Avatar

The Avatar is the central heroic figure of the Ultima mythology — the Stranger summoned from another world to defeat Mondain, who returned again to bring an end to the revenge of Minax, to dispatch their hellspawn Exodus, to retrieve the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom from the Great Stygian Abyss, to overthrow a repressive regime, to broker peace between humans and Gargoyles, and ultimately to confront and destroy the Guardian. He is not an embodiment of a god in the traditional sense of the term avatar, but of a set of ethical principles called the Virtues, and his quest is to balance his actions according to those Virtues — for it is the practice of the Virtues that sets him apart from his enemies.

In Ultima Online specifically, the term Avatar carries two distinct meanings — the lore figure of the Stranger, and the more general term for the player character itself.

The two meanings of Avatar in UO

The lore figure

The Avatar in Britannian lore is the stranger who defeated Mondain — the same hero who, across the long arc of the Ultima single-player games, returned again and again to defend the realm. He is the embodiment of the Virtues, and the Britannian moral architecture takes him as its Christ-figure: the exemplar against whom every adventurer's behavior is measured. He is said to return one day, though the doctrine is ambiguous — and the realm's troubles in his ongoing absence are real.

In the single-player Ultima games on which UO is based, the Avatar was the character under the player's control. In Ultima Online, the Avatar is a distinct historical figure — every UO character is not the Avatar, but every UO character lives in the realm the Avatar made.

The general term

In a separate, more technical sense, the term Avatar is used to describe the character that the player controls within the game environment — the moving graphic in the game window, as distinct from the static portrait in the paperdoll. This usage is more common in other electronic games than within UO itself; Britannian players more often say "character" than "avatar" when referring to the player figure.

Origins of the term and the figure

The Avatar was first known as the Stranger — or, more fully, the Stranger from another world — in the original Ultima, when the figure first defeated Mondain. The Stranger returned to bring an end to Minax's revenge in Ultima II, and to dispatch Mondain and Minax's hellspawn Exodus in Ultima III. It is widely debated whether the Stranger and the later Avatar are the same person; the games themselves are not quite consistent on the matter. Ultima IV (Ultima Prime) suggests that the heroes of the first three games were several different people, and implies that the party of heroes from Ultima III still lived in Britannia. But later games — most definitively Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle — imply that the Stranger and the Avatar are one and the same.

A pragmatic in-fiction explanation: the gradual muddling of history. As Batlin explains in Ultima VII: The Black Gate, the games cover a very long timespan, and the rate of time runs differently between Earth and Britannia, so the intervals between visits are immense. By the time of the later Ultimas, the historical clarity that distinguished different incarnations had eroded, and the Stranger and the Avatar were remembered as one figure.

In the first three Ultimas, the player was not bound by any moral guidelines — the future Avatar was free to steal and murder, with only the local authorities to enforce restraint. In Ultima IV, the Stranger's quest changed entirely: instead of defeating an enemy, the Avatar's goal became to follow the path of the Eight Virtues, and to retrieve the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom from the Great Stygian Abyss. This was the inflection point at which the Stranger became the Avatar in his fully realized moral identity.

The arc through the Ultima series

The Avatar's career spans every Ultima game from the first through the ninth. Each return carried a different mission:

The seventh, eighth, and ninth episodes form the Guardian saga — the long-form arc in which the Avatar's antagonist is no longer Mondain or his lineage, but a transcendent evil whose final defeat requires the Avatar's own destruction. The arc closes with the Avatar's sacrifice; his return after that point is the open question of the lore.

Companions

Several characters who appear as NPCs in Ultima Online served as companions of the Avatar in the single-player games. These figures carry into UO as historical NPCs, occasional questgivers, and named role-played figures on individual shards. Notable companions:

• Dupre — the Avatar's military companion; later the military chief of Lord British and the captain of the Order of the Silver Serpent.
• Geoffrey — Knight, swordsman, and tactician.
• Iolo — Bard, ranged-combat companion.
• Julia — Tinker, technical specialist.
• Katrina — Shepherd; introduced in Ultima IV's small-towns arc.
• Gwenno — Iolo's wife; bardic companion.
• Additional canonical companions appear across the various Ultimas: Mariah, Jaana, Shamino, Sentri, and others.

These figures populate the Britannian historical record and surface in event content, BNN articles, and EM-driven role-play.

Dialogue and the player voice

Across the early Ultimas, the Stranger was a silent protagonist whose speech was never shown. From Ultima IV onward, the player chose keywords from a dialogue tree (in early parts by typing them out, in Ultima VII by selecting them). The other characters discussed things with the Avatar, but apart from the topic keywords, the player never saw what the Avatar actually said. By tradition, the dialogue keywords every player knew beforehand were name, job, and bye (and, less often, health). This convention was parodied in Ultima VII, where an actor playing the Avatar in a play-within-the-game has hundreds of lines to memorise — most of them "name", "job", and "bye".

The first time the Avatar had actual dialogue lines was in Ultima VII, but even there full lines were rare and only appeared in a couple of places. Ultima Underworld broke the silent-protagonist tradition by being the first Ultima where the Avatar had full dialogue lines throughout the game. Ultima IX not only had full dialogue, but voiced speech to go with it — the first and last fully-voiced Avatar in the series.

Appearance and customization

The implied design behind the Avatar character is that the in-game character should be a mirror image of the player — the character becomes, in a sense, an "avatar" (in the virtual-reality usage) of the player themselves. This intent was never made explicit in dialogue, but the customization choices reflect it.

In all Ultima games except Ultima IX, the player names the Avatar however they choose. Ultima IX removes the name choice; the option is restored in fan-made dialogue patches, though no full audio dialogue is preserved.

In Ultima IV and V, graphical limitations restricted character customization to gender choice. Most later games — Ultima VI, Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, and the Ultima Underworld series — offer several portraits with different skin and hair colors. Ultima VII: The Black Gate curiously reduces this to gender only, with both portraits showing blond hair and fair skin (running The Black Gate with Exult and Serpent Isle installed restores the fuller portrait set). The Avatar sprite is determined by class in early games, fixed in Ultima V and VI, and gendered in Ultima VII. Ultima VIII and IX offer no choice — the Avatar is male, blond, and fair.

The Avatar's trademark clothing typically includes chain mail with a white, red, or orange tunic over it — a golden Ankh symbol marking both chest and back — and a red cape. He typically wields a sword. The exact appearance varies game to game and version to version, but the Ankh-marked tunic and the red cape are the consistent insignia.

The Avatar in Ultima Online

The Avatar does not actively appear as an NPC in modern UO. He exists in the realm's history — referenced in NPC dialogue, named in lore texts, depicted in art — but the player character is not the Avatar, and the Avatar himself is not present to speak. The Isle of the Avatar in the southeast of the Felucca/Trammel map is a memorial location rather than a residence; the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom — the object of the Avatar's quest in Ultima IV — gives this online encyclopedia its name in tribute. Several role-played factions on individual shards venerate the Avatar as a saint-figure, and the iconography (Ankh, red cape, sword) appears in event-released apparel and replicas.

See also

Stranger, Mondain, Minax, Exodus, Guardian, Lord British, Eight Virtues, Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, Great Stygian Abyss, Isle of the Avatar, Dupre, Geoffrey, Iolo, Julia, Katrina, Gwenno, Shamino, Mariah, Britannia, Ultima Prime, Order of the Silver Serpent, Royal Britannian Guard.