The Black Gate: Won!

It's not your place to decide what "won!" means for me.

          

Throughout the backstory and in the gameplay so far, there have been several hints about the calamity that befell Skara Brae shortly after the events of Ultima VI. In The Book of Fellowship, Batlin mentions the "terrible fires which ravaged that island." He goes on to say: "Later I made a pilgrimage to the desolate ruins of Skara Brae and there I had a spiritual experience so profound that I have vowed never to relate it to anyone." When I first read the manual, I regarded this as more Batlin balderdash--the kind of thing that a shallow "spiritual leader" would say when unable to describe an actual spiritual experience. It turned out, to my surprise, that Batlin wasn't lying--but more on that later.

   

Ultima VII's Skara Brae is no longer a city of rangers but rather a haunted ruin. The island is surrounded by stones placed at intervals close enough that no ship can approach, and although some commenters have said that there are a few patches clear enough to land a magic carpet, I never saw any. The casual player must approach by ferry from the mainland. The ferry is manned by an undead ferryman who demands 2 gold pieces to cross. No explanation is ever given for how he got his job or why he's condemned to do it for eternity.

        

The inexplicable ferryman accepts his fare.

         

We pay the fare and cross the channel, arriving about mid-afternoon. (My tendency to keep the "Great Light" spell going permanently has essentially erased my ability to assess the time, as if the game is taking place in Alaska in July. Fortunately, I have the watch.) We immediately start encountering ghosts. I have to cast the "Seance" spell to talk with them; one casting seems to last forever. I wish it worked in other places during the game.

     

The first person we talk to happens to be Quenton. Now, you may remember this story from Ultima VI. In that game, we encountered an emotional wreck of a woman named Marney. Her mother had been kidnapped and killed by "Mondain's henchmen," looking for someone named "Relthor" or "Renthar." As the events of Ultima VI were unfolding, her father, Quenton, had just been murdered. Although some witnesses claimed gargoyles had killed him, we found evidence that pointed to a man named Michael, living nearby on the mainland, who said cryptically, "A debt needed to be settled." It was never clear who "Relthor" or "Renthar" was, although the mayor, Trenton, seemed to be hiding something. It was never clear how "Mondain's henchmen" could still be around in living memory. And there was no official way to solve the murder, although my party killed Michael.

         

Why weren't you this talkative when I used "Seance" in the last game. Back then, you just pointed at stuff.

      

Quenton's story in this game "solves" the mystery but only by retconnning it a bit. Quenton's wife, Gwen, wasn't kidnapped by "Mondain's henchmen," but rather just "evil men." Quenton blames his own murder on having borrowed more than he had the ability to repay, and Michael is confirmed as the killer. We hear that Marney eventually succumbed to her grief shortly after we left last time, a sad end to a sad story, although on the positive side, both Gwen's and Quenton's killers were eventually brought to justice in Yew, my killing of Michael being apparently non-canonical.

    

Anyway, Quenton's story is of course less important than the story of what happened to Skara Brae to make it a burned, ghost-infested ruin. The full story becomes clear only after talking to multiple NPCs, but it begins with the mage Horance, once a goofy man, given to speaking in rhyme, who lived on an island off the coast in Ultima VI. I guess his rhyme-speak, which we found amusing at the time, was a sign of growing mental illness. Horance eventually decided to seek eternal life by making himself a lich (which the game insists on spelling as "liche"). Ultima in general doesn't go into a lot of detail about lich lore, but the ritual apparently involves inviting a demon to inhabit your body, which then represses the original personality, thus somewhat ruining the benefits of eternal life. In any case, the ritual worked for Horance, and he began terrorizing the town. One of his crimes was to kidnap Rowena, wife of the local blacksmith, Trent.

      

Trent is unhappy about this turn of events.

