Spam Spam Spam Humbug 95 – Alternate Histories of Ultima
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Co-Producers
This episode of Spam Spam Spam Humbug is brought to you by our Patreon backers; thank you to everyone who supports Spam Spam Spam Humbug and the Ultima Codex by that means. And, as always, a hearty thank you to our Patreon co-producers: Seth, Dominik, Chris, Violation, Adam, Erik, Thorwan, Pascal, Helgraf, Aaron, the Hearth of Britannia, Edward, Stirring Dragon, Cranberry, Slegnor, and Bruce.
New Patrons & Shout-Outs
We acknowledged Bruce in a previous episode, but it’s fitting to actually mention him and thank him here; he’s a recent backer of the podcast on Patreon.
And we’d like to also thank Slegnor, who recently bumped his pledge up a bit.
New Ultima Dragons
Facebook: Ruben, Cindy, Daryl, Dan, Salvador, Ian, Sebastien, Jeremy, Amicis, Jeremiah, Daniel, Vicssy, Jeff, Breno, Diogo, John, John, Matt, Wanis, Paolo, RJ, Amber, Mark, Ryan, Rayme, Jeff, Michael, David, Didier, Eddie, Nicolas, Michael, Pat, Joe, Cory, John, Daniel, Jon, Kerry, Luke, Andrew, Karl, Seer Hawkwind, Hawkwind Legacy, Tony, Chris, Andrew, Jan, Matt, James, Andrew, Petra, Matt, Rich, Markus, Peter, Glenda, Sam, Stefan, Daniel, Bill, Daniel, Steven, Tim, Dan, Tommy, and Phillip
Google+: Colin, Jason, Jihad
Podcast Topic(s)
This discussion had its genesis back in October, in the #topic-suggestions channel on the Spam Spam Spam Humbug Discord server. We started down the rabbit hole of “what it?”-type scenarios with different events and figures from Ultima lore, and within the span of a few hours had expanded into competing headcanons and comparisons of how various games — such as Ultima Online and Ultima Forever — had addressed changes to the continuity of Ultima.
Inasmuch as we can say that there is any continuity in Ultima, since the canon of the series tended to be a very malleable thing from game to game; retcons and contradictions were common. We come up with a few interesting ideas about those as well; give it a listen!
In Other News
A friend of Withstand the Fury’s donates to a charity called Worldbuilders every year. The campaign may have ended by now, in which case…well…apologies to all and sundry for the lateness of this and the vagaries of a publishing schedule. Worldbuilders is hosted by author Patrick Rothfuss, whom a number of you have no doubt heard of.
Be that as it may: the campaign had a set goal of $500,000, but as the end of it drew near, they extended the deadline of the fundraiser a bit in order to go from $500,000 to $715,000, to garner a top-up from a benefactor to $1 million.
If the campaign is still ongoing, please do consider supporting it; it seems like a quite worthwhile initiative.
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Music
Ultima VI Gates of Creation by OC ReMix
My personal head cannon is that Ultima IX is a direct sequel to the bad end of Ultima VII. It explains why the companions have turned evil and why you summon pyros, why you start on Earth, there is zero mention of Serpent Isle and so on. So the Avatar has to essentially go on the quest of the Avatar again to redeem himself.
That’s…rather interesting, actually. I kind of like that.
To elaborate a little further, I imagine it playing out like this:
The Avatar jumps ship back to Earth, leaving his companions in a lurch. Batlin has scarpered, but doesn’t flee to Serpent Isle since the Guardian wasn’t prevented from entering the Black Gate. The Companions, therefore, are front and center when he enters Britannia. Dupre dies with honor, befitting a Paladin. The rest of the group escapes, carrying Dupre’s body with them. Over time, their own anger at the betrayal of the Avatar corrupts most of them, only Shamino remains unaffected.
Meanwhile on Serpent Isle, Gwenno finishes her research without too much trouble since there is no Batlin there pulling strings to speed up the imbalance. Of course, the Chaos serpent stays dead and the Great Earth Serpent remains trapped. The imbalance is going to continue to spread, of course, which explains why there are no longer Emps and only a handful of Gargoyles on Britannia. Gwenno heads back home to find Iolo AWOL.
The Guardian, now essentially unopposed creates the columns that both corrupt the virtues, but also serve the purpose of replacing the Cube, Tetrahedron, and Sphere. Moongates are broken, again. Magic has gone all wonky and the Guardian replaced it with a system similar to what was on Pagan. I would wager that Sosarian versions of the Titans were being created, and thus why we could summon Pyros to yank us to the Stygian Abyss.
Important artifacts, such as the Black Sword and Rudyum’s wand were lost when the Avatar entered the Black Gate. Thus Arcadion is forever trapped somewhere in the void.
Finally, the reason we never get another game is because even though the Avatar stopped the Guardian, no one fixed the Space Snakes.
I’ll maintain this as my own head cannon until someone finishes a remake of U9 that fits the chronology of U7 part 2 and U8 better. I mean, its Ultima, i don’t expect everything to fit into one neat little package, but I expect people to remember that the Avatar and three of his friends went traipsing off to another world, and the friends came back without him, but lugging along a walking talking Frankenstein’s Monster.