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The History of Might and Magic |
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(Article
reprinted courtesy of Cool Jerk's RPG Center) Posted by Ralf on May 12, 2000 The missing
link is that HoMM I doesn't have a very detailed back-story. But, if you
read the letters in the correspondence that appears in the back of the
manual, and construct a fuller history of 1-5, you'll notice a
connection. Also, there is a MAJOR link between MM III and MM VII. Here's the
whole thing: Corak is
either an Ancient, or a constructed servant of the Ancients. We really
don't know who or what the ancients are yet, but judging by the GOOD
ending to MM VII, we are on the threshold of finding out. Now, the
Ancients used to spend a lot of time "seeding" the galaxy with
microcosms - small biospheres supporting life. In fact, in the first 5
MM's, all the planets are flat, and in fact are strategically placed
life support systems. We don't know why they did this. About 900
years ago (if my memory of MMVII serves me) the ancients got in a
horrible war with a race called the Kreegan. A large part of the galaxy
was cut off from the direct influence of the Ancients, and fell into
barbarism and witchcraft. In fact, these isolated worlds are precisely
the worlds in which the MM games occur. Many of
these worlds had "guardians", appointed agents of the Ancients
who were sent to guide the microcosmic little flat planets to their
appointed place in the galaxy. Now then…
as the story begins, Sheltem, the Guardian of Terra has gone funny in
the head. As we eventually find out from logs in the shuttles in MM V,
Terra was a large, hospitable planet, which the Ancients were intending
to seed with numerous of these microcosms. Apparently, the Ancients
weren't too happy with the way he was running things (he became a bit of
tyrant it seems), so they dispatched agent Corak to check things out.
Corak placed Sheltem in stasis and was bringing him home to check his
programming. Somehow,
Sheltem escapes and goes on a rampage. Corak begins his long quest to
track him down and neutralize him. As the story opens in MM I, Sheltem
goes to ground on one of these microcosms named Vehicular Astropod
Research Nacelle. He deposes the good King Alamar and masquerades in his
place. Our party of adventurers discovers him and sets everything to
rights. Sheltem flees to Central Research Observational Nacelle via a
gateway which we will see more of in MMVII. It should be noted that
there is a location in MM I called Castle White Wolf. The Lord of this
Castle is named IRONFIST, and one of his quests is to find LORD KILBURN.
Remember those names for about 6 paragraphs. In MMII,
Sheltem winds up on CRON and starts to drive it off course and hurl it
into it's sun. With a little help from Corak in stasis, our heroes
manage to thwart this scheme as well. However, Sheltem escapes as we are
busy decrypting a quote that will give us the password to the device and
stop CRON from committing sun-icide. Next, in
MMIII, Sheltem arrives back on Terra which is where the whole mess
started. Again, our trusty adventurers find out what's going on behind
the scenes and drive Sheltem off. Three space shuttles depart Terra. One
containing Sheltem, another containing Corak in pursuit, and another
containing our party of adventurers. Something happens on this journey.
Sheltem lands safely on Xylonite Experimental Environment Nacelle. Corak
lands much less safely on XEEN, and our adventurers are thrown off
course, supposedly never to be seen again… at least, not until MM VII. MM IV
(Clouds of XEEN) opens on XEEN, and our new party of adventurers defeats
an evil undead lord calling himself simply, "Lord Xeen". As we
defeat Lord Xeen, we see a vision of Sheltem proclaiming, "You may
have defeated my lieutenant, but the Darkside of Xeen will always be
mine. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!" MM V opens.
Sheltem is up to his old tricks, masquerading as Alamar again and
driving planets off course to fly into their suns. The dragon pharaoh
summons our party and they perform many tasks to set things to right.
