Heroes I
In I, Lord Morglin Ironfist is ousted from his homeland of Varn by his cousin, Ragnar. Fleeing with his few loyal followers through a portal, he finds himself on another planet, in the land of Enroth. Enroth is a contested land: Lord Slayer, Queen Lamanda, and Lord Alamar are locked in a civil war for control of the continent. Ironfist himself quickly establishes himself as a fourth player in this power struggle. The player gets to chose which of the four warlords they control during the single-player campaign - however the canonical ending is a victory for Morglin Ironfist and the foundation of the Ironfist Dynasty.Heroes II
The second game's campaign centers around a civil war between Morglin's sons - Roland Ironfist, a good knight/wizard, and Archibald Ironfist, a not-so-good warlock. After their father's death, the line of succession is questioned, leading to disagreements between the two. The Royal Seer who was supposed to make the decision unfortunately died in a boating accident. His next three successors died similar deaths before Roland is accused of murdering them and goes into hiding, leaving the fifth Royal Seer to declare Archibald the king, while Roland initiates an insurgency to oust his evil brother.The expansion pack, The Price of Loyalty, included four new standalone campaigns. What it did not include was a continuation of the main storyline - since the expansion was contracted to Cyberlore Studios instead of New World Computing, the campaigns take place in a new, unnamed setting and are unconnected to the rest of the Might & Magic franchise. The actual story would continue in the third installment (as well as in Might and Magic VI).
Heroes III
Backstory for the games Heroes III and M&M VI states the canonical victor of the second to be Roland: by the time of those two games, he is King of Enroth, married to Catherine Gryphonheart, heir to the throne of Enroth's ally, Erathia. The two have a son together (Nicolai, an NPC in Might and Magic VI). It is around this point that the Kreegans (a race of aliens that look like demons) invade the North-West of Enroth and the North-East of Antagarich (the continent Erathia is located on).The third game is the first in the series to move the action away from the continent of Enroth. Instead it occurs on the southern continent of Antagarich. King Gryphonheart of Erathia has died and the enemies of Erathia (the Antagarich branch of the Kreegan Invasion, the Dungeon Overlords of Nighon, and the Necromancers of Deyja) take the opportunity of its weakened state to launch attacks against it. Queen Catherine leads a force of the Enrothian army to reclaim control of her homeland with the aid of Erathia's local allies AvLee (elves, dwarves, and centaurs) and Bracada (human and genie wizards). The other nations on Antagarich—-the nation of Krewlod, a wasteland ruled by barbarous humans, orcs, goblins, and ogres; and the lizardfolk and gnolls of the Tatalian swamps—take this as an opportunity to bite off a little of their neighbors' territory while they are all distracted with each other, thus beginning the eight-way "Restoration War".
The third game's first Expansion Pack Armageddon's Blade occurs after the eventual victory of Erathia and its allies in the third game. It features a young ranger, Gelu, and his quest to stop a devil from creating the titular artifact and using it to Take Over the World (or destroy the world, either one seems likely). In addition, there are some other campaigns. In the chaos following the Restoration War, a Nighon overlord seeks to transform herself into a dragon; on the flip side, a wizard's apprentice attempts to become a dragonslayer and prove himself; a young barbarian, Kilgor, seeks to become the new ruler of Krewlod during its Festival of Life; and a Tatalian witch, outcast for her use of fire magic, tries to save her homeland from an undead invasion, led by a figure from the Restoration War. Before all of this, in a comedic prequel campaign, Sir Christian, the first hero you get in the first Restoration War campaign, has a devil of a time getting home to Erathia. The third game's other Expansion Pack The Shadow Of Death acts as a prequel to the actual third game, exploring the backstory of several important character and how the Evil Plan of the lich Sandro resulted in him igniting the Restoration War almost singlehandedly.
