HOMM3 modification - Orrin the Knight

I've been doing all kinds of crazy things with regards to Heroes of Might and Magic III. I've actually downloaded a bunch of alternate hero portraits, and figured out how to change them in the data files. I've also figured out how to create my own, if I were so inclined, but I don't think that I will. I like the packs that I've found, and at most, I have to change the image format to a 256 color PCX file, which I can do pretty easily in GIMP; I don't have to resize, I don't have to manually draw in the 1-pixel border, or anything else that while also probably not terribly difficult, is a bit intimidating. Besides, I'd have to find alternatives somewhere that I like better, which is also a time-consuming, tedious and ultimately pretty thankless task.

So I have a number of collections of alternative proposed Hero portraits. Let me review the collections that I have. Most of them come from the VCMI community. I've also downloaded that, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish, and I'm not convinced that I want to make the jump to replacing my regular HOMM engine with the VCMI one instead. Even though there are a number of specific adds that it has that I quite like. 

Originals: While I tend to think that the originals do, as one of the collectors below noted in the description of his collection, look kind of rushed sometimes, and strange and cartoony other times, I do have a certain nostalgia for them, and often if the art direction isn't terrible and the quality isn't terrible, I actually still prefer the originals in some cases. Even when I don't necessarily prefer the originals, I often prefer variants that clean up or smooth over the originals while still maintaining the look and feel of the original... just better executed. Not only are the originals an important point of reference, but in most cases, they are also a contender; there will be many portraits that I don't change.

ensricks: Ensrick's collection, or ensricks as the filename says, is a collection of AI generated improvements to the originals. I actually quite like this one; I think it's the single best pack of alternates. However, some of the clean-ups are arguably not as dynamic or characterful, some of the men look like they belong on the cover of a romance novel; too smoothed over and effeminate, and occasionally when he really didn't like the original and tried to replace it with something else, I don't think he made the best possible choice (this was especially true for the elemental characters from Conflux, but not exclusively.)

Stable Diffusion: I first saw this presented as "original portraits remastered" and that's a good description of how most of them work. I like this one because it keeps very close to the look of the original portrait, which most of the time I think is a good thing, but usually does a better job of executing them. However, there are sometimes AI artifacts, like weird colors that don't belong, strange extrusions of ... something, or stuff like that. Still; they are very often contenders too.

Stable Diffusion 2: A second set of stable diffusion generated portraits. In general, many of these came out as lower quality and cartoony, so while there are some winners there, in general the two above are usually better. This collection is also incomplete; only about half a dozen town's worth of heroes were ever added to it.

dtnmang: The first of the more radical departures. The collector found art online that matched the idea, but not necessarily the image of the original hero portrait. While they're all quite good, most of the time, I don't think such radical departures are necessary. However, given how radical the departure is, some of these images could be repurposed to other heroes where I never liked the original art direction at all.

Pack 01: Similar to dtnmang's in concept, yet also missing a few key heroes (the campaign specials in particular.)

Pack 02: Same as above. Not that the images are the same, or even similar, but the collector's intentions are clearly the same.

StrikerX: Same as above. I suspect many (all?) these are AI generated as well, but not using the original image as a prompt.

Vallex: Same as above. These all seem to have a similar style to them, which is cool, and which is also different than the normal HOMM style, so I suspect that they may not be as well integrated if you're only using a few of them, unless you're very careful with your selection.

Wild Cards: A strange incomplete collection that replaces maybe a third of the heroes or so. Many of them don't seem to be as high quality, and many are clearly cribbed from other games or fantasy art (I recognized a few Blizzard pieces in there, for instance.) Not sure how many (if any) of these I would use, but I have it, so I'll show them if they have a replacement for the hero I'm reviewing.

Here's the first of the Heroes I'm reviewing; Orrin the Knight. Because Castle is the default first choice when starting a game with a random faction, and Orrin is the default first choice of a starting character, it seems appropriate to review what I have for him before anyone else.

While he doesn't blow me a away, Orrin is a classic, and his original was always well conceived and pretty well executed. And since none of the alternatives blow me away as clearly superior to the original, I'm more focused on those that look like the original, but hopefully offer some small improvement. I think all of the AI generated alternatives are pretty good. Of the bunch, I think ensricks is the best one, although the second Stable Diffusion is interesting because it is still recognizable, but he appears to have been "recast" with a different actor that's just a bit more different than the first two alternatives. Although you can see the overall lower quality and level of detail to the image overall. That's typical for that collection, sadly.

