August 7th, 2007 Foreword I always wanted to develop a campaign for Myth. For many years I could not enjoy a good internet connection for a decent online play, so then only mapmaking has been keeping up my interest in this game. In 2001 I started with an ambitious project: writing the plot for a wannabe sequel to Myth, to be released in a 18 map pack (likely to be published on the Mill on three separate plugins). I wrote a timeline with the mains events, I planned the missions and their titles and I refined several characters. At that time I was pretty confident about my abilities, however I did not know how I was wrong. Making something for real is not so easy, especially if you have not enough time to spend and if you are the only one who carries on the initiative. I eventually found myself toying with a bunch of sparse ideas, and a local folder filled with stuff. Since I had little or no contacts with the Myth community, the progress of the project relied only on me. My commitment to the project started then to dwindle, for I could hardly see an end to it. After a major set back, two years ago, I chanced to come back to my tags, retouching my custom units, or refinishing my old colormaps, having a fun with my half scripted missions . In matter of facts, my engagement ended up shifting from grand design to minor fixing. Lately, I read again my notes and I realized the very storyline itself needed to be reduced in scale and scope, as well as some serious fixes... I was really on a dead end, and I was to give up! Then MWC 07 arrived. And a few things have changed for me. For the first time ever I was able and interact with mythers and dedicated mapmakers outside ingame chat. Interestingly, by playing the tourney, I have found a way to get in touch with the right people to share and discuss my stuff, and the right places where to show it. I am pretty confident some guys will eventually see some potential in what I have done so far, and they likely give a hand. Assuming this perspective I have come up with the decision to upload all my rough materials here at hl.uogs.net. I am providing everything in a way to make it easy to handle: the original colormaps, the background story, the unit tagsets and a bit of pregame art (music, a new myth worldmap and so on) are being brought to you separately. What I have got so far is enough for developing four solo levels. These levels now have been reworked and redesigned in order to become the core of a short single player campaign. In all due honesty I think I am not going to see the end of this project (at least as it was originally conceived)... but with some little help, who knows... If you are willing to join the fun, you are welcome. Download my stuff and help yourself then! From the original project, to the current campaign: I think a word or two should be spent on the development of the scenario and the background story. I've been working on the storyline of this campaign for long. Very long. Besides, I've been always interested more in crafting out a good plot and in the creative side of storytelling rather than in mapmaking itself. It took me few weeks to write down a first draft of the campaign. Fixing it and then, *resizing* its scope has proven to be a whole different matter. In particular getting to a shortened version of the story has been far more difficult than expected, it has been also more "distracting" than an hobby could ever be. Anyways, after countless revisions, and painful cuts, I have come up with something I am really happy with. Before moving to it, I would just like to let you have a glimpse of how it originally looked like... "The Avatara" The campaign draws its origins back to my first project codenamed "The Avatara". The Avatara was meant to focus on the hopeless fight for survival a millenium after the war against soulblighter. Unlike Myth II, I wanted to convey the idea that men were the main responsible for their own destruction. Despite the presence of several villains, evil did not show up through an incarnation (= leveler) nor it is set in motion by its own will; rather it acts as a powerful ally, everyone strives for it. In our case it is difficult to say who the bad guys and the good guys really are. Nonetheless two main parties can be highlighted: on the one hand we have people who seek power by whatever means (such as the help of a fallen lord). On the other hand we have the Exiled kin, people willing to stand free even if this means staying by the side of the weak and facing scorn and defeat. The setting had to be darker than in Myth. Picture yourself the mission from Myth III, rod of the callieach - the Province has been reduced to a wasteland, rotten corpses and blackened ruins are laying everywhere; just an handful of settlements spared by war. The "nicer" guys are just desperate: rather than winning, it looks like they are trying to find a proper place for a heroic last stand. The original plot developed on in a quite complicate way though. Let's suffice to say that the core of the narration focused on the hard struggle between the King of Muirthemne and the Exiled Kin. At the beginning of the campaign the King of Muirthemne was concerned in the complete extermination of the Exiled and he was organizing a strike attack with the help of his unreliable Fallen allies, the Watcher and the Voiceless One. The turning point in the story had to be the entrance of a young avatara who would eventually bring the Voiceless One to the side of the Exiled. A few Characters from "the Avatara" The plot was crowded with several primary and secondary characters. Most of them have been discarded, but some clues about them survive in the string list, some other characters have been recycled, though they play different roles now. This paragraph is perhaps unnecessary, however I think a few old ideas are still worth mentioning. I imagined the rise of an usurper to the throne of Llancarfan, the so called King of Muirthemne. The King of Muirthemne had been a valiant general and the emperor's most trusted friend. For unexplained reasons he managed to overthrow the emperor and to slaughter all the remaining pretenders. In order to crush every resistance and defend his power, the King of Muirthemne forged an unholy alliance with two ancient evils: the Watcher and the Voiceless One. With the support of their armies of undead and beasts, the King has laid waste to the entire Province. Muirthemne itself has become a decaying city, half deserted by internal strife. On the opposite side there are the Exiled Kin, a spare collection of homeless soldiers and castaways. They had to leave the dryland and find safety into the sea from their enemies. They support actively everyone who is fighting the King of Muirthemne, so far they have been almost unsuccessful in their attempts... or just too unfortunate. Among their leaders there are several strong individuals. In particular, Noa, a young lady, is the last surviving member of the Emperor's family. Her claims to the throne of the Cath Bruigh have eventually reached the King himself and started to worry him. Speaking of fallen lords, I've been toying with several characters from myth I and myth II. As for the Watcher, I've been exploring his connection with shade Phelot, and the way he could have survived. (I developed my own theory, the Watcher used necromancy to transfer his soul into his sword- see Myth I). As for the Voiceless One, it was like designing a completely new character starting out from nothing but a name. I developed for him a complex backstory: according to my concept design The Voiceless One was a renegade Callieach, the only one to have survived the extinction of his race. The story about the last Callieach had to be used in several ways: as a description of his outstanding magic skills and his inhuman looking, as a way to strongly characterize him as ancient evil. Somewhere in my user uploads you find a picture where the Voiceless One is portrayed. The Voiceless One was originally meant to play an important role in the balance of fight: he wanted to revive on of his relatives through necromancy. Despite his skills, he could not achieve nothing but freezing her body. So he turned on the Watcher for help. He eventually participated the Great War, for the Watcher had shown alliegiance to Balor, and Balor knew the way to bind the Voiceless One to himself. A few cameos for some secondary characters were also planned: Cu'Roi returning as shade, shade Sycorax fighting both for the light and the dark, warlock hero Seanshaid. Despite my attempts to erase any trace of the previous plot, there's probably something left in my plugins for your own curiosity. Ok, that's it!