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and now, the story of the undead

Necromancy was kept secret by the imperial authorities; all knowledge was stored in the Black Archive beneath the Imperial Palace.

Emperor Radas III contracted the plague; by that time, a large part of the capital's inhabitants had already perished, and the coastal citadels were completely deserted (magic was respected in the empire, and all the inhabitants of the center were mages or people with increased magical power). The magical surveillance systems sent a warning to the capital about the approaching demon fleet. Radas decided to take extreme measures – to become a lich and raise an army of the dead, which he succeeded in doing. Now he was known as Radas the Last.
When the demons were destroyed, Radas realized that he had lost his empire – his subjects were bone puppets, and living people would not recognize him. Then, the army of the dead stood guard over the imperial lands, and Radas himself shut himself up in his palace.

Fifty years later, a group of Nord heroes gathered an army to destroy the blasphemous king-necromancer. Their army defeated the undead, and the heroes defeated the lich, but before he died, he cursed them.
The lands of the undead became the domain of the heroes; their Clans settled in the abandoned imperial cities. After a few years, all the heroes fell ill with an unknown disease and, after death, turned into higher vampires.

Now, 3 first-blood vampires have survived – these are the higher lords.
From them come the second-blood vampires – death knights and necromancers.
The third-blood vampires include the Nosferatu outcasts – powerful infantry.

Ideas
The undead can control living people – the vampire lords remained true to their oaths and continued to take care of their Clans.

Liches may differ from those in the West – the fact is that the lich elixir is made on the basis of Namtaru poison, while in the East, it is made according to Shantirian formulas (I remind you that the Shantirians walled up Namtaru's mother in a fortress and placed Nagas to clean out the evil forces with a magical staff)

Cool. I wouldn't say I liked everything or that it's all good. But it's definitely clear that the author spent a lot of time and effort thinking through the setting. In short, this is all subjective and just my opinion, but I have one question. Why tie your lore to Ashan? Yes, of course, coming up with all of this so that it can fit into the existing lore is an interesting task. And the author has done a good job with it. But everything the author comes up with is completely different from Ashan. Yes, technically, it could have happened within the existing lore, but it creates a completely different impression than Ashan. There's a feeling that it's from a different opera. Therefore, the question is, why limit yourself to the framework of an existing work? Why write fan fiction when you can write original content? If the thought arises, "how will the players perceive this?" then you can just ignore it. If you're not going to make a story campaign, then the players basically don't care what exactly you came up with. Only about 20% of the total audience will delve into the details, and they are more likely to appreciate that you have an original world, not fan fiction. And in general, in my opinion, Ashan is a rather cliché fantasy world. And towards the end, it's also spiced up with "relevant" problems of orc discrimination. Let its fans forgive me, but in fact, Ashan is not remarkable in any way. Everything that is there has already been somewhere else. The plots are also cliché. There is always a main bad guy against whom everyone unites. And it seems to me that Ubisoft made a huge mistake by starting the development of games in the franchise by hiring a team that, instead of doing really useful things, came up with all this nonsense, like dragon gods and demons. Such behavior is forgivable for fanfic writers, but not for serious people. That is, I want to say that there are a lot of really useful things that could have been done instead of inventing a "deep mythology" that is difficult to distinguish from any other cliché fantasy. Judging by the leaks from Nival and Limbek, it was this kind of attitude of the production group that greatly hindered the work. Just look at their epic with names. If you've ever delved into the files of Heroes 5 and wondered why the hero's file has one name, the script name is different, and in the game he is called a third name. This is because of Ubisoft. After all, choosing the perfect name for a hero is so important that they changed it every week. Detailed work on the plot and lore would make sense if the plot and lore of the new Heroes were on the level of Game of Thrones. But there is nothing even close to that. Nothing particularly outstanding. Not bad, just ordinary and banal. It'll be okay, I guess. And in general, the plot in Heroes is not the most important thing. Therefore, my opinion is, forget about Ashan and come up with your own world. Maybe you'll even do better. And it will definitely not be worse. Of course, if you want it to be interesting to other people, you need to create some photo/video materials. Just text is not very exciting.

