Talk:Mondain

Mondain and time machines

Thanks to his hidden fortress in the Time of Legends,...

The Time of Legends only existed in Ultima II. Mondain's fortress was 1000 years into Sosaria's past. You learn this from one of the bartender's hints when buying drinks at the pub:

Thou had best know that over 1000 years ago, Mondain the Wizard created an evil gem. With this gem, he is immortal and cannot be defeated. The quest of --Ultima-- is to traverse the lands in search of a time machine. Upon finding such a device, thou should go back in time to the days before Mondain created the evil gem and destroy him!

Voyd 13:18, September 30, 2009 (UTC)Voyager Dragon

I totally concur. All this jazz about Mondain zipping through time is a little silly. Fixed. --Blu3vib3 23:02, 21 November 2010 (PST)

Does anyone understand why Mondain created the Gem of Immortality 1000 years before the events of Ultima I (other than an excuse to find a time machine)? I know I'm trying to somehow reconcile view from different games that may be irreconciliable, but let's give it a try. We know from The Book of Lore that around the time British arrived to Sosaria, Mondain was growing and stole his father's gem. We know from Akalabeth that Mondain and British fought and British defeated, temporarily, Mondain. We now again from The Book of Lore that while Lord British was governing wisely, Mondain was creating the gem. So... how does "1000 years into the past" fit here? Ultima I and V seem to directly contradict each other in this point.

Even if we take only Ultima I in mind, what did happen here? Mondain was 1000 years old at the events of Ultima I? Thefore, either Akalabeth is not taken into account, or Lord British was also 1000 years old by the time of Ultima I... which seems weird.

Either way, I can't reoncile the "1000" figure from U1 neither with Akalabeth, nor with Ultima V. Maybe, if noone else has any more evidence to improve this, it is something that just can be reconciled, and at least the article History of Britannia should be modified in order to mention this two, conflicting views.--Sega381 13:13, 23 November 2010 (PST)

Part of the magic of Ultima is that its story has forever proven flexible enough to be retconned into submission by each subsequent game in the series. However, this sadly leads to crazy problems like this, which border on violating time-space causality and make editors unsurprisingly frustrated. I think there are any number of explanations as to why the thousand year figure makes sense, but they'd be speculative to the point where most shouldn't be listed in an encyclopedic article. While inferring that Mondain *must* have traveled back in time to do his dirty work is tempting, there's not enough in game evidence.

The truth is likely that there is no "real" solution to the continuity issue. Richard Garriott was a crazy twenty-something making games about phaser-wielding elves and time-travel, and it's hard to conceive that he understood that he would want to write a nice, clean, high fantasy compatible game manual for a sequel years in the future. The games just don't fit together like the tidy lego pieces we would like them to be.

My stance for how best to address this: LB is just hella old. Adding a thousand years to his already extraordinary lifespan seems fine, given that the actual rate at which people age in Britannia, in spite of the 1:10 ratio that's been cited, has never really been consistent. Look at Shamino - totally native and still looking at most... forty by U9? I think there's more to that then diet/exercise/really good magical plastic surgery. While it's a little hard to conceive of LB being 1,500ish instead of just 500ish, it seems a much cleaner solution than deciding that Mondain was time-travel capable, as this is never alluded to. Occam's razoring this, I think that asserting that LB is even more ancient than previously thought is simpler and more elegant than putting forth that nobody bothered to mention Mondain's time travel skillz.

Here's what I'd take from the sources:

Ultima I: It's explicit here that a thousand years separate the construction of Mondain's gem and the events of Ultima I. Even if the barkeep's statement on such things is untrustworthy, the Stranger feels the passage of a thousand years after falling into a strange slumber. As this is something experienced by the player, it automatically takes precedence over documents written from an in-game perspective, as historians are imperfect recorders of history and liable to put spin on things.

Book of Lore: According to the "Folklore" section of the Book of Lore (which for all we know might be as propagandist as Batlin's insinuations in the "Book of the Fellowship" or Erstam's accusations in the "Journey Beyond the Serpent Pillars"), Lord British comes to Sosaria as a youth. Around this same time, Mondain is an emo teenager who kills his dad, as MySpace was not yet invented and as he wanted a certain Sun Ruby Gem. While this proves that Mondain/British were contemporaries in their early years, it never states when Mondain made the gem in relation to when he killed his father. While it certainly doesn't imply that a thousand years passed between the gem's creation and Lord British getting off his butt to summon a hero (not that this is terribly inconsistent with LB's method of government :P), it doesn't explicitly state that a thousand years did not pass. Nor does it explicitly state that the monsters mucking around the kingdom meddling with LB's plans for peace and democracy were post-gem creations.