Nobody else is a contender for replacement here. dtnmang's option is "just a guy", Pack 01's is too dark and muddy looking, Pack 02's is—what is that, a black bodybuilder from an 80s action movie? How does that even fit? StrikerX and Vallex have good enough options (although in the Vallex case, I think white backgrounds, even if they don't show very much, don't look good in this game) and Wild Cards is a great image... of somebody else.  Maybe some rangery character that I don't like the original look of, like Kyrre or something, even.

WINNER: ensricks alternative will go in the game.

So anyway, that's my process and thinking. I'll probably get around (eventually) to replacing (or at least evaluating for replacement) all of the characters in the game, which will be a time-consuming yet enjoyable project—and something to keep me busy while I'm taking a short break from my AI vs AI testing for the next few days. That is; I'll do the evaluation and selection over that time. I won't actually make any changes, except maybe in the VCMI alternative, until after the AI vs AI testing is complete. At that time, I'll also switch to my alternative game soundtrack. It will make a nice freshening of the look and feel of the game, without changing anything drastic. And frankly, even for portraits that I update, I'll probably stick to pretty familiar alternatives so I can recognize who's who at a glance when I see them in the tavern or the thieves' guild or out "in the wild" while playing. When I do my (eventual) actual play videos, I'll have the updated portraits and soundtrack ready and installed.

Fascism and Liberalism

"There is a specter haunting the West, the specter of fascism" could be the opening line to a manifesto from just about any group in the modern West. Three generations after fascism ceased to exist as a real political and intellectual movement, it hangs over the Western mind like a terrifying fog. Every issue in the political debate is there because it relates to fascism in some way. It either defines who is and who is not a fascist, or it is assumed to be a precursor to fascism.

[...] Fascism is impossible to define, in part, because it is the universal bogeyman. Both communists and liberals have spent generations heaping every sin imaginable on fascism. Those sins, of course, are the things these ideological camps fear most about themselves. With communism in the ash heap of history, fascism is now just the warted, gnarled face of Western liberalism’s worst fears about itself.

Another reason fascism is impossible to define is it was never really a standalone ideology, but a reaction to ideology. Fascism would never have existed if not for the apparent failure of liberalism and the very real threat of communism, especially the Bolshevik variety. Fascism was an ad hoc defense against cultural and spiritual genocide by people who saw both Western liberalism and communism in their raw form as they evolved in the 19th century.

This is why modern liberalism looks strikingly like fascism. We live in an age where the lines between the state and capitalism are impossible to see. Corporate America and the apparatus of the state are two heads of the same hydra. The media, the academy and entertainment are the other heads. The body that controls them is managerialism, which looks a lot like fascism. If James Burnham were alive today, he would easily make the connection between the two.

For a long time, people have wondered what would happen when the last real Nazi or alleged victim of the Nazis is no more. In the next decade that whole generation will be gone, leaving no more devils for liberalism to chase. Similarly, people have wondered what comes after liberalism reaches its end point. Both questions seem to have the same answer in that one cannot live without the other. When both are gone, the long nightmare of the West will finally come to an end.

From today's Z-man post: https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=30826

Kinda goes without needing comment. I excised a big section out of the post; this is just a few paragraphs. I guess by bolding a certain segment, I made a de facto comment of sorts.

HOMM3 AI vs AI update

Shockingly (to me at least) I've made thirty videos matching up one faction against another (31, actually, because I redid Castle vs Rampart, my first one, after I settled on a better format, materials and methods for the experiment.) Equally shocking, I've only got fifteen more to go. I've done two-thirds of the experiment.

I'm getting kind of tired of it too, though. It's only my commitment to see it all the way through that will in fact see me all the way through. It's a little frustrating sometimes to spend so much of my free time with a nearly twenty-five year old computer game running experiments rather than just chillin' and playin'. Once I'm done, I'm done and I'm going to do something totally different. In any case, here's the current status:

Castle, as I expected, performed admirably, and didn't lose a single match (closest it got was it's 6-4 win over Stronghold.) Rampart and Tower also performed quite well, only losing to Castle each, and to Cove in Tower's case. Dungeon has surprisingly, performed very poorly, only beating Necropolis, Stronghold and Conflux. The Neutral towns have been all over the map; sometimes Stronghold or Fortress will win a lot of battles within a match, and other times get completely blown out. Cove has (so far) performed quite well; nearly at the level of Rampart or Tower, perhaps, although we'll see as it gets more matches under its belt. Not only do I like the concept of the Cove, but it's nice to see that a late, unofficial add is balanced fairly well. It seems that there's a tendency to go overboard and make it weaker to not be seen as making it overpowered.

