Trammel and Felucca are facets.
Even Ricardo would know that.
Even Ricardo would know that.
That indicates that if we move from Trammel to Felucca or vice versa, we're not travelling between facets of the same shard, we're moving between shards, and thus between different pieces of the Gem of Immortality entirely. This would also mean that Tokuno, Malas, Ter Mur, and Ilshenar are also "shards."It seems that the great Nystul, royal mage to Lord British, used it to copy the land in the shard that we now call Felucca onto the shard that we now call Trammel.
WHAT?! And give up the 2D client?! Blaspheemer! ahahahaExcepting, of course, that this hypothetical explanation makes no sense in the context of anything...
That indicates that if we move from Trammel to Felucca or vice versa, we're not travelling between facets of the same shard, we're moving between shards, and thus between different pieces of the Gem of Immortality entirely. This would also mean that Tokuno, Malas, Ter Mur, and Ilshenar are also "shards."
Except that the fiction has always been that each of our individual worlds exists within a "shard" of the Gem of Immortality, and that Minax came from one facet, attacked our then facet which became known as Felucca, and we fled to Trammel.
I get that we may not yet know what's coming, but if that's not an error, then we're completely redefining the terms "shard" and "facet," which makes me wonder how long it'll be before we're all just living inside "servers" that are housed within "Exodus" instead of on "shards" of the "gem" of "immortality."
Of course, if that means we get to exit "Exodus" and take part in Ultima Worlds Online : Origin finally, well, I guess I'll be okay with that, as long as it's a fully-realized 3D world.![]()
Per Nystul:
I stood at the largest of the stone structures in Britain as I opened the tome and started. All over the land I could sense the other structures ignite with life and burst to the heavens above. Pure energy as I have never felt in all of my years of arcane studies tore through me; cradled me in its grasp. I pulsed with the magic, drew it into me. Then released it into the night sky.
I awoke to find the ancient tome no more then scattered ashes across my robe. The loss of such a vessel of knowledge made me momentarily wince in pain of loss; yet I could barely think of that in light of what I hoped had been accomplished. A hand helped me up from the ground then as a familiar voice spoke to me, “It is done.” I felt elation grip me as I stared at the world around me in pride. That feeling slowly fled though as I stared upon the wistful face of my liege and friend.
It was done indeed…
Or.......Ricardo is a product of the Sossarian public education system.Trammel and Felucca are facets.
Even Ricardo would know that.
Funny - seems to me like an awkward, slightly uneducated, way of saying that Trammel & Felucca were actually the Felucca(s) of two different shards, until Nystul reached out and grabbed what became Trammel (an empty Felucca of another shard), and juxtaposed it over one of the facets surrounding "his" Felucca to "create" the duplicate, not caring what might have been there before the juxtaposition. Tell me, how would YOU describe what was probably a tenth, eleventh or twelfth circle spell, if the only spells ninth or higher you'd seen in your life were the ninth level "Armageddon" and "Decay"? (and the latter went REALLY badly wrong, as anyone living in Yew Trammel prior to the return of the Elves can attest).Excepting, of course, that this hypothetical explanation makes no sense in the context of anything...
It seems that the great Nystul, royal mage to Lord British, used it to copy the land in the shard that we now call Felucca onto the shard that we now call Trammel.
You mean Sosarian education system.Or.......Ricardo is a product of the Sossarian public education system.![]()
Except that, again, that makes absolutely no sense, unless we're discussing the Felucca that was inside one of the recursive shards of the Gem that was inside our own shard. But that still does not make any sense in the context of calling them the shards we call Trammel and Felucca. I don't know of anyone who calls any shard Trammel or Felucca.Funny - seems to me like an awkward, slightly uneducated, way of saying that Trammel & Felucca were actually the Felucca(s) of two different shards, until Nystul reached out and grabbed what became Trammel (an empty Felucca of another shard), and juxtaposed it over one of the facets surrounding "his" Felucca to "create" the duplicate, not caring what might have been there before the juxtaposition. Tell me, how would YOU describe what was probably a tenth, eleventh or twelfth circle spell, if the only spells ninth or higher you'd seen in your life were the ninth level "Armageddon" and "Decay"? (and the latter went REALLY badly wrong, as anyone living in Yew Trammel prior to the return of the Elves can attest).
