SpellForce: The Order of Dawn

SpellForce: The Order of Dawn takes place on the high-fantasy world of Eo, inhabited by several races including humans, elves, dwarves and orcs, which originally consisted of several continents, islands and oceans. 80 years before the story begins, a group of 13 powerful mages known as The Circle were engaged in a war due to the lust for power, which was worsened when they came across a powerful ritual  – known as the Convocation, the ritual would allow them to acquire the powers of the elementals that the god Aonir had bound together in order to form Eo, during a celestial event that blocked Aonir's power. Eventually one of the Circle managed to invoke the Convocation, only to discover that the elementals could not be controlled by them, causing Eo to be shattered into a series of islands, each held together by obelisks that channelled Aonir's power while isolated from each other by an elemental sea, which prevents travel by ship.

The single-player campaign takes place amongst a group of these islands that formed the northern half of the continent of Fiara, which maintain links with each other thanks to a portal network established by the mage Rohen Tahir, a supposed survivor of the Circle as most of its members were killed during Eo's shattering. The story focuses on the plight of a Runewarrior  – one of several immortal slaves created by the Circle from the souls of warriors and mages to lead their armies  – who Rohen releases in order to investigate a troubling set of events.

During a heated battle between armies of humans and orcs, Circle mage Rohen Tahir attempts to stop another member of the Circle from invoking the ritual of Convocation, but fails in doing so, resulting in Eo being shattered by the elementals bound beneath its surface. 80 years later, Rohen, having spent the years creating a portal network to keep the remaining land connected in the wake of the Convocation, receives a powerful runestone from a former Circle servant. Using it to summon forth a powerful Runewarrior, he frees them from their slavery and before instructing them to travel to the town of Greyfell and find further instructions on what to do. Shortly after Rohen leaves to investigate reports of creatures made of black steel, the Runewarrior is led into an ambush by a mage referred to as "The Dark One". Learning that Rohen is walking into a trap and that several islands are about to be invaded, the Runewarrior escapes their trap and begins a quest to find and save Rohen.

In Greyfell, the Runewarrior learns that much of the northern islands have been overrun by mercenaries known as The Black Fist, who have allied with local orc tribes. Gaining the support of an outfit known as The Order of Dawn, the Runewarrior begins work on clearing a path to Rohen, dealing with the orcs and mercenaries. After catching up to Rohen, who is exploring the island of Frostland Marches for a casket, they quickly inform him about the Dark One. Surprised by this, Rohen gives them a book about the Convocation and informs them to find a powerful item known to the mage Hokan, which is the only thing that can stop the Dark One. Shortly after this, Rohen finds and opens the casket he sought out, but finds it empty. At that moment, the Dark One arrives and kills Rohen, before telling the Runewarrior to inform the Order that an age of war is coming, before blocking the way beyond the island with an army of black steel creatures called the Iron Ones.

Returning to the Order, the Runewarrior learns that Hokan was not only a member of the Circle, but also a necromancer who returned from his death as a ghost that commands undead armies. Discovering he is commanding his armies to find an artifact, the Runewarrior retrieves it and brings it to Hokan. In exchange for it, Hokan reveals that the Iron Ones were his own creation designed to deal with the armies of demons his rival commanded, and that the only thing that can stop a member of the Circle is an artifact called the Phoenix Stone. With this knowledge, the Runewarrior retrieves the stone, but is unable to stop the Order launching an attack on the barricade of the Iron Ones, successfully breaching it at the cost of their own men. Although they continue their pursuit of the Dark One, a trap causes them to lose both the Phoenix Stone and the Book of Convocation.

Despite this, the Runewarrior eventually tracks down and confronts the Dark One at their fortress, only to discover that the mage is actually a younger version of Rohen. They quickly learn that Rohen had tried to invoke the Convocation 80 years ago, but after it failed, they travelled into the future to find what they needed in order to go back and attempt the Convocation again in order to get it right. Thanking the Runewarrior, Rohen opens a time-gate and travels back into the past, years before the Convocation was invoked. However, the ending cutscenes reveals how the younger Rohen soon changed, after realizing how foolish his quest for power was and the destruction he had caused, effectively being caught in a time-loop in which he would try to stop his younger self but fail, and then be killed by him, allowing events to repeat themselves while effectively ending the Circle's madness for good.

SpellForce and its expansion packs have been awarded with several awards at the Deutscher Entwicklerpreis:[9][10]

The first expansion, Breath of Winter, was released on June 25, 2004, and focused on a new story that takes place after the events of The Order of Dawn. In this expansions, players assume the role of a Runewarrior who is summoned by the leaders of a group of refugees to provide them assistance. However, events soon descend into chaos when the group find themselves working alongside a race of ice-elves to prevent a powerful entity reviving two dark gods that could plunge Eo into darkness. Alongside the new campaign and the enemies it introduces, the expansion brought several improvements to the original gameplay, including new items and spells for use in all game modes.

The second expansion, Shadow of the Phoenix, was released on November 12, 2004, and focused on a story that takes place after the events of Breath of Winter. In this story, players assume the role of a Runewarrior who is summoned to help stop the madness of the necromancer Hokan, who has come back to life thanks to the events in The Order of Dawn. They soon find themselves on a quest to stop Hokan achieving unimaginable power that could make them a god, finding themselves dealing the resurrected souls of the mages of Circle in the process. The expansion features a more difficult campaign aimed for characters who are above level 25 - while players can choose to play as pre-defined avatars, they may also import those created for The Order of Dawn or Breath of Winter, but only if they are above the minimum level requirement for the expansion. In addition to this, the expansion also introduced two new types of units for the playable races, new maps for Freeplay and multiplayer modes, and allows players to choose whether to use the original PvP game rules, or those of Shadow of the Phoenix, though they may not engage players using the other set as a result.