Talking about it has recharged my energy about the project, but I still might take a couple of days where I actually play the game normally rather than do something like this. We'll see. I am determined to finish this, especially noting that I've done two-thirds of the work already. The next matches will go down fairly fast. I'm already at the point, on Inferno if you note above, where I only have to do five sets to finish the match. Necropolis will only need four, Stronghold three (no reference to Sky High intended), Fortress two, Conflux one, and by the time we get to Cove, I literally don't have to do it; they'll already have fought everyone. In fact, I do the (now shortened) Inferno run, and I've done another third of everything that's left!

Because I have four factions who've now played everyone and are out of the action, it's maybe appropriate to review their record:

Castle: 9-1 No losses to anyone.

Rampart: 7-1-1 Only a loss to Castle, and a tie with Tower.

Tower: 6-2-1 A loss to Castle and Cove and a tie with Rampart

Dungeon: 3-7 The first really bad performance and overall loser. I'm really surprised and disappointed. I had thought Dungeon was one of the stronger players, or rather, one of the easier factions to play with relatively strong troops and a forgiving playstyle. Even though I admit that I've used them pretty infrequently, especially as a starting main.

Note that none of this means that any of the factions aren't viable. Although Dungeon performed poorly, the nature of this test is that it flattens any other variable, and many factions' success depends on strategic variables that are not represented at all in the experiment, which is just raw 1x1 unit power. For instance, Dungeon is a rather magic-heavy faction, with special magical bonuses in its castle, and the nature of the test completely eliminated magic from consideration, except in the cases where the faction's might hero came with a spell book and a modest spell (Tower and Necropolis.) It also has extraordinarily fragile 6th level troops, who the computer AI seems to want to throw into harm's way as quickly as possible because of their speed. They're not alone in this (Fortress has the same problem) but I'm just pointing out that there are certain parameters of the experiment which will not paint factions in the best light, because their best light is not in straight up combat troop strength, but is rather in a strategic assessment of resources. Necropolis is largely considered OP, for instance, but it is unlikely to win a single match, or maybe even a single combat. Their strength is in the Necromancy skill, not in creature growth in town. To use one obvious example.

Anyway, the experiment has been fun, but I'm ready to finish it up and move on to some other kind of HOMM3 enjoyment. I'll also switch to my alternative soundtrack at that point.

Dark Fantasy X

I had a terrible weekend. I got myself either sick or rundown or both sometime in the middle of the week last week, and actually bailed on work for the second half of Tuesday and all of Wednesday. I went into the office on Thursday, and was "strongly encouraged" to attend the picnic. So I did, but even my boss said she could tell I was running out of steam partway through. And I left early even so. And then I had to pick up my son at the airport, who was blowing into town for the weekend. His flight was supposed to land at midnight, which was bad enough, but it got delayed several hours. By the time I actually got to bed on Friday morning, it was 4AM. But no rest for the weary; I needed to be up shortly after 8, and I had some work activity around 9. Halfway through the day, I couldn't do it anymore, although I still didn't get very good rest.

So the entire weekend, I was overly tired and felt terrible. Sunday was kind of worst; I was in a daze most of the day, and could barely keep my eyes open at church. I came home afterwards and took a nap, but was still sleepy and zoned out most of the evening, until going to bed.

Now, Monday morning, I'm sorta recovered, but still kind of tired. It will take me a few days of normal, regular sleep, I think, to get out of this haze, and any really bad night, for any reason, will probably cause a relapse. This kind of thing happens to my wife frequently, but it hasn't really happened to me much before. I don't know if I'm more tired now than I have been in the past, or the problem has been prolonged and exacerbated by other stress, or if I'm just getting too old to have that kind of schedule and still be reasonably functional anymore.

