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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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