Compendium

Compendium is the manual for Ultima VI, written by Greg Malone. It is 48 pages long and called upon to pass the game's three copy protection sequences, in which questions regarding the bestiary, reagents, and magic syllables of the realm are respectively posed by Lord British, Selganor, and Mariah. Penned from an in-game perspective, British is the fictional originator of the book's content, having dictated it to the scribe Moebius of the Lycaeum.

The book does touch upon mostly the same topics as the Book of Lore, omitting some things Lord British assumes the Avatar should know by now as general knowledge. While Lord British does manage to be neutral concerning unpolitical topics, Britannia at the time of writing was embroiled in the Gargish invasion that begat the events of Ultima VI; as such, the race is subjectively portrayed in a negative light whenever they are part of the topic in question.

For the various ports to Japanese computers, the Compendium was fully translated into Japanese, including the title. Content-wise however, it stayed the same. The book also was fully translated to Chinese (Taiwan) and Korean, but with different cover images.

The book was later re-printed in the Age of Virtue manual. While the text is the same, the book otherwise was altered in many ways. The illustrated page borders were removed, as were numerous illustrations (although far less than in the Book of Lore).

Book Content

 * Foreword
 * History of Britannia
 * Travelling guide
 * Runic Alphabet
 * Commerce
 * Classes
 * Adventuring as a party
 * Cosmology
 * Reagents
 * Weapons and armour
 * Bestiary
 * Magic

Trivia

 * Translated, the runic script framing the cover reads, "Contained within these pages lies the accumulated wisdom of the great scribes of Britannia ·· being recorded by the hand of Moebius at my command ·· Lord British."


 * While Moebius does not appear as a character in Ultima VI, his name is a reference to Origin's 1985 action-RPG, Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony, designed by the real-world author of Compendium, Greg Malone.


 * Compendium reuses several illustrations from previous Ultima manuals - mostly in the bestiary.


 * In The Ultima 6 Project, Compendium forms part of the user interface, and its scribe, Moebius, can be found at the Lycaeum. Furthermore, the Compendium was turned into a PDF-version, which is available in English and German and tries to imitate the style of Ultima manuals as close as possible. In the links below are the places where to find both language versions.