Virtues

The Virtue System is the moral architecture of Britannia — eight philosophical virtues that double as a game mechanic granting concrete in-game powers. Lord British's reign codified the Eight Virtues as the foundation of Britannian society; the Avatar of Ultima single-player canon is the embodiment of all eight. In Ultima Online, performing virtuous actions raises a player's standing in each virtue, unlocking abilities ranging from self-resurrection to Champion Spawn altar manipulation.

The Eight Virtues

Each virtue is derived from one or more of the three Principles — Truth, Love, and Courage — embodied by three iconic items: the Book of Truth (under the Lycaeum), the Candle of Love (under the Yew winery), and the Bell of Courage (broken and repaired with Blackrock).

The mantras are occasionally used in-game (typically chanted at the corresponding Shrine for activation effects). The "Words of Power" are documented but were never wired into the game systems — they remain pure lore.

The relationship between Principles and Virtues, in plain terms:

• Honesty is respect for Truth.
• Compassion is Love of others.
• Valor is Courage to stand up against risks.
• Justice is Truth, tempered by Love.
• Sacrifice is Courage to give oneself in name of Love.
• Honor is Courage to seek and uphold the Truth.
• Spirituality is to seek Truth, Love, and Courage from one's own self.
• Humility is the opposite of Pride — the absence of Truth, Love, or Courage. Often described as the foundation of the other Virtues.

Game mechanics — what Virtues do

The system is accessed via the Virtue Gump (2D client: double-click the symbol at the very top of the paperdoll; Enhanced Client: Virtues Menu). Each virtue tracks accumulated standing through specific actions; once standing is high enough, the virtue can be invoked for an ability use.

Compassion

• Action that raises it: Successful NPC Escort Quests.
• Ability invoked: Resurrect another player at up to 80% full health (vs the standard much-lower base health).
• Ranks: Seeker of Compassion → Follower of Compassion → Knight of Compassion.

Honesty

• Action: Returning "Lost" items (special item drops with an owner ID) to their owner.
• Ability: NPC merchant discount on purchases.
• Ranks: Seeker of Honesty → Follower of Honesty → Knight of Honesty.

Honor

• Action: Honoring a creature (target the Honor virtue on a monster), then killing it.
• Ability: Walk amidst monsters without being attacked (passive, virtue-active). Combined with Bushido, drives the Perfection damage bonus on honored kills.
• Ranks: Seeker → Follower → Knight of Honor.

Justice

• Action: Killing red-flagged murderers.
• Ability: When pairing with another player as Justice Protector, both players gain an increased Power Scroll drop chance during Champion Spawns and on Scrolls of Transcendence in Felucca. The most economically-significant Virtue.
• Ranks: Seeker → Follower → Knight of Justice.

Sacrifice

• Action: Sacrificing accumulated Fame (turn in fame at the Sacrifice shrine).
• Ability: Self-resurrection — die in the field, resurrect from the virtue without needing a healer or shrine. The "second life" virtue.
• Ranks: Seeker → Follower → Knight of Sacrifice.

Valor

• Action: Killing Champion Spawn monsters.
• Ability: Activate and advance Champion Spawn altars at higher rates; some skip-stage capabilities. Used by Champion Spawn party leaders.
• Ranks: Seeker → Follower → Knight of Valor.

Spirituality

• Action: Use of targeted heals and resurrections on other players.
• Ability: Various community-support abilities; primarily a healer's virtue.
• Ranks: Seeker → Follower → Knight of Spirituality.

Humility

• Action: Killing evil-aligned monsters during the Humility Hunt event cycle.
• Ability: Cosmetic and lore-flavored bonuses tied to the Humility quest line; the Cloak of Humility quest reward.
• Ranks: Seeker → Follower → Knight of Humility.

The Avatar and Mondain

The Avatar is the embodiment of all eight Virtues. In the single-player Ultima games, the Avatar was the protagonist; in UO lore, the Avatar is a mythical "Christ figure" who is referred to but never seen, who slew Mondain (the originator of the Codex's villain arc and the namesake of Mondain's Legacy).

This is why every UO virtue article ultimately points back to Mondain — the Avatar's defeat of the dark wizard is the founding event of Britannia's heroic age, and the Eight Virtues are the moral framework that defines what it means to inherit the Avatar's role.

