The Black Gate: The Road Not Taken

Happy?

         

So here's what's supposed to happen, picking up from the party's victory at Skara Brae: I get the answer to the question of Life and Death (or, at least, enough of one) from the Tortured One and return to Alagner. Alagner lets me borrow his book. I have to solve a bunch of annoying navigation puzzles in his lab to get it, and while I'm doing so, Alagner is murdered by Hook and Forkris, an event I'm able to witness in the crystal ball on his table, since it records what happened in the previous 24 hours.

 

Alagner's notebook satisfies the wisp, who tells me that the Time Lord wants to speak to me, but he's trapped in the Shrine of Spirituality. I can reach him by using my Orb of Moons directly to the northwest, even though this has never worked before. The wisp goes on to explain that Britannia is under attack from the Guardian, who is vain, greedy, egocentric, and malevolent. He has conquered numerous worlds, and his followers--the leaders of the Fellowship--are building a black moongate to allow him to enter and conquer Britannia. The wisp warns us to prevent this, as in Britannia, the Guardian will be unstoppable. Most of this is stuff we already know.

In his prison in the Shrine of Spirituality, the Time Lord confirms that it was he who sent the red moongate to bring me to Britannia. He is being held in his prison by the spherical generator in the dungeon Despise, which he bids the Avatar to destroy. The Avatar has to journey all the way there, get blocked by the red moongate, and return to the Time Lord to hear the Time Lord's solution to the barrier: get Nicodemus's hourglass.
       

The Time Lord ruins the fan theory that he was Hawkwind in Ultima IV.

        
Nicdoemus tells you that he sold the hourglass to an antique store in Paws. You can buy it or steal it there, but Nicodemus needs to enchant it for it to be useful. If the ether is still messed up, he can't do that, so the Avatar has to return to the Time Lord and get the clue to visit Penumbra as a first step to destroying the tetrahedron generator. Afterwards (or if the Avatar has already done this), Nicodemus can cast the necessary spell.

The enchanted hourglass somehow provides protection from the barrier, allowing the Avatar to enter and destroy the generator as I did by accident. More important, by double-clicking on the hourglass, the Avatar can contact the Time Lord later on.

To destroy the cube generator legitimately, you must use the hourglass to contact the Time Lord, who suggests that its defense can be countered with a special metal called Caddellite. I had already picked up Caddellite ore on a premature visit to Ambrosia, but if I hadn't, the Time Lord would tell me to ask Brion at the Moonglow observatory. Brion tells you that Caddellite only comes from meteors, and the last one to strike Britannia landed in the "northeast sea." It is also Brion who recommends that you take the ore to Zorn in Minoc to have helmets fashioned from it. Zorn's helmets protect from the cube generator's attacks, allowing the party to access it and get the cube prism.
        

Zorn forges faster than the player character in Skyrim.

      
By bumbling prematurely into the sphere generator, I destroyed some of this questline, but less than I thought. As we've seen, I could still contact the wisps and get the hints to visit Alagner, and from Alagner the quest to visit the Tortured One, and I could have continued through Alagner's murder.

Unfortunately, I couldn't visit the Time Lord in his original prison, since I'd already freed him and then broke the Orb of Moons. This meant that I never asked him about a way to get through the red moongate, which means he never gave me the HOURGLASS keyword to feed to Nicodemus. However, I discovered that if I obtained the hourglass from Paws, Nicodemus still had the ENCHANT keyword that would allow me to pick up from there.
          

That was the past, Time Lord.

        
When I used it, the Time Lord addressed me as if speaking to me for the first time, using dialogue that I would have received if I'd visited him in his prison, but I also had keywords from later in the questline, so it was a weird conversation, mixing dialogue that suggested he was still entrapped with dialogue that I was meant to get after freeing him. Either way, he directed me to Brion and the Caddellite helms the way he was supposed to, allowing me to pick up from there.

Truth be told, I had already obtained the cube prism by dismissing my party, sucking up the damage that the generator dealt with my enhanced hit points, solving the puzzle, and re-enlisting my party members. But I still went to Brion, got the hint, went to Minoc, and got Zorn to make me eight Caddellite helmets.
         

Spark puts one on.

