Talk:Lost Lore

Extra "Nether Gods" stories

Would "The Inferno", "The Rampart", "Rumors from the Court" and "Parallel world" also fit here?

• Not sure - what are those? --Legate (talk) 13:00, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
• Parallel World I didn't know where to place, as it wasn't directly related to any topic back when I added those. Inferno and Rampart are kind of dry, just explanations of the factions. More mechanical than lore-related IMO. Rumors, I forgot what it was about. --Turnam (talk) 13:37, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
• I mean - Are these short stories? Do you have the text of the stories or a link to them? Do you know who wrote them? I haven't seen any pages on the wiki yet that refer to these? --Legate (talk) 17:28, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Very interesting! The style of these stories seem to closely match what is already in Lost Lore. If we can trace their origin back to some official employee, we should definitely add them here! How did you come across these? --Legate (talk) 19:39, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
    • They're just more of the "Nether Gods" stories. They can now be found on the bad f*ndom wiki. --Turnam (talk) 17:19, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
    • Nice. The intro makes a reference to different colored text implying commentary by...probably Marcus Finch? Did the other site have anything like that? --Legate (talk) 18:52, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
    • If you are referring to the other wiki, yes. I just checked their page related to the "Kreegan reference" and they used a darker shade of blue to not get it mixed up with the links. I don't think that would solve the problem here though; the links automatically turn darker once you click on them, right? If viable, perhaps something in the middle?
    • Plus, the user Turnam summed it up pretty well, then went ahead and ported everything nice and tidy; but I have no idea who wrote them or whether they should be in this section. I don't where the references for the stories we currently have in store come from. Though I think their addition might be worthwhile: "Parallel world" opens up a whole another realm of possibilities, "Rumors from the Court" sheds a bit more light on the background events (I find the Overlord dominion thing there particularly interesting) and even "the Inferno" confirms that the familiars deal with dimensional rifts. So, maybe we could add something like "..., mechanics-related..." into the explanation here and get them? If there are no information about them whatsoever, perhaps we could link to another page and put a warning up front?

Here are the texts: (moved to appropriate pages)

Other stories that may fit

I found a few stories originally written by Bard Tannim (in a Polish translation). I wasn't able to locate the english source, even using the web archive - I suspect it may be lost to time.

Link to the stories: Zaginiona Księga (eng.: The Lost Book) - Csaros (talk)

• Several of these are stories from the H3 manuals (and are already included on their various pages). We should go through the rest and see if they belong on the wiki! Likely they don't belong with lost lore...at least in my mind Lost Lore is fan-fiction written by official employees. Somewhere between Bob's random heroes 3 internet story and lore officially included in the game. --Legate (talk) 15:36, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Chronological order

Geography is several weeks after Tale from the Swamps, and Kreegan Reference takes place some unspecified time after Tale. However, it is also highly likely that Geography also takes place before Kreegan Reference.

The latter is in August 1164, and during that time Sir Christian was apparently already marooned on the Regnan Isles. Hurry Up and Wait starts in September or October 1164 at the latest. [This can be inferred from the following: the scenario takes place on an island "just off Enroth", and features a four-month wait for Catherine, who set sail from Enroth to Erathia in very late December 1164 or early January 1165 (five months before 11 June), then voyaging to Erathia for seven weeks, picking up Sir Christian from that island along the way. Given that the island is near Enroth, she apparently picked him up somewhere during the start of her voyage.] And before that, there are three scenarios depicting Christian's adventures on the isles, also with some time between the two.

So, Christian most probably couldn't have consulted Finch on Erathian geography around August 1164. This means that Tale takes place at least several months before Kreegan Reference, with Geography falling in-between, and closer to Tale. This fits, as while Xanthor references the Stillbog adventure in Kreegan Reference, he doesn't specify the time between the two stories.

Tale is also chronologically the first story, except those marked "0", whose timing is vague. It and Geography also take place no earlier than 1162, as the order of Baa is already around.

I've rearranged the numbers accordingly, also adjusting some other things in the table. --XEL (talk) 00:44, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

• The numbering also included "The Wider Story" section, so we have some duplicate numbers at the moment. Probably worth adding a note to this effect when fixing the numbers. --Legate (talk) 01:47, 11 August 2025 (UTC)
  • Oops, indeed. I'll readjust it soon. --XEL (talk) 01:53, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Authorship

I am positive that all the pre-release RoE stories were written by Christian Vanover. "The tales of Xanthor that were posted on our community forums", in context, doesn't appear to mean "the texts that are from Xanthor's perspective", but rather this is Christian summing it up for brevity. Such a generalization makes sense, as Xanthor is a central character in this collective body of work anyway. Moreover, he says "it was fun to craft each new chapter", which wouldn't make sense if he was the author of only the stories explicitly from Xanthor's perspective, and just the wording itself does sound like he was the man behind them all. Plus all these texts do have similar writing style throughout.

Given all of the above, I think it's safe to list all these stories as being from him until proven otherwise. --XEL (talk) 00:45, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Still Lost

I think we've yet to find all the texts. A fairly common misconception is that they were "published on the Nether Gods fansite". In reality, they were officially posted on the 3DO forums, with Nether Gods merely rehosting them. This was a good thing in the long run, as the forums don't seem to be archived anywhere, while Nether Gods is on Wayback Machine. However, clearly not all the stories were rehosted there, with History of Erathia being found elsewhere. So there is a possibility that some texts are still lost.

...In fact, there is the elusive Zoological Accounts from Xanthor. What else could it be than a missing short story from the forums?

It would be good to talk to Christian on the matter. --XEL (talk) 00:45, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

• Agreed. I looked all over for any other reference to the "Zoological Accounts" a while back, but I came up dry. --Legate (talk) 01:47, 11 August 2025 (UTC)