I'm assuming the campaign still has unanswered questions for Fee-bella, so plenty of story to still work with.
The unanswered questions being What was the Nightmare that awoke Fea-bella? Who sent it? And is it related to (i) these dark times, in which Elves will need her help, and (ii) the stubbornness and greed of the Dwarves.
Additional content - assuming Lareth is still alive, perhaps build a relationship with his brother and/or adopt his brother's ambitions or work against them...
Also, who is her father?
There's also the other Elven PC, Telemere, whose enemy is his brother, Kalamere (or Calamere? - this might be another case of two spellings), who is somehow connected to evil portents (stars, comets, etc). And the possibility that Calamere, Telemere and Fea-bella are somehow connected.
But Telemere's player's presence is more intermittent, which means this Telemere-related stuff is not quite as central.
With Golin he still has his mentor and enemy story to deal with, but you have built on this backstory of his parents death and how Vaxen (his friend from town, two different spellings of the name) appears to have kept details of the explosion incident from his Golin.
In that prior session which developed his town friend you write
When the player wrote that Golin might be losing his friend - was that a suggestion or the desire by the player? Is that something you worked towards?
My job, as I see it, is to create the pressure, by linking the new elements that get introduced - in this case, via a random event roll - into the existing situation and "big picture" (that's a Burning Wheel term for the overall campaign context/logic). So I did.
It was Golin's playe who was worried that this revelation might hurt his relationship with Vaxen/Vaccin. Being a sentimental GM, I pointed out another possibility. But neither is "fixed" or predetermined. It will depend on how play unfolds.
A couple of other comments - these might be obvious, but seem worth making explicit:
First, the Fea-bella and Golin backstories intersect, geographically, at the Wizard's Tower (where Vaccin lives and where Fea-bella's mum lives, and where Pallando/Beholder of Fates - Lareth's father - had his house, which has inside it a post from the Elven dreamhouse that was stolen by Celedhring) and at the Forgotten Temple Complex (which is where Golin is from, and where Lareth's cult has its origin). But they don't yet intersect in terms of
events. That is something that could change, and that I as GM am alert to. (Likewise, albeit to a slightly lesser extent, with Telemere's backstory which has the Elven theme to it, and also the ill omens theme to it. It was established very early in play that Kalamere had visited the now-ruined tower of Beholder of Fates, so there is some interweaving there.)
I imagine that some of this interweaving is what would be considered as "contrivance" by some RPGers. Personally I don't see it as any more contrived than the party phenomenon, or the fact that - in a typical adventure-based FRPG - the PCs just happen to be the ones doing the adventurous stuff, and happen to have (say) the opportunity to go on a 2nd level-ish adventure just at the time they are 2nd level.
Particularly when some of it involves fates, omens and dreams - which provides a bit of a "lampshade" for the way the PCs lives end up being connected.
Second, the time-sequence in the fiction and the time sequence at the table are not corresponding. In the fiction, Fea-bella and Golin are learning things about their respective pasts. So in the fiction, the sequence of events is something like
Golin's parents and their wee bairn visit Vaccin at the Wizard's Tower => Vaccin helps with a new concoction => the explosion at the Temple that costs Fori his beard and kills Golin's parents => Golin is orphaned => (perhaps) Vaccin is Golin's friend.
But at the table, the sequence is:
:*During the hometown phase of PC build, the player decides that Golin is from a Forgotten Temple Complex;
*During the "how am I wise" phase of PC build, the player decides that Golin is Explosives-wise (and that the Forgotten Temple Complex had explosion-worshippers);
*During the relationships phase of PC build, the player decides that Golin is an orphan and has a friend, Vaccin, an alchemist in the Wizard's Tower;
*Later on, in play, a roll on the rumours table while Golin is drinking at the tavern in the Wizard's Tower means that I have to make up the "dismal news" about Golin's parents, and so do so;
*Later on again, I decide to use the Moathouse from T1 (prompted, I think, by
@hawkeyefan posting about his T1-T4 campaign), and elaborate the Forgotten Temple Complex as the (Forgotten) Temple of Elemental (Evil)
*And later on again, I decide to introduce a new NPC, Fori the Beardless, as part of the Lareth cult-Temple-pirate situation, and when I introduce him in play I decide to connect his Beardlessness to Golin's backstory as an orphaned explosives cultists.
I think all RPGing involves some of these time-sequence variations between fiction and table - as in, the GM (for world backstory) or the players (for PC backstory) make up stuff
now that relates to the
back then of the fiction, and helps explain or provide context for the
now of the fiction. This can be anything from writing up a new dungeon and giving it an explanatory backstory, to rolling a good reaction roll for a NPC and inventing some backstory connection to a PC.
But what I've described is probably a more deliberate and "aggressive" illustration of, and deployment of, the technique then some of the "living world"-ers would endorse. There's not attempt by me as GM to
conceal my authorship: it's pretty blatantly on display.
My personal experience at the table is that this sort of deliberate injection of personal stakes increases player immersion into the fiction and into the situation of their PC.
