You are Amara, seventeenth daughter of Qun-Jin, the now-dead emperor of the elves. Qun-Jin was a mighty emperor; he united the squabbling nobles of the elvish nation under his banner, and brought, for a time, peace and order to the countryside. Qun-Jin was as wise as he was powerful, and he knew that the restless noblemen were too headstrong and avaricious to remain content during a time of peace. To keep the nation united, he launched a great war of conquest; under his capable leadership, elf armies, together with their traditional allies, penetrated deep into the surrounding wildernesses, crushing the forces of the mighty warlords which had, for generations, threatened the elves from the East.
Qun-Jin did not survive to solidify his gains. As his armies were returning in triumph from the conquered territories of your traditional enemies, a mysterious fever overtook him, and two days later he was dead. His wife, your mother, died the next day of the same ailment. Qun-Jin's general, a capable and honest soldier, returned to the capital with the bodies, and the nation was plunged into mourning.
Your father had left explicit orders establishing the succession; the throne passed immediately to his first child, your eldest sister, Corinna. Over the following years, however, the empire began to disintegrate. The nobles resumed their hereditary feuding, and Corinna faced several direct challenges to her rule. The internal difficulties kept Corinna too busy at home to maintain an effective administration in the remote territories captured by her father; they slid first into anarchy, then into organized revolt. Before five years had passed, enemies were again massing on the borders of elf territory, and the headstrong leaders of the elf factions were too completely at odds with each other to mount an effective defense.
What followed was a logical consequence of the disunity and short-sightedness of the elves. Corinna was killed in battle as her forces struggled to hold the pass through which your enemies were mounting an invasion. Her successor, your brother Tyrrel, held the pass for another fortnight before he, too, fell beneath the claws of a Wyvern and the defense at the pass collapsed. Over the next months the invaders poured through the pass; for a short time an elf counter-attack seemed to be gaining ground, but ogre sorcerers launched a sneak attack on an unprotected province of the kingdom by opening a portal to their fortresses on the underground sea. In the resulting melee, the elf advance crumbled. To make matters worse, a few days later several of the king's children were assassinated by a group of disgruntled noblemen; you yourself barely escaped with your life.
The series of military disasters has ended as it must: only one city remains under your control, the remote fortress called Madake. The petty, fractious lords whose intransigence brought about the empire's downfall have reaped their reward: their smoldering corpses lie unburied where they fell, and their castles lie in ruins. You are the last of Qun-Jin's children; all of your siblings have fallen to the forces of the invaders or the treachery of your countrymen. The kingdom is in ruins, your armies have been all but annihilated, and the hordes of the enemy are massing for their final assault.
Time is against you. The enemy has the advantage of numbers. Your people are dispirited and hungry. The countryside lies in ruins. Let the game begin.
Download the first episode of The Legacy of Qun-Jin.
Hier für die deutsche Version klicken.
(German translation courtesy of Jens Menne)
Or, click here for the Russian language version, translated by Dmitriy Pekshev.
(Click here to jump to Episode II and skip the rest of this page).
I’m a bit embarrassed because I never made it past 1.5 months— This is the 1st time I’ve never been able to complete a map that I think is premised on a good design. I consider myself a pretty skilled HOMM III player, but this sucker humbled me. Still, some people will want a challenge like this. The design concept is a sound one, and I like the overall feel of the map.
Super hard-core maniacs who can’t get enough challenge will drool all over their keyboards with your map!
Review by Stefan "Satan´s Puppet" Bjelkfelt
I´ve finished testing your map, and I have to admit - It´s great! I played green five times and red and purple (the computer) once each, just to check for errors. I tested the map on hard level, since this is where the computer plays at it´s best and you don´t start with any advantages, thus making the map easier to test. Since I consider myself to be one of the "super hard-core maniacs", I found it a little bit easy on the hard level, but after moving up to expert or even impossible - the map really rocked! You should get some credit for the good design - one of the better I´ve seen. I really look forward to see more maps from you...
Review by Al Mytko
Well, on my first attempt at the map I was humbled in about a month. I had 25 sliver pegasi, 2 green dragons, 70 centaur captains, 40 greater elves, 8 unicorns, 8 Dendroid solidiers. The computer had like 50 gorgons, 15 hydras, 20 wyverns... I'll stop right there. I'm not giving up though--I'll try it again. Your design is one of the best I've seen ever. A map that is well designed is a lot of fun to play. I can tell you put thought into the landscape and didn't just randomly place land.
Review by Jagan
I think you have a great map design and interesting story. I like the messages that give the human character all the information that is required. I first played the map on the hard difficulty setting, I lost on the 7th day of the 4th week. I then tried the normal difficulty setting, even knowing what to expect in the first four weeks, I lost in month 2, week 1, day 6. I played on the easy difficulty setting, I won on month 2, week 3, day 1.
The scenario can be won, I actually tried the scenario a fourth time on the impossible difficulty setting, and lasted almost as long as the hard difficulty setting. I like to be able to win on most settings or be given a good challenge. This is a very good challenge to me.
The average player that gets disappointed by being attacked within a few days of the start of the scenario will probably curse you, people like myself that enjoy a good fight will thank you. Overall I found the map a terrific struggle at any difficulty setting. I enjoyed the fact that a player has to earn any of the skills that they receive as they get further in the map or fighting and not from finding artifacts.
I hope other people get the same pleasure from playing your scenario as I have.
