I am playing on a Mac. This is a totally unmodded new game I just started to test this issue, which has never used any mods.
I was troubleshooting another issue regarding deleting noble sims, and I inadvertently deleted the sim who had pulled Simcalibur out of the stone in the square. That meant Simcalibur in his inventory was deleted along with him. (Later, I also tried putting Simcalibur mounted on a wall in his home before deleting him, but when he was deleted Simcalibur in his home disappeared.)
After the owner of Simcalibur was deleted, the stone in the square had no sword in it. The next sim to visit the stone was given a popup asking "Where is the Sword?" This is the answer:
Trying to reset the stone in debug does not change anything. Exiting the game and restarting shows the sword back in the stone in build buy, but sending a sim to the stone in live mode shows a missing sword. As far as I have been able to troubleshoot, NOTHING will bring the sword back into the game.
And trying to add the same sim back into the game from the library does not work. The sim, even if saved with Simcalibur still in his inventory, or mounted on a wall in his house, is not recognized as the sim who pulled the sword from the stone.
Then I discovered something else really bad that happens when the owner of Simcalibur is deleted: The chosen heir can take the throne, but if no heir was chosen, then the next Arch Duke noble who wants a promotion is told that the title is exclusive and that they cannot advance, so from then on, NO KING in the game!
Once this happens, the save is toast.
The only "fix" is to have the owner of Simcalibur put the sword back in the stone before deleting the sim, or if the Simcalibur owner stays in the game but is not being played, then make sure the game cannot cull the Simcalibur owner, as a safeguard.
Edit By crinrict: Added pack tag to title.