       

The town healer, Mistress Mordra, came up with a plan to free the town of the lich. She enlisted the help of the mayor, Forsythe, Trent, and the local alchemist, Caine. Trent was to build an iron cage to contain the lich. Caine was to brew a special potion to pour over the cage once Horance was contained. Somehow, Forsythe ended up with the list of ingredients needed for the spell, which he read to Caine while the latter was brewing the concoction. Unfortunately, Forsythe misplaced a decimal or something, and he accidentally told Caine to use 10 times the amount of "mandrake essence" as he was actually supposed to use. The resulting explosion destroyed the entire island and killed everyone.

      

Horance somehow prevented any of their spirits from moving on, and instead ensorcelled them so that all the residents of Skara Brae have to march to Horance's castle every night at midnight and participate in a "black mass." None of them actually remember this later. Meanwhile, Rowena sits at Horance's side, unable to remember herself. Trent, not realizing he's dead, continues to hammer at the cage. Miscellaneous skeletons and ghosts wander the ruins and attack. The souls of Skara Brae's past dead are trapped in the Well of Souls in Horance's tower. And poor Caine, unable to forgive himself for what he did to the town, imagines that he's constantly surrounded by fire. The other ghosts call him "The Tortured One." It's from him that Alagner the sage wants me to obtain the secrets of life and death.

         

The Tortured One explains how he got his name.

         

The quest frankly isn't hard enough to solve that it should have been left undone for 200 years. I see it as yet another black mark against Lord British. Mistress Mordra gives me most of the instructions, which boil down to completing the ritual that they had attempted in the first place. She provides all the ingredients for the potion, which we take to Caine's laboratory and create using his apparatus. Here, I'll pause to note that the "essence of mandrake" potion has some beautiful graphics. It's a marbled red and yellow, I think, but constantly shifting rather than a solid color. It strikes me as a lot of work, graphically, to put into such a small item.

         

Mordra walks me through everything.

Brewing the mixture. There's only one essence of mandrake, so you can't really screw it up.

        

We then had to snap Trent out of his haze by bringing him Rowena's ring. This, in turn, meant briefly waking up Rowena to who she really was by bringing a music box from her old house, putting it on the floor, and playing it. We met Horance during this visit, but he didn't seem surprised or alarmed by the party's presence. He says he intends to rule all Britannia, but come on, Horance--you haven't made any move off this island in two centuries.

        

Rowena comes to her senses.

Horance interprets both answers the same way.

          

Trent needs an iron bar from the cemetery to finish the cage. Once again, I read and translate every gravestone while I'm there. Unlike the ones in Yew, they don't seem to be in-jokes (although some sound like real names), but a lot of them are just weird. A whole batch of them involve food puns that aren't very good. Here you go:

             

• REY. INSTALLED HERE.
• JACKIE D. AS IN D FOR DINNER.
• BRIAN S. FOOD WAS HIM.
• MICHELLE G. BRINGER OF DINNER.
• JOHN T. GONE AND WENT.
• HERE LIES DONNA. SHE IS A GONNA. (This one is replicated in Yew.)
• WAYNE S. THE FOOD WAS GREAT.
• W. HAGY. FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
• M. STEVENS. ARRIVED WITH GIFTS.
• ELGELETH. QUEEN FOR A DAY. WORM FOOD FOREVER.
• JEFF F. FED BUT NEVER ATE.
• CRAIG C. WAS DELIVERED.
• BETH AND MICHAEL. WORM FOOD.
• RHOODE. A MORE DESERVING MAN NEVER DIED.
• SARNAN. WAS NOT MISSED BUT IS NOW.
• WAMPOL. HERE HE LIED, NOW HERE HE LAYS.
• GREGHIM. OLD AGE NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD.
• DESTRA. WOUNDED BY A LOVERS SPURNING.
• JRRT. A GREAT MAN, A GREAT WRITER. (This in a gold plaque affixed to a statue, obviously referring to J. R. R. Tolkien.)
• FOR THE LOVE OF MARNEY. (A gold plaque in a tomb with a secret door. An NPC mentions that Yorl, Marney's guardian after her father's death, erected this special tomb.)

           

Studying Marney's tomb.

