Video Game / Horn of the Abyss

Horn of the Abyss is a Game Mod for Heroes of Might and Magic III aiming to act as a third expansion pack, with high quality and a feel of consistency with the main game. It has been in development since 2008 and was first publicly released in 2014. It also updates the software to allow computers from past the Turn of the Millennium to play the game. Its major features are as follows:

• Cove, a piratical town based on the island nation of Regna. It employs a variety of sailors and nautical monsters in its ranks, and favours aggressive strategies. It also comes with a new war machine, the Cannon, which acts as a stronger but more expensive Ballista that can also target enemy walls.
• Factory, a reimagining of the scrapped Forge town, this time themed around Cattle Punk instead of sci-fi. They have a mix of wasteland dwelling creatures and steampunk machines in their lineup. Uniquely, they have access to two tier 7 units, both of which can be built in the same town.
• New terrain types: Highlands; a verdant grassland that acts as the new native terrain for Conflux^note Which also subtly nerfs them, since they no longer benefit from the very common Grass terrain, and Wasteland; a sunbaked desert that originally appeared in Heroes II and is Factory's native terrain.
• Tons and tons of new map objects, including things for the new terrain types but also new objects for existing terrain. Water objects in particular have been greatly expanded, and now feature a bunch of aquatic counterparts to common land interactables.
• Allows the creation of even bigger maps than Extra Large (XL). Sizes added are: Huge, Extra Huge and Giant.
• Fully-realized campaigns with animatics that serve to introduce the new towns and tell the story of the mod's eponymous Artifact of Doom.

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This video game provides examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: The names of Cove's heroes include strange fantasy names like Zilare and Eovacius, but also perfectly mundane ones like Anabel, Derek, and Jeremy. The lattermost of those is even The Hero of the Cove campaigns. Factory is even more extreme, with heroes like Tancred and Floribert alongside Henrietta, Frederick, Sam, and Todd (with Henrietta being the main The Hero of the Factory campaign).
• Artifact of Doom: There are increasing hints as the campaigns progress that the eponymous Horn of the Abyss has a deleterious effect on the morals and perhaps sanity of its wielder. Beyond that its mechanical power (it is indicated to have more not represented in gameplay) is supremely creepy, allowing strange tentacled beings with powerful mental abilities called Fangarms to rise from the corpses of slain beings.
• Anti-Frustration Feature: Navigation, a skill that increases the hero's movement while sailing in the sea, is banned from being learned in non-water maps to avoid potentially learning an useless skill. In addition, the three heroes that starts with the Navigation skill, Sylvia the Knight, Voy the Witch, and Elmore the Captain, are banned in non-water maps and are replaced by three different heroes, Beatrice, Kinkeria, and Derek, respectively.
• Balance Buff: Horn of the Abyss has multiple quality-of-life changes and buffs to underpowered heroes, skills, and creatures. Some of the major buffs include allowing Magogs to aim where their fireballs at a specific location instead of a creature (previously, it was hard to get max value and you could often hit your own units), doubling the money Estates generates and almost tripling the Spell Point bonus from Mysticism, making Inferno cheaper to build, and making the Cyclops Cave at the Stronghold much cheaper by removing its crystal cost (though the upgrade now requires crystal).
• Battle Couple: The Factory heroes Floribert and Victoria are revealed to be a couple in their bios. Victoria's field tests for her landmines provide many opportunities for Floribert to use his Combat Medic training.
• Beast of Battle: Ayssids and Sea Serpents are oceanic animals used by the Regnan military. Done more maliciously on Factory's side: Armadillos and Couatls were captured and are being bred specifically for war, while Sandworms were straight-up created. Their upgraded forms show the result of the intense breeding, with Crimson Couatls losing their beautiful rainbow plumage.
• Bilingual Bonus: Fangarm is a genuine word... in Danish, meaning tentacle.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Haspid isn't an obscure mythological creature, but rather a mistranslation of aspis, the Latin word for viper. The same is probably also responsible for the bizarrely-named Ayssid.
• Cattle Punk: A major part of the aesthetic of the Factory, with a Jules Verne lean.
• Combat Medic: Mechanics serve as a field medic for Factory's mechanical creatures. Despite packing a flamethrower, they're quite pathetic as attackers. However, they have the ability to repair and even resurrect friendly mechanical creatures (namely Automatons and Dreadnoughts), which is rather powerful for a tier 2. They're the cornerstone of Factory's early game, letting you easily take neutrals without losses.
