Character problems

[Xavlier]

Ok so I recently brought Warband from steam, so I could get the Napoleonic war dlc. I originally owned Warband after buying it from the website a while back, and have been playing Nord Invasion on it.  However when I got the steam version, I thought I'd just install Nord Invasion onto that, but when I went to play it, despite the fact that the same character names were there, they were all level 1 without any of the equipment etc that I'd had previously. 

Also when I went back and tried my non-steam version of Warband my characters had the same problem there.  Can anyone help me, or do I just need to start over?