Eventually, they discover Corak's shuttle, and the stage is set for the
final showdown of Corak and Sheltem. You seek out a "soul
box", a device which can contain Corak's essence so that you can
smuggle him into Castle Alamar without Sheltem being aware. Once you
arrive, you release Corak, and he finally has a chance to confront
Sheltem face to face. It is obvious that Sheltem has grown very strong
"in the ways of the force" and is going to win this battle…
but Corak grabs Sheltem and initiates his own self-destruct mechanism,
destroying them both. So ends the first story arc in the Might and Magic
pantheon. (The
extended 'World of Xeen' ending doesn't figure into the grand scheme too
much, so I won't comment on it here.) Next up
would be HoMMI. Per the letters, someone apparently named Morglin
Ironfist was involved in a power struggle on his home planet and his
lineage was usurped by his cousin. Morglin failed to make a successful
coup and therefore ran for his life with a small retinue that was loyal
to his line. There are a number of hints dropped that this may be the
Lord Ironfist from Castle White Wolf on Varn, or perhaps one of his
descendants. Note also, that MM VI has one subplot featuring a Lord
Kilburn, also named in MM I. And MMI begins in the town of 'Sorpigal',
and MMVI begins in 'New Sorpgial'. Anyway- while on the lam, Morglin
Ironfist accidentally trips through a magical portal to another world,
Enroth, and sets up his reign there. HoMM II is
the next scene in the story, the succession wars. Morglin's sons,
Archibald and Roland have a little tiff over who is going to inherit the
throne. It's all family squabbles, nothing hugely important to the
overall story. At the end, Roland wins and Archibald is turned to stone
and imprisoned in the library of Castle Ironfist. MM VI picks
up again with the big picture, and makes it much bigger. The Kreegan,
after 900 years of fighting the Ancients in other parts of the galaxy
are finally making a push towards this region. They land in Enroth and
in Erathia and start a reign of terror. MMVI takes place in Enroth.
Roland is defeated in the opening battles and is captured, not to be
seen again in Enroth for a LONG TIME. His wife, Catherine of Erathia has
heard of her father's death and has departed for home and doesn't hear
of this issue for some time. Their son,
little Nicolai, is left in charge. Our heroic adventurers are guided by
the chief regent on a series of quests to figure out what is going on.
Eventually we discover that the evil cult of the temple of Baa are in
league with the demonic kreegans and many other adventures are had…
Eventually, the oracle of Enroth is able to tell us how to defeat the
Kreegan. We need to free the stoned Archibald! He has a magic item we
need to teleport the Kreegan's nest into the void as we destroy it - in
order to avoid destroying the planet as well. We succeed in defeating
the kreegan. HoMM III
follows up from MMVI and largely takes place at the same time. The
Kreegan and warlocks have overrun Erathia and made quite a mess of
things. Catherine arrives for her father's funeral and discovers that
the land has a bit of trouble. She takes up the banner of Erathia and
begins a successful campaign to push them back. The warlocks make a pact
with the Necromancers to ressurect Catherine's father as a lich and lead
the war against Erathia. It's a bloody mess, but eventually Catherine
wins the day, lays her father to eternal rest, pushes the Warlocks back
to Nighon, and forces the remaining Kreegans to hole up in Eoful. In all the
turmoil, the re-awakened Archibald sneaks into Deyja, the land of
Necromancers just north of Erathia, and begins rebuilding his influence
in the world. MM VII opens
with the strongest link between the original five games. The shuttle
carrying the 8 member party from MM III - which missed XEEN completely -
finally crashlands off the coast of Antigarich (the continent which
contains Erathia, Eoful, Avlee, Nighon, Bracada, and Tatalia.) At this
time, they have a split. 4 of them decide to seek out the wizards of
this world and offer them their technology and see if they can rebuild a
gate to the ancients. The other 4 seek out Archibald and the
Necromancers and seek to build the Forge- a machine which can grant them
extremely powerful weapons to dominate this world. Which group will
succeed depends entirely on your party's actions. Assuming that you
choose the "good" path, which is fairly important for the
overall story line… You will finally wipe out the Kreegans, free
Roland and indirectly defeat the Necromancer's guild. You will also
succeed in building a gate which takes you to an interstellar waypoint,
where you meet someone named "Corak", though not the same
"Corak" of MM's I-V. Corak gives you some information about
the Kreegans and the Ancients, and answers the question, "Where can
we go from here" with, "Anywhere you want to!" MMVIII
opens. Apparently, we were a little too slow to defeat the Kreegan
menace. Someone among the ancients seems to have a "Scorched
Earth" policy. That is- do NOT let the kreegans have a planet under
any circumstances. If the locals can't defeat the Kreegans, destroy the
planet. The planeswalker, Escaton, who appears to be another automaton
like the original Corak, is dispatched to destroy our planet. He appears
in the third continent on this world, Jadame, and opens portals to the 4
elemental planes. Once their energies leak into the world, and meet at a
certain magical crystal… POP goes the world. Our heroes are tasked
with the monumental project of building an alliance among the races of
Jadame and closing the planes. Along the way, we discover that the order
was given before we finally defeated the last of the Kreegan in MMVII,
but that Escaton is unable to avert his programming and stop the
process. Roland and Catherine make an important cameo appearance as they
stop in Jadame on their journey from Erathia back to Enroth. At the end
of MMVIII, The Ironfist Dynasty is back on track and the Kreegan (and
all of their side effects) are finally beaten down. Also, we
have the Gateway from MMVII opened for the first time in many centuries. My guess is
that MM IX will draw us directly into the Kreegan/Ancient war. That's my
story and I'm sticking to it. Ralf NOTE:
(6/9/01) My thanks to the many fans who have been trying to amend this
original attempt at making a coherent history out of all the games. This
was written long before HoMM3's two expansion packs were released.
