Headscratchers / Ultima

• Sure Minax was pissed that her mentor/lover was killed. But she had more or less complete control of time travel. Why didn't she just go back in time and warn Mondain? Or try to kill The Avatar herself before the events of the first game? Hell, she can raise the exact same invincible army, go back in time and do the same plot she had in the game, but this time kill The Avatar's ancestor. This would cause a paradox that The Avatar was never born, and she and Mondain and would live evilly ever after.
  • The Avatar (Or, rather, the Stranger, as he was retroactively titled back then) seems insulated from altering time. Earth was clearly radically altered all the way back to Pangea, and it didn't stop him from existing. Could be the work of Lord British, or a Time Lord, protecting the Stranger, meaning that Minax has to deal with him directly instead of trying to just stop him from existing.
  • As to warning Mondain, I theorize that Mondain's fortress where he was making his gem was set in the Time of Legends that Minax sets her base in. While the Time of Legends is supposedly set far back in Earth's history, even the manual seems rather vague, hinting that the Time of Legends may not be in the past, as much as outside of time. Meaning that changes there can't be retroactively undone. The Stranger travelled there to kill Mondain, and Mondain remains dead, because you can't go 'back' in the Time of Legends.
• Or rather, why didn't she seek out and kill The Avatar herself? This was a personal revenge plot, it seems weird that she would hide in her secure fortress while sending her mooks to do the job. Especially seeing as she was invincible. So if she went to kill the Avatar at the very beginning of the game, before he had the Quicksword (Or any weapons for that matter) she would win no problem.
  • Because The Avatar, at this date, was The Stanger. A foreigner in a foreign land. Nothing was know about him, other than he fought Mondain in a time that does not exist now (And thus, nobody can go there anymore) and that he's from a strange place in a strange time. Minax couldn't target him because she didn't know ANYTHING about him!
  • Similar to what protects the Avatar/Stranger from being Time Paradoxed out of existence, it's possible that the Stranger is similarly shrouded from Minax's view, so she can't actually perceive where he is across time and space. Thus she does the next best thing, lure him to challenge her to set things right, and have an overwhelming force to hopefully stop him.
• Ultima IV starts with the karma meter, causing the character to become an avatar who mastered all eight virtues. Why is the title maintained even when the Avatar later commits crimes? If anything, it may appear to be just a one-time ritual rather than something that needed to be maintained; at the very least, the later games could have included a karma gate for certain sections.
  • In fact, looks like you are given a title based on your deeds, and asked to remain an example of the virtues. You can steal, murder, lie and even cheat the game, but the best, most rewarding experience in the game, is being The Avatar, an embodiment of virtues.
• Ultima VI reveals the magical words of power come from the Gargoyle language. How do you reconcile this with the fact that magic in Pagan and other dimensions (such as ones visited in Ultima Underworld II also use those same words?
  • The words are the same across dimensions. The gargoyles were just the first to discover them in the world of Britannia.