Heroes Chronicles
Using the Heroes III engine, eight standalone episodes were released called Heroes Chronicles. The series starred Tarnum, who in the first episode, rose from being a shepherd to becoming the king of the barbarians; but in his quest to free his people from the Empire of Bracaduun (the evil predecessors to Bracada), a series of painful setbacks lead him to become increasingly brutal, tyrannical, and paranoid; history would remember him as the Barbarian Tyrant. His reign ends abruptly when Rion Gryphonheart, Queen Catherine's ancestor and founder of the nation of Erathia, challenged him to single combat and slew him. Judged by the barbarian gods known as the Ancestors, he is found wanting, and is resurrected as an immortal hero to seek redemption through a thousand-year series of quests fighting the forces of evil. Several of these quests also serve as a form of Ironic Hell, as he must help those he once warred against, but in the final episode, he fails to recover the Sword of Frost before Kilgor does.Heroes IV
After the events of Armageddon's Blade and Heroes Chronicles, Gelu, who now wields the Armageddon's Blade and has been driven insane by it, embarks on a quest to destroy the Sword of Frost, which has been recovered by the Barbarian King, Kilgor. When the two weapons clash, it releases Armageddon upon the world that Heroes 1-3 were set on. Those that survived use a series of portals to evacuate to another world, Axeoth, which leads into the events of Heroes of Might and Magic IV. The RPG Might and Magic IX is also set on Axeoth, but a different continent.IV, much like Armageddon's Blade, features standalone campaigns, one for each town. The Life campaign follows the efforts of the knight Lysander to preserve the nation he founded and rules when a usurper king emerges, claiming to be the last survivor of the Gryphonheart bloodline and igniting a civil war. The Might campaign centers around Warjak, a young barbarian and the son of Tarnum, as he tries to rally the barbarians and save them from extinction warring against one another (as well as concluding the story of Heroes Chronicles). The Order campaign chronicles the journey of Emilia Nighthaven as she rises from being a peasant to becoming a sorceress-queen, and eventually fights a war to stop a Knight Templar from controlling the wills of every creature in the world. The Preserve campaign tells the tale of Elwin and Shaera, a love story with an Elvish civil war when the druid protagonist, Elwin, rebels against the elven lord who has mind-controlled his lover Shaera into marrying him. The Chaos campaign explores the adventures of Tawni Balfour, a pirate who rises from inheriting her father's ship to becoming a Pirate Queen of an entire ocean. And finally, the Death campaign tells the tale of Gauldoth Half-Dead, a half-dead man forced to play savior of the world after he becomes the lord of an undead kingdom, only to find that the God of Death that manipulated the Armageddon that struck the previous world has similar plans for this new world.
There are two expansion packs, which feature even more heroes' tales, and these expansion packs have a Grand Finale scenarios for each pack, uniting the heroes of each scenarios for one last bang. The first expansion, The Gathering Storm, tells the story of five heroes who are each masters of opposite forces who must work together to stop a mad wizard named Hexis. The second, Winds of War, involves five rulers who each want to conquer the human kingdom of Channon for their own purpose, opening a six-way war between every faction. The original six heroes didn't get such Grand Finale, but a custom map made for the fifth game below features the closest thing you can get for it, although only Lysander, Emilia Nighthaven and Gauldoth Half-Dead (and characters from those scenarios) are present.
Heroes V
When the series was bought by Ubisoft, it was moved to a new world called Ashan and the previous continuity was erased. As for the plot of V; the demon's ruler, only known as the Demon Sovereign, was defeated and imprisoned by an alliance of the good races with the humans at the helm ages ago. At the opening of the game, the current King, Nicolai (not the one from the previous games), is about to marry Lady Isabel when demons crash the wedding and begin to invade the country. This leads into a set of six sequential campaigns, one for each faction. Over the course of the story, Nicolai is killed and Isabel is named Queen. However, she is later dragged to Sheogh and replaced with a demonic imposter.The first expansion pack, Hammers of Fate, continues the fallout from the previous campaign, as the demon posing as Isabel stirs up a violent army known as the rebels, or Red Haven, and continues a war campaign that crosses paths with the once-neutral dwarves. This indirectly leads into Tribes of the East, the second expansion pack. The orcs, human-demon hybrids that are used as slaves, have begun a rebellion against their masters, which draws the attention of "Isabel". Ultimately, this leads to the demons' defeat as the real Isabel returns to slay her imposter. With that, she passes her crown to her ally Freyda and declares the Griffin Empire to be no more, beginning the Unicorn Empire.
