Horance

Horance is a mage in Skara Brae with a pernicious and fateful history, first encountered innocuously in Ultima VI, before a calamitous turn in Ultima VII.

History
In his earlier years, Horance was kind-hearted with a passion for magic and writing poetry, and the people of Skara Brae initially felt safely protected by his presence. As the years wore on, however, Horance's mind began to deteriorate into a senile shadow of his former self. His sonnets became a "rhyming doggerel" and the only form in which he would speak, while his demonstrations of magic became increasingly violent, provoking fear from his fellow citizens. It was in this state that he was encountered in Ultima VI, living as a recluse on the small satellite isle of Iver's Rounding and trading destructive spells with the Avatar.

After a time, Horance had the Dark Tower erected upon the northwestern tip of Skara Brae and completely confined himself within its walls. The mage eventually descended into total madness from years of isolation, his existence dominated by an obsession with discovering the secret to immortality. Though finally able to divine its formula, it ultimately came at the dreadful cost of his becoming one with a malevolent, power-hungry liche. He began to raise the dead from their graves in order to do his ghastly bidding, which included abducting Rowena, wife of Trent the blacksmith. Rowena was killed in the struggle and the distraught inhabitants of Skara Brae, in an effort to put an end to these horrors, composed a plan to destroy the liche with a distinctly formulated potion. However, the scheme went catastrophically awry through a miscommunication of the concoction's balance of ingredients, resulting in a colossal blaze that incinerated the entire island and, in a tragic twist of irony, left Horance as the lone survivor.

When the Avatar met Horance the Liche in Ultima VII, he had become megalomaniacal, effectively controlling all undead on the island and, with the Well of Souls, leeching the essence of its spectral townsfolk in a nightly "Black Service" to further his dark existence and fuel a bid to overtake Britannia. With the Soul Cage and a correctly proportioned liche potion, however, the Avatar managed to destroy the vile magicks corrupting Horance and freed him from their grasp. Upon the subsequent destruction of the well, the spirits it once held captive were released to their destinies, with Horance vowing to remain in Skara Brae and restore the island city of Spirituality to its former beauty.

Trivia

 * In Ultima VII, Horance is armed with a Firedoom Staff.
 * According to internal documents pertaining to lead designer Bob White's iteration of Ultima IX, Horance was to be directly referenced in materials found strewn about the Dark Tower, at that time a location reprised in the game. The journals, written by those who had once been in his servitude, questioned the mage's sanity following his discovery of undead in ancient tombs beneath the Well of Souls.

Goods
His prices in Ultima VI can be found at: Ultima VI Magic Shops