Perhaps I agree with Zakhar.

Actually, yes, I've read about your ideas, [email protected], and secretly felt quite glad that many of them are fully compatible with my own original world, traces of which I left on the forum (though it was in the section dedicated to FRPGs). I didn't dare speak up so as not to intrude unnecessarily on someone else's project, but zahar0z convinced me otherwise; better to just say it.

Here is the main thread.
And overall, the section is dedicated to this little world.

I am ready to propose joint lore development based on all this (not necessarily the lore of this specific world, since much has already been written there, but specifically *based* on it). If you're interested.

Briefly regarding what this nonsense is: well, it's fantasy with elements of Victorianism, and a long time ago I dreamed of porting it to the engine of the fifth game. The time period is the beginning of the 20th century for the more technically advanced Factions, the Renaissance for those more magically inclined, and as for the savages, obviously, everything is savage (although savages such as orcs, goblins, and giants usually don't unite into specific Factions, unless they are individual "civilized" specimens who were raised in more technically advanced countries and adopted their culture).

I also consider an advantage of this world to be the presence of pagans—quite a lot of them—but it's not universal paganism; there are more "normal" religions too. And there are none of those currently fashionable things like a canonized myth of the creation of the world; meaning the system here is much more flexible, everyone believes in their own thing, and the conflict isn't reduced to a couple of dragon-gods having a scrap and everything revolving around that.

I mostly abandoned it because I couldn't resolve (and couldn't even imagine how to solve) problems with the game mechanics, as there are many things I dislike in the combat engine of the fifth game. In particular, these are counterattacks (although this point could be solved somewhat clumsily by giving everyone universal retaliation, though that would break "infinite retaliation," which is also bad; in exceptional cases, heavy-class creatures with retaliation are still desirable), and the inability to limit the range of shooting and magic for creatures, as a result of which the tactical component suffers greatly.

My hopes were partially tied to Heroes VII, thinking that surely *there* all this could be implemented. But time passed, no one plays or mods the seventh game anymore (including me), and it seems the limitations there are roughly the same, so...

However, a maximum goal is one thing, and world-building assets are another. And here, perhaps, I can be useful, as I had even thought through creature lines along with full faction concepts and all that.

Until the thread author arrives, I'll slowly put the details under a spoiler, and then we'll see if any of this is needed. Objectively speaking, most likely not, but a bout of graphomania is a bout of graphomania.

More details on what I once planned

World Information

A rough map looks approximately like this:



The basis of the conflict for adaptation to Heroes V:
1) Roughly at the start of the narrative, the major powers became aware of the Wild Ocean and the continent of Sarantoda, and the potential it holds. A race begins to see who can develop these new lands the fastest.
2) The continents of Western and Eastern Petaloda have formally already been divided some time ago, however, not everyone is satisfied with the current balance of power there. Accordingly, colonial wars are ready to flare up at any moment. A separate problem is the local population: orcs, goblins, and giants. Orcs and goblins are partially civilized and join the ranks of the invading countries, but not all; there are enough reactionary tribes who do not need progress (which is being very crudely imposed) and are ready to tear apart both the occupiers and each other at every opportunity. Sometimes literally; cannibalism is honored among them. Giants are a separate headache, as their intelligence level is very low even by the standards of their other wild brethren; they are simply incapable of living in society.
3) In the Old World (Pheron and Salinkari), not everything is fine, as old conflicts haven't gone anywhere. For instance, the Forge of Life, a source of immense and mysterious magic in northern Salinkari, is still a tempting prize; it has changed hands many times between various peoples with access to the north, but in the end, it never remained in the hands of anyone specific. Now the lords of the dead are eyeing it—a sect of former wanderer mages who suddenly gained enormous influence and their own recently formed state.
4) Separatist sentiments are strong in some places. For example, the Yoru (local dark elves), although they have their own state, are currently under strong political influence from their Sylv relatives (local high elf knights, partially sylvan, the state of Tervert). This is due to a lost war; relatively recently roles were reversed and it was the Sylvs who were under the tyranny of a rather powerful empire of dark elves, which also united northern human Vikings, river elves, and several other peoples, but in the end Tervert took control of the mountains, and the coastal territories of the former Yoru empire went to local analogues of "Spaniards".

