Yes, whenever you get around to starting this challenge, you're welcome to use the PlaceFriezes cheat.
Welcome to the forum.
I'm in total agreement, Pam. There needs to be a game-breaker involved for me to sign off on someone restarting from a previous save. And I've always been willing to do that.
Well, for me it would have been a game breaker since I couldn't even LEAVE the country to go back home. Everyone in my party was disassociated from everyone else. Only one character was visible in my line up, the spouse of the founder. Everyone else had disappeared entirely, as if they never existed and he was my only character, but I couldn't even send him back home. My only choice was to end that game and go back to the save I did just before I left the country. This happened with a party of four, both married couples. I decided I needed to see if it was having two couples go. So I went in again with only one couple. Same response but only after I did one challenge and was starting challenge number two. If this means it kills the dynasty for me then so be it.
@Pam: Pam, do you have Fast Lane installed? I used to travel extensively before I installed FL and never had any problems that I noticed.
EDIT: Ok, I HAD to find out if it was me, or what. I sent an old couple I had saved, (DaVinci challenge couple), to Shang Simla. They got there fine, they did a challenge fine, (just one of them, the other sat and read), and they returned home fine. So I once again sent a couple from my Dynasty. Founder and spouse. Day one went along smoothly.
When the founder went back to camp she prepared dinner, everyone ate and then they started to bounce off one another. They had not talked to anyone except the person in charge of the challenge. Once they started bouncing and getting very independent, I checked on the family tree. Sure enough no one was there in either the family tree, (which showed the founder as a ghost), or in her list of acquaintances.
Everyone disappeared from her list EXCEPT the man who she had talked to about the challenge. My conclusion is it is something within my dynasty itself that is causing the mess and I have no clue what the difference would be. Oh, and once again I could not use the telephone to go back home.