         
I declined to finish the Alagner questline because it would have gotten him needlessly killed, and I no longer needed the wisps' hints about reaching the Time Lord. Thus, we pick up this narrative as my Avatar arrives at the Meditation Retreat for the second time. Whether it's the Caddellite helm that protects the Avatar or the extra hit points he gained from Forge of Virtue, he ends up in the generator (as he does with all the generators) alone.
        

Thank the gods. Trying to move my party through this area would be a nightmare.

          

If the phrase "fiendish without being particularly clever" makes any sense, it applies to the little cube generator maze. The cube is in the center of a series of concentric squares. The Avatar can walk around the squares, but there are invisible walls blocking him at various points. Stepping on some points sets off traps, while stepping on others creates little bridges between the outer and inner squares. You basically have to walk around the whole thing multiple times, doing your best to avoid fireballs and gouts of flame, reloading if you suddenly wake up at the Fellowship shelter in Paws.
         

Maneuvering my way around the area.

          

The voice of the Guardian taunts you throughout this process, sometimes laughing, sometimes saying, "Yes, that is the proper direction to travel, Avatar." Either way, you ignore him until you finally reach the center and take the cube. As usual, this destroys the generator.

Afterwards, the Time Lord speaks unbidden:
         

Avatar! The Astronomical Alignment is almost at hand! Time is running out! The Guardian must be prevented from coming through the Black Gate! The cube will help thee find the location of the Black Gate. With it in thy possession, those under the influence of the Guardian will be more receptive to speaking the truth to thee. Go to Buccaneer's Den. Search for the one called "Hook." Talk to the so-called Fellowship. Thou shouldst have no trouble ascertaining his whereabouts there. I am sure that thou wilt eventually find the location of the Black Gate. Good luck!

         
Gorn has no new dialogue on the way out; his "god" is somehow still able to speak to him, so he and the Avatar still part with animosity. 
   
Having already visited Buccaneer's Den (and, of course, having already gotten to it twice), I already know that the Black Gate will be found on the Isle of the Avatar, but the prospect of using a lie detector on Fellowship members is too good to pass up. I spend a while flying everywhere with a Fellowship hall, re-engaging various members in dialogue. They often begin with their "old" dialogue, but then the cube vibrates and they have additional dialogue in which they're forced to speak the truth. Here are some highlights:
         

• Klog in Trinsic not only knew about the Fellowship's role in Christopher's murder; he instigated it. When Christopher refused to help with the Black Gate project despite having been paid, Klog confronted him and Christopher shoved him out of his smithy. Klog called for the assassins, and Hook and Forskis arrived in The Crown Jewel to take care of the deed. Inamo was in the wrong place at the wrong time after all.

• Batlin casts a spell and disappears the moment he sees that you have the cube.

• Patterson has no new dialogue. He's not being influenced by the Guardian; he's just a jackass.

           

The Avatar looks at the cube in confusion, shakes it, checks the battery compartment.

           

• Elynor in Minoc knows full well that Hook and Forskis committed the murders of Frederico and Tania. She attributes the Fellowship candelabra left at the scene to their carelessness.

• Danag, the branch leader in Buccaneer's Den, has the most to offer. He spills the beans on Hook, who is the Fellowship's chief executioner, having been trained to the role by his predecessor, de Snel. Danag doesn't like the Fellowship leaders. He calls Elizabeth a "royal she-bitch" who "will murder thee at a moment's notice," and he says that Abraham cheats at cards. He also says explicitly that the Black Gate is being built on the Isle of the Avatar, in case it wasn't clear from the materials in Hook's chambers, and that Hook has a key. He confirms that Buccaneer's Den and its pirates are completely controlled by the Fellowship, and that most of the organization's profits come from there.

            

The cube basically vibrates continually as Danag talks.

          

• Gordy, the game master, confirms Fellowship owner of the casino and says that the guard Sintag has the key to the back areas.

• Sintag willingly hands over the key if asked. This is how players were supposed to get in without the "Telekinesis" spell.

• None of the NPCs in the Baths have any new dialogue. I guess maybe they really are volunteers.

• The game specifically notes that the cube had no effect on some Fellowship members, meaning they were honestly suckered. This is true of Feridwyn in Paws and Quan in Terfin.

• Mistress Mandy, the tavernkeeper in Buccaneer's Den, causes the cube to vibrate "a little," but tells me nothing she didn't when I didn't have the cube. The game notes that "somehow you know that Mandy would have told you the truth without it."

Lord British has no new dialogue, neither from the cube nor any of the things we've discovered the whole game.

