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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted September 14, 2025 01:57 PM |
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Edited by Galaad at 13:58, 14 Sep 2025.
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Central archive for all lore discussions
Hey everyone,
As you all know, Unfrozen chose to return to the original setting for Olden Era, and I couldn’t be more delighted.
I’ve been trying to follow the lore discussions on Discord, but it’s really hard to keep track. The flow is chaotic and unorganized, and a lot of great info gets buried.
So, let’s use this thread as a place to collect and share lore knowledge ; suchs as how the original setting connects to Olden Era, new lore we uncover from the game itself, possible inconsistencies, speculation, etc.
That way we can build a resource that’s easier to navigate and reference than scrolling endlessly through chat.
Your contributions here will be highly appreciated. 
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MurlocAggroB
Known Hero
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posted September 15, 2025 07:56 AM |
bonus applied by Galaad on 16 Sep 2025. |
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I guess it would be most appropriate to start with what we know about each faction.
Temple
An offshoot of the Church of the Sun, a religious order founded on the island of Karigor. The church worships the Sun, and preaches that all worthy souls will be carried into its Holy Chalice upon their death. As such, it is their mission to save as many souls as they can, even by force. Temple represents a branch of the church and a recent arrival to Jadame. The relations between the Temple and everyone else are fairly hostile. Interestingly, by the time of MM8, the church on Karigor is dissolved and this Temple of the Sun is one of the last remnants of the order.
Lore blurbs say that griffins are not native to Jadame but were brought over to aid in the war effort, explaining their absence in MM8. The flavour text for Sentinel of Glory says that they were once allied with the Temple, but became independent for their own inscrutable reasons. Given how hard Olden Era is leaning into the "angels are anti-Kreegan robots" tidbit, I'm sure that's related. It'll be interesting to find out what the deal with Temple's T7 angels are.
Necropolis
This represents two tightly-related factions, both headquartered in Shadowspire. First is the Necromancers' Guild, which was a major faction in MM8 and is mentioned all over the place in other games up to Heroes IV. It's led by Thant, meaning he will probably be the faction leader and a campaign hero. The other faction is the Jadamean branch of the Church of the Moon, bitter rivals of the Church of the Sun. Uniquely for a necromancer faction, they have a pretty good relationship with their neighbours, especially Alvar.
Sylvan
This one's kind of interesting, since it's only loosely based on existing lore but the new lore has massive implications and raises equally massive questions for what happened between now and MM8. The faction represents Murmurwoods, a magical forest. This place is bound by a force called the Mycelium, an interconnected web that has been around since before the Silence (aka when the sci-fi went away). The Mycelium connects every living thing in the forest together spiritually, and allows them to conjure elemental spirits to aid them. That's basically all we know.
The major implication is with it being a pre-Silence thing. That means whatever the Mycelium is, it's almost certainly something left behind by the Ancients. Elementals played a major role in MM8 and I have no doubt that this being a spiritual successor to Conflux is a nod to that, but importantly the Ancients used a mixture of technology and elemental magic to do a lot of their terraforming.
Dungeon
This represents an alliance of equal parts desperation and convenience. Dungeon is the culmination of the Alvar Pact, an agreement led by the Triumvirate: Caspair Silvertongue of the dark elves, Balthazar of the minotaurs, and Amelchia of the dragons. Troglodytes and medusae are also there, but don't have pillars in the Triumvirate. The dragons are the most recent recruits, having joined the pact following the Hive's emergence when clutches of eggs started disappearing. Despite dark elves being a surface-dwelling race in MM8, they're underground here simply because the underground races outnumber them, something reinforced by flavour text saying that they're not used to this environment. Another important tidbit is confirmation that the dark elves are descendants of Vori elves that travelled to Jadame; that's more important to Schism, however.
The thing that really intrigues me about the faction is - what about the medusae? They're equally important to the minotaurs, the most prominent Dungeon character Ylwari, is a medusa, and a medusa face is the faction's logo. All of their flavour texts hint at some mysterious ulterior motive for joining the pact. It's got me theorizing.
Hive
Our villains, the bad guys who show up out of nowhere and start causing problem for everyone else. Several dormant volcanos throughout Shadowspire and especially Ironsand Desert suddenly awoke, spilling out hordes of giant, demonically-enhanced bugs. The only other concrete thing we know about them is that they're led by a figure called the Dragonfly King, a demon lord who the mere sight of will draw anyone into the hivemind.
Whether or not they have anything to do with the Kreegans remains to be seen. Do keep in mind that there are actual, non-alien demons in the setting. Personally, I'm open to the Dragonfly King being either a Kreegan or a real demon.
Schism
A faction located in the opposite coast of Jadame, beyond the playable border in MM8. In a region called the Frozen Vast, a cult of Alvarian elves has emerged, wielding strange magic that lets them tap into the lowest part of the Plane of Water: the Abyss - a region adjacent to the Realm Between Realms. They serve a figure so far only referred to as "the mistress" with fanatical devotion. We know that the cult appeared shortly after a failed expedition to the area was led by someone called Lyssara. They had set out to explore ancient Vori ruins of their ancestors, but something went so wrong that the area came to be known as the Sea of Regrets.
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NOYBusiness
Tavern Dweller
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posted September 21, 2025 06:23 AM |
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MurlocAggroB said:
Hive
Our villains, the bad guys who show up out of nowhere and start causing problem for everyone else.
