Part 8: The Black Gate - supposed to work, we can handwave that little dalliance. Clearly, I was meant to be able to bake with Spark's father.
The puking has always been there for me, so I wasn't surprised to see it in Exult; I remember it from the ol' 486 days, but I'm still not sure why it works that way.
My guess is Exult fixed certain bugs with objects of the same type (all buckets, regardless of contents, fall under the "bucket" object) being usable as if they were similar objects of the same variety. There's a huge bug in Serpent Isle's expansion, which either Exult or one of the mods for Exult fixed, where double-clicking a pillar in the Silver Seed area teleported you to a storyline area you reach at a different point in the game by clicking the same kind of pillar, because their art assets were identical. I think they just overlooked that "full bucket = make bread" can apply to blood and alcohol. Although I suppose you could use any old liquid to make a dough from flour. I'm not sure blood would bake well.
Anyway since we now know blood-cooking was supposed to work, we can handwave that little dalliance. Clearly, I was meant to be able to bake with Spark's father.
Also, I was always under the impression that your stealing tips did work. I usually like to move offscreen from any potential witnesses if possible, but at the very least I've never seen Iolo care as long as objects were dragged directly to the backpack. He (and Shamino, and Spark, and the wounded guys in the infirmary) didn't say a word when I robbed the apothecary and healer. As I've stated, there are differences in the emulator, like the hackmover not ignoring volume. I still prefer Exult for the graphical options and stability.
Why Don't You Come With Me Little Girl, On A Magic Carpet Ride
"So you've cautiously arranged all our stuff in the hold of a ship we don't even own."
"We could kill the shipwright."
"We're not killing the shipwright." "We've got limits, Steve. We can put up with most of your antics, but this time you're going to have to think outside the box." "Or... outside the hold!"
"That doesn't even make sense." "You've never met Dupre. Yet. AWAY!"
There are two easy ways to Jhelom. One is to use the Orb of the Moons and keep ramming into the red moongate and falling over like a tool until it finally works, or trying the moongates themselves. The other is to F3 yourself over there because that's just stupid.
Or you can sail a boat there, but that's an awful lot of work for just Dupre.
"Remember back in the days when Jhelom was an island much larger than it is now, and we needed a ship to sail between the other islands in this chain, and couldn't just walk across a 20-foot-long bridge to get around?" "Good times, good times." "Hey, remember when everyone in the kingdom was too retarded to actually build boats, and we had to sit around on the shore for days and days at a time waiting for pirates to show up so we could steal their ship? "And now that we have a ship for free from Lord British, we're not even going to use it! What a bunch of kooky characters we are."
"Dupre's in there. I'd recognize his smell anywhere." "All I smell is cheap alcohol." "Precisely."
"And so that, I feel, is really what I got out of the book, what really spoke to me, you know? I thought 'My god, is this really how it all goes down?' If you ask me, you know, I think that Dostoevsky is really a master. It almost, it almost made me weep sometimes. And I-" "Dupre! I knew I'd find you here!" "Well yes, we did all tell you that he was here." "You didn't mention he'd be in the bar." "Isn't that sort of assumed?" "You old dog! I knew of all my so-called friends you'd be the one still sticking to the old ways." "Actually, Steve, I've been clean for near-on twenty years now." "..." "After I was knighted, I thought to myself, you know, alcohol owned me. It was a needless vice and it was destroying my life." "
" "So now I've started an outreach program in Britannia's taverns, trying to warn others of the dangerous path of substance abuse. I'm really optimistic for the future. I finally feel like my life is on track." "...WHAT!?" "...nah, I'm just messin' with ya, Steve, I'm fucking tanked right now."
"Awesome. Wanna go get tanked somewhere else and then kill somebody?" "You know it, Steve." "Where are your shoes, anyway?" "Coke's a hell of a drug, Steve." "What?" "Uhhhhhh, nothing. Say, you're not going to make me carry a boat again, right?" "Oh no, no, not a boat."
"Just part of one." "I don't think it's actually physically possible to carry the hold of a ship, Steve." "You're just not trying hard enough." "I think I tore something in my arm. I say something because this is a pain unlike any other I have experienced in my life and it seems I have sundered tendons which until quite recently were only assumed to exist within the human body." "More booze, then?" "Please."
