The Fossorians are HoMM3's Cancelled Faction

[Ruludos]

I was brushing up on the old Forge concepts for my own purposes when I had a revelation; every Fossorian unit directly matches the equivalent Forge unit, in function if not form. For those of you who don't know the history, the Forge was a sci-fi faction planned for the Armageddon's Blade expansion for Heroes of Might and Magic III. Due to poor fan reception, the faction was cancelled in favor of the Conflux, but thanks to various promotional material and leaks we have a good idea of what the Forge would have looked like. You can read about it yourself here:

http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes3ab/forgetown.shtml

To make my point though I just wanted to go down the list of units real quick:

Ratling/Grunt: a stereotypically weak creature is made more dangerous thanks to firearms.
Meatboy/Cyber-Dead: mundane melee unit.
Hammerite/Pyro: melee unit with an AoE attack.
Earthshaker/Stinger: artillery-based ranged attacker.
Tunnel Worm/Jump Soldier: fast melee unit that ignores terrain.
Commissar/Tank: fast and powerful melee cavalry.
Liberator/Juggernaut: large mechanical melee unit.

It might just be the brain worms talking but I can't write all the similarities off as a coincidence. Just to be clear I think it's really cool this forgotten history is being used by the developers, and I thought it was interesting enough to talk about.

[knight_darklord]

Indeed, well spotted. Thank you for the reminiscence down memory lane about HoMoM3 and the lost faction

[ttodorov]

Lets then welcome them in Silence of the Siren family.