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Is He or Isn't He..Dead?

Dragonater

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Please unconfuse me. I was there when Exodus fell, even helped loot his corpse. So that means he's gone, dead, vanquished, right? But now after reading "The Awakening Act 5 Part 2"...

“A setback, my minions. Much damage was done to the apparatus meant to empower and strengthen me…and my whereabouts are unknown. But none of it has affected my ability to communicate across realms, as you can see.”
It seems as thou he's in some unknown dimension plotting revenge. Which is it?
 

Crysta

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Well.. Exodus is technically half-machine.. so that could easily have not been his "actual" body...
 

Dragonater

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Well.. Exodus is technically half-machine.. so that could easily have not been his "actual" body...
Hmm...so who were we fighting or did you mean something else? I'm a little tired so maybe I'm missing the obvious, please elaborate.
 

Dermott of LS

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

Basically a way for the devs to be able to bring back Exodus for later events without having to "reset" the story in some way. Makes it make a little more sense than in some other games when you go and kill the same named character over and over again even though storywise you supposedly killed them at the end of the specific quest thread.

In this case consider it like the old Shadowlords events where you are fighting a shadow or avatar of Exodus and not the actual "in-the-flesh (whatever)" creature.
 

Dermott of LS

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

I'd be all for a pointless retcon (which I guess wouldn't be so pointless) if they de-borgified Blackthorn to bring him back. Borgthorn was one of the dumbest Ultima ideas IMO and one of the reasons I was never a fan of UO2.
 

Raptor85

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Hmm...so who were we fighting or did you mean something else? I'm a little tired so maybe I'm missing the obvious, please elaborate.
That was just the cleaning droid....you didn't think i'd be that easy did you?

 

WarderDragon

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Is He or Isn't He...Dead?
Let's hope not. Else that was an uninspiring end to what could have been a memorable villain.

Besides ...the Exodus Dungeon is Exodus. He is a giant supercomputer and the basis for the Overlords / Technocrats of UO2. The big blue demon thrown at us to rush the arc to conclusion might be part of Exodus - perhaps even the daemonic seed upon which Mondain and Minax built their Machine - but his consciousness is spread throughout the Dungeon.

The whole Machine-UO2-LBR thing doesn't appeal to those who imagine Ultima as a cardboard cutout of Tolkien. But I like it.
 

NuSair

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Exodus is (well, at least part) a demon and in that aspect he cannot be permanently killed.
 

Martyna Zmuir

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Machines don't "die" and can be repaired/rebuilt when broken. Daemons in the Ultimaverse tend to be immortal, but can be banished or bound to things to sorta-permanently defeat them. Exodus could have any number of avatars/backup copies to throw at us.

Is he dead? I think all we can say is an emphatic maybe.

Who knows, perhaps his mommy will stop applying makeup long enough to hurtle more cliches at us for killing her darling baby roboboy. Lets "kill" Minax for the third time (or is it fourth?) next! :rolleyes2:
 

Crysta

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Hmm...so who were we fighting or did you mean something else? I'm a little tired so maybe I'm missing the obvious, please elaborate.
What I mean is what I saw someone else say before.. he could have a stockpile of spare bodies somewhere. So we did kill him.. just.. it's not the only him that he could be.
 

Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
We killed an incarnation of Exodus. May be more out there, in other shards, timelines, dimensions, whatever ...

For now, it's kicked out of our Sosaria. May come back. Same as our experiences of Minax, and the Shadowlords.
 

Crysta

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Well, his server could still be buried underground somewhere that we don't know about.
 

Aurelius

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Well, his server could still be buried underground somewhere that we don't know about.
Server? Considering how tech has moved on since Exodus version 1 was built, he'd probably fit on a USB stick nowadays... ;)
 

Crysta

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I just mean.. you killed him by crashing his four server towers in Ultima III by shoving magical cards into his punch card slots (get it? the nexus punch card thing was a reference :p). So yeah. Those have to be around somewhere. Prolly running on MOS 1.0 or somethin (Mondain Operating System :p).
 

