The Ultima Society
Timeline of Ultima Mythology

This timeline of Ultima history was inspired by "The Unofficial Ultima Timeline Version 0.20" by Underworld Dragon. Using the methodology and information of Underworld Dragon's timeline as a baseline, I am working to create The Ultima Society Timeline of Ultima Mythology.

My first step will be to add in the details provided by Quill Dragon's Improved Ultima Timeline. Then, I will clarify and expand the entries and add any others that are relevant. Finally, I will reorganize it into a tidy and easily updated form. I may even make it possible for fellow members of the Ultima Society to do their own editing of the timeline right here on this site.

Currently, all portions of the timeline available on this page are either direct quotes from the Underworld Dragon timeline or paraphrasings with minor corrections. In the future, this timeline will be developed in much further detail. If you would like to collaborate in this project, please contact me.

Acronyms

The following terms are used consistently throughout this document:

• AB After Britannia (the founding)
• BB Before Britannia (ancient times)
• BG Black Gate (i.e. Ultima VII)
• BMC Britannian Mining Company
• BT Blackthorn
• FOV Forge of Virtue (U7 add-on product)
• LB Lord British
• MD Worlds of Ultima 2: Martian Dreams
• SE Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire
• SI Serpent Isle (i.e. Ultima VII part 2)
• SS Silver Seed (U7.5 add-on product)
• U1 Ultima (or Ultima I: The Beginning)
• U2 Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress
• U3 Ultima III: Exodus
• U4 Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
• U5 Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
• U6 Ultima VI: The False Prophet
• U7 Ultima VII: The Black Gate
• U7.5 Ultima VII part 2: Serpent Isle
• U8 Ultima VII
• UW1 Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
• UW2 Ultima Underworld 2: Labyrinth of Worlds
• WOU Worlds of Ultima

About Britannian Time

How does the Britannian calendar work?

The Britannian calendar has twelve months, each with exactly 28 days. This much can be ascertained from watching the calendars advance as you play Ultima VI. In Ultima V, the months have 30 days. Since the lunar cycle is exactly 28 days, this makes things come out a bit funky. Whether the change to 28-day months is just a retroactive continuity change, or whether the Britannians really got sick of irregular lunar cycles and changed their calendars, is unclear. I'm assuming for all dates in U6, UW1, U7, and UW2, that there are 28 days per month. The months themselves are named January through December, just like our normal calendar [B-00001].

In this document, dates are represented year-month-day, like this:

meaning November 5, 0361. The calendar started on 0001-01-01, with the founding of Britannia out of old Sosaria [B-00101]. This is a major premise of this timeline. Pre-Britannian dates are simply given by a number of years with a BB (Before Britannia) beside it. Also, dates with a small "c" on them are "circa" that date; in other words, the exact date cannot be pinned down, and the given date is presumed to be correct or as close as possible, given existing evidence. Sometimes AB (After Britannia, Anno British.. whatever) is used to indicate a year in the "modern" Britannian age.

How do the moons and other heavenly bodies relate?

Britannia has two moons, Trammel and Felucca. There are two different models of lunar movement used - on in U3 and U4, and the other in U5, U6 and U7. I call these the "1-3" and "2-3" models, respectively, to describe how many rotations each moon makes per lunar cycle. By "lunar cycle", I mean the time between consecutive double new moons. In the 1-3 model, Trammel completes one rotation around Britannia for every three that Felucca makes. That is, Felucca travels three times as fast, and changes phase three times as fast. In the 2-3 model, Trammel completes two rotations in the time that Felucca completes three. In each model, the lunar cycle begins and ends with a double new moon. Note that in the 1-3 model, a double full moon is possible (this is how you access the Shrine of Spirituality in U4, for instance), but it is not possible in the 2-3 model. The 1-3 model has a lunar cycle of 24 days; the 2-3 model has a lunar cycle of 28 days.

How do we resolve the discrepancy between the models? Well, the best thing to do would seem to be to ignore the details, and focus on direct evidence for establishing dates. There are a couple of useful tidbits we can use, though. For example, from U6 on, we know that the double new moon always occurs on the first of each month.

