The Chronicle of Pagan

The Chronicle of Pagan is the manual included with Ultima VIII. It is 32 pages long and written from the perspective of Bentic the scholar, as he himself admits in-game. In reality, Andrew P. Morris is the author. In-game Bentic had help from various sources. Vardion insisted on adding a short section about the history of Britannia, Vividos and Stellos sent material about their ways of magic and Mythran helped with the rest of the magical section while adding the story of the Black Gate.

Of note is the fact that while Bentic endeavored to be objective in his writings, contained within are many subjects of which he inadvertently transcribed a false account or simply could not have known about. As such, the whole book was written somewhat naively under the influence of the Guardian's deception, to be interpreted by the reader accordingly and put into contrast with information later found in the game.

The European editions of the book were translated to French, German, Italian and Spanish and content-wise are the same, apart from a different color of the cover and the language stated there. The book is of a somewhat smaller format with more glossy paper as well. The Japanese edition again has a different color of the cover, otherwise however stays the same. There also are fully Korean and Chinese (Taiwan) editions of the book, though their covers are totally different from the original.

The foreign language titles are as follows:
 * "Die Chronik von Pagan" (German)
 * "Chronique de Pagan" (French)
 * "La Chronaca di Pagan" (Italian)
 * "La Crónica de Pagan" (Spanish)

Later budget editions all contained the book as a PDF on the CD-ROM. These editions are notorious for the lacking quality, especially concerning the quite pixellated illustrations.

Book Content
The following topics comprise the book:


 * Foreword
 * History of Pagan
 * History of Britannia
 * Travelling guide
 * Important people
 * Shops and money
 * Bestiary
 * The four schools of Pagan Magic

Trivia

 * At the beginning of the book, a table of the Runic Alphabet is shown, described as "Archaic Alphabet". The implications of this remain unclear.