Seven years after the events of Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars, on a day later to be known as the Night of Shooting Stars, meteor-like spaceships fall from the Void, infested with Kreegans. The king of Enroth, Roland Ironfist, departs north with an army seeking to attack the devil-like creatures, but he is betrayed by a traitorous air mage named Sulman. Roland's forces are ambushed by an enormous Kreegan army, and he, his court wizard Tanir, and the noble Sir Ragnar are captured, while the rest of the Enrothian forces are devastated. The Kreegan king Xenofex secretly establishes the Temple of Baa, a doomsday cult dedicated to removing the Ironfist dynasty from power. With their king missing, his wife Queen Catherine having recently sailed to her homeland of Erathia to attend her father's funeral, and their young son, Prince Nicolai, left to rule the kingdom alongside Regent Wilbur Humphrey, the people of Enroth begin to fear that the Ironfists have lost the "Mandate of Heaven" (the divine right to rule).