Anyway, one good thing that came out of the weekend is that further discussion about "we should play 'D&D'" was had by my son in law, my oldest son, and my daughter in law. I should be able to grab at least those three, and maybe my daughter too, and I've told them both that if you give me an hour to collect my notes and print some stuff off, I can run anytime. Not that this was a good weekend to make the attempt, nor is next weekend, nor any of the nights this week, I don't think. But still—I think at some point, if we don't play, it's because I was the one dithering around and not making it happen. Another series of blog posts will probably start where I summarize notes from our play sessions, and maybe I'll even make some youtube posts about it. They won't be as cool as Professer DM's play reports, like the Reviled Society, but we'll see what they end up being, if I get that far.

Ironically, my "heat" for roleplaying games right now is a bit low. I've been blowing my free hobby time on playing Heroes of Might & Magic III again, something I haven't done in years, while the novel I started before going out of town a few weeks ago is untouched, my Enemy Within readthrough has had little love, and I haven't even made HeroForge models or thought much about Dark Fantasy X at all.

Time to get back in the saddle with life. It's been chaotic both at home and at work lately, but you've gotta wrassle life back into shape if you don't want to be at its mercy sometimes.

HOMM3 Combat Backgrounds

I whipped up a test map to do these super easy combats, just so I could take screenshots of the various combat "arenas", which is a combination of terrain, and occasionally something that modifies the background. Not every terrain has more than one variation, but several do. 

The only "combat arenas" that I don't have, because I didn't think of it when I made my test map, so I'd need to do another one, is the two ship deck combats. Oh, and somehow I forgot the basic Dirt terrain combat screen! But I see that one so much, that's fine for now.

The beach, a special Sand variant when next to water terrain.

Clover Fields, which give neutral alignment factions extra luck.

Cracked Ice, which lowers everyone's defense.

Cursed Ground, which negates most magic.

Dirt with dead trees, which you have to try hard as a mapmaker to make show up...

Dirt when near mountains or hills

Dunes, which is actually different than Sand, and which has hidden quicksand traps.

Evil Fog, which gives evil alignment extra morale and good alignment poor morale

Fields of Glory, which are pretty gross and lower everyone's morale.

Fiery Fields, which maximize everyone's Fire Magic spells

Basic Grass.

Grass with hills nearby

Highlands, the "alt.Grass" for Conflux

Holy Ground, which is the reverse of the Evil Fog.

Lava

Lucid Pools, which maximizes all Water Magic Spells.

The Magic Plains, which maximizes all spells (including Prayer in this dramatic example)

The Magic Clouds which maximize Air Magic spells.

The Rocklands, which maximize all Earth Magic spells.

The Rough terrain

Regular, basic Sand terrain

Regular Snow terrain

Snow when hills are nearby

Swamp

The open swamp, i.e. hills are nearby

The Wasteland terrain

Heroes 3 Updates

Here's the latest status of my AI vs AI. I've finished the Rampart series in addition to the earlier Castle series. Tower is next. Of course, because of the matrix nature, each series is one less set (using set as it's used in tennis) than the previous. There's no reason to do Rampart vs Castle if I've already done Castle vs Rampart, for instance. Tower needs to do neither Castle nor Rampart, and Dungeon—which will be next after Tower, will not need to do any of the good aligned factions. This also means that by the time I get to Cove, I'll literally have no sets left to do, and when I get to Conflux, it'll only have one set; vs Cove.

I've also decided to do a playthrough series. Each map that I do will probably take more than one video to complete, especially if I narrate/comment on it as I'm playing, the way Norovo does. I've picked the map The Battle of Daeyun's Ford, since it's a good map where there are six factions, each of them is human or com, so supposedly balanced, and the map allows for an extended period of building and exploring before you run into your enemies. If the AI "personalities" you can select are Builder, Explorer and Warrior, I'm definitely a mix of Builder and Explorer; I get the idea of having enemies, but I don't enjoy it as much as maps that maybe pit you against something more static, and you just beat it the way you beat old fashioned video game bosses.

I've also made two variations on this map. Mostly, that means that I changed some of the terrain to give me more variety, because I'd like to play the map, and post recordings of the playthrough, of all ten factions. But I'll do it as follows:

Using the HD launcher, play very traditional versions of the map with minimal extra features, except some of the quality of life features that the HD mod adds, on the original SOD version of the map. I'd play this version with the following factions:

• Rampart as Red
• Castle as Purple
• Fortress as Blue
• Dungeon as Orange.

Yes, yes... I've played the map before and because I modified it, I'm more or less familiar with the terrain. Do you like playing Super Mario Brothers levels less just because you've played them enough to know them well?

