Serpent Isle guard towers

Serpent Isle guard towers
Location of the guard towers
Located in:	Serpent Isle
Type:	guard towers
At the Bull Tower

The Serpent Isle guard towers are a safety system on the Serpent Isle, created by the pikemen of Monitor in order to ensure the safety of travellers because of the threat of bandits and especially goblins. They appear in Ultima VII Part Two.

Description

Essentially three guard towers had been erected at three strategic points of the trading route in the southern Serpent Isle mainland to keep away these unwanted elements and also keep up law and order. They are:

• Monitor Tower, just north of the city of Monitor.
• Bull Tower, just north of the Inn of the Sleeping Bull.
• Fawn Tower, south of the city of Fawn.

History

Thanks to treachery from Lord Marsten and Spektor, the goblins had managed to take over Fawn Tower, shortly before the Avatar’s arrival on the Serpent Isle. The Avatar managed to throw them out and helped pikemen to reclaim the tower. Also the pikemen of the Bull Tower turned out to be especially corrupt, as they had been bribed by Flindo to arrest Captain Hawk and were also greedy concerning his release, wanting an absurdly high sum for it until accepting a gold bar.

When the Banes of Chaos were released, all pikemen in the towers were slaughtered and the towers fell into ruin.

Trivia

• Thanks to badly programmed flags, goblins still spawn in Fawn Tower even after reclaiming it.
• The names of the Commands were different in the original plans. One of them would have been the Bulls in place of the Wolves. That Command being in charge of the Bull Tower made sense, but the connection was lost when the Commands were re-worked and two got different animals.
• It's an effective (even though unvirtuous) tactic for getting money, to slaughter the pikemen at Monitor Tower and then sell the bodies to Renfry for cremation. There are no repercussions, nor does anyone ever notice the slaughtering spree.

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Geography