Linguistic Dragon has been making steady progress through Ultima 6, and has published two blog posts about it over the last week or so. The first one discusses how the game starts, and by the end of it Linguistic has managed to liberate the Shrine of Compassion:

…I tumbled into Lord British’s throne room, three gargoyles in hot pursuit, unarmored and with nothing but an ankh and a sword Dupre had thrust into my hands only mere moments before. All was frenzied for a moment, but old skills returned to mind swiftly, and between that, Dupre’s strength, Shamino’s swiftness, and Iolo’s accuracy, this initial skirmish was over swiftly. After we’d all taken a moment to catch our breath, I spoke with Lord British, who took some time to go over several matters with me – the collapse of the Underworld after his rescue, the subsequent gargoyle invasion, the capture of the Shrines, a recent attempt to retake the Shrine of Compassion, and on advice from court mage Nystul, the operation of the Orb of the Moons that I’d picked up before charging through the moongate. My old friend Geoffrey, now Captain of the Guard, told me a little more about the failed attempt to recapture the Shrine, telling me that the survivors were now recovering in Cove.

…

It was thus to Cove that I turned my sights, figuring that it was best to know the enemy I was facing, and the memories were freshest to those recovering there. Loath as I was to make things more difficult for those soldiers as they attempted to cope, they seemed my best bet for the time being. My path there, however, would necessitate me going by the Shrine of Compassion, and as I had suspected, the gargoyles that had taken and held the shrine were still around – one of them large and winged, and as we would find out in the ensuing fight, capable of wielding powerful magic. Shamino was paralyzed by a spell and took rather a beating, as did we all from the explosive magic slung around by our foe, but we persevered and managed to send them off running to lick their wounds while we pressed on toward Cove – though not before taking note of the moonstone surrounded by a force field resting atop the shrine itself.

…

…With the rune in hand, we headed back to the Shrine of Compassion. The gargoyles protecting it were back, having recovered, but we knew what to expect this time – not one of them escaped us alive. The rune, combined with the proper mantra, dissolved the force field, and we took the moonstone with us. Everyone but Shamino was experienced enough to find themselves a bit stronger after some meditation at the Shrine as well, so we took the time to do so before we set our sights toward Minoc – we surmised we’d have to repeat the process for the remaining seven shrines, and we were already on the road to the City of Sacrifice.

As usual, there’s a lot more than has been written; you’ll want to read the whole thing. Still, it would seem Linguistic has already come to grasp the…significant threat posed by the Gargoyles that guard the shrines (the winged ones, in particular). That said, as we can see in the follow-up article, frontal assaults continue to be the order of the day:

We turned north at a fork in the road, and found ourselves beset upon by a group of roguish adventurers. The tables were turned on them rather swiftly, and once the dust cleared, we thanked Blaine for his assistance in the fight – it was his first, after all. Some of the spoils we recovered after the fight seemed like things he could use, and so he was a bit better equipped as we traveled further along the road. There were a few lights dancing along the pathway, which put me on my guard remembering how dangerous an enemy wisps could be from past adventures, but they generally left us alone, and so we did the same as we slipped by. Iolo pointed us toward his cottage (as did a sign along the path) as we neared, so we made a pit stop there, picking up some blood moss along the way, and paid Smith a visit, ever vigilant against the hay menace that threatened to consume the land. It took some doing to coerce a slightly dumbfounded Dupre along again, and he and Iolo were settling some kind of bet over the matter of a talking horse by the time we arrived at the gates of Empath Abbey.

…

I turned toward the Shrine of Justice, and the fight that met us there was long, arduous, and bloody. There was a larger contingent of gargoyles present here than at the Shrine of Compassion, including no less than three of the more powerful winged variety. I was glad for the Great Heal spell I had bought in Cove earlier, as I had need of it on a couple occasions through the course of the battle. Eventually, though, we struck them all down and claimed the moonstone atop the shrine. We took some time to heal from the fight, then returned to Minoc, where I had the log cut down into boards, which I then took to Julia so they could be fashioned into panpipes. After playing Stones on them for Selganor, he pressed the Rune of Sacrifice into my hands, and it was off to another Shrine. The fight to reclaim the Shrine of Sacrifice proved less arduous – though it, too, was guarded by several winged gargoyles, by the time they discovered our presence, we’d dealt with a good number of the wingless surrounding the shrine, and thus could focus our attentions better. Dupre’s new axe proved helpful, and even the inexperienced juggler did a fair amount of damage (both he and Shamino found themselves gaining a level between the two fights at the shrines). I’m likely to replace Blaine’s boomerang with the bow and arrows we picked up as some of the spoils from the battle, once I stop by Britain and pick up some more ammunition, but it was there that we called it a day.

Ultima 6 certainly seems to be making an impression on Linguistic, which is good:

The sheer size of Ultima VI is truly staggering, I’m realizing as I play through. I’ve had two solid sessions thus far and I know there’s still a lot of plot to get through. I haven’t even mentioned everything I found worth noting down, either, simply because a good deal of it is interesting but there more for flavor than contributory to the plot – the Burma-Shave-style tombstones in Empath Abbey are the first things that spring to mind along those lines, along with the virtuous reminders I get from meditating at the different shrines. I’m going to be on this one for a while, I think – but it’s certainly holding my attention, especially since I’m taking the time to explore and poke around.

Pro tip: If you use the Orb of the Moons to reach the shrines directly, you can grab the moonstone and get into another moongate before any nearby winged gargoyles even have a chance to lob a spell your way.