Next, I have a map where I swapped some of the terrain and decorative elements, but otherwise didn't change much. It's still an SOD compatible map in all ways, although I believe I'll play it with the Horn of the Abyss Launcher, which means random elements (like towns, creature dwellings, creatures, artifacts, etc.) could be pulled from that map. But it's still an SOD map being played with HOTA. I'll record this version with the following factions:

• Necropolis as Red
• Stronghold as Teal
• Inferno as Blue

And the final version of the map is HOTA compliant; I changed some of the terrain and decorative elements again, but I specifically used, for instance, the Wasteland and Highlands terrain, which are unique to HOTA. I don't expect this to impact the map too much vs the version above, other than it will be aesthetically somewhat different, of course, and will deliberately use some HOTA elements. I'll play and record the following factions with this one:

• Cove as Blue
• Tower as Purple
• Conflux as Red

As you can probably guess, among the changes I made was to convert one large grassy area where Red starts to Highlands, and one large grassy area where Purple starts to Snow. I converted, in the earlier map, Red's area to Dirt, Purple's area to Sand and Blue's area to Lava.

Heroes3 AI vs AI test fights

I've been doing AI vs AI fights, mostly for fun and data gathering on Heroes of Might and Magic III using the Horn of the Abyss unofficial expansion pack. I've now finished all of the Castle fights (although I need to redo Castle vs Rampart). Castle is kind of the default, but it is also the strongest faction. Or, at least that was my hypothesis. I think my data gathering bears that out.

I tried to flatten the impact of any variable other than the strength of the creatures themselves. I had might heroes who's secondary skills were replaced with non-combat ones that would have no impact, I gave them no spellbooks (except Tower's Alchemist and Necropolis' Death Knight, because they start with one by default). I also attempted to run combats on terrain that had the following traits: 1) a truly neutral terrain which benefitted neither faction, 2) two two terrains that are favored by each of the two factions, 3) the terrains that align (no pun intended) with the alignment of the faction. And for each of these terrains, I'd run two AI vs AI battles, one in which the Castle hero attacked the other hero, and one in which the other hero attacked the Castle hero.

In practice, because Castle is the most powerful, they were often overwhelming the other faction. When that was happening, I sometimes didn't do the Holy Ground, because that (usually) just favored the Castle faction even more (unless they were fighting another Good Aligned faction, in which case the effect was neutral.) When that happened, I'd use a different neutral terrain just for visual interest. For the factions that started your Might hero with a spellbook, I also did Magic Fields and Cursed Ground to see if that made any difference. That was Tower and Necropolis, so instead of 10 fights, they had 12 each.

What were the results? You can watch them here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3rBWzgVK9hyRwW6i1OsOjZf-aKkdXwie

Or, I can give you the summary here. Again; Castle vs Rampart needs to be redone with a few more battles, but I don't expect that to change the big picture result at all. Both are good aligned and both have Grass as their favored terrain, so no terrain gives either one an advantage over the other.

Castle beats Rampart: 4-2

Castle beats Tower: 8-4

Castle beats Dungeon: 9-1

Castle beats Inferno: 8-2

Castle beats Necropolis: 12-0

Castle beats Stronghold: 6-4

Castle beats Fortress: 10-0

Castle beats Conflux: 8-2

Castle beats Cove: 7-3

As I said, Castle is clearly the most powerful of the factions, at least in terms of raw troop strength. In some cases, this was dramatic enough for absolute blow-outs and even complete shut-outs. Rampart, Stronghold, and Tower were the only ones that gave them even a little run for their money, and the new Cove town did OK. Necropolis and Fortress were especially disappointing, being completely shut out, and I expected Dungeon to do better than it did. In comparison, even though not even close to a win, the Conflux and Inferno both did better than I expected, because I didn't think of them are particularly strong factions to begin with.

Working on Rampart as the follow-up, and then I'll keep going down the line. I suppose at the end of the day, I won't do Cove, because by the time I get to Cove, it will have already have played against everyone. Here's the current status...

