A Brief History of Magic in Britannia

There's a bit of both. Richard has told the tale many times. The first three Ultimas were a mish mash of influences with few ideas where all his. The first incarnations of moongates for example.. the Time Gates of Ultima II come straight out of the movie Time Bandits. Of course the games were heavily influences by D&D. The original Sosaria map and origin of Mondain come with out of his D&D campaigns from high school. Other influences includes LotR and Star Wars. The original Time Lord character idea in Ultima III is a nod to Doctor Who.

It was in Ultima IV where he decided he wanted to make a world that was all his own but of course some of those old influences still remain and a lot of the ideas behind SotA still come from those early days. He's just putting a new twist on old tricks.

 

YEah but I've even heard words out of richard's mouth that I find myself questioning ... is that what he always said ... or I thought I read him say something slightly different in an interview 30 years ago... or whatever. Memory doesn't serve us well and sometiems it does, but regardless if he has changed his stance or even what he claim are facts... what we end up with today may be different than what we remember in the past. So maybe refreshing our memories could be likened to a reboot rather than a reconstruction of what we already knew.

 

Good point. I think that even when he reflects back to the older ultimas from the 80's, he doesn't always remember them correctly.

 

Yes, that is a good point. I've been telling the story for years about how I would stay up all night in my dorm room playing UO when I was a beta tester... only recently when reviewing the timeline did I realize that was impossible since by the time UO beta testing began, I was living in an apartment.

Had the fake "picture in my head" to go with the fake story, and everything! Now I'm starting to wonder if I really was a beta tester, or if I had just wanted to be....

I definitely remember getting flamestriked by grief mages right outside of Trinsic, and them looting my corpse and taunting me over and over again... I think...

 

Events not limited to beta unfortunately.

 

For the love of god, somebody please compile all this material and make it into a book

 

Oddly enough, Kazyn Pheonixfyre recently wrote a book covering the first epoch of Sosaria. I'm certain that at some point, players will write all of this done. As for me, I might stay away from Ultima canon and focus more on recent, Novian history.

 

Haha what... you mean you don't want to purchase a copy of the Ultima Collection, retrofit your rig, and catch up with everything by.... ohhhh say 2020?

 

I have a copy of Ultima 7 that I really must start playing. The last one I played was 2 or 3 and I never finished those. Will never be able to hold my head up high with this bunch otherwise

 

I think you will enjoy playing Ultima 7, and especially Serpent Isle if you ever get around to it.

 

Don't you just love 'Time' paradoxes. Seriously, if the 'stranger from another world' had to use a time machine to go back in time to defeat Mondain the Wizard and destroy the Gem of Immortality, then all of the events afterwards would never have happened that would have required the 'stranger from another world' from having to go back into time to begin with.

 

I am also staying away from Ultima lore in-game for RP reasons. None of my characters were around so how would they know? For that matter, unless your RP is based on your character having been around during that time.. they wouldn't have that knowledge either.

On the other hand.. the civilization survived the cataclysm. So it's unreasonable to assume that ALL books were lost and unrecoverable. Hmm.. well perhaps if no one else gets around to it and it seems 'something is missing' I might do a few ancient lore books.

 

Didn't you hear? Jaan had an encounter with a Stranger who arrived in a flying ship that came through a silver rift in the sky above Wizard's Rest. He seemed confused and kept talking about a place called "Sosaria". Also was asking very urgently to see Lord British. She sent him to Kingsport to catch a ferry...

Now you've got me wondering *which* Lord British is inhabiting Novia.... hrrmmmmm...

 

Jaan is a member of a secretive sect of very long-lived Druidesses that trace their lineage back to before the Cataclysm. They are called the Order of the Thrice Great Grandmothers and claim to be in possession of lost knowledge, which will be forthcoming in a series of Missives.

According to a book which used to be in the Jaanaford Public Library (and which also appears to have since gone missing) her own grandmother was one of the founders of Jaanaford, and was believed by some to have witnessed the Cataclysm herself.

There are legends of a Druidess named Jaana who discovered, and later mapped, a vast labyrinth of tunnels and caves underneath Novia. Apparently this is where she was able to survive the fallout from the Cataclysm.

Of course, many people believe they are just a bunch of crazy old ladies with too much time on their hands. If they exist at all. As for Jaan... well she insists she is a Novian but some think that's just the dementia talking.

 

Must be in a parallel dimension then

 

On this I would have to agree with. Unless someone scribbled something on a stone tablet, and it was decipherable, there really isn't anyone around to pass on information from Old Britannia, and anything that was would have become altered, just like in RL where information that is passed on by word from one generation to the next tend to become altered and therefore, not the same story/legend that it was when told by the original story teller.
Hence, the reason why I am sticking to more current Novian history, where possible.

 

If you help me with a re-write of this book, it may mysteriously reappear in the library

 

Go back to Richard Garriott's premise then we've been transported here. The intro would suggest we are modern, contemporary. As a roleplayer I'm not going to play myself, but I am playing a contemporary fellow, a former clothing salesman from Oklahoma City. This lends itself to some fun braiding of fiction and reality. Brigham may well have played the previous Ultimas, may even have been an Avatar in Britannia. If so, he's certainly found a familiar setting. They even refer to him as Avatar. While things may have changed Brigham would know his Ultima canon.

 

The only problem I really have with playing as an "avatar" is any claim of being THE avatar in a multiplayer environment. There is certainly room even in SotA lore exclusively for PCs to be not just other avatars but from places other than Earth (ie the Titans). I don't see any reason why others can't have travelled back and forth as THE Avatar did. LB has done so at least once.. most of the companions are from Earth and there are several examples from Ultima of people being from other worlds (ie Gorn, invasion of LB's castle in UWII etc).

 

Captain Janeway would hate Ultima.