In general, all this is a kind of analogue to the real First World War. Humanoids, on one hand, have become much better at understanding how to kill their own kind, and on the other—how to protect their political ambitions by forming alliances; all this will lead to wars of previously unseen scales.

Regarding the game Factions:

1) Creats

Very heavily inspired by one of the factions in the game Rise of Legends. The Creat Empire is relatively homogeneous—its citizens are mainly the titular nation, and its power is built on colony resources (exploited in an absolutely brazen manner) and the most powerful engineering school in the world.
Creats, like all other humans, do not possess magic, but with the recent explosive growth of mechanical engineering and aeronautics, this no longer seems like a big problem for them.
Essentially, the faction line was planned (heh, if you can call it planning) based on an absolutely absurd number of flying units—these include airships, planes, and helicopters (designed similarly to Da Vinci's helicopters). Ground troops consist of various riflemen and grenadiers. The faction's combat style is extremely mobile but extremely fragile: fly in, bomb, shoot, and gain an advantage from that, but if the enemy isn't defeated quickly, then alas and ah. In a prolonged fight, Creats are mediocre fighters.

2) Dwarves

Representatives of the continent Pheron. Although Pheron is in the south, it represents a unique weather anomaly: there are few hot regions, and the highest mountain areas are very, very harsh. In ancient times, dwarves did not inhabit Pheron; their home continent was Salinkari, specifically the northern lands, so the settler dwarves took it as a good sign that they managed to find a place covered in snow, like their former homeland.
On Pheron, there actually live two slightly different dwarven nationalities (they have the same origin, but the timing of migration to the continent differed, so cultures vary), and halflings have also settled there.
Also, like humans, dwarves are technically advanced, but the historical reasons for this are different. The surface of many mountainous regions of Pheron is poorly suited for life; temperatures there are below zero year-round—few places like that still exist. However, in areas of volcanic activity, it is warm, but developing only the surface in such places is economically insufficiently profitable. Therefore, since ancient times, parallel to surface development, dwarves dug deep and became very proficient at it.
They had magic back then, but its level of development didn't make it an effective tool for construction (since magic in the world of Nero is primarily a science; if you don't study it in the smallest detail, you achieve nothing); it was easier to use crafting and their own hands. Moreover, the settler dwarves, due to their religion at the time, had already mastered working with iron, among the first in the world.
The dwarven combat line, according to my idea, consisted of
- tamed digger worms (a traditional combat unit, not particularly strong by modern standards, but these worms are very easy to breed and can be multiplied by the tens of thousands, as they simply eat dirt)
- shooters (one of whose upgrades are technomages, meaning they use magic to enhance the parameters of their rifles) and mechanized units
- a special line of cannons (practically stationary units, and I hoped that one of the grades would fire at moving targets, but of course, that's impossible to do)
- the coolest thing—self-propelled machines, one version of which becomes a mechanical dragon, a machine that dwarves created with a view toward earth dragons, the most terrifying and powerful inhabitants of Pheron's dungeons.

The characteristic of dwarven lines is their "brute force." They are the least prone to tricks and simply maximize the durability and damage of everything they create. I thought about making one of the upgrades berserkers (not for all creatures, but only those tied to living strength more than technology). It wasn't exactly the same idea as in the fifth game; here I thought that a human player simply wouldn't be able to control them, but because of this, berserkers would have even more serious stats than regular units. They wouldn't attack their own, though; that's also a poor mechanic. They would simply try to attack the nearest enemies and that's it.
Another feature is that they have no flyers, only "diggers"—combat units that essentially teleport by tunneling underground. When mechanically there's not much difference.