Review by Zhuge Tzarn Xing and Blitzkrieg Darkreign
This is THE map for tactical training and building up attacking skill for
novices, the average HoMM3 player and budding experts. It is a
well-designed, no-nonsense map without frillings and devoid of unfair
randomness (creatures, artifacts, etc) present in many an amateur map. As
such it promotes heavy reliance on sound strategies to conquer and defend
your territory.
This map is not all strategy alone; it features an excellent story (intro)
and good follow-up from the timed events. For the average player seeking a
stern challenge, seek no further, your map of choice lies right before you.
Click here for the full text of the review written by Zhuge and Blitzkrieg for the Astralwizard site.
Review by Yung
I just finished your map and it was enjoyable. Here are a few thoughts.
I played your expert map at expert level finishing on day50.
It was very fast paced - that in itself is unusual for me. My style is to build up and push the front line forward.
The look of the map was nicely done and had a polished feel to it.
I usually despise the use of transporters because of my style of play, only using one or two heroes with any troops. When people put transporters in they make it very difficult to advance without some defence of your towns. With your map you used the two way and one way transporters brilliantly. I was ambushed a few times and lost my capitol once but nothing that I couldn't deal with because there was only one source of real access at the south east.
I liked the non-existence of artifacts but with the learning stones and the other upgrade structures it was easy to get decent heroes and even decent secondary heroes.
You decision to put the creature structures in were essential to a rapid expansion.
Other nice touches - the resources already under your control as it would be if it was territory you are supposed to be ruling, the placing of the purple and red heroes in my "back yard" spurred me to a more aggressive expansion. Placement of the eyes were good, allowing me to respond to some tough heroes when my army was non-existent.
I didn't have much trouble with my opponents, I managed to keep their numbers trimmed but I don't think I'd storm through the map on impossible because the lack of money early on will certainly kill you.
Review by Florian Trombach
If it wasn´t for "The Lord of War," I´d call these [Episodes I and II] the two best maps I have played so far. In medium and large, they are the best maps so far. The story is logical, based on a good idea and it develops quite well. It is enforced by timed and placed events, and the two generals tend to build up own personalities.
The maps were very well designed, no bugs have been detected and they were hard and continuous battling (one weak point: at the end, the battles tended to be too easy for me).
I am one of the hardcore-maniacs who loves a good fighting and the real need to do the right thing and to think about every move you will have to do. These were just the right maps for me and they gave me a lot of fun. For newbies I would not neccesarily recommend them since any mistake in the beginning will face heavy punishment. But for those who think themself ready for a real challenge I can do nothing but emphasize you to download these maps and prove whether you are a good or an expert player.
Review by BrentMTO9@aol.com
I wouldn't call this a full-fledged review but it does have a rating. Mostly I wanted to thank you for the "Legacy of Qun-Jin" map; it is the best HOMM3 map I have ever played. I have tried, on various occasions, to accomplish what you did with your map; You kept the map challenging while giving the player access to a full complement of creatures so that they have to choose what to recruit. Also, while the map had ample resources, they were not easy to obtain early on, which also made the player choose how to allocate them; many maps do this, but none as well as this one. Another great thing about this map was that the amount of mop-up time (time when you know your victory is assured and just have to clean up the mess of enemies and castles remaining) was minimal, which is uncommon in a map without a special victory condition.
I have been looking for challenging single player maps for months and this was by far the most challenging HOMM3 map I have ever played (haven't played the second one yet). Most maps are not terribly challenging even at the "impossible" (I always play at "Impossible") level, but after two failed attempts, I was beginning to think that maybe this one truly was impossible. On my third try, however, I managed to beat back the lizards, bugs and other assorted monsters to reestablish the empire of Qun-Jin. That is, I won. I would rate the gameplay aspect ((im)balance of power, resource availability, etc.) of this map a perfect 10 (65% of overall).
The story in the readme file gave the map a setting and a good background, but in the map itself the first week of timed events was all there was to the story, so after the first few days the story seemed to fade out of the picture. I would have enjoyed some location-based events that continued the story as heroes recaptured the conquered cities of the former empire and pushed on into the attacking regions of the Fortresses and Strongholds. Because the map itself didn't contain enough story I would rate that area 6 out of 10 (25% of overall). The timed events in the first week gave adequate introductory story but mostly seemed like strategy advice.
Generally I dislike having six teleporters next to a castle (not that I
can recall any other maps where I've seen that) and I took my time letting
that border guard open his gates. I knew that when I opened the border did
open enemy heroes from all over the entire map would be swarm to my castle (
their lone enemy). The third time I played, though, I opened the border early,
and that was the key to my victory. When I first began playing, I was wary
of the design/layout with all the Centaur Stables, Homesteads, Dwarf mounds
and Learning stones. While you didn't have any wide open spaces, there were
many areas that were moderately open and most of the visitable locations
(creature dwellings, skill enhancers and Learning stones) were crowded
together. I must also admit that such layouts were practical and necessary,
so in the Layout category (aesthetics, placement of castles, resources,
teleporters.) I would rate your map a 8 (10% of overall).
Overall rating
8.8/10
I really wanted to give this map a higher rating, but the inadequate in-game
story held it back. But again, great challenge and thanks for a great map.
I would take these pages down, but I see from the logs that people are still coming by to download the maps. So I'll leave these pages in place as long as people are still playing the series. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the LQJ project.
http://www.heroes3.com (The official 3DO site)
www.astralwizard.com
For maps in English or German, take a look at the site which provided original German translations of The Legacy of Qun-Jin:
Or this other German language site:
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