Akalabeth Manual: The manual states that British and Mondain skirmished, but never mentions the gem. In this narrative, the motivation for the patricide is merely a matter of inheritance and no markers are really given to place the chronology of this game. Given that in future games the kingdom Akalabeth is never spoken of again, this might be a good justification for inferring the passage of a long span of time - enough time for a land's name to change (perhaps to the Lands of Lord British?) and be forgotten. (Blu3 speculates: Perhaps even enough time for the original, single ruler of the kingdom to have passed into the darkness of history long enough that his castle is known as the "Castle of the Lost King"?)

What would I make of all this? The following Blu3vibe-approved chronology:

1 LB arrives on Sosaria

2 Mondain kills Wolfgang

3 Mondain hooks up with Minax (the sooner the better... given that Minax was eleven when she first met him :/)

4 Mondain and Minax start work on Exodus, release generally annoying monsters

5 Mondain launches "Project: Make a Magic Immortality Gem"

6 Mondain completes said project

7 Mondain and LB fight. Mondain gets pWned but is still good, due to his immortality and all. LB gets half of a kingdom that nobody remembers.

8 LB governs *awesomely* (according to a historian he commissioned to write the Book of Lore, who obviously had no motivation to streamline history to make him look good. :P)

9 A thousand years pass and some aliens and space-ships and lasers show up. Lord British sits around, demands money and tribute to do anything for the people and imprisons some chick named Julia. (The historian responsible for the Book of Lore certainly had no financial motivations to ignore this bit either)

10 Lord British wishes on his magic amulet of summoning people to fix his problems. The Stranger shows up.

11 The Stranger kills a bunch of d00ds, murders a jester who might be Gwenno, and finds a time machine. GOTO Line 5 (but tack on "only this time Mondain turns into a bat and dies!")

The beauty of this chronology? By having the Stranger kill Mondain it line 5, means that we can take all of the horribly silly and inconsistent things in lines 7-10 and claim that the *never* happened, or happened differently, and that perhaps nobody remembers Gwenno getting hacked to pieces and its best they didn't. If we take the stance that Mondain somehow transposed himself back in time a la Minax, we run into problems, as he didn't have the good taste to take his butt back to the Time of Legends where there appears to be a friendly causality bubble keeping the universe from imploding due to paradox.

That being said, an edit to the History of Britannia page is probably still in order, as the Age of Darkness is just... it's kinda f*cked up.

ALSO! (In case this wasn't a long enough incoherent ramble about the continuity of 1980s video games) This will take forever to complete, but I have a significant other who enjoys translating written Japanese, and who has recently been given copies of the intro/outro sequences from the FM-Towns Ultima Trilogy, which might provide explanations and or clues as to these games really infuriatingly bizarre chronology. He's slow, but determined, and I'll gladly furnish the Codex with translations as they become available.

Whew.--Blu3vib3 16:12, 23 November 2010 (PST)

Very nice analysis. Probably the most detailed analysis on the subject one could find on the net :). I had glimpsed this was the general lines you were thinking of from the edits to the Mondain article and others. And it is true that the changing the timeline thingy is very convenient to avoid weird stuff that happened in between. Lord British still would have to be 1000 years old, but I guess it is possible and the least unlikely alternative.

A couple of minor details about your account: assuming that 1000 years happened between the death of Mondain and the end of Ultima I, with LB congratulating the hero and all, that would mean that both Minax and Exodus waited 1000 years before appearing. While Exodus could have waited while Minax finished building it (it would have been really slow, but we don't know what technology Minax had), the Ultima II manual said that "several years" happened between Mondain's death and the rise of Minax. And it would be weird to call 1000 several years. Though of course, we can make the stretch, but still.

