The Book of Lore

The Book of Lore comes with Ultima V. It is 54 pages long. In-game, many sources are provided as authors, and the book is mentioned throughout the heroe's adventures in Britannia. In real-life, Richard Garriott, Mark Hamner, Paul Isaac, Stuart Marks, Steve Meuse, John Miles, Toshi Morita, Chris Roberts and Dallas Snell are credited for the book.

The Book of Lore is presented as an in-character guide to the land of Britannia, giving a very detailed account of things the traveler has to know about the land. It touches upon many topics that were not discussed in previous or subsequent game manuals, such as the exact workings of the Great Council. The last page holds the Ethics of Blackthorn, which were enacted in-universe during Blackthorn's reign just days before the book would go into printing, and thus are a late addition.

For the port to the PC-9801 in Japan, the entire book was translated - including the title itself. Content-wise however, it stayed the same.

The book was later re-printed in the Age of Virtue manual. While the text is the same, the book otherwise was altered significantly. The section headers - in the original drawn words - were replaced by simple text, a big number of illustrations were removed, others shoved together (especially the shop signs).

Book Content
The following topics are part of the book:


 * History of Britannia
 * Terrain
 * Government
 * Shops
 * Travelling guide
 * The classes
 * Transportation
 * Cosmology
 * Runescript
 * Music
 * Combat
 * Weapons and armour
 * Bestiary
 * The Eight Virtues
 * Magic and all its topics
 * Ethics of Blackthorn