"Of course, I'm not needlessly cruel enough to force Dupre to actually cart the hold of a ship around all the time. Pack your stuff, guys, we're going on a walk." "Where, exactly?" "It's a surprise!" "Awesome, I think she's going to murder Iolo again." "And we're all plausible deniability!"
This is the west exit of Britain. We're taking a little trip west.
Some of you already know where this is going.
"Halt! We want all of your money!"
"How funny! I want all of your money too!" "This isn't quite working out as well as I had expected." "You guys are aware that Britain is 30 feet away from us, right? We could be guards on a smoke break. We could be anything. Are you idiots?"
"Dead idiots, I guess. Hey Shamino, I found you some clothes."
"Someday, maybe I will even have shoes." 
In the midst of the fighting, Dupre decided to put away the disembodied hold of the ship to draw his sword. It now sits in his backpack, giving me ideas. More on this in tomorrow's update.
"I figured, eh, violate the laws of physics once, might as well violate them twice." "Yet another reason this game is better than Nethack."
Dupre also gets a halberd, since he actually has the physical strength and competent AI to wield it. It has long range and a good reach, but unlike Iolo there is zero risk of him accidentally bonking me with it.
"Hey, Skara Brae!" "..." "Just keep walkin', kid."
A little more hunting.
"Dibs on the fifth leg!"But after the deer have died off, Shamino and Dupre go rushing off to the south. What in the world could they be looking for?
"Hey, it's one of those asshole monsters that looks like a tree! Kill it!"
"I didn't even do anything!" "This is for putting us to sleep for 30 straight turns in Ultima IV, you prick!" "Rarrrrrrr!"
Getting closer...
"Halt! Give me your... wait you guys are the Warriors of Destiny." "We are." "Can I have your autographs?" "Are you carrying money?" "Yes."
"Then no."
"I still feel kind of bad about those guys. They probably just wanted some shoes or something." "Spark, there are two kinds of people in this harsh world. There are people who blindly attack others regardless of the horrible consequences for themselves and those they love, and there are those who are actually good at it." "I don't believe it." "That... is why you fail."
Over the bridge here. Notice we're rather close to Yew already. Britannia is, ultimately, not that large, despite arguably being bigger than it's ever been.
"Where are we going, anyway?"
"To find my ride." "How the hell did you know this was here?" "Lojack." "Really? That's prudent." "Yeah, but I never could make the insurance premiums." "I can't imagine why no one would give you coverage." "Yeah, the good ol' Magic Carpet. They even kepy my bitchin' seat covers. But... we can't use it like this." "Why did you have us go all the way out here, then?" "I don't mean we can't use it... just not like this. It's missing something."
Let's rice this sucker out!
The (notoriously buggy) magic carpet is a flying transport, making it probably the best in all of Ultima VII despite causing lag and sometimes crashes. It just has a few problems over ships: It needs a clear area to land, and it doesn't have a hold. We can fix one of these conditions rather easily.
"Just drop that thing anywhere, Dupre." "I don't even know what to think of this whole affair."
"There we go. Not like we need those extra chairs anyway." "We could always recruit Katrina, Jaana, or Sentri." "Ahahahahahaha." "I know, I'm full of it tonight."
It works! If you can balance an object on the carpet, it should stay on the carpet even when you take off...
...or fly around.
"Yeah, it's good and all, but it's still missing something. And I know just what that is."
"One of these."
"I thought I told you to stay out of my castle?" "We're not in your castle right now, asshole!"
It takes a bit of effort, but the cannon can finally be placed on the carpet. Where it promptly crashes the game the first time I try to turn the carpet. As hilarious as it is to sit cannons on the carpet (and it can work, although it's far too buggy to bother with), it's just too much of a pain in the ass. Large objects mess with NPC pathfinding, which can cause your allies to bumble around and then stand still, unable to find themselves a seat. If everybody isn't seated on a boat/carpet, you can't take off. It just isn't worth the trouble.
Of course, with the F3 cheat, neither is the carpet, really.
Shamino claims the dungeon where we found the carpet is Despise, which is news to me, as I thought it was Shame. But honestly, nobody fucking knows which dungeon is which in Britannia. Next update I'll actually drop by a dungeon since this one has a few cool things deep within. After that, though, I'll mostly ignore the dungeons for a while and focus on the Forge of Virtue expansion. The Avatar shall become powerful indeed, and we'll pick up our, ahem, sixth party member there.