Eight other bodies share the Britannian solar system. They are named for the virtues: Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility. Their periods of rotation are unknown, despite the orrery in U7, so they cannot be used to help determine dates for the timeline.

Doesn't time run differently on the different Ultima worlds?

Yes it does. But that doesn't really affect this timeline, because it's only concerned with dates and times in Britannia. Even so, here's a little discussion of the relationship between time in the different Ultima worlds.

It is implied several times in the various games that the ratio of time passing is about 10 Britannian years to one Earth year. That is, time passes very differently in different worlds in the Ultima universe. However, this certainly isn't a consistent measure - after all between the end of U6 and the beginning of U7, over 200 Britannian years have passed, but the Avatar doesn't appear to have aged 20 years! In fact, Iolo comments that the Avatar "doesn't appear to have aged a day"!

I would suggest that perhaps the ratio of time itself isn't fixed - time rolls past in a given world at a constant rate, but time in other worlds is completely relative. Going from Britannia to Earth and back might result in a day passing, a year, or a decade. Which raises the question of whether that relative flow could be NEGATIVE. That is, could time actually be regressing in one world while you are in another? I doubt this; although there are some unexplained paradoxes (such as Arcadion not recognizing the Avatar in U8), we should find another explanation than that time in Pagan runs backwards relative to Britannia.

The Timeline

• ???? BB Sosaria came into existence.
• ???? BB Zog, a Sosarian, talks to the Wisps. They give him the Armageddon spell, and he uses it. Life ceases to exist for a long time. [S-00010]
• ???? BB Lord British enters Britannia for the first time. He meets Shamino and is given the name "British". [S-00020]
• ???? BB Mondain slays his father, taking his magical ruby for himself. Through sorcerous means, it becomes the Gem of Immortality. [S-00020]
• ???? BB Mondain defeated by the Stranger from Another World.
• ???? BB Minax begins her assault on the world. [S-00030]
• ???? BB The Stranger arrives through a time gate. (This is the beginning of U2.) [S-00030]
• ???? BB Minax defeated by the Stranger. [S-00030]
• ???? BB The Isle of Fire rises from the sea. [S-00040]
• ???? BB The Stranger from another world arrives in Britannia again. (This is the beginning of U3.)
• ???? BB First contact between the Time Lord and the Stranger (Avatar).
• 0001 BB Exodus defeated by the Stranger, et al. [S-00050]
• 0001-01-01 Britannia founded. [B-00101]
• 0136-01-01 The ghosts of old Magincia laid to rest. [B-13601]
• 0136-03-12 New Magincia is founded. [B-13601]
• 0137-11-27 Lord British and his party set out to explore the Underworld. They disappear through a whirlpool at the bottom of a waterfall in the river Maelstrom. [B-13701]
• 0137-12-01 Lord British is captured by the Shadowlords. [B-13701]
• 0139-04-05 The Avatar reappears in Britannia. (This is the beginning of U5.)
• 0148 AB c The Avatar rescues Lord British. Blackthorn is banished to an unknown land, which turns out to be the Serpent Isle. [B-14801]
• 0161-07-04 Summoned through a red Moongate by the gargoyles, the Avatar returns to Britannia again. (This is the beginning of U6.)
• 0163 AB c The Avatar returns the Codex to the Ethereal Void, bringing peace between the Human and Gargoyle peoples.
• 0168 AB c After obtaining permission from Lord British, Sir Cabirus leads a group of settlers to the Isle of the Avatar, and founds a new Town of Virtue within the Great Stygian Abyss.
• 02?? AB c The Avatar reappears in Britannia, drawn magically through a dream by a ghost. He winds up destroying the volcano known as the Stygian Abyss, and in the bargain banishes a demon known only as "the Slasher of Veils", who could otherwise have destroyed Britannia. (This is UW1.)
• 0341 AB c Batlin founds the Fellowship. [B-34101]
• 0361 AB c The Avatar returns to Britannia through a red Moongate summonned by the Time Lord. (This is the beginning of U7.) [B-36101]
• 0362 AB c The Avatar frees the Time Lord from the Shrine of Spirituality.
• 0363-08-01 c The Avatar destroys the Black Gate, moments before the Guardian is able to enter Britannia. This is also the exact date of the celestial alignment, where all 12 Britannian celestial bodies are aligned. This event occurs only once every 800 years. [B-36901]
• 0364-08-01 c Exactly one year to the day from the destruction of the Black Gate, the Guardian casts a spell creating a massive blackrock gem which encases Castle British. A small invasion force appears. Within days, the Avatar is able to destroy the gem, setting the castle free again. [B-36902]
• 0365-02-?? c About six months after destroying the Guardian's gem, and 18 months after destroying the Black Gate, the Avatar et al sail through the Serpent Pillars. This is the last direct contact the Avatar has with Britannia. Until, of course, Ultima IX is released! [B-36903]

