The player controls a party of raiders from the town of Ravensford, who are shipwrecked on the Isle of Ashes and told of their fate by a hermit, Yrsa the Troll.

Joined by another shipwrecked warrior named Forad Darre, they travel to the six clans of Chedian, uniting them against the threat of the Beldonian Horde.

Forad Darre is sent to lead the armies of Chedian against the Beldonian Horde while the party performs a task for Yrsa, but they are slaughtered to the man.

The spirit of one of the six slain Jarls, Sven Forkbeard, reveals that Darre is a double-agent working for Leng, and the party is sent to the Otherworld of Axeoth to recover the dead warriors from Skraelos, the god of death.

Disposing of the Wyrdes, influencing Leng to send Forad Darre, and taking the forms of Yrsa the Troll and Igrid, the god of chaos plotted an elaborate coup against Krohn, coveting Fre and desiring rulership of the denizens of Axeoth for himself.

Krohn sends the party to imprison a pursuing Njam in the Tomb of a Thousand Terrors, and they succeed, encasing the malevolent god in a shell of impenetrable frost.

The change to a new world with little direct connection to previous storylines was prompted by the destruction of Enroth, as depicted in the introductory sequence of Heroes of Might and Magic IV, which also takes place on Axeoth.

Unlike Heroes IV, however, Might and Magic IX makes only passing reference to the series' previous setting, as it takes place on a different continent than the one most survivors of Enroth ended up on.

[5] The land of Chedian lies upon the east coast of Rysh, and is divided into several towns and cities ruled by six disagreeable clans, with the nations of Framon and Beldonia further to the west.

Time in Rysh is calculated according to years following the Great Cataclysm, an event in which the enigmatic sorcerer, Verhoffin, unleashed a destructive spell of such power upon the continent that its entire geography was reshuffled, crippling the Ursanian Empire from which the Beldonians are descended.

Many themes, characters and location names, such as the gods, the Frost Giants, Lindisfarne, Arslegard and the Otherworld, were directly inspired by Celtic and Norse mythology.

[citation needed] The continent upon which Heroes IV takes place, which was settled by refugees from Enroth, is located far across the sea,[7] and is not referenced in-game.

As the first title in the series in which New World Computing received a deadline for completion from 3DO, Might and Magic IX's developers were faced with a lack of time and resources during production.

Shortly after the release of the patch, 3DO declared bankruptcy and was dissolved, eliminating the possibility that remaining problems would ever receive an official fix.