To be exact, as a faction they're new, but they consist of pre-existing insectoid species that were already in Jadame and have been corrupted by the Dragonfly King, including wasps (as seen in MM8) and mantes (seen in H4).
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted September 21, 2025 01:32 PM |
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Edited by MattII at 14:17, 21 Sep 2025.
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NOYBusiness said:
To be exact, as a faction they're new, but they consist of pre-existing insectoid species that were already in Jadame and have been corrupted by the Dragonfly King, including wasps (as seen in MM8) and mantes (seen in H4).
This isn't the place to quibbles like this. Also, there's only wasps on Jadame, as H4 takes place on Axeoth, a completely different world to Enroth.
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NOYBusiness
Tavern Dweller
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posted September 21, 2025 06:27 PM |
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MattII said:
NOYBusiness said:
To be exact, as a faction they're new, but they consist of pre-existing insectoid species that were already in Jadame and have been corrupted by the Dragonfly King, including wasps (as seen in MM8) and mantes (seen in H4).
This isn't the place to quibbles like this. Also, there's only wasps on Jadame, as H4 takes place on Axeoth, a completely different world to Enroth.
I didn't post it to quibble, it's another fact we know about the Hive, this being the place to post everything we know about them, among other things.
The factions in H4 formed from Enrothian refugees, with it not always being clear which of their units came from Enroth and which are native to Axeoth, so having mantes in Jadame in this game suggests they could be the same mantes, as does the fact Unfrozen have been referencing old lore whenever possible. The Unfrozen reveal of the Mantis unit talked about them being another race in Jadame that met the same fate as the waspfolk when the Hive's corruption started spreading.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted September 21, 2025 06:33 PM |
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MattII] said:
This isn't the place to quibbles like this.
On the contrary, this is exactly the right place to add clarifications and discuss such points. 
Also taking the opportunity to share the screenshot I grabbed from Discord:
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NOYBusiness
Tavern Dweller
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posted September 21, 2025 06:41 PM |
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Galaad said:
MattII] said:
This isn't the place to quibbles like this.
On the contrary, this is exactly the right place to add clarifications and discuss such points.
Also taking the opportunity to share the screenshot I grabbed from Discord:
Thank you, and thanks for posting the screenshot!
Presumably the MM8 wasps (and H4 mantes if they are indeed connected) are descended from those who either managed to avoid the corruption or were purified when the Hive was ultimately defeated.
MurlocAggroB said:
Whether or not they have anything to do with the Kreegans remains to be seen. Do keep in mind that there are actual, non-alien demons in the setting. Personally, I'm open to the Dragonfly King being either a Kreegan or a real demon.
Personally, I like the idea of the Dragonfly King being a kind of Kreegan advance scout a long time before the full-on invasion on the Night of Shooting Stars, but we'll see what Unfrozen have in mind. 
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Rimgrabber
Promising
Famous Hero
Voice in Gelu's Head
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posted September 21, 2025 06:55 PM |
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What would qualify as a "real demon" in Might and Magic? I don't see any reason why the Kreegans aren't "real demons" just because they're aliens in a setting where all of the fantasy elements are sci-fi based anyway. I know that in Heroes Chronicles demons are mentioned long before the Kreegans arrive, but I don't see what makes those demons "real demons" and Kreegans not so.
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NOYBusiness
Tavern Dweller
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posted September 21, 2025 07:01 PM |
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Rimgrabber said:
What would qualify as a "real demon" in Might and Magic? I don't see any reason why the Kreegans aren't "real demons" just because they're aliens in a setting where all of the fantasy elements are sci-fi based anyway.
Underworld demons from Conquest of the Underworld, I suppose, and a few examples of demons from the earlier Might and Magic RPG games that don't seem to be Kreegans. [edit: I posted that before Rimgrabber edited his post to include a mention of those demons; I wasn't ignoring what he said.] But as you say, the Kreegans themselves can also be considered "demonic" fairly accurately. At the very least, they worship dark gods and summon other demonic creatures as allies. And the bestiary entries for Kreegan enemies in Shifters (if we consider it canonical) do say they're from outside time and space. Greg Fulton (at least, I think it was Greg Fulton; it was definitely one of the developers) also said something about them being extradimensional in a Q&A. He also said something about how the word "demonic" can be applied to multiple different creatures, including Kreegans and efreet.
Speaking of the Underworld, the devlog about the Schism right after their reveal indicated the Underworld was the lower level of the Plane of Fire adjacent to the Realm Between Realms, equivalent to the Abyss for Water (along with the Chthonic Depths for Earth and Starry Firmament for Air).
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MurlocAggroB
Known Hero
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posted September 21, 2025 07:44 PM |
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Rimgrabber said:
I know that in Heroes Chronicles demons are mentioned long before the Kreegans arrive, but I don't see what makes those demons "real demons" and Kreegans not so.
Kreegans are space aliens, demons are creatures from another plane. To be clear, the Elemental Planes are never implied to be planets. Based on all evidence, they're full-on alternate realities. They have weird rules in regards to time and physics and are literally layered on top of each other, so it doesn't make sense that the planes would be planets.
Regardless, I mostly use the distinction for ease of understanding. Demon and Kreegan are close to synonymous, so, in lieu of a more specific term, "real demon" is a way to make it clear that I'm not talking about Kreegans.
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