@Iggy, Golden1Knight did express interest but you are first in the list. Expecting Seon (Pandaholme) and thomas.berubeg (Elephantcave) to give birth this turn also.
I realise I should give the AWOL players a bit more time to check in, after the four month wait and all...
Question to all: what do you think of another round of 'magic births', allowing new players to start with custom (adult) humans (as in the first few turns)? Accounting for the fact I went way OTT on detail last turn, and we are likely to have some NPC players, I think I could add 3-5 more players to the mix. Nintz and Arrow Gamer could choose to do this instead, and I'd also consider letting other people swap to a new character if they had taken over an NPC.
I have in mind some Boring Time time-skips later on, as and when the survival stage has had a good run and towns are emerging... So I'm happy to leave things to natural population growth, but I think we could do with a little more variety..?