Dragonater

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
What I mean is what I saw someone else say before.. he could have a stockpile of spare bodies somewhere. So we did kill him.. just.. it's not the only him that he could be.
I'm way to simple minded for this game, I thought dead was dead. Got a lot to learn. But I'm glad he may come back cause he owes me some new armour..
 

Dragonater

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Thought this was going to be about Blackthorn.
You're right, should of read..Is It dead..Speaking of BT, what did happen to him. Is he also with Exodus or is he dead or is he, as Martyna said about Exodus, another "emphatic maybe".
 

Xalan Dementia

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
unless i read it wrong the part you quoted seems to be a flashback to when we first beat exodus in ilshenar years ago
 

Xalan Dementia

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
i believe all the italic paragraphs are a flashback to blackthornes last moments as a human
 

WarderDragon

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
We killed an incarnation of Exodus. May be more out there, in other shards, timelines, dimensions, whatever ...
The Core - the mechanical brain and OS that runs the Machine - was banished to the Void at some point in Ultima canon.

The Temple of the Machine in Central Ilshenar sits atop a door and what appears to be a portal into the Void. While the latest arc seems to suggest that the Exodus Dungeon is underground - tunneled into as we saw during the Awakening - previous lore seemed to suggest the dungeon was located within the Void itself. If that's true then the Dungeon might be the Dark Core.

Compare Exodus to the Overlords described in UO2 Lore. (I like the subtle Lovecraftian / Elder God's thing going on here.)

Overlords - Rulers over the Jukay, very little is known of who OR what the Overlords are. Some myths even point to the idea that they may just be machines pretending to be alive. But most believe they are living beings of flesh and bone. They are mysterious, unseen, and incalculably powerful. They are also masters of technology and alchemical magic. Later we find out from first-hand experience with the rebels that The Overlords and their mechanical dens are indistinguishable from each other. They are sentient catacombs; entombed gods.​
Exodus - Little is known about its involvement in Juka Lore, but this entity was the prime enemy in Ultima 3 (the series). It is known though that it is a machine and not a living being. As described upon Kumar’s first encounter with it, “The device was huge. It nearly filled the breadth of the vast floor and continued down to unknown depths. Most of it appeared to be a massive, tangled network of thick glass pipes and globes, supported by a coppery scaffold; though its fleeting, inscrutable internal movements suggested unguessed layers of complexity. It flashed and glowed in a thousand places, in the cadence of a distant thunderstorm. Darkness trickled throughout its workings. Its countenance was furtive, mysterious.”​
I've been borrowing some of these ideas for RP during the arc.

Whoa, that throws in a curve. I assumed it was current. What makes you think it's a flashback?
It is.

And if Exodus was programmed into the Dungeon - the Dark Core - then it is possible Blackthornes consciousness could also be housed within the Dungeon (or the object placed within his coffin during the funeral) that would allow him to be reconstructed and entombed in an artificial body.
 

Emil Ispep

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

I'd be all for a pointless retcon (which I guess wouldn't be so pointless) if they de-borgified Blackthorn to bring him back. Borgthorn was one of the dumbest Ultima ideas IMO and one of the reasons I was never a fan of UO2.
/agree.

This was Todd McFarlane's grand vision for the Ultima universe.
 

Crysta

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I'd be happy if they retconned the whole story around then, if only because i'd rather UO2's story still be cannon, even if the game never comes to be. Using the alternate future where Mondain ruled for a thousand years as the explanation for just how Exodus could ever have been made was absoloutely brilliant, as was the story of the true origin of Zog.

Even if you don't like the UO2 story, letting it stand on its own is far better than patching it in to the original UO's world in such a haphazard way.
 

Mirt

Certifiable
Supporter
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Best guess with something like that is maybe, maybe not. I would hope that there is some more Exodus coming for us. Maybe as a new Ish champ that respawns where Ver Lor Reg used to be and drops those scrolls but then again who knows.
 

Crysta

Babbling Loonie
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I'd say to actually go as far as to hunt down all three books. They really are worth it.
 
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