Read horizontally, i.e. 8-2 means the horizontal axis had 8 wins, and the vertical axis only 2.
Castle	x	8-2	8-4	9-1	8-2	12-0	6-4	10-0	8-2	7-3
Rampart	2-8	x	6-6	8-2
Tower	4-8	6-6	x
Dungeon	1-9	2-8		x
Inferno	2-8				x
Necropolis	0-12					x
Stronghold	4-6						x
Fortress	0-10							x
Conflux	2-8								x
Cove	3-7									x
	Castle	Rampart	Tower	Dungeon	Inferno	Necropolis	Stronghold	Fortress	Conflux	Cove

It's a good thing that the Horn of the Abyss changed the Conflux favored (or native) terrain from Grass to the Grass lookalike Highlands, but we still have two that have Grass as a favored terrain, and nobody has Sand. With the addition of Cove, we have two on Swamp too.

I think Fortress could have been retooled graphically to be a sand/desert lizards and hyenas; that would actually probably fit even better for the troops than Swamp. Of course, the only reason that they're two on Swamp is because of the unofficial expansion pack, and Sand makes no sense for the pirates of the Cove. Ah, well.

I really like the new Wasteland terrain, but that's just the first taste of what is supposed to come out with a new faction (yet another neutral; someone should bulk up the Evil and Good!) and a new campaign, etc. I'm not sure that I'm sold on the new faction; it's got a little bit of a Forgy vibe, except instead of cyperpunk zombies, it's steampunk cowboys. I guess it's OK.

Shadows Over Garenport, play and adaptation

My son and his wife are living with us again temporarily. By temporarily, I probably mean for months, maybe even the better part of a year. They were talking with me and my daughter and son-in-law the other night, and there was casual talk about them wanting to play "D&D." My son-in-law Caleb suggested that if so, I would have to be the GM. Which I'm totally fine with. I'd love to give Shadows Over Garenport a go, and I'm almost ready to run. I need to redo the Scooby-gang characters and print out the inserts for my GM screen, but other than that, I'm good to go.

This is something that I'm very excited about, and hope that it comes to fruition soon. There's a few things that will possibly get in the way (interruptions of my son's little kids, and my daughter's ambivalent interest in playing) but I suspect that my other son's girlfriend may enjoy this if I could talk her into playing too; she's got a theatre background and theatrical interests... in spite of her upbringing in a small town in Wyoming, and her continued schooling in a small town in Idaho, where theatrical pursuits are probably pretty few and far between. We'll see what comes of that; so far, it was just a small offhand conversation, but it sounded positive. I don't want to be pushy, and we've got a lot of immediate concerns that will occupy us for a few weeks before we're ready to seriously consider it, I think.

However, my son, who I introduced many years ago to Heroes of Might and Magic III, has brought this game back to me. I was a fan of the series back in the Heroes of Might and Magic II days, in the later 90s, and I was around in "the community", which back then was a website and a listserv run by a guy named AstralWizard. I remember when the expansion packs were released. I remember when the Forge controversy happened, and I contributed in my own small way towards effecting that change. Although I also believe that it was incredibly foolish to think that such a drastic change in tone wouldn't impact the fan reception to the game. Developers are all alike. Although NWC did change their plans based on fan feedback, there seems to have been the generation of some ill will because of it, and resentment on their part that their vision was rejected by enough of the fans that they had to abandon it or risk the financial viability of the continuation of the game. Hardly seems something to be resentful of. They should be lucky that they got the feedback when they did and not after it was too late.

Heroes3 is now almost 25 years old, having been released in 1999, when I was a young student and had very small kids. My son who reintroduced me to the game, was too young to play it when it was released; he was three. He now has a three year old of his own. In spite of that, the game has surprising longevity, and fans have kept it alive for decades, even releasing mods that qualify as full-blown expansion packs in their own right in terms of content and professionalism.

The most popular of these seems to be Horn of the Abyss, which adds a new pirate-themed town, and a number of other structures and terrain types. A lot of these seem to be redrawn elements from Heroes2, honestly, which is kind of cool.

I may install this mod, and then make a map (or three) of the Dark Fantasy X setting. The first one would, of course, be a Shadows Over Garenport map. Interpreting this into the Heroes3 milieu will be challenging, but then again, people (including me, in the past) have been interpreting other works into this milieu for years, in spite of their poor fit sometimes. Lord of the Rings has numerous interpretations, as does all kinds of actual historical events or eras.

Anyway, my personal life continues to be chaotic, to the point where it's difficult to make any confident plans for blogging progress on anything specifically, or gaming, or anything else. I take each day at a time, and often—honestly—fritter away whatever free time I manage to have, just sitting with my grandkids, or playing around on my phone, on youtube, or now on Heroes3.