Aww 
No one noticed my wordplay on the Curie family...
Maybe make that a condition of his actually taking your recruitment offer. Until you actually assist him with the Spider problem/Save the wife, he stays a singular entity that you can follow to the destination, but will remain uncontrollable until the Quest is completed.
Hell you could even recruit the wife even... She could provide a +1 Farming (garden weed picking) bonus.
Exactly! My idea with the family was obviously that they work together as a team ( the Cuires were the ones who discovered radioactivity - hence the giant spiders :0) ). Depending on the backstory of the character the bonus could be different stuff. A former noble could give some heirloom - a nice weapon, a merchant might have left his stash somewhere.
I suppose the simplest way to implement this would be to have quests whereby the reward is to improve a given NPC you control, or reward you with a new NPC.
The quest could be triggered either through a quest hub (inn/map feature) or as a 'random event' like those in Gal Civ.
Hmm again that really would depend on what you need this quest to do. If you need it to expand the general quests then the random thing might show up. But if you want to distinguish an early city builder from an adventurer there needs to be some sort of proper trigger for it. Maybe just going into the inn:
So you are sitting around with your new best friend Mr. Just-stumbled-on-him-in-the-Wilderness and knocking back a pint or two of wasteland ale. Then he drunkenly suggests you go looking for his old homestead that was burned to the ground by bandits. And you find his old plow and VOILA! Increased food output from his bonus...he was obviously a farmer - so +3 instead of +2 AND you get xp for the Sov!
Hmm. Any other suggestions for how this could work? Also a bit of examples. It is much easier to visualize it then 
And more fun to read also!
Off-topic rambling sidenote: Uhh and thx for the Karma TC! And on my first post here Wuhuu!
Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie aww crap. They were married! shouldn't try to play smart when I obviously can't remember the facts properly 
