Part 15: The Time Lord

We traveled back to Britain to collect our flying carpet and flew to New Magincia. One of the guards in Britain decided to step on the carpet just as we took off. He is now stranded in New Magincia:

I told Alagner there are no answers to the questions of life and death. He, of course, knew this and simply sent me to learn this for myself. He then let me borrow his notebook provided I return it when I am done.

He gave me the key to his storeroom and we went outside to investigate it. What we found was a maze of levers, teleporters, invisible walls, and illusions. It culminated in having to create a staircase with crates to get up to the room where the notebook lay.

We found some other nice loot up there - reagents for my spells, a wand of lightning, but the notebook was the most interesting. I gave it a read before heading off to the wisps.

The entire notebook is an analysis of The Fellowship. The main points:

• The 'Triad of Inner Strength' is full of fallacies. "Strive for unity" is ultimately expressed as Fellowship members seeing themselves as an elite group, above others. If one is not for them, they are against them. "Trust thy brother" is about implicitly trusting your fellow members, but ultimately ends up causing situations where Fellowship members do what another says regardless of the implications of that act. "Worthiness precedes rewards" pressures members to do good deeds for The Fellowship and punishes those who do not.
• Alagner has come to the conclusion that The Fellowship serves some higher power, a malevolent one. The inner circle of The Fellowship refer to this being as 'The Guardian'.
• The Fellowship is organised into different tiers - the general masses of naive innocents, the branch leaders, and the inner circle consisting of Batlin, Elizabeth, and Abraham (apparently these two are twins).
• Alagner believes the inner circle are in direct communication with The Guardian.
• Alagner suspects The Guardian is the one who has interfered with the magic in Britannia. The moongates as well.
• The Guardian possesses a means to speak to people in Britannia from afar. 

At the end of the notebook Alagner mentions he will present his findings to Lord British as soon as he has sufficient evidence.

We hopped back on our flying carpet and headed for Iolo's house in Yew. The place is looking great:

Then we headed into Yew Forest by foot to find the lair of the wisps. We blew Trellek's whistle and had another chat. Xorinia absorbed the knowledge contained in the notebook and told me I could return it to Alagner.

Then the wisp gave me a message from the Time Lord. Apparently he is trapped at the Shrine of Spirituality, and I can reach him using my orb of the moons (and walking directly northwest).

Xorinia also gave me information about The Guardian. He is a being from another dimension that the wisps sometimes trade information with. Xorinia described The Guardian as vain, greedy, egocentric, and malevolent. He is a being who conquers other worlds. His ultimate objective is to enter Britannia through a moongate - but not a red or blue one, a "Black Gate". The Black Gate will be fully functional at the time of the astronomical alignment. If he gets through, he will destroy Britannia.

At this point we know pretty much exactly what is going on. After speaking with the wisps I used the orb of the moons as instructed and was taken to the Shrine of Spirituality.

The Time Lord was there, sealed inside some kind of magical prison. Apparently we have met before during Ultima III: Exodus.

The Time Lord confirmed much of what the wisps had told me. The Guardian has used The Fellowship to build a 'generator' which is interfering with the moongates.

I agreed to free him and to join forces against The Guardian. He asked me to travel to Dungeon Despise to find this generator. It is apparently a spherical structure. He mentioned it will likely have some kind of defense mechanism and that once I find out, I can return to him to find out how to bypass it.

The Time Lord also revealed he was the one who summoned the red moongate which took me to Britannia.

With our quest laid before us we used the moongates to travel back to Yew and make our way down to the entrance of Dungeon Despise. This is the same place we found the flying carpet so long ago:

Inside Dungeon Despise we found Brother Wayne, a monk from the Empath Abbey who had gotten lost while exploring. We just had to leave him to it... it felt wrong that there was no option to lead him back to the Abbey.

The dungeon was much worse than Destard. There were hidden teleporters everywhere and invisible walls and floors which caused a great deal of disorientation. We stumbled our way around, I used my magic to heal us after sustaining heavy damage. And then, quite suddenly we came across the Sphere Generator.

There was a red moongate blocking our way. Each time we tried to pass it, we were sent back down the hallway.

I cast "Mark" on the white virtue stone Jaana was carrying for me so we could return here quickly, and then used my orb of the moons to go back to the Shrine of Spirituality and ask the Time Lord for help. When I passed through the gate The Guardian spoke to me:

"You are not going to trust the Time Lord are you? Careful my friend, do not believe him."

The Time Lord mentioned that I need to find Nicodemus' hourglass to pass through the red moongate blocking my way to the Sphere Generator.

We traveled via moongate back to Yew and visited Nicodemus in his house. He was as crazy as the last time I spoke to him but he did remember that he sold the hourglass to an antique dealer in Britain or Paws. He also remembered that the hourglass had lost its enchantment. He suggested I return the hourglass to him to get it re-enchanted.

We walked back to Iolo's house to collect the flying carpet, then flew to the antique dealer in Paws that I remembered talking to long ago.

The House of Items, run by Beverlea, had the hourglass sitting on the counter. I happily parted with a little gold (at this point I don't even loot enemies, there is no use for all the gold I have) and we flew back to Yew to show the hourglass to Nicodemus.

Nicodemus threw a spanner in the works. In order for him to enchant the hourglass he needs me to fix the ether! And he told me tell the Time Lord that.

So I again, traveled to the Shrine of Spirituality where the Time Lord told me to seek out Penumbra in Moonglow who can help me. Penumbra is of course the mage who has been sleeping for some hundred or so years.

Next up we will awaken a mage who has been sleeping for an extremely long time, and then hopefully repair the ether and restore magic (and the sanity of the mages) in Britannia.

(I must also remember to return Alagner's notebook!)