HoMM1: mapping Morglin's adventures

[GreatEmerald]

So I just read the HoMM1 manual for the first time (LP coming soon, so I'm doing research and stuff Also, the text is all here, for reference: https://www.celestialheavens.com/535 ), and the descriptions are detailed enough to try and map how Morglin Ironfist was doing throughout that time, I think. Of course, things are quite subjective, given that HoMM1 was done before MM6:MoH, but with some creativity I think both map together well enough.

So, starting with year 632. Morglin emerges from the hills, somewhere southward from the present-day Castle Ironfist. He starts building a town that he calls Ironfist.

Here I marked an estimate of where at that point the borders between the kingdoms could have been. Green is ruled by Sorceress Queen Lamanda, blue by the Barbarian Lord Slayer, red by the Warlock Lord Alamar. Yellow is Morglin's movements, white is goblins coming to live in the new town.

I wonder what their capital cities would have been. Perhaps Alamos, Kriegspire and Darkmoor, respectively? Those three castles were old and abandoned at the time of MM6 IIRC.



Year 633: Morglin continues building up town Ironfist. He names the valley Ragnar Valley, and one of the rivers River Morglin. Dwarves come to the town of Ironfist. Morglin builds the Morglin Ironfist Keep.

I wonder if the Morglin Ironfist Keep is the main keep of Castle Ironfist. Sounds likely.

Also, "Ragnar" is totally "Rangar" (ranger?) backwards. And I also just realised that Regna backwards is "anger". Hum.



Year 635: Morglin takes over a Barbarian town and learns about the other kingdoms.

I'm not too sure which town it is, but likely it's either Castle Temper or Free Haven. It is later emphasised that another town was near open sea; so this town probably wasn't near open sea, so Castle Temper fits (it's near a lake, not sea). But the other town could be Silver Cove, and Free Haven is in Bootleg Bay, while Silver Cove is a proper town on the edge of the sea. So that would fit too, but it requires Castle Temper to not exist yet at that date.



Years 636-638: lots of things happen at once.

First, Morglin fights against an enemy hero and wins the battle. Then he takes over another town by the open sea. He splits hits army, with one hero taking a boat. That hero is defeated by a magician (fits nicely with the notion that Sorceress lands are based in and around Mist; by MM6 it's the seat of the High Sorcerer of Enroth).



Next, a great prince of another realm takes Castle Ironfist. (I show him as coming from Sorceress lands, although it might be from Warlock lands too.)



Morglin retakes Castle Ironfist, but while he's busy doing that, he loses the two other towns. (Again not clear to whom; I maximised the number of kingdoms involved.)



More in a bit.

[GreatEmerald]

638-641: Again lots of things happen.

First, Castle Ironfist is attacked by two heroes, one by the same hero that attacked Ironfist's forces in 636. Both attacks are repelled.

Morglin sends a hero south, who recaptures a town. (Only New Sorpigal is marked to the south of Castle Ironfist; this means there must have been another town at that time, likely around Dragoons' Caverns. So the hero takes one of the two.) Also, Morglin develops contacts with thieves guilds; likely that means the Shadow Guild.



The hero in the south takes the second town, which is by where Morglin had travelled after going through the Gates to Another World. The town is strengthened, lighthouse and ships are built in the town. (That's why I think this was New Sorpigal: it has defensive walls and a dock.)

Morglin moves his army eastward across broad open plains. (Lots of those eastward! The plains go all the way to Blackshire.)

The hero in the south takes a ship, travels north, and takes a Sorceress town and the islands around it. (Most likely that's Mist and the Misty Islands.)



Morglin loses a lot of troops to a Meteor Shower, the three other kingdoms ally against Morglin, and he loses all the area to the south of Castle Ironfist, probably to Alamar's troops. Castle Ironfist is attacked using Dimension Door, but the attack is repelled again thanks to Morglin pulling back his main force.



641-646: Once again lots of things.

Morglin takes a number of towns and consolidates his winnings. (It's not very clear which ones; I just guessed.)



Morglin's empire is attacked by six armies from different directions. He makes use of Town Portal and Dimension Door to neutralise them. He also manages to control an Oracle, through whom he learns the secrets and intentions of his enemies. (Very interesting: this is either the Oracle in Free Haven, and IIRC we do know that Ironfists had access to it, or a different name for the Seer near Castle Ironfist.)



Morglin defeats both Lord Slayer and Queen Lamanda.



Meanwhile, the strongest opponent, Lord Alamar, launches an attack that sweeps right into the heartland of Ironfist's realm. Morglin is forced to teleport back to deal with the threat.



Finally Morglin besieges the capital of Lord Alamar's kingdom. Alamar is defeated and retreats. Morglin achieves Enroth domination, but there are still wars in distant lands, and other kings have plans to overthrow Morglin. (Likely around the edges: Paradise Valley, Frozen Highlands, areas off the map.)



So that's it, that's my variant of the events. There could be some different interpretations, but the area descriptions given match actual Enroth amazingly well.

[orzie]

Looks interesting. I tried the same thing with Heroes 2 and MM6, but then I decided that the area of Enroth presented on the map of MM6 is too small for my taste, and I prefer to think that MM6 covers only the small part of Enroth, which fact provides imagination and creative potential for the future fan-based developments.

[GreatEmerald]

Yea, it certainly doesn't cover all of it, but I think the main thing is that the scaling in MM6 is not right. It's shown quite clearly that it takes several days to travel from one area to another, and yet you get the official map by just fitting different areas together. So obviously all buildings and people are overscaled compared to the land; it makes sense, because otherwise it would get real boring to travel between landmarks. But it also means that things had to be omitted, like the town south of Ironfist.

[Paviel]

It could be that the scaling isn't right, or there could be more to the continent than what we see in MM6. Didn't Lord Alamar live in a volcanic region surrounded by a swamp?

It also seems odd that anybody other than Alamar could have been in control of Castle Alamos, given the similarity of the two names, yet its location in the Eel Infested Waters does suggest that it was under control of Lamanda instead.

Also, there was supposed to be a desert directly south of the Frozen Wastes, which also isn't on the map.

And, of course, there are plenty of locations in Heroes 2 that cannot be found in MM6 either. Off the top of my head: Roland's summer palace (to the west), Rocklin's domain (I'm pretty sure that it wasn't as close to Castle Ironfist as Snergle's Caverns), the Carator region (mountains to the south), Lorendale Valley, and Noraston.

Actually, Noraston looks a lot like Silver Cove to me... but if they're supposed to be the same place, why do they have different names?

[orzie]

Alamar lived in Castle Alamar instead, I presume.

Noraston should be situated somewhere near Darkmoor swamps, but on the coastal zone.