      

• KEVIN B. DIED AWAY FROM THE CHILTONS. 
• GALLER. CAME, SAW, WAS CONQUERED.
• DARREN MCDONALD. WHO IS FALTRAN.
• HERE'S TONY MORSE. HE'S DEAD OF COURSE.
• HERE'S LARRY SALAMOT. GROSS.
• ERLEMAR. GREATEST ENCHANTER OF HIS DAY.

         

We have to dip the cage into the Well of Souls, then lock it onto Horance while he slumbers on a slab during the midnight ritual. Waiting for midnight took longer than anything else during this session, and I actually left the island for a while to clean up some errands on the continent, including selling gold bars and nuggets, buying more reagents, and spending my final skill-development points. I also took a ship up to Ambrosia and checked out that fortress building in the middle of the bay, only to find nothing important.

        

Dipping the cage in the Well of Souls.

         

When I return at midnight, everything goes fine. We snap the cage onto Horance and douse it with the potion. The "lich" part of Horance flees howling into the ether, and what's left is a kindly old ghost who apologizes for his actions. He asks me to bring Rowena home to her husband while he figures out how to destroy the Well of Souls. Rowena and Trent are joyously reunited.

         

Using the cage on the lich as the rest of the townsfolk sleep nearby.

       

(Since you kill the Lich during the ritual, all of the ghosts from the town are in the fortress at the time. If you speak with them, they have dialogues that include banter with each other--banter that would normally be impossible because during the day, they're in separate buildings. You'd only ever get the dialogue by speaking to these NPCs immediately after destroying the lich. It's funny that the developers put so much detail into this one area and overlooked so many other things.)

        

NPCs have dialogue that only makes sense for a few minutes in this one place.

        

Horance tells me that to destroy the Well of Souls, some soul will have to jump into it, sacrificing himself for the others. It has to be a dead soul, severed from the body, so my party is out of consideration. Horance doesn't volunteer himself for unknown reasons. He suggests I ask Forsythe, for as mayor, "it is his right to be considered before the others."

          

Maybe you could do it since you, you know, tortured everyone for centuries?

         

Forsythe would happily forgo that honor, and frankly I think what happens to him next is a bit unfair. He insists that I first speak to everyone else in town, including the ferryman, plus Trent and Rowena, who were just reunited. Now, Forsythe isn't being the bravest soul here, but it's still not exactly fair that he's automatically the default. And a lot of the other NPCs get out of it for awfully spurious reasons. In fact, only Mistress Mordra seems to have a good reason; she's tied herself to other entities spiritually, so that if she jumps in the well, it will have devastating consequences for the land.

    

Caine would be an obvious choice, for instance, but he just insists it's his lot to suffer forever in his imaginary flames. Yes, even solving the lich problem didn't free Caine. There should have been more options for me to convince Caine it wasn't his fault, and that he can both sacrifice himself and free himself from his self-imposed torture. Most other NPCs simply decline without considering it (the tavernkeeper: "Oh, goodness no. I do not think I'm the one thou wantest for that job.") or by pretending they don't even understand the question (the waitress Paulette: "Thou wantest met to jump in a well? Well, thou canst go jump in a lake!"). The ferryman would happily do it to relieve himself of his monotonous job, but he resignedly says that he cannot, because of whatever geas binds him here.

So Forsythe finally sucks it up, shows some bravery, and marches to the well. He tries to stall a bit but ultimately says, "I suppose I didn't make a very good mayor in life . . . At least in death, I'll make a name for myself and do the job right." He jumps, and the souls are freed.

        

I'm not even sure either of us is clear about what he's sacrificing. Is his own soul destroyed, or is it trapped in the well in lieu of the others?

       

Horance rewards us with a Firedoom Staff, which we immediately drop on the floor and leave there, since it's deadly to friend and foe alike. He announces his intention to stay and try to rebuild Skara Brae "into a shining example of spirituality; a shrine where people of good heart may live in peace and harmony." I have no idea how he plans to do that as a ghost, but lacking any other worthy living person to give it to, I drop the Rune of Spirituality beside him on my way out. I find myself wondering if Horance is really the right "person" to wield it and find I no longer really care.

