Why does the first guy I meet always have to be Janusk?

I turned off in game help advice and Janusk no longer shows up... your mileage may vary.

he's free though

how can you not like free?

Janusk scares me. I let him die in my first battle, and he still sends me tips from the grave!!! Be gone demon!!!

You are given Janusk if you have it set for him to advise you.

He's not free.  It's 10 gold to hire him (may vary with Charisma).

I have actually had a couple of game where for some reason he didn't show up or I met a wandering hero before I met him.

He's always free in my games, I don't know why anyone would pass up a free +1 gold merchant ability .. I think that's what he has. I typically buy him travelling boots right off so he can move three squares a turn and you can cover twice as much search right from the getgo.

I wish he showed up as the race you were starting as :/

Janusk has a semi-random appearance. I've had him be the bearded red guy, a Tarth-looking Bard, and an Arabic kind of guy.

I'd prefer an adivsor from our own race though. Janusk isn't memorable in the least...yet he gets a front row seat to the whole game. You could replace Janusk with a randomly generated model drawn from the player's faction, give them a random name, and I would probably enjoy them more.

Janusk makes partial sense for the campaign. But they just plucked him from the camp and dropped him into sandbox. They could put more effort into it.

It's not that I don't like getting a free guy.  I jsut want it to maybe sometimes be a woman, or someone with a different name.  It sounds like a brand of car stereo.

I just give Janusk to my enemies via a trade and he can terrorize them (Wait I wonder if that carries some type of diplomatic penalty towards the side I "gave" Janusk too)

Yeah you will probably have to make a Janusk mod to rename him/allow him to be female.

Actually, I think he gives random abilities: sometimes +1 gold, sometimes +1 tech research etc. Those are the two I really like, I take meditative and when Janussk gives +1 tech research you can start your research without any buildings or improvements.

Yeah I just created a game to test it: he cost 23 gold (I was playing Markinn who has a low charisma), but produces 1 gold per turn, so whether listening to his advice is something you are willing to put up with is up to you but pays off if the game is longer than 23 turns.

I would rather your right-hand man get mixed up among the different heroes and not always be Janusk.  He seems a little too eager... almost creepy...

I don't think I've ever gotten Janusk with anything but Master Merchant, over like 50 game starts. But I'll admit I wasn't always paying attention because many of those starts were throw aways.

Yesterday I had him as "janusk the scribe" and he gave tech or arcane knowledge it wasn't merchant though.