Editing Jennifer Bullard/Acid Cave Interview (section)

== [[Heroes Chronicles]] ==

Q: Gods and [[Ancients]] - How are [[Ancestors]] and [[Ancients]] related?

A: [[Ancestors]] were the biological start of the current crop of heroes. [[Ancients]] were often other powers who dabbled in the lives of mortals.


Q: We all remember the [[Ancestors]] from [[Heroes Chronicles]] as these super-natural beings. This was rather new to the Might & Magic games, where generally we met no other god-like creatures. Many times religions and "gods" in M&M were later revealed to be connected with the [[Ancients]] - the futuristic advanced race which "seeded" the worlds many centuries ago. So were the [[Ancestors]] just these god-like entities or were they somehow connected to the [[Ancients]] and their Guardians from the main M&M storyline? Did they exist in the Might and Magic universe before [[Heroes Chronicles]] were written or are they a new element (and if so - who was their author)? Were gods more powerful than the [[Ancients]] or less? How much was [[Jon Van Caneghem]] involved in creating the storyline?

A: Think of the [[Ancestors]] as super powerful [[human|humans]] who have become legends to their descendants. Many people can view their ancestors as god-like, having done something truly heroic. Those are what the [[Ancestors]] were - people who went above and beyond with extraordinary skill and talent to do great things. They had never been written into the Might & Magic Universe before the [[Heroes Chronicles]]. The "Gods" were more powerful than the [[Ancients]]. [[Jon Van Caneghem]] was not involved in the [[Heroes Chronicles]] series - In fact I did a majority of the work myself.


Q: Until this day some fans are not sure on the subject of how the [[Heroes Chronicles]] fit in the general Might & Magic storyline. Some of them are even finding references which may not exist. So did you write [[Heroes Chronicles]] more like a stand-alone story of the immortal hero [[Tarnum]] or was it meant mostly to expand the history of the lands and worlds of other Might & Magic games and if so - which ones? Did you reference elements from the M&M RPGs or just included some characters from Heroes III?

A: The [[Heroes Chronicles]] were meant to be more stand-alone than anything. Honestly, it was marketing who had the greatest hand in driving the products. We were slipping on Heroes IV and they wanted our fan base to have more maps to play. So I was asked to create 8 campaigns that could stand alone and be played in any order, without any reference to each other or the other products in development. So we created a series of titles that could do just that. Each original story & maps was written by one level designer and then I cleaned and polished them until ship. Each one was supposed to take place in 'the distant past' and we didn't create a specific order to their events.