Non-national heroes

[Psitticine]

Sounds like an excellent idea to me, FWIW. It'd work quite smoothly if, for example, the more provinces you have where you can recruit druids, the more chance Tadgh mag Nuadat will pop up to fight for you.

There are random heroes that might join up with anybody, but this would be a nice addition. Maybe also some "magic-aligned" heroes that, well, like the druid example, are drawn to certain forms of magic would be fun. An off-the-top-of-my-head example: if you have a pretender who is very strong in Astral magic, you might just attract a brilliant astronomer who has Astral magic himself, along with a very high research skill and possible a unique magical item (an Astral telescope that lets him cast scying spells).