A second detail is that TBOL clearly states that LB had become Lord British and was lord over a region over several city states before Mondain created the gem. This would directly contradict your account, and I'm not sure how to see it. This would have been before the arrival of the time travelling Stranger, so this can't change due to the hero's meddling. Btw, your account would erase Akalabeth from the continuity, though in truth The Book of Lore says that Lord British gained his Lord status due to his wisdom, not due to a fight with Mondain. But in summary, your point 7 contradicts info from TBOL, so it could be removed and the part about "LB gets half of a kingdom..." would fall between 3 and 5. But basically, I don't see a way to reconcile the account from Akalabeth with the info in TBOL, and with your account, regarding this point. Of course, assuming TBOL is not full of bull.

That translation would be interesting. I will be waiting for that. And about the History of Britannia, if it can be dealt with without adding speculation or assumptions, an improvement would be most welcome.--Sega381 18:22, 23 November 2010 (PST)

Wow.... I need to cut down on my caffeine intake before posting long zany CRPG timeline analyses... Anyhow! Good point on moving point 7 back to between points 3-5. That makes much more sense. I'm not sure what to really do with the delayed revenge of Minax and Exodus, but I think the explanation of the latter's circuitry taking a few centuries to heat up is the best that can be done with the material. (It took him at least two to get into gear post-Ultima-VI, and we can probably imagine that he spent another eight learning how the world works, figuring out how to make the Standard Bad-Guy Issue Hoarde of Monsters(tm), building Castle Death, etc...)

As for Minax, well... she's sort of a nasty pimple on the face of Ultima continuity, and I'm never really sure what to do with her (as much as I really have taken a liking to her in my fangirlish imagination). I feel the best excuse for her sitting on the vengeance for a thousand years would likely be best described thus (i.e. Minax did a time thing. Nobody knows "when" it took place) It still doesn't mesh well with TBoL ...although nothing from Ultima II really meshes well with anything... Ever. :P

On a chipper note: The SO is still in the preliminary phases of digging around through his Kanji for Idiots texts, but has informed me that there *is* what he thinks is mention of "space-time fracturing" in the intros. He also has taken great pleasure in informing me that the word used to describe Mondain's profession as a wizard is also a slang term for virgin.

In the meantime, I've updated U1 and U2 on the History of Britannia page with a big handy footnote on the contradictions. --Blu3vib3 21:43, 25 November 2010 (PST)

I'm not entirely sure I agree with you on this particular Occam's Razor conclusion, Blu3vib3. While I agree with most of your points, I don't think Mondain having access to time travel is farfetched at all, seeing as how it existed in both technological and magical form during that era. Still, I'm reluctant to claim that is the case since we're never told that's what happened. But on the other hand, assuming that Lord British arrived in Sosaria 1000 years earlier presents yet another problem - the person who greeted LB on his arrival was none other than Shamino - which would make him a thousand years older as well! And while the companions age slowly for whatever reason, I'm not convinced they age -that- slowly; just look at Iolo! I'm not sure there's an elegant solution to this. --Warder Dragon 06:04, 26 November 2010 (PST)

You're right. There really isn't an elegant solution to this, and I do concur that time-travelin' Mondain would be a plausible solution. However, I think it would be equally plausible to assert that Minax's intervention into time created a temporal distortion which caused a thousand years to seemingly pass as twenty, or that the entire land of Sosaria fell into a stasis-inducing slumber along with the Stranger, causing the thousand years to have no impact on the ages of those in the land. I'm certain that if an Ultima had been made in which these events were retroactively explained, the explanation wouldn't be "LB is just really old." However, I think this explanation makes the fewest assumptions with what we have available.

Given that its becoming apparent that this conclusion might not click for everyone, however, I think it would probably be wise to not *explicitly* make mention of the idea that LB and Shamino are really old, and to leave the particulars of how the thousand-year gap worked out somewhat vague in the articles. As I've been doing a lot of Age of Darkness editing recently, I'll try to go over the stuff I've written about Mondain and smooth out this point a little, to leave more room for a variety of solutions. --Blu3vib3 10:40, 26 November 2010 (PST)

Yeah, it's probably for the best. We don't need to explain anything, after all. All we need to do is present to the readers what the games tell us, and let them draw their own conclusions. People thought his invasion of Sosaria was Mondain's greatest evil, but we, the editors, now know better. --Warder Dragon 13:31, 26 November 2010 (PST)

That was my final intent. Besides having a good time trying to explain unexplainable stuff :), I wanted to see if we could gather all the facts regarding this topic and present them in the most objective and not-speculative way we cound found, consistently through the wiki. And we seem to have achieved that :).--Sega381 06:50, 27 November 2010 (PST)

You know the more I think about it the more the sequence actually make sense. As for Shamino I remember reading somewhere that the slowed aging applies to other worlds, not just Earth, so he'd only age at normal rate on Serpent Isle. I can't remember the source now or if it was reliable though. There is another explanation though.

