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Before time as we know it began A man who is later referred to as "Zog", curious about the newly foming
effects of magic, speaks with the wisps in order to learn more about the
arcane arts. Eventually, he becomes a talanted practitioner of magic in
his primitive Sosaria. A Curious man, when the wisps taught him a new spell,
he wanted to cast it right away. The Spell was the Ritual of Armageddon.
The casting of this ritual destroyed all life on Sosaria.
Uncountable thousands of years pass, eventually life returns to the
fertile planet. The kingdom of Akalabeth spreads throughout Sosaria. In its day, Akalabeth was a large kingdom similar to Britannia. It's last monarch was one King Wolfgang. Wolfgang's second son is born. His name is Mondain. A young man by the name of Richard Garriott from Cambridge, England
on Earth came across a medallion with a serpent engraved upon it. Upon
examining it, a portal opened, and Garriott went through to a new land:
Sosaria. There he met his first friend, Shamino who had injured
himself while chopping wood. Shamino used magic to repair his wound, and
Garriott was impressed. Afterward, Garriott couldn't re-open the portal,
and so stayed with Shamino. It was Shamino who gave Garriott the nickname
British as he was from Britain. Wolfgang tries to curb his youngest sons reckless behaviour by showing him his inheritance. Wolfgang declared that should his sons behaviour continue, he would not recieve his inheritance. Mondain then killed his own father and stole his inheritance, part of which was a magical ruby gemstone. The death of Wolfgang signaled the end of the Akalabethian empire, and the beginnings of a feudal city-state form of government. Mondain studies the ruby, and determines that by using the ruby against itself, he can create the Gem of Immortality. It is unclear wether this discovery was intentional or accidental. In any event, the power of the Gem gave Mondain a new confidence. He began to "experiment" with cross-breeding species through the use of magic. He crossed Rats and Humans to create Ratmen, Lizards and humans to create Lizardmen, and Dogs and Humans to create orcs. Slowly he began to release them into the world to wreak havoc on the remains of Akalabeth. Mondain opposed Lord British, now ruler of the most prosperous Akalabeth remnant. With the
Gem of Immortality at his command, Mondain summoned creatures of every
type to wreak havoc on the land, and distract the people from the true
culprit; himself. Because Sosarian time is 12 times faster than Earth time,
Lord British also had his own form of Immortality, at least to Sosarians.
He eventually learned how to use the Serpent Medallion he found ages ago
and summoned another from Earth to help save the planet. You may have noticed that thus far, this is virtually identical to
the story of Ultima 1. That is because that this IS the story of Ultima
1. The only events that the Ultima Series and Ultima Online share
is Ultima 1. Contrary to popular belief, the events of Ultima 2-9 did
not happen in Ultima Online. Each Likness of Sosaria contained within each fragment of the Gem became
a living breathing world contained within that gem. Within each gem, the worlds were further seperated
into different facets of each gem. In one (or possibly more) of these facets, the destruction of the gem
caused catastrophic and disastrous changes to Britannia, most notably the facet of Ilshenar. The history of Ilshenar is not covered in this section, see instead our special Ilshenar section of the Institute.
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