3) Dascalos

Local analogues of mages, the Dascalos are Greco-Romans. Historically, "Greeks" lived on the plains and specialized in air magic, while "Romans" lived in volcanic and mountainous terrain, where fire magic was honored. Fire magic in ancient times allowed these mages to rise very, very high through metalworking; they mastered iron roughly at the same time as the dwarves and began actively uniting scattered poleis, forming a state. Subsequently, an ideology of venerating the ancient teacher of mages, Dascalos, was established in this state; the cult of personality of this humanoid became so strong that the entire nation eventually bore his name.
Dascalos are the most academic of all mages; they constantly seek new ways to apply it, specifically creating golems based on a special technique of accumulating magical energy using special crystals.
Generally, the Dascalos are very similar to the mages of Ashan, except that the Indo-Arabic setting in their case is replaced by a Greco-Roman one, which, as is known, is much cooler.
The Dascalos combat line was supposed to represent an alternative of air and fire units, including
- legionnaires and hoplites (legionnaires have the fire element and their gimmick is better equipment and the ability to throw disposable fire spears at the enemy; hoplites are spearmen with a powerful ability to counterattack the enemy before they attack them, combined with a probability of knocking the enemy squad back with a blast of air)
- golems (based on air and fire magic respectively)
- djinn (air and fire-ifrit)
- battle mages themselves
- as well as cannons made via a mechanism similar to the golems. Mages saturate them with energy before the battle, and then in battle, these things fire at the enemy with a power that an ordinary battle mage is incapable of.

4) Sylvans

Elves with a knightly aesthetic, and the right kind—monotheistic faith included, along with many monastic orders. Not like in fantasy where any association of fanatics is called an "order," often not even based on religion—remember the so-called "Order of the Dragon" in Ashan. But not here; these are orders in the full sense of the word; they pray there, and periodically fight, as there is someone to fight.
Sylvans do not possess powerful engineering; they try to compete with the Dascalos in magic but cannot outdo them. And their former traditions no longer work in modern warfare.
But their real gimmick is that they are masters of tactics. Their innate abilities are earth magic and air magic. With earth, they strengthen their own bodies, create obstacles on the battlefield, and fortify their positions. They use air to manipulate enemy squads.
Their long-standing and still strong alliance with Ents deserves special mention—a wooden people, once "cursed" by a pagan goddess, but since then they converted to the true faith along with the Sylvans.
Sylvan units are swordsmen, archers (earth grade is armor-piercing, air is pushing), mounted knights (as well as knights on unicorns and pegasi as upgrades), ents, and traditional monk-druids (Cynics specializing in air magic, and Stoics who can reduce their speed to zero to increase their parameters, thus becoming an analogue of dwarven cannons for a time). All of them use magic in battle whenever possible, but do not forget to cover their bodies in armor, and use weapons based on outdated principles but with the most perfect technology (bows are enhanced by magic, metal for swords is not simple, etc.).

That's probably enough for the Factions for now; I wanted to mention some general things.

Important facts about the lore

All types of elves, dwarves, halflings, and mages (both Dascalos and other types) know how to use magic in this world.
Humans and troglodytes (meaning orcs, goblins, and giants) cannot.

Magic was planned to be elemental, like in "Avatar"—earth, water, fire, air. But not exactly.

Feature 1: in reality, the elements aren't elements at all, but rather a question of the state of matter. Earth is about everything solid/granular, water is about liquids, air is about gases, and fire is plasma and partially the control of high temperatures.

Feature 2: at the intersection of magics, a new magical school is born. Earth+water gives control over crystals, including ice. Water + fire gives electricity. Fire + air — light. Earth + air — darkness. Earth + fire — metal. Water + air — unknown which state of matter this combination is responsible for.
Spellcasters who are skilled in several elements usually begin to develop in these mixed schools of magic and gain very serious advantages over single-element users. Advanced healing techniques also belong to mixed schools (a humanoid organism can only be disinfected or given other basic treatments using water magic; to accelerate tissue regeneration and other serious things, one must master at least earth+water).