FOOTNOTES TO THE TIMELINE

• [B-00001] U7, several sources, particularly BMC logs in Minoc.
• [B-00101] The timeline assumes that the calendar starts with the founding of Britannia. Of course, it need not have happenned on January 1, but it's as good a date as any. Somewhere in here, the old towns in U3 become the eight cities of Virtue found in U4. Particularly, Magincia grows, and is destroyed at some point prior to U4.
• [B-13601] U5, various signposts in New Magincia.
• [B-13701] From U5, Lord British's Underworld log, recorded by Remoh. This documentation was inadvertently omitted from later releases of U5.
• [B-14801] The introduction to U6 indicates that "five seasons have passed on your world" since the end of U5. We could interpret this two ways - five earth years, or five earth "seasons", i.e. about 1.25 years. Given the standard 10-to-1 ratio of time passing between Earth and Britannia, the first option would mean 50 years had passed in Britannia, which is obviously not the case. The other option would mean about twelve and a half years. Given the start date of U6 in 0161, that puts the end of U5 somewhere around the end of 0148. Of course I doubt anyone playing U5 actually took nine game years to win, but that's ok.
• [B-34101] From several sources in U7, the Fellowship was founded twenty years before the Avatar's arrival.
• [B-36101] From various logs, such as Morfin's and those found in the various BMC mines, it appears that 0361 the is arrival year. It certainly cannot be any earlier. But because there is no calendar, it is difficult to get more specific than that.
• [B-36901] This date probably occurs no later than one year after the beginning of U7. Three weeks is probably closer. We do know that this occurs on the alignment, which could only happen on the double new moon, which occurs on the first of each month. As for WHICH month, it's obviously unclear, since it depends on how long one took to solve the game! For an "official" date, we can guess 0361-08-01.
• [B-36902] This occurs exactly one year after the Black Gate's destruction.
• [B-36903] This occurs approximately 18 months after the destruction of the Black Gate.
• [S-00010] In U6, the wisps reveal they talked with Zog, whose "bones" are given as the oldest known fossil in several places in U6 and U7. Since they gave him the Armageddon spell.. the conclusion is obvious.
• [S-00020] From the U5 Book of Lore, p2. These events occurred at approximately the same time.
• [S-00030] Because of the inconsistencies with the time doors, trying to place a date on this event is meaningless.
• [S-00040] This date is approximately 20 years after Minax is defeated. This comes from the U3 documentation.
• [S-00050] The time between this date and the founding of Britannia is assumed to be very small. From the documentation in U4, it would appear to be on the order of weeks.
• [Z-00001] Yes, just like this. :)

CREDITS

Underworld Dragon wrote the above text. All that I've done so far is format it in HTML and make minor tweaks to the formatting. The original document states that "All contents are copyright (c) Robert S. Gregg, 1996." I am assuming that Robert S. Gregg is Underworld Dragon.

"Ultima", "the Avatar", and many other phrases used in this document are trademarks or registered trademarks of Origin Systems, Inc.

My name is Treesong, aka Wayfarer Dragon, formerly known as Justin "The Avatar" O'Neill. I will be working together with other Ultima enthusiasts to create an expanded version of this timeline soon. :)