Compendium

Compendium is the manual for Ultima VI: The False Prophet, 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.

Description
In anticipation of the Avatar's return to Britannia, Compendium is expressly written for the hero's use and covers many of the same topics as The History of Britannia and The Book of Lore, with greater pertinence to its intended reader. While Lord British strives for neutrality concerning apolitical matters, Britannia at the time of writing was embroiled in the Gargish invasion that gave rise to the events of Ultima VI: The False Prophet; as such, the race is subjectively portrayed in a negative light when discussed.

Translated, the runic script framing the cover reads as follows: "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."

Compendium reuses numerous illustrations from previous Ultima manuals The First Age of Darkness (Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness), The History of Britannia (Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar), and The Book of Lore (Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny).

Book Content

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

Other Editions
For the various ports to Japanese computers, Compendium was fully translated into Japanese, including the cover title. The book was also localized in Taiwanese Mandarin and Korean with different cover images.

Also, unlike the western console release - which only got a booklet - the Japanese edition of the SNES-Port of Ultima VI did come with the Compendium combined with the game manual. While it is somewhat shortened - with some sections removed entirely and some reduced - the remaining content still features all of the original illustrations.

Compendium was later reprinted in The Age of Virtue, the manual included with the Ultima Trilogy IV V VI compilation. While the text itself is identical, the original's decorative page borders are absent, as are many other illustrations (although far less than in the same reprint of The Book of Lore).

Trivia

 * While Moebius does not appear as a character in Ultima VI: The False Prophet, 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.
 * In The Ultima 6 Project, a fan-revised Compendium forms part of the user interface, and its fictional scribe, Moebius, can be found at the Lycaeum. This edition, which aims to remain faithful to the narrative style of the original, is also available in PDF format in both English and German, linked below.