          

Discarding the last rune.

          

My last stop is at Caine's. I've done what he wanted, and now it's his turn to give me the answers to the secrets of Life and Death. But he just smiles at me and calls me a fool. "There are no answers," he says. "Only questions." Then he demands I leave his shop.

       

If you weren't dead, I'd kill you.

   
Oh, young readers, I would like you to imagine the party riding the ferry on the way back to the mainland. Imagine that they are all smiles and happiness, reveling in their triumph over the darkness that had infested Skara Brae. Imagine that they ask a few pointed questions of the ferryman, who reveals that his enchantment is such that he may only escort the Avatar and the Avatar's companions, which explains why neither Lord British nor any other Britannian in the last 200 years attempted to free the island of its torments. Imagine, still, that upon arriving in Britain, Lord British falls on his knees before the Avatar, thanking him for ending this travesty, this centuries-old affront to the very ideals on which Britannia once stood, this wrong grave enough that its righting would be the entire plot of a lesser game. Imagine further that Lord British is convinced by the Avatar's evidence of the Fellowship's treachery, of the Guardian's threat, and vows to stir himself from his torpor and make himself worthy of the mantle of king again. Imagine that Lord British, the Avatar, and his worthy companions, working together, manage to end the threat and restore virtue to Britannia. Imagine such, and end your reading here. Close your browser. Move on to the next game, and pretend that all is right in Britannia forevermore.
          
Move forward at your peril. For I promise you: you are not going to like what happens next.
        

Imagine this.

          

My companions start demanding food as we take the ferry back across the channel. Oh, but I am so tired. So tired of them, and their inability to do anything for themselves, of their complete dereliction of duty whenever I'm not in town. So tired of this place, with its shifting stories that make no sense; with its inevitable degradation no matter how hard I struggle; with its absolutely useless ruler who doesn't even notice the decay around him; with its conniving, ungrateful population, the best of them sacrificing and the worst succeeding; with its insistence in calling me "the Avatar" but without showing any interest in me being "the Avatar." In my entire visit, I've spoken to maybe two or three people who I actually like, and a couple of them are clearly doomed, including the suicidally-depressed Nastassia. In her, I see a future Marney, no matter how hard I might try to build a life with her.

   

We land the carpet on the streets of Britain, and I lead the party into Lord British's throne room. I open a dialogue with him, hoping he has anything mitigating to say. Maybe a congratulations for freeing Skara Brae from a lich? Maybe an excuse for why he couldn't do it himself, or one of his knights couldn't have done it, for two centuries? Maybe some acknowledgement that the Fellowship is a menace and Batlin is the worst of the lot? But no, he just has the same pabulum as before. Sighing, I open my spellbook, look Lord British in the eyes, and say, "IN CORP HUR TYM."

         

This spell could easily be cast accidentally by someone choking while trying to say "Incorporation."

      

Magic bursts from me. The ground rumbles and the sky thunders. Behind me, I hear my companions fall lifeless to the floor. You will think that I do not grieve them, nor the other roughly-100 remaining citizens of Britannia who just died, just because the rest of this entry is not about that grief. But I do. I grieved them from the moment that I knew this would be the end. Their deaths were instantaneous, with no suffering, which is a far greater mercy than they would have faced under the Guardian's rule. More important, it is a far greater mercy than they would have faced under the capricious, indifferent rule of an immortal, indestructible sovereign who lets entire cities burn even as a sinister society schemes the throne out from under him using the most obvious means.
    
That sovereign, of course, is unfazed. With a look of anger, not grief, he bellows:

      

Fool! What possessed thee to cast that damned Armageddon spell? I knew it was dangerous! Thou didst know it was dangerous! Now look at us! We are all alone on the entire planet! Britannia is ruined! What kind of Avatar art thou?! Now, with no Moongates working, we are both forced to spend eternity in this blasted wasteland! Of course, it could be viewed as a clever solution to all of our problems. After all, not even this so-called Guardian would want Britannia now!

