Part 3: Justice - Part I

Justice - Part I



Alright, Justice prevails, more or less, so Justice it is. We'll be playing a druid named Steve.



Who is a girl, for no particular reason. The starting stats are good; there are ways to improve them later, but they don't go too much higher than 30ish in most Ultima games.

Steve starts with a dagger and cloth armor. I can upgrade to leather armor, but that's it until very late in the game. Weapon choices are much more interesting.

We're outside the city of Yew, town of Justice and starting point for Druids.



Yew is a heavily forested town with lots of little secrets hidden in the trees. There aren't any monsters or anything, so other than being slow there's no downside to plunging into them. In fact, there are several people to talk to!



This is how the early part of the game works: Head to a town, ask around about the Rune, Shrine, and Mantra, and find the Rune. I'm taking a few intermediate steps before doing all of that, but since we're in Yew and it's easy we can go for it now.

In this case, the druid reveals that the shrine is northeast of here and that Talfourd, the chief justice of Yew, knows where the Rune is. That just leaves the mantra, which is really easy to find here.



But first, one of the game's goofy easter eggs. I asked him about love but he had no time for it.



Even more lame jokes. This one is okay because if you answer "no" she gets incredibly pissed off at you for ruining the joke.



This guy also tells me to talk to Talfourd, who is the dude in the throne. At least I think it's a throne. That tile is also used for windows, so he could be standing in a glass box.



This is one of those Humility questions; Talfourd asks if you can honestly claim you've never been guilty. Obviously, nobody can ever say they've never committed a crime, so the right answer is "no." Answering this not only boosts Humility a little bit, it also gives away the location of the Rune.



Which is in this charming character's cell. Most of the Runes are just lying around, so you just have to Search in the right place. It's usually not too hard to get people to tell you where it is.

All we need now is the mantra, which I was told by someone I didn't screenshot was known by the chanting druids.



They're hidden in a grove in the northern part of town. Other than giving you their name, all they do is chant the same thing over and over. But of course I was told that they knew he mantra, which means that "Beh" is the mantra of Justice.

So much for that. All we have to do now is actually become good enough to qualify for Partial Avatarhood in Justice and we're one eighth of the way to the goal. More like one-sixteenth or so because there's a lot of stuff to do after Partial Avatarhood, primarily the dungeons. Anyway, once we qualify, we just find the Shrine of Justice near Yew, bring the Rune along, and choose to meditate "Beh" several times in a row. Provided I didn't screw up, that will do it. But that's for later.




Wandering overland near Yew is pretty annoying. The northwestern part of Britannia is easily the most heavily-forested in the game, which means slow progress, blind travel, and lots of monsters. At low levels in the wilderness the worst you're going to see are orcs, rogues, and mages, none of them too hard to kill. Still, the better-prepared I can get as soon as I can get there, the better.

Orcs don't give much experience, and so it's not worth grinding on them. Money is also much easier to find eslewhere. The advantage of killing things is that most of them are evil and the money they drop is 100% virtuous. The chests can also be left where they are; they'll stay forever as landmarks, which can actually be useful in these thick forests.



There's a castle to the west of Yew, Empath Abbey. In addition to the towns of the Virtues, there are three castles in Britannia dedicated to the Principles. Empath Abbey is dedicated to Love, and since we'll need two pieces of info from here, I've decided to stop by.



Guards are rarely talkative, but this one gives good advice.



This guy, on the other hand, is a dick.



Entering the shrine allows me to talk to the Ankh. Creepy. The Ankh talks about entering the Abyss, which is what we'll have to do at the very end of this quest to finalize our status as Avatar. Once there, we'll need the Candle of Love, and a special word of power. We don't know where the Candle is or what the word is, so we're going to have to find them. According to Ankhy here, there's a bard who knows the location of the Candle. Off we go, then!



This guy is the lord of Empath Abbey. The three lords of the three castles each know part of the word we'll need at the end of the game. Lord Robert just knows "amo." We'll get the others later. Now, where's this bard? The courtyard to the east is locked and I don't have any keys to jimmy the lock, but that's not where he is anyway.



If you look very carefully at the wall, you can see a little white mark. Any wall with that mark is a secret that can be passed right through. Two more secret doors later and we've tracked down Derek, who tells me that the Candle of Love is hidden at Lock Lake. Britannian geographers will recall that Lock Lake is near the village of Cove, east of Britain. Unlike later Ultimas, though, getting to Cove is really hard in this one. There are mountains in the way, and if you try to sail a ship, you're going to lose that ship under normal circumstances. There are a couple ways to get there, but we don't need to go to Cove just yet. Just keep it in mind.



With all that done, it's time to leave Yew, head to Britain, and act like a complete douchebag while I lie, cheat, and steal my way to power. To get to Britain quickly and easily, the Moongate is the fastest way.

A little northwest of Yew is the clearing in the woods where the Moongate appears, whenever Trammel is at a Waxing Gibbous. The Moongate sticks around for three phases of Felucca and then vanishes. In this case, the Waxing Crescent of Felucca takes us to Britain, which makes this easy and convenient. I didn't plan this out, it just so happens that going from Yew to Britain is incredibly easy. Keep this trick in mind, because in Ultima V you also start near Yew and want to go to Britain early, which means we'll be doing the exact same thing next game.