Lord Blackthorn's Code of Virtues

In Ultima V, Lord Blackthorn (the tyrant who ruled in Lord British's absence) codified the Virtues into a draconian legal code:

Blackthorn's Code is the standard cautionary tale: codifying ethics into law doesn't make evil people good. The Virtues come from one's own self, not the norms of society — and unethical lawmakers can twist the framework to mean its opposite.

The fall of Magincia

The demon attacks on Magincia in autumn 2007 were canonically a punishment for the city's collective Pride — the failure of Humility, the foundation of the other Virtues. The pre-fall city was wealthy and arrogant; the fall stripped the city to ruin. Modern New Magincia (the rebuilt settlement) carries Humility as its associated virtue (Black, Shepherd's staff). The Magincia article in the Codex covers the historical timeline.

The Shield of Recognition and other lore-tied items

The Shield of Recognition, the Cloak of Humility, the Virtue Armor Set, and the Eight Shrines all tie into the Virtue system mechanically and narratively. The Anti-Virtues form a parallel evil-aligned set: each Virtue has an opposing Anti-Virtue (Pride, Lying, etc.), and Anti-Principles complete the lore framework.

Strategy notes

• Justice Protection is the highest-impact ability. Pair with another Champion Spawn player as Justice Protectors; both players gain a meaningful Power Scroll drop boost. Standard Champion Spawn party practice.
• Honor + Bushido + Perfection is the dexer's damage compounding stack. Honor a tough boss before engaging; Bushido's Perfection scales each hit on the honored target up to 100% bonus on the 10th hit. The Avatar's combat archetype, mechanically realized.
• Sacrifice = field rez. Drop into a fight without a healer; if you die, sacrifice resurrects you. Burn it on solo dungeon dives or low-population shards where partner-healing is unavailable.
• Compassion: NPC Escort Quests are the one Virtue grind that pays gold while raising standing. Two birds, one stone.
• Valor for Champion Spawn alts. A dedicated Valor character can activate / skip stages on Champion Spawn altars. Useful for party-organizer mains.
• Mantras at shrines. Standing at the appropriate Virtue Shrine and saying the mantra triggers the activation effect. Most players macro the mantra-and-shrine combo.
• Word of Power fact. The Words listed in the lore (Fallax / Vilis / Inopia / Malum / Avidus / Infama / Ignavus / Veramocor) are decorative — the game does not invoke them as effective triggers despite the official lore claims.

Authoritative Mechanics Reference

The following reference distills the official virtue-by-virtue mechanics maintained by Broadsword. Each virtue includes its precise activation conditions, point-gain rules, decay behavior, and per-step numeric outputs.

Virtue companion and sigil map

Every Virtue has a canonical companion (from the single-player Ultima saga), a sigil device, and a heraldic rune in addition to the items listed in the overview table.

The Ankh Pendant

The Ankh Pendant is a Virtue Artifact dropped from monsters in the anti-virtue dungeons (Covetous, Deceit, Despise, Destard, Hythloth, Shame, Wrong). To activate the pendant's bonus, wear it and chant the relevant mantra at the matching Shrine. The bonus can only be claimed once per day and persists for 24 hours regardless of whether the pendant is still equipped. Each Principle maps to a regeneration statistic:

• Truth → Mana Regeneration
• Love → Hit Point Regeneration
• Courage → Stamina Regeneration

Per-virtue Ankh Pendant outputs:

Compassion — full mechanics

Resurrection ability percentages. Compassion restores a percentage of the target's max Hit Points on rez (rather than the default 1 HP):

• Seeker of Compassion: 20% of max HP
• Follower of Compassion: 40%
• Knight of Compassion: 80%

Pet resurrection bonus. Compassion also boosts pet rez when used through the Veterinary skill (the targeted pet rez):

• Base pet rez restoration at 120 Veterinary + 120 Animal Lore: up to 20% of pet max HP
• Compassion adds an additional bonus on top:
• Seeker: +5%
• Follower: +10%
• Knight: +20%
• Combined cap: 200 HP absolute ceiling on resurrected HP
• 10-second cooldown applies before a pet can be resurrected after death (prevents accidental bandage triggers)

Gain limits. Points can be earned at most 5 times per day with a 5-minute delay between each successful escort. Young characters cannot earn Compassion. New Haven escorts are excluded from awarding Compassion points (they are tutorial-only). Prisoner-rescue escorts award more points than the standard town-escort variant.