Okay... perhaps... but then, the Gem of Immortality was bound to Sosaria by (oh... the Mondainites on Great Lakes are going to get to me for this one... heh) a mere mortal. And I think the plot implication derived thus far from this quest is that Minax stole it from Britannia first.Even with the magery of Nystul, using an artifact of Minax, THAT level of creation should NOT have been possible by a mere mortal, or even one ascended into immortality.
Actually, the Lost Lands has no such fiction to it at all (at least until the Age of Shadows, when all of a sudden it became described as a facet), and rather that it was revealed by earthquakes caused by the Armageddon spell... Malas did not come dragged from anywhere, it's a world that's been decaying around itself (much like Ter Mur), and its people have been watching it decay...On the other hand, we've got lore concerning Tokuno, Malas, Ilshenar, the Lost Lands, and even Heartwood & Ter Mur, of lands being "dragged elsewhere" by magic (and, typically, bad things happening as a result).
from The Dark Facet
As I have explained in past essays, the Gem of Immortality was linked to our world when it was broken. As a result, copies of Sosaria exist within each of the broken fragments. As previous essays suggest, it is possible that copies of actual people may exist and thrive in different lives within these alternative Sosarias (I sometimes wonder if I have a duplicate in these worlds and how he fares). Although these alternate Sosarias appear to us as small globes within the shards and a great deal of detail cannot be seen, we have learned much. We know that just as the shards themselves are not in the original shape as the Gem of Immortality, the worlds within the shards are also different. Each facet of each shard holds a different world altogether. Through the larger and more uniform of the facets a nearly identical copy of Britannia can be seen, although differences can be detected in the geography of the land within the facet and our own true Britannia. However through the smaller and more uneven facets there are worlds so changed and bent that they look nothing like our Britannia and clearly have a civilization unlike any known to us.
Description of Ilshenar...[/]
In many of the shards one particular facet contains one single continent, wreathed in mountains and with a great white city that can be seen nestled in the center.
Description of the Lost Lands... first time it's called a facet...
Another facet contains an ancient looking land with swamps to the south and a desert to the north.
I can only theorize that the imperfect and sometimes jagged shape of the facets formed these strange worlds from what was to be a copy of Britannia. As the vessel that held the world changed, all elements of space, time and magic would also have to adapt to fit the new form. It is entirely possible that within each facet the past, present and future changed drastically to accommodate the new shape of its facet, a sort of retroactive continuity. Who knows what strange new civilizations could have been created in the distant past or future of these worlds?
We can also tell from fiction that those of Malas know of Britannia:Each shard possesses one facet remarkably different from the rest, one I have named the "dark facet". The dark facet seems to have a shadow cast over it, almost as if it absorbs light. This facet also contains a world, but it is one unlike any I have ever dreamed. The land within appears to rest over a great void that seems to extend in all directions; it is as if a massive island rests on a dark sea of stars. Could it be that the laws of nature have become so bent in this facet that such a thing is possible? Did a great magic within the world create such a place? I may speculate for the rest of my life but the puzzle extends deeper still.
As for Ilshenar... EA wrote some fiction for it, didn't like it, and then pretended that the first fiction didn't happen at all. All the while, it was never suggested as anything more than another facet than in the same vein as Trammel, save that it was distorted from within that facet.from Part II: The Revival
"Everyone in Malas knows of the whirlpool," Grevel interrupted. "It sends people here. That's why we call this lake the Gatewater, everyone caught in the whirlpool arrives on these shores." Grevel paused. "For decades now people have searched for a way to return to Britannia but no one has found one. I'm afraid you boys are trapped here."
