Last night, I played as Overlord for a Castle Daerion quest. In Encounter 1, The (4) heroes huddled all of the villagers in the middle cabin area, and the search token adjacent to where the villagers were ended up being a secret room. Obviously, the question was raised- can the villagers move into the secret room? The way I see it, the argument is:

Pro:
-Villagers are treated as hero figures, heroes can spend movement to enter

Con:
-The Secret Room rules state that "During a player's turn" a hero can move in. Do villagers activate during any player's turn? Or after the last hero player's is already over?

-Since monsters can't move into the Secret Room, hiding the villagers in there seems rather unfair.

We temporarily ruled they cannot move in based on the timing technicality, and the balance issue. Was that correct? I'd love to hear input, and how this might apply to other quests.

http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Descent_Second_Edition_Unofficial_FAQ#toc2

FFG has clarified that "Unless otherwise specified, anything treated as a hero [or hero figure] (and therefore not actually a hero) can only be affected by monster attacks, hero abilities, and Overlord cards that target a hero."

Basically, they follow the same rules as familiars treated as figures, which have rulings on p. 18 of the rulebook, and in the FAQ.

Thanks for pointing that out, griton, that helps a lot. I got confused by the wording in the quest guide "villagers are treated as hero figures with the following exceptions..." and forgot that didn't mean that they were heroes for every purpose except those specific things listed.