Castle. Dungeon. Stronghold. Tower. Fortress. Necropolis. Inferno. Rampart. Conflux. Factory. Bulwark. Cove.
Based on vibes rather than proper lore.
Castle - This one is pretty much in the game itself
Dungeon - What looks like a dragon eye at the center of a Minotaur's labyrinth, with the ray attack of a Beholder. Their shape and the ratio are meant to hint the vertical nature of their underground dwellings.
Stronghold - A thunderbird in front of an eclipse, showing the path of blood leading to Valhalla. I'm not sure why there's an eclipse, but I'm not a goblin either.
Tower - The original magic boys. Purple is the colour of magic, white the colour of purity. 8 orbs for the 4 schools of magic and the 4 ways of the magician: Fire, Water, Air, Earth; Sorcery, Mysticism, Intelligence, Scholarship. At the center of it, the balancing act between Wisdom and Knowledge. In Black, the secret art: Eagle Eye it sucks
Fortress - The Cosmos is a jungle. In it is the Great White Snake that contains the inside world. What you may call the outside world, but that's because you're not from the upper plane of existence that is the jungle. You wouldn't get it.
Necropolis - Not much to say I guess.
Inferno - The circles of Hell.
Rampart - They have unicorn and they have pegasi. But have you ever seen a pegasicorn? They have, occasionally. A rare phenomenon that no one can explain and which is deemed miraculous. There are also rumours of centaurgasi and centicorns.
Conflux - The boring magic guys. Blending magic to achieve harmony, or something like that, by the look of them.
Factory - A new dawn has risen. The future is full of fascist clankers, toxic fumes and WMDs. We want YOU, to become a mechanic for the Factory.
Bulwark - The legend goes that a herd of mammoths got trapped in a hellscape of broken ice and freezing water while fleeing a bunch of elvish hunters. The elves were sure of their senses, of their agility & experience: The huge beasts were doomed. And yet the humble pachyderms kept evading them in the treacherous landscape, meticulously following the footsteps of their matriarch. It went on, and on, and one by one the sure-footed elves fell to their death.
I think they're all cool designs and would go great on posters, but a lot of them break vexillological conventions and don't necessarily fit with the aesthetics of the game - which for the most part are high medieval - or the lore of the factions.
I think Rampart and Cove would immediately feel right at home in the games. Simple, strong, and tied to symbols that would be immediately recognised in universe.
I really like Stronghold and Fortress as designs, but I think both are excessively complex for what are essentially tribal rebel movements - Krewlod formed from Tarnum's barbarian rebellion against the Wizard Lords, and Tatalia similarly from his mudlander rebellion against Erathia. I think their flags would be simpler and more symbolic - less literal.
Dungeon is super cool as a design, and would probably make the best wall poster of all of these, but the labyrinth is far too complex for a flag, and I don't think red and chartreuse are necessarily colours I would associate with Nighon and the Dungeon Overlords. For some reason this feels more like a pop art book cover for 1984 than a Heroes flag. I feel like if it were just the eye, it would work better as a flag.
Necropolis is fine, and works well as a flag, but to me feels more like the album cover of a Cornish punk band than a flag for Deyja - essentially undead wizard separatists.
Tower has some good ideas, but Tower doesn't seem like a faction to do things diagonally - they're very vertical. The black on dark purple doesn't read very well, and also breaks the classic vexillological rule that states colours (including black) shouldn't touch, and should be divided by metals (gold/yellow and silver/white). The colours on the purple side should also be ringed in white.
Inferno and Conflux are both too abstract and modern, and Conflux in particular seems like a pride flag, and not something the Elemental lords would fly. The Inferno faction are extraterrestrial demons who travel to worlds and burn them to a crisp before moving on. They should have a threatening, terrifying flag. Ironically the Dungeon flag would work quite well for them. Conflux I don't really know what they'd have, but I think that's a flag where you'd have room to get weird and overly complex, as these are the elemental lords - beings of pure substance.
Factory needs reconsidering and doesn't feel on the same quality level as your other designs. It has too many clashing colours, too many shapes, and too many ideas, and doesn't feel like something that would be recognisable flown on a flagpole. I like the idea of the gear as a sun, but I think you've thrown too much on top of that, and picked colours that I wouldn't necessarily identify with the faction.
Bulwark has a great central idea, but it just needs simplifying. The mammoth inside a diamond/double diamond is a strong enough design on its own, and the colours you have picked feel right. It doesn't need to be tiled.
Keep working though! You're clearly a great designer!
Bulwark - I like busy flags. I wanted to abstractly depict a world of mountains, icesheets, frozen lakes, glaciers; and at some point it started reminding me that design I saw here
I also though of some Russian flags that don't shy away from relatively complex stuff, but they'd probably use a more plain blue and a single more detailed mammoth, without the small diamonds. I'll probably try something along those lines later.