                  
Apropos of nothing, in the sea between Buccaneer's Den and Serpent's Hold is a ship floating by itself with no crew. I didn't check it out (it would require my own ship), but I wonder what's in the hold.
        

The Crown Jewel at last!

          
Thus we made our way once again to the old dungeon Hythloth, built into the mountains west of the old Shrine of the Codex, and we use the key from Hook's chambers--conveniently forgotten by the loyal Fellowship assassin--to open the front door.
 
Immediately inside the door, we're startled to see a giant stone throne, clearly built for the Guardian. It's not so much the presence of the throne that startles us, but its specific location. Did the Guardian really want to sit so immediately in front of the main door, in a dungeon with a dirt floor, looking out on the Shrine of the Codex through iron bars?
           

This is more where you'd put the receptionist's desk than the throne of your leader and conqueror.

          
There are living and dining quarters for Fellowship staff--all of whom we kill--immediately south of the throne room. The dungeon continues to the north, opened by a switch found behind a hidden door.

The area beyond has a jail with three doors. A switch puzzle opens the doors; one must enter the third one, where the body of a well-dressed woman lies dead on the floor. She has a necessary key.

The next area has a variety of switches and walls opened by those switches. We got through by figuring out the pattern. The next chamber we explore has dozens of bodies and skeletons, almost all of them wearing Fellowship medallions. As we move west, we see that the chamber is occupied by a dragon, which we kill without much trouble. There's an enormous pile of treasure, including gems and multiple stacks of gold pieces, at the southern end. We pick up a few final enchanted armor pieces, but it would take a moron to bother to pick up all that treasure.
        

The dragon's useless treasure hoard. Shamino gets a magic choker, at least.

           
The rest of the dungeon is weird. If the other Fellowship members have to travel through it to get to where they're constructing the Black Gate, they must constantly put their lives in their hands. There are numerous hidden passages (and I hate how this game does hidden passages) and one succession of areas in which you get teleported every time you sit on a throne, only to an identical chamber so you don't realize you've been teleported. There are some false teleporters that dump you back to the beginning. There aren't a lot of enemies, but a lich nonsensically blocks the way to the final area.
        

The lich killed Dupre, so I have to resurrect him.

         
The penultimate area is a large Fellowship hall, where we defeat about half a dozen members of various classes. A hidden hallway behind the altar leads to a final teleporter, which in turn leads, at last, to the chamber of the Black Gate. Knowing what's coming, we arrive with "Mass Might" and "Protect All" having been cast.
        

This place would make more sense for the throne.

        
The chamber is a long north-south room with the Black Gate on a triangular platform at the north end. Each corner of the platform has a pedestal with a receptacle for each of the three prisms. The room is occupied by five people: Batlin, Elizabeth, Abraham, Hook, and Forskis. As we enter, the Guardian's voice booms: "Stop the Avatar! I will come through the Black Gate now!"
  
Each of the Fellowship members has some dialogue. Batlin demands that we stop and questions our sanity. He says the Guardian will crush us "like an insect." He says if we bow down to the Guardian, "perhaps he shall give thee a place at his side."
     

How is it "mad" to stop a tyrannical, otherworldly being from coming through a portal?

    
Hook isn't interested in bribing us with power. Neither is his henchman, Forskis.
      

To be fair, Hook and I are in agreement.

Forskis is like a parody of gargoyles.

   
Abraham and Elizabeth both join in the calls to kill us:
          

These two names have loomed so large throughout the entire game, and yet these lines are the entirety of the Avatar's interactions with these characters.

    
Outvoted, Batlin changes his tune:
 

Batlin, you're the craftiest guy I know. But you're the only one in this room who doesn't realize that I decided to kill you five minutes ago.

       
I saved a lot of resources for this battle, including several Potions of Sleep. Immediately after the battle begins, I administer them to each of the Fellowship members.
           

Batlin flights with spells while his companions sleep.

         
Only Batlin is immune, and it doesn't take the rest of the party long to defeat him. He has a little speech:
           

Dost thou imagine thyself an immortal? The Guardian is far more. Return to your precious Earth and rest. Sleep, that he may visit your dreams with countless visions of death in the belly of the Great Sea Serpent. As for me, I shall begone! Thou shalt never find me! Farewell, Avatar!

