

The vanishing smiths is due to somebody else in your court getting the smith offer event and declining it.

[Zsrai]

Vanishing without a Trace is just how the devs cleaned up the save file bloat of keeping track of all the dead characters. It wipes them from the histories. It's not a bug.

[Mordovorot]

I see. It's like 1984

[Adam Apples]

Not sure any of these posts answer the question really? I've had it a few times also, x and y have arrived at your court. Both DOA, well vanished without a trace: more accurately

[Random]

Its a cleanup process within the game by design of the developers as Zsrai said.

It is a culling mechanism for intrigue spawned courtiers. EG you invite a physician to your court, and the guy turns up with the slow trait and ~10 learning... He is trash, you tell him to take a hike, he does. He moves to a nearby court of the same culture religion and then "vanishes without a trace" as he is a reject with no purpose other then to have been your physician.

The same can be said about holy men. Invite one for 25 piety, say NO not good enough, poof "vanished without a trace".

Any event that spawns a character that is denied due to cost or suitability, is removed by this cleanup system.

The reason such a system exists, is to improve end game performance, which was quite an issue prior to the RIP patch, where a game on 4x speed would run at a speed of 1x due to sprawling empires and the hundreds of thousands of courtiers out there.

Now court sizes are limited quite severly based on title rank. and any members in excess of this number will "inspire" disease, and various sickness events. A count can have a court of about 25 members before it will start giving lower profile members sicknesses leading to likely death, affecting any unmarried adult in your court, as they are deemed expendable! (to prioritize your dynasties growth)

But anyways, these are the types of systems that are deliberately coded in place by the developers in order to improve game performance by culling unnecesary characters. intrigue spawned or event spawned = vanished without a trace, over sized court for rank = excessive sickness.

[lembct]

I'm curious if anyone has specific numbers on court culling?