Again, none of this suggests that any of these things came from outside of our own world, but instead, all of it came from within, was already there, or was the result of being distorted by the various facets of the Gem of Immortality.from the Ultima Online Samurai Empire game manual...
The Tokuno Islands
It turns out that Sosaria is a larger world than we know. When Mondain shattered the Gem of Immortality it did not, as was previously believed, destroy the Land of the Feudal Lords. Rather the continent collided with another land, creating a time rip that would have lasting repercussions.
The survivors on the part of the Land of the Feudal Lords that would become the Tokuno Islands used their magic to protect their lands from outsiders. In this way the Tokuno Islands remained unknown to the inhabitants of Britannia until Minax discovered a way to cross the breach.
This is all we really know about the elves... that they were cut off... and the idea, of course, is that they were reunited with a way to Heartwood. Same fact, same world.From![]()
But the stories are true. The Elves do exist. They serve as caretakers to Sosaria, linked directly to the world itself, their health tied directly to that of the land. Perhaps not quite as beautiful, valorous, and brilliant as legend tells us. Real, but isolated and alone, they live out their lives in The Heartwood amidst the mighty branches of the world tree. Their knowledge has been passed from Lorekeeper to Lorekeeper, although their language is unsuited to writing and their traditions are complex and subtle. The Elves form a community in the truest sense, sharing equally and caring for one another with no concept of family or wealth.
What we have here, of course, is fiction for Gargoyles slightly different than that of what was presented in Ultima Prime, however, we can presume that Ter Mur is what became of the gargoyles that we might normally have encountered were we to exist outside of the Gem of Immortality, and on Sosaria Prime.from the UO Stygian Abyss home page
An entrance to the Stygian Abyss has been discovered upon the world of Sosaria, hidden in the seething caldera of a newly-risen volcano. At first glance nothing more than a colossal web of dank caverns and oppressive dungeons, it houses an ancient temple that acts as a barrier between the worlds of Sosaria and Ter Mur, home to the Gargoyles.
Of course, you're simply supporting the previously established fiction that the facets each are some perversion of an original, existing Sosaria. The elves never returned in Ultima Prime, but our histories within the shards differ from Ultima Prime from the very moment we were trapped inside the shards of the Gem of Immortality and those who continued to exist within Sosaria Prime were not.Hell, even Ambrosia from the original Ultima games falls into this meme of lands displaced via magics, with disastrous consequences, and some of the place names in Ilshenar reflect Sosarian names of places that mysteriously disappeared between the fall of Exodus in Ultima III, and the Stranger's return in Ultima IV. That same time period ALSO saw the elves and 3 other player races vanish from Sosaria, at least as common beings.
Again, it would ONLY have been easy to steal Felucca from a recursive shard WITHIN our own shard. There is nothing to support the idea that -- aside from knowing that we existed upon a shard ourselves -- anyone (aside from the recursive Lord Britishes) knew how many shards of the original Gem from Sosaria Prime even existed, and certainly (aside from character transfers) there's nothing to support anything ever moving between those shards (save some fiction from players, some fiction from some EMs, and small announcements that indicate the same event is happening on all known shards that our characters would not be privy to in-game anyway). So while I support the idea that Nystul may have transplanted a Felucca from inside one of the recursive shards we know to have existed in our own shard, and placed it upon the facet of our own shard which we then dubbed Trammel, the final result is still two different FACETS, not the merging of two different shards.It would have been MUCH easier, once Nystul knew of the concept of shards, to STEAL someone else's (uninhabited? or did it just take the land and leave behind the inhabitants in limbo?) Felucca, and attach it (as Trammel) to his own (via replacing an existing facet - and what happened to anyone whose land was overwritten by Trammel?), on multiple shards, than ALL of the Shards' Nystuls combining forces to create even ONE Trammel totally from scratch. Is it really even possible for a resident of a shard to cut a new facet into the existing fragment?
Bleh... using this to explain faction fiction is a huge stretch of the imagination.And, yes, the implications of what I suggest would assuredly rock the theoretical leadership (as opposed to the battle leaders, which are PCs) of the two remaining "good" factions to the core - thereby explaining the new faction system.