Minax isn't necessarily a problem once time effects are taken into account. After Ultima I Minax uses the Time Doors to rewrite history. With the Doors open time was not behaving linearly and Minax was subtle at first. In her own subjective time Minax presumably did not wait long at all. Then this history gets erased when she is killed by the Stranger. Minax died in the time of Legends but the Britannians have records of her attacks. Most likely everything after her creating the Fortress was undone but not her first steps. A few years would be accurate. If the Stranger also emerges from the time mess around that era then the end of Ultima 1 (and most of the game itself) occurs in a future Sosaria that never happens.

What's kind funny about this is that from the point of view of someone in the final timeline, the Stranger just appeared out of nowhere twice and assassinated some aspiring evil overlord.

Now there is the oddity that The Stranger seems to return to an altered but happy Earth in U2, not the original Earth or Sosaria in which (s)he will fight Exodus. That's an issue regardless though, and possibly explained by the fact that others messed with the time stream and the Time Lord hasn't fixed it all yet. I have to concede though that it's also possible that the "fates avoided" mentioned in the end of Ultima 1 includes the events of Minax's rule as well as Mondain's and simply aren't covered in detail. In that case we could justify Minax's waiting period as reasonable but still have Exodus' and the age of various characters to boggle over. --Anarch Cassius 13:07, 11 December 2010 (PST)

Rewrite

I just rewrote the Mondain article to be a bit more readable. There was also a tale or two that I never remember from the games, particularly the part about Minax taking Mondain's skull and empowering it. I also removed some information that I found curious - Mondain's father's name (allegedly Wolfgang) and a reference to him being his second son. The former does sound familiar but I cannot find any source from Ultima that mentions this information. If someone can confirm this however I'd be willing to re-add it. --Voyd 21:55, December 10, 2009 (UTC)

What is the matter with your browser? Looking at the article in the edit window revealed a gorrible code-mess that makes it extremely annoying to edit the article.... *Sigh*... looks like I have to fix that once I have time... --Tribun 22:12, December 10, 2009 (UTC)

• Tribun, with all due respect I think your aversion to this whole non-breaking space issue is a bit overblown. Whether intentional or not, it's a legitimate piece of HTML code that hardly makes it annoying to read or edit an article. As I see, it only shows up in the actual edit history; no big deal, since a lot of otherwise unsightly code appears there. --Terilem 22:35, December 10, 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it's no big deal, but it does look messy when you're re-editing the article's source code. Terilem and Voyd, you are probably using the "Rich text editing" feature in Wikia, which allows to edit the article in the WYSIWYG kind of way. However, this editor has several problems, one of them being the non-breaking space issue. For the people NOT using the Rich text editor, the non-breaking spaces are a real pain. Btw, I recommend turning of the Rich text editor, as it has several problems. This can be done in the preferences section.--Sega381 01:00, December 11, 2009 (UTC)

If people are attached to the Rich Text Editor (thought I don't know why you would be) or if it is something else causing it then I can just have FenyxBot run through and remove them on a regular basis. Fenyx4 01:10, December 11, 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I wasn't aware there were issues with the Rich Text Editor. I defaulted to using it because it seemed more convenient. I haven't experienced such problems with any of my edits thus far, but obviously others have been. You're right, I can see now how that would be an issue. --Terilem 01:20, December 11, 2009 (UTC)

From the Akalabeth manual, "Mondain, second born of Wolfgang, a great king of old, wished to gain his brother's inheritance and so he used his great powers for evil." Browncoat Jayson 22:22, December 10, 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and added Wolfgang back in. Fenyx4 01:10, December 11, 2009 (UTC)

Is the game ending consistent?

The way I remember it ending for me, is that I beat Mondain ad infinitum until it finally twigged that I wasn't going to win the game beating him any more. ("Mondain is dead... or is he?") Then I went over to the gem and finally found out what the Get command was for, and that was it. But in later years, I learned that there was a slightly different way to do it. Does this article cover all bases? The Ultra-Mind (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2015 (UTC)