Firstknight has released the first in what I assume will be a series of Beautiful Britannia “Mini Mods” for Ultima 9. In a news entry posted to the Forgotten World website, he explains the mods thusly:

While doing some trigger-related research I had to find out, that there was quite some content within the earth map hidden by the developers. So I’ve created a copy of the earth map, where all this content is visible and useable now, and integrated the map into the main game after that.

Now this special map can be acccessed by entering “Castle Prison” after speaking with Lord British at the Beginning of the game. The Back Teleporter now leads to this Earth Map, from there you can return to the front of LB Castle or try out one of the following:

• Teleporters to positions all over Britannia (Best to use with my “Freedom Mod” preinstalled, so that you can walk back to Britain then)
• Teleporters, which changes the complete armor set you wear
• Collect all the Armor and Weapons, which had become visible now
• Bake your own Bread within Avatar’s House

The download is available on my project site on Aiera.

Quick Install instructions:
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Just as for “Beautiful Britannia” I use a simple batch file as Installer, so it will be working on any system,
starting from Windows 98 up to Windows 7, and on x32 and x64 systems.

* Unzip the Release into your Ultima IX install directory (where u9.exe is located, otherwise the Installer will not work)
* Now you have a new directory within your Ultima IX install directory, named BB, with a Subdir named BBMini01, further the Installer called BBMini01.cmd

* To the next please run BBMini01.cmd
* At the first start the Installer creates a Backup of the original files in the BACKUP Subdir of the BBMini01 directory.
* Enter 1 for installing the BBMini01 (Enter 2 for restoring the previous installation)
* The Mod works not only with new games but also with every existing savegame!

Screenshots, of course!

I haven’t given it a try yet, but the download is indeed now available at the Beautiful Britannia project entry. Grab a copy and give it a try!

For the record: It is actually possible to reach a default set of cheat teleporters — hidden just outside the Avatar’s front gate — without this mod (you can either jump from the Avatar’s training dummy, or you smash crates behind the Avatar’s house and move the pieces closer to the fence to create stairs), but it is not possible to continue playing the game’s plot if you do so, unless you have the fly cheat enabled. Firstknight’s mod simplifies matters considerably, and it looks like he’s arranged the teleporters more sensibly, in addition to adding a few extras.