Dark Core

The Dark Core is one of the two components of the daemon-machine Exodus. It serves as a repository for the creatures memories and collected knowledge.

Age of Darkness
Exodus diligently spend upwards of twenty years exploring and examining the world which surrounded it that it might enact vengeance for the deaths of its progenitors. Each piece of data it collected was stored in a component known as the Dark Core, which served as the daemon-machine's memory. Unfeeling and without motivation, this inert artifact nevertheless housed a massive array of facts, from complex inner workings of the Britannian planet system to the color of the sky on a particular day. It's counterpart, the Psyche, held Exodus' emotions and personality, and it was the combination of the two components which made up the sum of the hellspawn's mind. In Ultima III, the Stranger managed to sever the connection between the Psyche and the Core by tricking Exodus into its own destruction using the Four Cards.

Age of Enlightenment
Shortly afterward, the Psyche was snatched from the Void my mystics of the Gargish race and installed within the Shrine in the garogoyle's homeworld, where it served as an embodiment of the Principle of Diligence. Decades later, however, the collapse of the Britannian Underworld in the years after Ultima VI freed the Psyche to roam the Ethereal Void. From here, the Psyche slowly attempted to reunite itself with its Core, and during these years, a knowledge hungry mage known as Erethian made his way to the underwater Castle of Fire which housed the Core, making it the obsessive object of his study.

Age of Armageddon
After communing with the Dark Core, Erethian appeared to slowly find himself under the sway of Exodus, wishing to see the miracle of the hellspawn's rebirth which would occur with the two forces at last reunited. Using his vast magical prowess to raise the Isle of Fire from the sea, the magician bided his time, carefully observing and waiting. The Avatar, however, eventually made their way to newly surfaced island and began to meddle in such affairs, eventually finding a means to banish the Core into the Void using the Talisman of Infinity. Erethian, enraged by such actions, desperately attempted to counteract this with a spell, but succeeded only in blasting himself into naught but charred bones when his incantation backfired. Once in the Void, the Core could never again conjoin with the Psyche on the material plane.

Trivia

 * The Dark Core serves as the inspiration for A New Breed of Dragon's interactive fiction, Ultima: The Dark Core.