The First Age of Darkness

The book Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness was packaged with the re-release of Ultima I and the Ultima Trilogy I II III compilation. Written by Dave Albert, within the text an unknown Sosarian is credited for his contributions. It is 39 pages long.

The original release of Ultima I contained a completely different manual: Playbook, which held little lore and was more an instruction booklet. With The First Age of Darkness, the re-released Ultima I builds a neater bridge between the original game and its sequels by greatly expanding the story from an in-game perspective. The lore of the world was vastly expanded with this new book (changing the before only rudimentary existing story to a more deeper plot) and it contains numerous completely original illustrations, most of which are never seen in other books.

The book was faithfully translated for the Japanese versions, retaining all of the content of the original. The book was later re-printed in the Trilogy Manual with no changes, apart from removing the ornamental page borders.

Book Content
The book contains the following topics:


 * Introduction


 * Races and classes


 * Shops and facilities


 * Inside the Dungeons


 * Starwalking


 * Magic


 * Bestiary

Trivia

 * Trinsic and Jhelom are mentioned within the manual, while neither of these locations are actually available in-game.