Heroes Chronicles: Tipping the Balance

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Hello there! I’ve decided to go ahead and post about this particular project I’ve been working on quite a bit in its own thread.

What is Heroes Chronicles: Tipping the Balance? It’s a novelization of my take on the events of The Reckoning, taking place during and post Sword of Frost campaign. As a huge Song of Ice and Fire fan, I’m treating this text as if it were HoMM in that kind of setting. Maybe not quite as brutal, but trying to integrate all of the characters and their actions and also adding some realism. I also really want to give a reasonable send off to all of the heroes that just died offscreen in The Reckoning.

From the title, I’m sure you’ve guessed that the main protagonist is the Immortal Hero, Tarnum. I currently have 24 Tarnum chapters written, totaling 185 google docs pages (around 280 manuscript pages), So I’m reasonably far into his story arc.

I haven’t done nearly as much writing for the other heroes who will have point of view chapters, but I have been planning and plotting out story points for them.

At the moment, since I’m no George RR Martin, I plan to write through each of the story arcs one at a time. If I tried to bounce back and forth between characters, there would more than likely be some bleed over between them, so I want to make sure I’m keeping each of the hero points of view distinct from each other.

I’m releasing the first three chapters: Prologue, a Kija point of view, and a Tarnum point of view (though the second and third chapters could potentially shift when I get further along with other hero chapters). If there is any interest I could potentially just release all of the Tarnum chapters I have written, but I would prefer to wait until I have more story written for the other heroes.

Here they are.

And just to be clear, this is going to be a fully fleshed out novel, so if you’re expecting or looking for a light or fast read in the HoMM/MM universe, this won’t be for you.

I appreciate any and all feedback, even if it’s negative (though if negative, please make it something more constructive than “I don’t like it!”).

Big thanks to Jonny (Verriker/Erwinner) who has been a massive help in keeping this story as consistent as possible with the HoMM/MM lore.

Also big thanks to Michael (Karmakeld) who helped out a lot when this project was still a HoMM4 campaign.

Note. This is all still a very rough draft. I have a lot of polish I need to go back through and add, especially descriptions. I focused primarily on the events and heroes, with the intention to do several passes to enhance what is written.