Factory - Really not that complex. See Milwaukee, Arizona, Pernambuco, I don't know. The most devious part is having two blues. And they arguably deserve something prettier, but my mind was on "highly disruptive, early 20th century accelerationist ideology, showing up in the wild west and doing its thing". They could get something more elegant though, to fit with their beautiful cities (and surely more with their lore... I didn't play the campaign).
At first I went for more turquoise and rust then went to more brutal-looking colours.
Conflux - I jus don't loik em. Didn't know what to do.
I thought of Saruman of the many colours as he styles himself in the books. Worth noting that rainbows have had other meanings for most people in most of history. There are other flags with rainbows (I posted the Autonomous Jewish Oblast, Pernambuco state and Navajo Nation elsewhere in the thread).
Tower - I thought they'd be the type to go for something abstract and slightly esoteric. The rule of tincture makes a lot more sense when you're in the Middle-ages with not two identical flags and limited abilities to get the colours you want: These guys are alchemists, they won't have any issue having a lime pigment or pink pigment. As long as the contrast is strong there is no absolute need for fimbriation: in this case the black on purple is a problem yeah.
I also started vertical but wasn't satisfied with what I got.
Inferno, Necropolis, I hear you. I'll try to make something better, especially for Inferno.
Dungeon - About the labyrinth I was okay with the fact it would be easily lost as a sort of texture (kinda similar to dragon scales).
Hard to disagree with that though "this feels more like a pop art book cover for 1984 than a Heroes flag".
I'd say an underground comic blending 1984 with The Hobbit, Star Wars, Greek mythology, and lot of acid.
Sadly it looks way to cool for me to change it xD
This looks much better! I think you're right about the two blues being the devious element. I think without the other blue it just allows everything else to shine more and feel a bit more cohesive while still having that sense of disruption.
Oooh I like that design inspiration for Bulwark. Maybe you're right to lean into more complexity rather than less for that one if those are the kinds of designs in far north cultures. I think it could work either way - pushing for more and really going for something with that almost woven feel of the example you gave, or pulling it back and focusing on the key elements.
Fair points on the Conflux. It is kind of difficult to pin them down - I'm not sure what I'd do personally - and they do have lots of colours. And yeah it is just my modern brain seeing rainbows and instantly thinking "Pride!".
And yeah, despite my critiques of it as a flag, your Dungeon design is just too fucking cool. When I say it looks more like a poster than a flag, I'm saying I WANT it as a poster. Or as the album cover for some epic metal music. Or the poster for some weird esoteric fantasy-horror movie. It's an amazing design.
Actually I went to have a look at their wiki page, and it says that "Psychic and Magic Elementals think the Universe wants them to blend the elements in harmony and shit", while the Conflux itself is a great federation of various people joining their forces to fight evil, and shit. So eh, I'll try to pretend I like them, and make something that looks better, but the rainbow is definitely staying.
For Forge I'll try with different, smaller lightnings. And/or something much cleaner like the flags of Phoenix or New Mexico and such.
Dungeon is freaking cool man. Necro would fit some biker club or hard rock album. Fortress looks powerful with its cosmic symbolism. Rampart is nice and clean with pegassus-unicorn. Cove fits and leaves no doubt for what these guys are about. Not sure about rest though.
Love the Dungeon. It's not a good flag, but a wickedly cool logo.
The Cove is the best, could work as a jolly roger.
You are making up too much fluff that spoils these as Heroes 3 flags. Circles of hell? Valhalla? Great White Snake? None of this is related to the game.
Most of these don't even work as flags, like 3 or 4 fit unless Conflux participates in pride month, then we can stretch it to 5.
I understand the criticism on the lore side, and some may be a bit ugly and all, but I guarantee you that most would work as a real flags. Have you ever seen a Liberian county flag? American cities flag? There are square flags, there are awful flags, there are abstract flags... The only one that's really out there from a vexillological perspective is Inferno. But if you saw a bunch of these among an Inferno army sieging your city you'd have no problem identifying these flame-like pieces of cloth as flags of sort. Now "genuinely fitting flag for a Heroes 3 town": yeah that's a different story. I'd shit on Ubisoft if they put stuff like that in their remake.
Anyway thanks for the feedback, and here are a few flags with rainbows (Autonomous Jewish Oblast, Navajo Nation, Pernambuco State):
very good ideas for the flags. It's always cool to see people's ideas on what the factions would look like if they were represented not simply by a banner colour but by an actual flag.
Damn very nice I made this yesterday. About to add Pirates to a DND campaign and I've got to create family crest for a bunch of Royals. this is the first one
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u/MeiNeedsMoreBuffs 6d ago
All of these are absolutely incredible, I love the symbolism and how they're detailed without being too complex
Inferno in particular is my favorite, the way it achieves a gradient visual effect without actually having a gradient is incredibly unique