HoMM3: The Shadow of Death is believed to be a prequel to MM7. As DumB
points out: "I only complain because Ralf is incorrect about
defeating *all* the Kreegan in MM7... this actually happens in the main
storyline of H3:AB(a new general is chosen after Xenofex dies whose goal
is basically to destroy the world in fire using armageddon's blade and
since devils are immune to fire...) Anyway, I only mention Shadow of
Death because it's what lays the framework for RoE and MM7(Sandro [re]organizes
the necromancers for the arrival of Archibald- in Ralf's version, it
almost sounds like Archi usurped power in Deyja, when actually it was
more mutual). One last thing, we do know now that H4 and MM9(most
likely) will take place in a devasted "Erathia", so you might
want to note that..." Yet another
note submitted on 6/15/01: "In your section of the Might and Magic
History section, it is not stated clearly what Heroes of Might and Magic
3: The Shadow of Death is all about. The Shadow of Death is really the
prequel to the origional Heroes of Might and Magic 3: The Restoration of
Erathia. It tells the story of how Catherine's father, King Gryphenheart
was killed. Basically, Sandro, a necromancer tricks four heroes (Gem,
Gelu, Yog, and Crag Hack) into giving him artifacts which he was able to
build two very powerfull artifacts from. After defeting his old warlock
master, he made an ally, Finneas Vilmar, and eventually made Finneas
king of Deja, the necromancer country in the continent of Antagarich,
which was west of Enroth. They began to take over lands of Antagarich.
Gem, Gelu, Yog, and Crag Hack eventually built a magic sword called the
Angelic Alliance and defeated Sandro. But the story does not end there.
Sandro still won't give it a rest. He comes up with a new plan. He
convinces Lord Haart to poison King Gryphenheart, Catherine's father,
who is the king of Erathia. With the king gone, Sandro continues his
plan to conquer all of Erathia. After helping out the Kreegan race, the
countries of Eofall and Nighon joined Sandro's cause. In the end,
Finneas Vilmar (still the king of Deja), plays a trick on Sandro, which
eventually gets Sandro thrown in prison, so Finneas can take all the
credit for Sandro's idea. This is where the game ends, and this is where
HoMaM3: The Restoration of Erathia Starts, with the countries of Deja,
Nighon, and Eofall invading Erathia." This note
was submitted on 8/24/01 by Liam: "Crag Hack was one of the
travellers in MMVII, yet he has been in every HoMM Game. I have just
realized The shadow of death contradicts MMVII as far as I am concerned
because I have no clue how long MMI-V took place before 6. Our latest
submission arrives on 9/14/01 from Jayman531: "I just want to add
some information to your Might and Magic History Section. Heroes of
Might and Magic 3: The Shadow of Death occurs a little bit after Heroes
2, and is the prequel to Might and Magic 6. Sandro sends Lord Haart to
kill King Gryphenheart, and in Might and Magic 6, Queen Catherine has
left Enroth for his funeral. Also, about that last note regarding Crag
Hack being in all of the Heroes games and in Might and Magic 7, it's
probably just a coincidence. He's probably someone with the same name,
just like at the end of MM7, when we meet someone named Corak, but is
not THE Corak from Might and Magics 1-5. But this is only a guess. Maybe
the guys at 3DO just like the name Crag Hack, because MM3 was made a
while back before the Heroes series started." |