Dragons of this world are terrible monsters that remain something in the vein of "better not mess with them" even with modern technology. There is no question of dragons fighting in regular armies, as they are uncontrollable.
Dragons are large, physically strong, and are the most powerful spellcasters. As in Ashan, every dragon is proficient in its own element. Several types:
Mentioned earth dragons, or brown dragons—diggers living underground
Red dragons—specialize in fire
Black dragons—also specialize in fire. The fire of black dragons is so powerful that they use it for flight (as a winged lizard of their size could never stay in the air, fire magic is like an engine for planes for them).
There are sea dragons, similar in shape to earth ones, but swimmers.
Green and azure dragons—masters of air.
Snow dragons—relatively small, but one shouldn't be fooled by their size; they are dual-element, essentially icy.

Troglodytes
These are orcs, giants, and goblins, but all of them here are green and reptilian (as they literally contain reptile genes, most are covered in scales, and their teeth are sharp and predatory).
The difference is that goblins have an R-strategy, while orcs have a K-strategy. Goblins are small and numerous; they regenerate well. Orcs were selected based on physical strength and rage. Giants are the quintessence of such selection; they are several meters tall, and occasionally even larger and more ferocious one-eyed individuals (cyclopes) are born among them. Giants understand nothing but the language of force, whereas among orcs and goblins there are those who have normally integrated into society (the Kro empires, main population are Polo, who are essentially Spanish-humans).
Troglodytes can be found on all continents; however, on Salinkari, most locals died out in their time (killed by more civilized neighbors), leaving only northern giants, whom it was too expensive to touch. Now Salinkari is full of goblins and orcs again, but they are newcomers from other continents, migrants.

Game Mechanics

As I said, I wanted to move away from things like counterattacks at the time, leaving them only to a few squads that specialize in it (and making them infinite by default). That is, only spearmen and other defensive-type units would counterattack. This would destroy "one-unit" tactics and make focusing less interesting (instead of destroying one squad while its retaliation is down, you could "chip away" at several different squads if it allows for a more advantageous positioning of your own troops or for other goals).

I also hoped for a limitation on the range of magic and shooting for units, as in the current form, both greatly limit the tactics for mages and shooters; moving them is disadvantageous in most cases—just exposing yourself for no reason. Also, the fact of taking losses against relatively weak neutrals simply because they move slightly earlier and shoot at you has always irritated me personally. This again creates stupid things, like the active use of invisibles in the army.
Nargott tried to fight this using penalties and limiting unit speeds, but in my opinion, his approach also has problems. Firstly, the neutral problem persists. Secondly, as long as long-distance shooting hasn't disappeared as a class, it will still remain the de facto standard for most battles, as people don't want to bother, and gaining advantages at short distances requires attentiveness. Only in final battles would I personally expect people to actually maneuver shooters (and mages, obviously, won't maneuver even there).
Therefore, it would be good to do as I wrote above, and also give the ability to move and shoot/cast simultaneously, as it was in KB: The Legend. That's just a dream; then units would actually run around. But I fear it's nothing more than a dream.

Overall, that's basically everything.

Thanks for the feedback! I didn't expect such a reaction!

Regarding my own world:
I actually wanted to create my own world, but it turned out to be шаблонный, like Ashan. The main difference is that in my world, the gods are dead, the races are not limited, and religion is based on the worship of super elementals (a modder's dream - no restrictions). From there, the concepts of undead, empires, and Nords were borrowed (and I completely rewrote the lore of the dwarves when I started reworking the dark dwarves faction).

I chose Ashan because I was too lazy to come up with names (this problem can be solved with a name generator), plus Ashan has an elven language! I can create a couple of names based on it, and I also know a little bit about the lore)). This radical difference in the spirit of my Ashan compared to Ubisoft's is simply explained by the fact that while the West is busy worshipping gods and fighting each other in the name of the elements, a totalitarian atheist empire has ruled here for over 1000 years, and it was only broken by a plague.

Ment, I'll read about your universe later - it's too much information at once.

