So, after seven (in game) years of continual building, The First Bridge has finally been completed and retired. Now in the eighth year, we really start seeing a shake-up in the Clan system. With over fifty named individuals ready to emigrate and several established Clans, we'll see who takes this opportunity to marry and start clans of their own. As each new bridge is built, the numbers of "newly created" dwarves will rise (the founders and first two migrant waves probably creating the majority). Slowly, the RNG will have more of the dwarven population available to be chosen for migration be named dwarves, and its hoped the RNG will also be affecting the births and deaths of the named dwarves in previous sites, which will in turn also affect the Clan ranking system for this game. I'm pretty excited, I can tell you! It will be very interesting to see what actually happens.
On another topic, I think that once the bridge-building phase is completed, that any forumite who wishes to play the succession phase of the game will need to select one of the bridge-builder's pantheon of deities as their "avatar".
I see the succession game going in two phases: 1: Monastery/Temple Building and 2: Adventurer Quests
Like Monopoly, a double set of dice (I'll be using an online service that posts the results publicly) are rolled to see to which island the Player's statue will be sent. Unlike Monopoly, I can see multiple Players being able to build monasteries on an island, but that just means that any "rent" (in the form of worship) is divided amongst the Players who have a temple there. (Or maybe each Player's monastery will have to be paid the full island rent as a kind of multiple?) Anyway, in the monastery-building phase, a Player sets up an embark by paying the appropriate amount of worship and proceeds to build a Monastery to eventually house their statue. Of course, if they happen to land on an island where they already have a monastery, they can then choose to upgrade it to a shrine, temple, ect... but they can also choose to just plop another basic monastery down too (I think I might make it that each pre-existing monastery will need to be paid it's full rent in worship before a new monastery can be built on an island. That should limit the number of monasteries that are built on any particular island by simple economics.) Anyway, after an in-game year, the monastery is retired and play passes to the next in line until everyone has had a chance to place their monastery. After that, the next phase is begun: phase 2.
In phase 2, each Player will begin as an adventurer by traveling to the site where the statue of their chosen deity is currently sitting. (The statue will be the playing piece, rather than the adventurers for the simple reason that statues die less often, volcanoes and deep pits notwithstanding). Their quest will be to bring the statue to it's new place (the monastery/site the Player was at in Phase 1.) Once they get it there, they place the statue in the spot they set up for it and retire the adventurer. Now comes the final bit: that new place is re-embarked to designate the statue as part of a temple. (Of course, that means that any further adventurer who gets the quest to move the statue the next turn will be cursed for "desecrating" that temple, but that should also make the statue-bearer a little less fragile when it comes to the hardships of the road. Interestingly, it also sets them up as quest targets for other Player's adventurers, and may be used by the RNG to go on a rampage at various sites in-game too. More stuff to make the game-world history more interesting.
I'll set up a statue-making embark adjacent to the capitol where the initial statues will be located. (Where-ever that may be. Currently it's Fort Lashtrance, but if each bridge takes 7-8 years to build, we're looking at about 300 years of in-game post-world-gen history happening before that starting embark is created. Anything could happen in that time, whole new dynasties might rise and fall in the interim. If Lashtrance has fallen, maybe I'll just "reclaim" it instead. Poetically closing the circle.)