             
And with that, Batlin teleports away, leaving me to wonder what he meant about the "Great Sea Serpent." We spend a grim few minutes executing coups-de-grâce on the rest of the Fellowship. After the sordid business is over, I remember that we've been carrying around about a dozen glass swords that I had intended to use in this final battle. Ah, well. An Ultima glass sword wouldn't be an Ultima glass sword if it was actually used.
 
One by one, I place the cube, tetrahedron, and sphere prisms in their receptacle. The last one lowers the protective barrier around the Black Gate. As I insert the objects, a few questions occur to me, such as how a gateway can be constructed of solid material, and why the Fellowship members built a fail-safe into their protective barrier that involved the three generator prisms.
          

I'm also a little confused about the blue light on the wall behind the gate.

           
Regardless of the answers, as the barrier collapses, the Guardian once more invades my thoughts:
     

So, Avatar! The moment of truth has come. You can destroy the Black Gate, but you will never return to your beloved Earth. Or you can come through now and go home! It is your choice!

 
If I didn't already know that it works, I'd be thinking now that the Guardian is trying to trick me. How can this portal go both to the Guardian's realm and to Earth? I'm grateful Lord British isn't here, as he'd probably shove me bodily into the portal before the Guardian finished speaking.
  
Instead, I point Rudyom's wand at the Black Gate and the endgame cinematic commences. It shows the Guardian struggling to come through just as the portal explodes.

It's not my fault that your followers made it so small. How were you planning to get your legs through?

I don't think it's going to stretch.

I feel like this should have killed him.

            
"Avatar!" calls the Guardian. "You think you have won? Think again! You are unable to leave Britannia, whereas I am free to enter other worlds! Hmmm . . . perhaps your puny Earth shall be my NEXT target!" I want to remind him that I've just beaten him in about two weeks in a world of 100 people with medieval technology, and he's talking about trying to conquer a planet of 5.4 billion people with fighter jets and nuclear weapons. And it's not like Earth is likely to be flim-flammed by a secretive, seemingly-benevolent organization led by an oily figurehead. But the game gives me no chance to respond. Instead, we get the endgame text:
    

In the months following the climactic battle at The Black Gate, Britannia is set upon the long road to recovery from its various plights. Upon your return to Britain, Lord British decreed that the Fellowship be outlawed, and all of its branches were soon destroyed. The frustration you feel at having been stranded in Britannia is somewhat alleviated by the satisfaction that you solved the gruesome murders committed by the Fellowship and even avenged the death of Spark's father. And although you are, at the moment, helpless to do anything about the Guardian's final threat, another thought nags at you . . . what became of Batlin, the fiend who got away? That is another story . . . one that will take you to a place called The Serpent Isle . . . 

           
And then the "congratulations" screen at the top of this entry. Several things occur to me as the credits roll:
     

• This is the first game I can remember in which "credits roll" at the end. They last a while, too.

• Any player who didn't take Spark into his party way back in Trinsic would probably be confused at the mention of avenging the death of "Spark's father."

• Rather than outlawing and destroying the Fellowship, a better solution would have been to have the Avatar take it over, using its infrastructure to promote a return to the eight virtues and a rebuilding of each city around them.

• There were times where the Guardian's communications with the Avatar seemed to be helping him. Was that just to sow confusion, or was the original intent to make the Guardian a more ambiguous figure?

• The Astronomical Alignment was a silly and needless addition. The game has no time limit whatsoever, and the planets (as viewed with the orrery viewer, in any event) are never in anything but random positions, even when the alignment is supposed to be "imminent."

       

Oh, give me a break.

     

• The series has now completed the severing of the Avatar from the player. The brilliance of the Avatar concept as introduced in Ultima IV has been disassembled. The Avatar is no longer the player's literal "avatar" within the realm of Britannia but just a character of that name that the player controls.

      
For the final reason above, it's not surprising to me that many fans consider The Black Gate to be the "end" of the Ultima series, the next three games notwithstanding. To many players, remaining in Britannia would hardly be a punishment. You are a powerful fight and mage, famous, the right arm of the king, adored by most of the population. It's a worthy reward for between four and ten world-saving quests. But the severance does bring it all to an end. When we pick up again, whether it's with Ultima Underworld II or The Serpent Isle, the game no longer will begin with the player being pulled from the "real" world and inhabiting his avatar in Britannia. If you don't get why that matters, you and I have never played the same Ultimas.
  
Actual final time: 74 hours