If you have any ideas for my factions, feel free to suggest them. I'm not going to come up with a huge lore anyway, and I'll add your interesting ideas to the race descriptions + I'll add pictures later

If you have any ideas for my factions, feel free to suggest them. I'll never come up with a huge lore on my own, but I'll incorporate your interesting ideas into the race descriptions and add pictures later.

It's a bit difficult for me to come up with ideas for Ashan; my brain isn't working very well in that direction. But if you like anything from what I wrote about Nero, feel free to use it as much as you want. If you end up with Ashan ;)

I find it difficult to come up with ideas for Ashan; my brain doesn't work well in that direction.

The suggestion doesn't necessarily have to be grand; it could be something small that enriches the lore – for example: dwarves value pearls more than cave minerals / elves transform a magical wasteland into a forest using sacred seeds of Britigi / 6 elemental schools of magic are suitable for priests, while battle mages use the most optimal magic system from 4 schools divided according to the principle of impact.

Added 20 hours 38 minutes ago
I suddenly realized a simple thing – the main advantage of the new world is that at the beginning, you can use the standard Heroes of Might and Magic factions, rewriting the details to fit the new lore (and then do a retcon if necessary). In principle, the elf, demon, and undead factions in Heroes of Might and Magic V are very stereotypical and will fit into any lore, and some units can even be left unchanged.

Yes! Moreover, you can approach it from this angle, or, conversely, immediately introduce some very powerful and unconventional axioms into the world and build upon them. For example, like in Enroth, with the multiplicity of worlds and all that (in fact, you could take a world within the same universe as Enroth, but a different planet, as a suggestion).

Ment, I read it, very cool

here's what I came up with:
creating a new world will simplify the task, we can build lore using the old factions, and then rework them

So, most technology works on magic, magic is divided into elemental, dark, light, and .... maybe high magic or life magic

let's start from the very beginning, magic came into an empty world, from magic emerged the higher spirits - dragons, krakens, and ents, they created mountains, forests, and oceans, they were led by 3 higher spirits, or gods
The Dragon God turned out to be a real jerk - he started burning the ents' forests
The Forest God created a fortress in the middle of the sea and decided to make flying warriors - angels, for this he assembled a magical mechanism that changes the shell of higher beings (while he was assembling it, the dragons managed to burn all the forests in the eastern lands)
The army of angels crushed the Dragon God and razed his mountain palace to the ground, after which the Forest God himself became an angel and began to think about world domination, but the ents took offense, allied with the Sea God and the surviving dragons
The Sea God attacked the angel palace from the west and faced the Angel God in a duel.... a draw - all died, in that place now there is a magical vortex
And now about the most important thing - the machine that turns ents into angels was destroyed, from it burst a wave of unstable magic that turned the higher spirits into flawed mortal beings - elves, dwarves, humans, and others

And now about the factions

Let's start with the good ones

Elves
the elves worship the great creator, the angels guide them on the right path, and the ents help expand the great forests. In the elven country, there are many religious orders, when an elf loses the will to live, he goes to an order to get a purpose for existence, there are organizations: knights of the unicorn (riders), prophets of the forest (maiden-druids), guardians of the forest (warrior maidens), rangers (archers)

besides the elves, there are many small feudal human states, they fight among themselves, but unite when the angels ask them to

the elves will remain with the sworn enemy and grass

Empire of the Sun
the first stone in the foundation of the empire was laid by a powerful mage - he did not want mortal peoples to obey dragons or angels and therefore created a system of magic - 4 schools and 12 specializations, and he also began experiments on infusing elemental magic into mortal beings
The Empire of the Sun was founded by his student who refined the magical enhancement and created the elemental legions - they managed to drive the dragons into the mountains and unite the scattered human kingdoms
At the moment, the original lands of the empire are destroyed by an alien army, and the new empire stands in the south

formerly the main strength of the empire was the elemental legions, now the conquered peoples are in the vanguard (I haven't figured out which ones yet, probably lizardmen), and the legionaries have become special forces

the faction's territory is a desert, specialization is mini-artifacts, we will probably rename this ability to something else, like magical enhancement

