The most recent update posted to the Underworld Ascendant Kickstater page discusses, among other things, the theme of fallen utopias…which, of course, informed the story of the first Ultima Underworld game:

Woven into the fabric of the original Ultima Underworld backstory was the story of a fallen utopia. A few years before the Avatar arrives, the knight Sir Cabirus led a band into the Stygian Abyss on a quest to establish a utopian colony. His dream was to bring together the often feuding factions of the Abyss into peaceful coexistence. Through sheer determination Cabirus nearly succeeded. But ultimately his experiment failed, and the Abyss stumbled back into chaos.

I’ve always had a fascination with utopias. How in fiction, as in world history, utopias seem to inevitably fall from their lofty goals, like Icarus flying too close to the sun. The all-too-brief shining moment when Greek democracy blossomed, then swiftly collapsed. In Tolkien’s fiction, the short-lived attempt by Balin to reestablish a dwarven colony in Moria. There are myriad stories of utopias fallen. Yet that seems not to discourage each new generation from trying.

Games besides Ultima Underworld have taken up this thread. A recent example is the BioShock games; although these particular stories are a shade more dystopian.

Either way, there seems to be a universal appeal to stories about those striving to build a grand society. We are fascinated by their hubris. Of their trying to rewrite established rules of how communities function to forge something new. We root for them to succeed, while knowing they are ultimately doomed.

We are revisiting the theme of utopia failed with Underworld Ascendant. We want to explore the theme at a deeper level than in the original game. The player finds themselves in a central role, choosing how they fit into an experiment of a utopia that is being torn ragged. Do they pick up the frayed threads of Cabirus’ dream and try to knit things back together? Do they nudge the Abyss back towards an apparently inevitable state of chaos? Or follow some other path? I think it is story worth telling.

As well, the first piece of cross-promotional merchandise between Underworld Ascendant and Shroud of the Avatar was revealed recently, in the form of the Dark Elf Kinsman Buckler:

The worlds of Underworld Ascendant and Shroud of the Avatar are connected. Through the ages a magic portal linking these distant worlds has allowed for travel and interchange. One such event happened generations ago, when a band of Dark Elves broke free of their magician overlord, and escaped through the portal to make an exodus into the Stygian Abyss.

Over the long years since, this band of Dark Elves established a thriving colony in the Abyss. Their one great sadness is being sundered so far from their dark elven kindred who remain in the lands of the Shroud of the Avatar. Their solace is a magic buckler, the Kinsman. This buckler has a solitary moonstone that glows with the warmth of friendship when held by kin across the two worlds, signifying the bonds that stretch beyond space and time.

For any Backers who get a Kinsman Buckler in both games, theirs will glow as well. Shroud of the Avatar players can get their buckler HERE.

Expect to see more such items in the future.