I never jumped the gun thinking that there were only 7 days... I simply said that it was the final spellword (as evidenced by the text of the journal itself). I read the original announcement which indicated that there would be ten tomes, and ten days worth of being able to do the quest.Let's see what the other books say (previous info indicated a 10 or 12 day event, before people jumped the gun yesterday and proclaiming it done after 7 days thinking that the spell words were all there was), before we dismiss Ricardo's partially incoherent ramblings as a brain fart by a Dev.
Thank you for your usual two cents.Or since Ricardo has gone crazy, he might just be saying it wrong.
I didn't read the fiction so I'm sorry if there are errors.Thank you for your usual two cents.
He didn't say anything. He wrote it down.
And sure, he might have described it wrong, but then, the rest of what he's written thus far shows no indication that he's vapid as to what he writes, and in fact, shows more that he's taken notes along the way of something he deems to be curious.
Imagine that a lone thief discovers something that goes to the very core of todays' Sosarian foundation... he at very least seems disturbed by what he's found, and in fact, I suspect we'll learn it's this knowledge that may have driven him crazy.
Regardless, there's no reason to presume that Ricardo suddenly forgot the difference between a shard and a facet. Save that it's now in-game that way.
Well, it is called a FACET, first of all. A faucet is that thing you get water from.Who's to say Ricardo even knows the difference between a Shard and a Faucet? Just an idea.
I really don't care about typo's or homophonal errors. Please refrain from responding to any of my posts with "it's spelled this way..." As, I will just respond with a jumble of homophones and purposely misspelled words.Well, it is called a FACET, first of all. A faucet is that thing you get water from.
True... but when we discovered that such was not the case, we continued to call the "shards" by the name "shards," and each facet within them by the name "facet."Until people started looking for other lands, the Facet we call "Felucca" was thought to be the whole of each shard.
Your point being what? That because continents collided, there must have been shards joining? No. The collision happened at the creation of the worlds within the shards of the Gem of Immortality... you know, that moment when it shattered into the pieces on Sosaria Prime? Trying to redefine what happened just so that it fits the misuse of the terms "facet" and "shard" is bad form.And, how do continents collide, when the world is being ripped apart by magic, except through the very type of magical disasters I mention?
From an in-character standpoint, we know that traversing the facets isn't as easy as saying, "Hmm... there must be a facet there, let's go." Which means, no, one would not think we'd have run into more Tram/Fel resembling facets.One would think that we'd have ran into more Tram/Fel resembling facet, if the gem really was like originally described in LB's propaganda for the move to Trammel.
Indicated it how? None of the fiction anywhere in the game (save perhaps EM/Seer stuff) has ever referenced Ambrosia to my knowledge.Some of the fiction I saw, going back through uo.com seemed to indicate that the LL or Ilshenar were what was left of Ambrosia after further deformation and a temporal accident or two.
Don't get me wrong, Basara, I'm not saying at all that the prospect that something went wonky when Trammel was created is a bad thing. I was saying that in-character when the actual formation occurred. All I'm saying is "Hey, use your terms correctly, and create interesting, deep stories that don't make the people involved go, 'Oh no. Not again.'" I'll be honest, I'm tired of feeling like a bowl of petunias*.The contents of the 9th book is more to muse about; it's talking about Fel having lost or hidden duplicates of items that LB took into the void - as if Fel was the copy, not Trammel - or that it wasn't obvious initially to LB & Nystul that the unique items used to make the transformation, whatever it was, weren't unique to their facet, as they moved to Trammel, the copies in trammel might have bounced to the fel side (sorta like Kirk & co. in "Mirror, Mirror")
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy *smiles*All I'm saying is "Hey, use your terms correctly, and create interesting, deep stories that don't make the people involved go, 'Oh no. Not again.'" I'll be honest, I'm tired of feeling like a bowl of petunias*.
* 50 points to whomever identifies the reference.
Woot!The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy *smiles*