Dwarves
Dwarves are traders, they trade with humans and elves, and more recently with goblins
dwarves are naturally poor at directing spells, so they created their own type of magic - runes, through runes dwarves can direct magic into a living being, or into an object, and the best rune mages are capable of breathing life into a golem
Dwarves live everywhere, their homeland is the northern island, ruled by the Mountain King Gardain, in the south live dwarven merchants making deals with humans and elves, underground roads run between their settlements

In the dwarf army, human mercenaries from the northern kingdom fight, this is a historical ally of the dwarf kingdom

territory and skill - snow and rune magic

Goblins
Goblins were created by a mad mage from kobolds, initially goblins lived only underground (stupid beliefs and prejudices kept goblins from coming to the surface), but a great goblin hero gathered all the clans and led the troops to the surface, the first to fall were the dwarf merchants, with firearms and dwarven weapons the goblins captured large lands in the knight kingdoms, which caught the eye of the dragons. The dragons took the goblins under their protection and helped them hold onto the surface

territory and skill - grass and retraining, retraining will be more like transformation - a small goblin can grow to enormous size in its lifetime

4 races, dwarves maintain neutrality, elves fight the empire, knights allied with elves fight goblins, but all these factions became allies when the Empire of the Sun was almost completely destroyed by the Utmar aliens, undead also participated in that war, but necromancers resurrected fallen comrades from other factions, which caused universal distrust

I'll rewrite the rest later, I'm lazy for now---------------------------------------
About demons
A good idea came up - aliens... no, not like the Krigan, these are aliens who crashed in their ship, their technology allows teleporting reinforcements directly onto the battlefield, and they live on lava fields because their home planet is lava
This race is called Utmar, their technology also works on magic, and ships move through the galaxy by teleportation. Utmar are at war with another race and their battle station was damaged due to sabotage and teleported incorrectly. Utmar are looking for resources and sources of magic to repair the ship, they treat other races as savages.

About warlocks
I like my old idea with the magical vortex killing all living things, so the warlocks study the vortex while being under it, underground, and the warlock army should consist of either bio-monsters like in the third game, or magical constructs
A warlock can be a representative of any race, they learned to open gates to other worlds, there they recruit new supporters, like evil eyes and harpies

About all humans
the mage empire is Greco-Roman, without golems, but with elementals
again an empire built on magic, GMO soldiers and elemental spirits form the basis of the army, the main enemy is the aliens, because it is the mages who have the most magical goodies needed to repair the ship
--------------
vikings are about the same, maybe they were always enslaved by the mages, let's say they lived on some Iron Islands where they were forced to forge weapons for the mage army, and after the magical plague they rebelled and at the head of the rebels were cultists of some Cthulhu (krakens will be there)
vikings or nords or... I haven't chosen a name, let them be Runds from the islands of Rundertag, this people fell under the influence of dark forces, the cult of the dead god rules there, the main enemy of this faction is the elves,

About undead
necromancers appeared the same way - plague > attempts to cure the plague > first lich > discovery of necromancy, then a crusade against the lich king and the cursed crusaders become the first vampires
in wild tribes, shamans can summon the souls of fallen warriors to protect the tribe, this magic is elementary necromancy, its feature is that all risen retain intelligence and memories, subjugating souls requires a black magic ritual, this is forbidden in most countries, but groups of bandit necromancers constantly arise. Vampires appeared due to a curse of a black mage, and liches are alchemist mages who prolonged their lives with black magic.

Perhaps there was a group of states that waged constant war among themselves, a certain king.... let him be named Rutrag, for many years cooperated with the sorcerer Nilremort, at some point the sorcerer realized that the king, with his pious knights and code of honor, was only hindering the war, Nilremort killed the king, turned the knights into golems, reduced the peasants to the level of slaves and placed mages to rule over them. Nilremort prolonged his life with black magic and sacrifices, his kingdom stood for a very very long time, but on one terrible day, conspirator mages ruined the life-prolonging ritual and ultimately killed Nilremort. The conspirators were necromancers - they slightly loosened control over the peasantry and introduced a new religion, now necromancers were considered servants of the god of death, and Nilremort's warlocks were vile heretics who deceived the god of death. Death knights are warrior-protectors guarding people, and vampires are beings cursed by the god of the dead and for their atonement they must fight for the necromancers.