• Continuity Nod: Quite a few. Many map objects are inspired by Heroes II, up to the Wasteland terrain being an addition and a design aspect of Factory being carrying over things and themes lost from the Heroes II Wizard town in the transition to the Heroes III Tower (a bit like Conflux did for Sorceress/Rampart), and the campaigns are littered with references to places and things from the roleplaying games and events from the Heroes III campaigns (three of the campaigns take place roughly concurrently with the Armageddon's Blade campaigns, while the fourth starts out a bit before Shadow of Death but in the same area that the eponymous campaign of Armageddon's Blade focused on, and ends in the same area at the same time as the eponymous campaign). The Cove itself is contextualized as a town associated with Regna, a nation referred to multiple times throughout Heroes and Might & Magic and seen in Might & Magic VIII.
• Critical Failure: Introduced in the mod, negative luck gives a creature a chance to fumble their attack and deal half of the damage than they would have inflicted normally.
• Cthulhumanoid: Fangarms, which look like little Cthulhus. Their primary purpose is being summoned by the titular Horn of the Abyss, although they can be recruited from a Ziggurat if you find one.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Averted. Cannons (already established in Heroes through cinematics and battle map details) are present as a new kind of war machine, the Cove has pistol-wielding pirates, and the Factory has riflemen.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Satyrs are a neutral creature. They can cast Mirth on an ally to boost their Morale, just like their appearance in Heroes IV.
• Feathered Dragons: The Couatl of the Factory are this, apparently related somehow to the Couatl of Might and Magic VIII. They still evoke the cultural associations of Feathered Serpents (their upgraded form has a helmet shaped after Mesoamerican statuary, for example), but are shaped like a dragon covered in feathers and with avian wings instead of a serpent with avian wings.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: Mechanics and Engineers carry a flamethrower, giving them a piercing breath attack like many dragons have. This is a nod to the scrapped Forge town's Pyromaniacs, who likewise would've used flamethrowers.
• Glass Cannon:
  • The Cove faction is generally this with its Tier 1-5 units, none of them having over 35 HP and having low Defense, generally relying on unique abilities or dishing out damage rather than taking it. Nixes and Sea Serpents, however, make up for this by being much tougher to kill (though the Haspid has relatively low Defense skill for an upgraded Tier 7 unit, it has 300 HP). The Cove's Might hero, the Captain, also leans more towards Attack skill rather than Defense.
  • Gunslingers and Bounty Hunters only have 45 HP, the second-lowest of any tier 6 creature (with the lowest, Enchanters, having some extremely broken abilities). They're also incredibly powerful shooters with an innate deterrence against enemy shooters with their Quick Draw special, however they fold to damaging spells.
• Instant Death Bullet: Sea Dogs, which are the special double-upgraded version of the Cove's Pirates, have the ability Accurate Shot, which gives them a chance to One-Hit Kill the top unit of an enemy stack after shooting them. The chance scales based on the unit's health compared to the number of Sea Dogs firing, but a lucky enough roll means that a single Sea Dog could instantly kill an entire Azure Dragon in one shot.
• Lightning Gun: Factory's Grail building is the Lightning Rod, which appears as a massive metal spire rising out of a canyon with an electrified ball on top. It strikes all enemies with lightning at the start of every combat.
• Lizard Folk: The Nixes found in the Cove appear to be a sea-dwelling relative of the Lizardmen found in the Tatalian Fortress, although their origins are never explained except that they had been thought extinct for a long time.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Factory is uniquely split into two "sub-factions" - the wasteland Halflings, Armadillos, Sand Worms, and Couatls, and the technological Mechanics, Automatons, Gunslingers, and Dreadnoughts. The town is arranged in a way where it's most economically viable to focus on one path rather than build all eight. The payoff is they have access to two tier 7 units and can eventually build both in one town.
• Mini-Mecha: Factory's second tier 7 is the Dreadnought/Juggernaut, a bulky mechanical humanoid that can fire a scorching laser. Looking at Factory's grail puzzle map, Dreadnoughts appear to be roughly the size of a small building.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Couatls are generally associated with jungles, but are placed in the desert Factory town. Justified by the campaign, which explains how the Factory captured Couatls from their natural habitat and are breeding them for war.
• Mythology Gag: One of the random names that Factory towns can spawn with is New Dolere. This is in reference to the one surviving screenshot of the scrapped Forge town that Factory is inspired by, which had the placeholder name Dolere (one of the names that Strongholds can have).
• Nerf: Several notable ones:
  • Intelligence and Logistics are much less powerful, making them less no-brainer skills to pick up.
  • The effectiveness of Necromancy has been halved across the board (except for the Necropolis's Grail structure), meaning Necropolis is much less unbeatable in the lategame.
  • The Resistance skill is removed^note in practice. It still exists as a skill, but it will not be offered at level-up, from scholars or Witch Huts, and Resistance-boosting artifacts do not randomly spawn, so it can be used in custom maps but will otherwise not be present and replaced by Interference, which lowers an enemy hero's Spell Power rather than granting a chance to negate incoming spells. As a result, Thorgrim (who specializes in Resistance) is banned by default and replaced by Giselle.
