I was away from the game for about 6 weeks, and just started back up this week. When I came here tonight to see the full list of AE badges, all my characters were gone except the ones I've played over the last few days. The ones that are there seem to have been re-added, since they only have the new badges I've gotten.
Was there a database error, or is there a some form of inactive account purge I was unaware of?