About orcs
evil green monsters, MAYBE even relatives of lizards (cool idea), prone to chaos and violence, only a powerful evil demon can unite them into one faction (more on them below)
options
1) goblins have a social structure like ants: soldier goblins and hive queens.
2) goblins are a subspecies of kobolds bred by a black mage as servants, the main difference between goblins and kobolds is in development - goblins have no development ceiling and continue to grow their entire lives, while body functions are disrupted; pain is dulled, the sense of fear is reduced, intelligence increases, and large goblins stop reproducing.
For a long time, goblins appeared on the surface only in small bands, so nobody considered them a threat, at some point they spread throughout the world and the dwarves began to sound the alarm - all races inhabiting the super-depths were destroyed and the dwarves were attacked from the depths, then goblins captured one of the most ancient human countries and built their kingdom there, now they are at war with the elves

About dwarves
dwarves have a very hard time with magic, from using magic they turn to stone, only the coolest dwarves can use magic and not mutate (these are heroes), because of this dwarves began to develop science, discovered gunpowder and the ability to seal magic in runes
Dwarves travel a lot and trade, in almost every country (except goblin) there is a dwarven trading post selling goodies, the human country of Haltstorm is allied with the dwarves and supplies them with mercenaries

that's turning out pretty decent - then the orcs will have to take the place of humans, and the vikings the place of orcs, if orcs grow all their lives and goblins\hobgoblins\orcs\trolls are representatives of one species then everything is fine

now about angels\demons\dragons\ents\krakens - these are higher spirits that survived the war of the gods, they are still fighting and gathering supporters (maybe elves work for angels, and orcs for demons, and dragons just sit on gold and eat beauties, sometimes make deals)

Since everyone uses magic, it's logical to make the Tears of Asha some kind of magical thing, maybe they are fragments of gods, or maybe sources of magical power from the time of the war of the gods, let's name this thing after the continent

the action takes place on a continent in the center of which is a crater with a magical vortex, no one lived there because of this vortex, but everything changed when a crazy dwarven expedition found a super-artifact there (Tears of Asha) and all races rushed to the continent for these things
the continent is the ancient ruins of the fortress of the gods, therefore it is of unnatural shape - square, the northern mountains were the palace of the spirit king, and the plains were gardens
about the gods
there were 3 - the nameless god, the light god and the dark god, first the light and dark deleted the nameless one, and then killed each other in the war of the gods
the cultists of the light god are the elves, they are led by angels, ents help them
the cultists of the nameless god are the vikings, krakens help them
there are very few cultists of the dark god, most often they are warlocks and mages wanting to get superpowers in a cheesy way
demons want to elevate a new god, they cooperate with goblins (maybe they created goblins)

I finished the visuals for the infantry; now I just need to organize the voice acting and icons. The stats will remain the same.

The red faction looks great.
I think the others would benefit from a helmet change.

Personally, I think all three of them need different helmets: the rounded ones don't quite fit, and the ones with a visor and eye slits are definitely not in the dwarven style...

They need angular, massive ones, and with a definite place for ornamentation!

In the photo, there are helmets for the basic creature and the upgraded version, and for the alternate upgrade, you can find them in the links above...

and now it’s too late))))
I finished the infantryman; now, I’ll take the dark dwarf spearmen and give them halberds, and I’ll put perfectly normal helmets on their heads; the dwarves are experiencing a full-blown Renaissance!

if it doesn’t turn out well, I’ll take helmets from the Lord of the Rings mod – they allowed me to use dwarf armor and weapons from TLD Overhaul.

I changed the helmets and slightly repainted the blue armor.
For now, they have the old stats.

I like the militaristic style... Although, they could make the blue one's helmet more interesting, because it doesn't stand out as much against the red one. Or maybe give him goggles on his face, since he's a mechanic.)
Like these guys.