       

His words confirm the wisdom of what I have just done. The land was doomed anyway. Does that sound like the speech of a good king, grieving over the loss of his entire populace? It sounds to me more like a child, angry that I've just broken his toy. He's angry, not grief-stricken, not horrified. Just angry. He also unwittingly lets on that he knows about the Guardian--probably has known about him for a long time. And what's that line about the "clever solution"? How would such a thing even occur to a moral person, a true king, at a time like this? For the hundredth time, I have to wonder why Richard Garriott allowed his alter-ego to be portrayed this way. Lord British has literally done nothing worthy of his reputation since he converted that demon in Ultima V--and even that was rectonned so that the demon was a gargoyle and thus not really evil in the first place.

    

What Lord British doesn't know is that neither of us is going to be stuck in this world with the other, either. I remove the Black Sword from my pack. "Death," I whisper to it. What follows is a dramatic event, with the demon coming forward and speaking through my mouth and controlling my hands.

          

The sword and Lord British have unique dialogue for just this eventuality.

Including the moron calling for his dead guards.

    

The resulting graphic shows Lord British's decapitated corpse sprawled over his throne. I stare at it for a while and leave.

         

Mission accomplished.

       

I head into the lifeless streets of Britain and walk to the Fellowship Hall. Batlin is standing near the entrance, more bemused than horrified. As we gaze out upon the continual storm that "Armageddon" has unleashed, he tells me his story:

              

Many years ago, Avatar. I went to Skara Brae, the ghost city. The way the world is now reminds me of that dead place. In Skara Brae, I had a spiritual experience, so profound that I have never spoken to another soul. I would like to share that experience with thee now, Avatar. 

There at Skara Brae, I saw a man who was called The Tortured One. I asked this dead man, pray tell, what is the answer to the question of Life and Death? He gave me no reply, and I asked him again. I beseeched him to impart some small parcel of wisdom upon me. What is the answer to the question of Life and Death?! He said nothing, but in his eyes . . . In his eyes, I could see, Avatar, that he could not answer me for there was no answer to give. No answers to the question of Life and Death! It was then I understood. No meanings! No virtues! No values!!!

I commend thee, Avatar, for reaching the same liberating illumination. 

             

I turn to him, and he raises his face to meet mine. "I'm ready to join the Fellowship now," I say. He stares at me incredulously for a few seconds and then begins laughing--halting at first, but soon collapsing into an insane, never-ending bellow. It sounds a bit like a scream. His voice is still echoing down the streets of the city as I board the magic carpet.*

         

Batlin gets the punishment he deserves: eternity alone in a lifeless prison.

         

I dolefully make my way south to the Meditation Retreat, enter, and walk out with the cube prism. It makes people tell the truth, but there's no one left to use it on. I fly from there to the Isle of the Avatar and wander its halls until I find the chamber with the Black Gate. An image of the Guardian forms in my mind.

"Stop the Avatar!" it orders. But there's no one to stop me. Everyone in the room is dead, even Batlin (somehow). I thus take the three prisms out of my backpack and place them in their receptacles around the Black Gate, lowering its defenses.*

          

Removing the force field around the Black Gate. Knowing this game, there's probably some way to accidentally walk right through it.

         

"So, Avatar, the moment of truth has come," the Guardian booms in my head. "You can destroy the Black Gate, but you will never return--" He's still talking as I walk through the gate and out of Britannia forever, without even a look behind me. My only regret is that I won't see his face when he arrives to this cold and lifeless world.

       

The Guardian still doesn't get it.

        

"You wonder how you are to live with the guilt for deserting Britannia and leaving its fate in the hands of the Guardian," the game says, but it doesn't know what it's talking about. I don't wonder. Not at all.

    

Final time: 72 hours

  

 *Everything in this paragraph I made up because I thought it sounded good. Batlin has no dialogue after he tells his story.

  

**Batlin, Hook, et. al., actually have their normal endgame dialogue at this point, despite their bodies being dead on the floor, but it intrudes with my narrative, so I didn't include it.