  • The game-breaking mobility spells Dimension Door and Town Portal will no longer show up in Mage Guilds until you've researched their respective tiers three times, pouring tonnes of resources into them first.
  • The overpowered heroes Sir Mullich and Galthran are banned by default, replaced with Lord Haart and returning Heroes II character Ranloo.
  • Conflux was hit hard, including making Psychic/Magic Elementals more expensive, making Firebirds only 50% fire resistant instead of fire immune (Phoenixes are unchanged), changing their native terrain from Grass to the uncommon Highlands, locking the upgraded Magic Lantern behind the Garden of Life to make Sprites slower and more costly to obtain, lowering Firebird/Phoenix growth from 2 to 1 (although with the new Vault of Ashes this can be increased by 1 for a total of 3 with Castle, down from 4) and limiting their Grail to only give spells that Conflux can naturally learn and only up to the level of their Mage Guild.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Steel Golems were added in the Wasteland update as a replacement for Iron Golems in the Experimental Shop. It was discovered that Iron Golems could be kited with Harpy Hags, allowing anyone with a Dungeon and enough patience to gain up to four Giants very early while losing no Harpy Hags. Steel Golems have higher speed than Iron Golems, making this impossible^note it was done as a separate creature to avoid buffing the Tower lineup solely for this one specific edge case, helped by Steel Golems being a Heroes II nod.
• Outcast Refuge: Factory is home to heroes from many different factions who were outcast for one reason or another. A druid who lost their grove, a gremlin who didn't want to be a Servant Race anymore, and lots of mages and warlocks who were shunned for rejecting magic in favour of "unnatural" science.
• Quick Draw: The special ability of the Factory's Gunslinger/Bounty Hunter creatures. When they're targeted by a shooter each round, they pull out a pistol and fire at their attacker before the enemy has a chance to shoot. Gunslingers do it once per turn, while Bounty Hunters can do it an unlimited number of times. However, the ability doesn't work against ranged units with Herd Hitting Attacks, like Liches/Power Liches and Magogs.
• Sand Worm: Factory's tier 5 creature, which can burrow underground for a form of Not Quite Flight ^note They cannot burrow into certain terrain types, such as ships or Magic Clouds; on those terrain types, they function like ground units and eat corpses they emerge under. Their upgraded form is the Olgoi-Khorkhoi, better known as the Mongolian death worm.
• Science Fantasy: The campaigns, especially the Factory campaign, makes the setting's Science Fantasy aspect much more apparent, generally focused on returning Might and Magic III/VII character Kastore. It avoids direct gameplay representation, however, so it is limited to just the campaigns.
• Sea Serpents: The Cove's level 7 creature, the Sea Serpent/Haspid, is a classic example, a giant serpentine sea-dwelling being, based on the Sea Serpent line of monsters seen in Might & Magic VI.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: Automatons detonate upon death, damaging everything around them. You have to prime their detonation first, which is free to do and doesn't cost an action but can't be turned off once it's been activated.
• Shout-Out: Bertram's intro dialogue in the mission "Deus ex Machina" has a stealthy recreation of Morshu's much-parodied "Lamp oil? Rope? Bombs? You want it? It's all yours, my friend." dialogue from Link: The Faces of Evil.^{Full quote}Lamp oil that burns brighter than any candle—just a cup of it will keep your home lit all night. Rope woven from the finest unicorn hair, with a core of pure spider silk, that can keep even a black dragon at bay. Bombs that can tear up rock in your mines or turn hordes of your enemies into so much mush. You want it? It's all yours, my friend. As are hundreds of other items offered by the Merchant Guild of Alvar!
• Spider Tank: Factory's tier 4 creature, the Automaton, is a six-legged mech that's powered by steam.
• Sword and Gun: The Pirate unit (and its upgraded forms) wields this, reflected in that they have the special ability of no hand-to-hand penalty.
• Treacherous Questgiver: The protagonists Jeremy, Bidley and Casmetra spend most of the second campaign searching for the Horn of the Abyss, soon joined by the Nix hero Tark. When they reach the Horn, Casmetra, the one who had pushed the most for the hunt and provided the most information (some leading to quests in their own rights, other allowing the hunt to proceed), claims the Horn for herself and backstabs the others.
• Where It All Began: The Factory campaign begins and ends in Eeofol. The first mission begins just after the Night of Shooting Stars, when the Kreegans arrived, and centers on Henrietta and Frederick taking the lead on the flight from Eeofol in the face of overwhelming force. The last mission is set during the last few missions of the Armageddon's Blade campaign, and has Henrietta lead a force to take advantage of the devils being weakened and distracted to push them out from at least part of the halfling homeland.

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