Honesty — full mechanics

Finding lost items. "Lost" items are flagged with an (Return To Gain Honesty) tag in their tooltip. They never spawn in dungeons or guard zones. The 'object handles' overlay (Ctrl+Shift) is the standard tool for spotting them in the open world.

Lost & Found Boxes. Each of the eight Virtue towns (Britain East, Jhelom, Minoc, Moonglow, New Magincia, Skara Brae, Trinsic, Yew) has a Lost & Found box in its bank. Drop a lost item in and receive Honesty credit.

Item lifespan. Lost items have an approximate 3-hour decay timer. Submit before it expires or the credit is forfeit.

Credit multipliers. Standard turn-in awards the base credit. Submitting to the box in the city the original owner is from doubles the credit (the Forensic Evaluation skill identifies the owner; multiple uses may be needed to extract the full information). Hand-delivering the item to the original owner NPC quadruples the credit. Felucca-sourced lost items also award higher credit than Trammel ones, with the trade-off that you risk being caught in a Vice vs Virtue skirmish on the way back.

Cooperative discovery. Telling a friend the owner's identity (or letting them identify it for you) is mechanically acceptable — credit goes to whoever turns it in.

Discount benefit. Honesty gives NPC merchant discounts on purchase totals (not displayed in the merchant window — visible via the system message after purchase). Discount magnitude scales with Honesty rank.

Honor — full mechanics

Embrace Honor — the passive. Double-clicking the Honor icon on the Virtue gump and targeting yourself activates Embrace Honor, causing all unaggressed monsters to ignore you for a duration that scales with your Honor rank. Monsters already aggressed before activation are unaffected.

Honoring a target — the Perfection initiator. Targeting a monster with the Honor virtue requires ≥50 Bushido and meets several preconditions:

• Target must be one you can perform a negative action upon
• Target must be at full health when honored
• Target must not already be honored by a nearby player
• Target must be in line-of-sight and have a clear path to you
• The honoring engagement must follow honorable-combat rules:
• Allow the opponent to damage you first
• One-on-one (no pets, summons, or party damage)
• No poison
• Ranged weapons: stay in the spot where you honored, or only damage while adjacent

Perfection mechanics. Each successful blow on the honored target adds a Perfection level; each miss subtracts. The bonus stacks toward a +100% damage maximum at the highest level. Effective Luck is also boosted by 10% of the squared perfection score — at max perfection 100, that's a (100²)/10 = +1,000 Luck bonus.

Final-blow bonus. Killing the target at top perfection refunds Hit Points, Stamina, and Mana. Losing the target (target dies / despawns / target switch) zeroes perfection.

Player honoring removed. Honor could originally be used against players; a later publish removed PvP honoring. Perfection is PvE-only today.

Honor gain. The points awarded for defeating an honored target depend on how strictly you followed the honorable-combat rules and the target's Fame — higher-fame targets pay more.

Humility — full mechanics

The Humility Hunt. Activated by speaking the words "lum lum lum" out loud. During the Hunt:

• All player resistances drop by −70 (player, pet, and summon)
• Stealth-related abilities are disabled (skill, spell, potion, turkey-feather variant)
• Killing evil-aligned creatures awards Humility points
• Speak "lum lum lum" again to end; resists restore over 30 seconds; 60-second cooldown before re-initiating

Pet HP regen buff. Targeting a pet with Humility grants the pet a 20-minute HP Regeneration buff:

• Seeker: +10 HPR
• Follower: +20 HPR
• Knight: +30 HPR

Note on the Doom association. Humility's anti-virtue is Pride, whose mantra "Mul" is the reverse of "Lum". The shrine of Humility sits closest to the Stygian Abyss (game-world location of Doom). Ultima IX: Ascension (non-canon for UO) inverts the dungeon assignment — Hythloth maps to Humility and Abyss to Spirituality. UO retains the standard assignment.

Justice — full mechanics

Justice Protection — the Power Scroll doubler. The headline ability:

• Seeker of Justice: 60% chance to receive a matching Scroll of Power when your protected partner does
• Follower of Justice: 80%
• Knight of Justice: 100% (every scroll your partner gets, you also receive)

The benefit applies only while both characters are in the same Champion Spawn area. The reward message reads: "You have been rewarded for your dedication to Justice!"

