Hey look, guys! I'm a Wyvern Monarch! I guess it means my Heroes III skillz are above average. Yes, I wrote skills with a 'z.'
Ladies and gentlemen, I've completed the Armageddon's Blade campaign! However, one thing still bugs me.
In the final scenario of the AB campaign, Catherine is visited by the elemental lord Tamar. He tells her that Gelu (and only Gelu) must bring the blade to Kreelah and slay Lucifer Kreegan. Only then will the destruction of the world be averted.
Oddly enough, this act actually leads Gelu down a path of no return, leading to the Reckoning. The destruction of Kreelah corrupts Gelu. If Gelu had simply destroyed Armageddon's Blade, King Lucifer would have lost his ability to set the world on fire. Furthermore, Khazandar's death at the hands of Xeron meant there'd be no other individual with the ability to create a duplicate. How did Tamar get everything so wrong?
Perhaps the creature who visited Catherine was not Tamar at all. After all, he never identifies himself. Catherine only assumes he is Tamar.
What if... the person who visited Catherine was actually the ghost of Xenofex (the same ghost who convinced Lucifer to seek Armageddon's Blade at the beginning of the game). What if... Xenofex sensed that Eeofol had lost the war and wanted to manipulate Catherine into fulfilling his desire?
Here's the original text:
In the darkest hours before dawn, Catherine is awoken by a soft wind blowing across her body, caressing it like Roland often had, pleasant and loving. She turns, expecting to see her loving husband there with her, when she sees a figure in azure robes trimmed in silver runic writing. The figure simply stands there, not saying a word."Greetings Tamar. What are you doing here? What visions have you come to warn me about now?" Catherine asks, quite annoyed at the fact it is not Roland."I have come to impart some wisdom to you, Queen of Enroth," Tamar says in that soft whisper of a voice. "The pale warrior often called Devil's Bane I have foreseen to be of great import in your endeavor. He alone is the key to victory here. You must see he is given the Blade and sent to Kreelah to face King Lucifer. He has a destiny to fulfill that no one must be allowed to interfere with, for if he is to fall, everything shall turn to chaos. Oceans will boil, the ground shall swallow entire cities, and everyone will die a horrifying death. I do not think that you would want this possibility to come to pass, am I wrong?"Catherine stares at the shadow shrouded face of this Elemental Lord and sighs, "No, of course not.""As I suspected. So, rest now, Catherine Ironfist, for the days ahead shall be plagued by troubles and filled with glorious victories. You shall prevail if you trust your heart and relax your mind. Heart is the one thing the devils cannot crush; use it as your most prominent weapon. Good luck. I pray you will be well, as I do for those under your command." With that, Tamar vanishes as if he had never come, as if he were a mere dream. Exhausted and confused somewhat, Catherine goes back to sleep, her task set before her. Gelu is the one who must bear the Blade to Kreelah and kill King Lucifer. It seems a task easier said than done.
I'd be curious to get people's thoughts on this theory.
What campaign should I tackle next? Should I start a different campaign in the AB expansion? If so, which one?
Alternatively, I can abandon the game and skip to the second Heroes III expansion: Shadow of Death? Let me know in the comments below.
As a longtime HOMM fan, I've got to say I love this blog. I think you should definitely finish the AB campaigns before you move on to SoD. I'd say to play them in whatever order you think makes the most sense, plotwise, though personally I'd pick Adrienne's campaign first. Keep up the great work!
ReplyDeleteI agree since you started with AB it would be more fitting to complete it. All the campaigns are made into a particular context and time period of Antagarich...Jumping to the prequel now will leave kind of a gap...Though the other campaigns are not so plot important as the armageddon's blade it doesn't mean that they don't have their own importance and I reassure you that they are very enjoyable since many of them offer alternative gameplay. I recomend tha dragonslayer campaign! It is much more relaxing and fast paced than the apocalyptic ultra epic armageddon's blade campaign. So it will be a nice break
ReplyDeleteThe other Armageddon's Blade campaigns are extremely difficult, but all of them are at least a little relevant to the overarching plot, so I say finish them all.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Tamar the Wanderer, there is no indication that he's Xenofex's ghost, but he's never mentioned again after Armageddon's Blade, so it's very difficult to tell what his motives are.
Notice though that he says *everyone* will die a horrible death if Gelu perishes. Not *everyone* died in the Reckoning, so perhaps Tamar was performing damage control by arranging for the Blade to end up with Gelu instead of the Kreegans. Seers in Might and Magic often complain that their visions are extremely vague, so maybe Tamar didn't foresee the Reckoning would happen anyway, but at least his action enabled some survivors to get to Axeoth as opposed to having everybody on Enroth die.
Great work on the blog!
First of all I wanna say I love this Blog, you are doing an awesome job.
ReplyDeleteAbout the AB or SoD matter, even though I like SoD better than AB, I would like to read the rest of your adventures on the remaining AB campaigns, so I would prefer you to finish AB first.
You should skip to Shadow of Death since the other campaigns aren't that interesting story-wise (since they are all self-contained).
ReplyDeleteGreat job with everything so far! Very entertaining!
This is a bit late, but I've enjoyed your blog very much. Heroes III is a classic at any age and this campaign is one of the more well-thought-out bits of story in the universe.
ReplyDeleteAs for Tamar, Heroes Chronicles goes into much more depth on him, at least as the nameless "Air Lord". Presuming that he's the same person and that Elemental Lords don't get old and die, his last intervention in Antagarich was an open invasion, seeking to destroy the world to plunder its raw elements. Given how miserably that failed, perhaps this time he and his fellow Elemental Lords decided to go for a subtler divide-and-conquer approach. I'd like to think that that WAS Tamar, but that he's the same manipulative bastard that he was when Tarnum fought him. Conflux is Neutral, not Good.
As always, thanks for the awesome blogging.