The idea of including heroes has been discussed many times on this forum, actually. I have at least six in mind for my mod, which is mainly because it's going to be very story-driven, and a story is nothing without good characters (in my opinion, anyway). There was a lot of discussion about this on the GAE board, I believe. I can't be bothered to locate it for you, since the search function on this forum is utterly broken as far as I can tell, but it's around here somewhere.