Offering and accepting protection. Double-click the Justice icon and target the candidate. They cannot be a criminal or murderer. The target receives the request prompt:

"{You} is offering you protection. Do you accept the offer from this pursuer of Justice?"

Protection can only be offered to a target who is currently in a non-consensual PvP ruleset area (Felucca). Moving into Trammel or Ilshenar does not break an already-active relationship.

Cooldowns and limits. If the target declines, you are blocked from offering protection again for 15 minutes. If the target is already protected or in a consensual ruleset, the system rejects the offer without consuming the 15-minute cooldown.

Pairing model. A protector can hold any number of innocents under their wing; each innocent may only have one protector. Either party can end the relationship via the context-menu option "Cancel Protective Relationship" on their own character. Logging out also breaks the link.

Point gain — slaying murderers. Justice is gained by defeating red-flagged murderer characters; system message "You have gained in Justice" confirms. 5-minute cooldown between Justice gains. Points awarded scale with the relative skill differential between the murderer and you.

Sacrifice — full mechanics

Sacrifice & Redemption — the alternate gain path. Sacrifice can be raised by spending Fame to instantly defeat certain redeemable monsters. The redeemable roster:

• Lich
• Enslaved Gargoyle
• Gargoyle Enforcer
• (Regular) Demon
• Succubus
• Evil Mage

Redemption conditions:

• Target must not have taken more than 15% of its max HP in damage
• Line-of-sight required
• You cannot be invisible or dead
• Limited to once per 24 hours

On a successful redemption: your Fame zeroes, the monster dissolves in a particle cloud, and you gain Sacrifice proportional to the Fame spent — bigger Fame drops mean larger Sacrifice gains.

Self-resurrection mechanics. Once you have any Sacrifice standing:

• Instant self-rez with no stat or skill loss from the rez itself
• Murderer stat-loss, Faction stat-loss, and similar prior debuffs still apply
• You return with 1 HP, 1 Mana (same as a healer rez)
• All items on the corpse are recovered to your inventory automatically, except items already looted or decayed
• You cannot self-resurrect:
• Inside a multi-tile object (house, boat, etc.)
• Inside a Faction stronghold
• While criminally flagged or as an aggressor
• Across a server-region boundary from your corpse (a notice warns first)

Spirituality — full mechanics

Spirituality Shield. Targeting a player or pet with Spirituality grants them a damage-absorbing shield that consumes Spirituality points:

• Seeker: 5% damage absorbed, 50 shield HP total
• Follower: 10%, 100 shield HP
• Knight: 20%, 200 shield HP

You cannot cast Attunement while a Spirituality Shield is active.

Point gain. Spirituality is earned by targeted heals and resurrections on other players using any of:

• Bandages (Healing skill)
• Close Wounds (Chivalry)
• Heal / Greater Heal (Magery)
• Gift of Renewal (Spellweaving)
• Cleansing Winds (Mysticism)
• Rejuvenate (Chivalry mastery)

Valor — full mechanics

Activate / Advance Champion Spawn altars. Valor lets a player issue a Virtuous Challenge to a Champion Spawn altar:

• Knight of Valor: can activate an inactive shrine — summons the first wave at the cost of a large portion of your Valor points
• Seeker of Valor or higher: can advance an active shrine's spawn level. Higher requested levels demand higher titles (Seeker / Follower / Knight). Valor cost scales with the current spawn level

One-shot-per-session. Each Champion Spawn session accepts at most one Virtuous Challenge from one player. Once advanced or activated, no further Valor interaction is permitted until the spawn is defeated and resets.

Point gain. Killing creatures spawned by an active Champion Spawn in Felucca dungeons, Felucca Lost Lands, or Ilshenar awards Valor scaled with creature difficulty.

Point decay

Every Virtue has decay: points wear off over time. Titles (Seeker / Follower / Knight) are recomputed from current point standing each time you mouse over the symbol — drop below the threshold and you lose the title until you re-earn the points. Using a virtue ability also consumes points.

See also

Compassion, Honesty, Honor, Justice, Sacrifice, Valor, Spirituality, Humility, Avatar, Lord British, Lord Blackthorn, Mondain, Mondain's Legacy, Eight Shrines, Ankh, Anti-Virtues, Principles, Virtue Quest, Virtue Tiles, Champion Spawn, Power Scrolls, Vice vs Virtue, Magincia, New Magincia, Cloak of Humility, Shield of Recognition, Virtue Armor Set, Bushido, Perfection.