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The Eight Virtues

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For the full article on all of the virtues in the entire Ultima series and their relationships, see Virtues.

[edit] The Three Principles

The Eight Virtues, defined first in Ultima IV, are based on Three Principles:

Principle Place associated Item
Truth Lycaeum Book of Truth
Love Empath Abbey Candle of Love
Courage Serpent's Hold Bell of Courage

These Principles are themselves derived from the Axiom of Infinity, which is represented in Castle Britannia.

[edit] The Eight Virtues

The Principles are combined to form the following Eight Virtues:

Virtue Principles Towns associated Mantra Player Class Dungeon Color Symbol Word of Power
Honesty Pure Truth Moonglow Ahm Mage Deceit Blue Open hand Fallax
Compassion Pure Love Britain¹, Cove Mu Bard Despise Yellow Heart/Rose Vilis
Valor Pure Courage Jhelom Ra Fighter Destard Red Sword Inopia
Justice Truth, Love Yew Beh Druid Wrong Green Scales Malum
Sacrifice Love, Courage Minoc Cah Tinker Covetous Orange Tear Avidus
Honor Truth, Courage Trinsic Summ Paladin Shame Purple Chalice Infama
Spirituality Truth, Love, and Courage Skara Brae Om Ranger Hythloth White Ankh Ignavus
Humility Truth, Love, and Courage independently New Magincia² Lum Shepherd Doom Black Shepherd staff Veramocor

Notes:

  1. Britain is the original town of Compassion, Cove is nearest the shrine.
  2. Magincia was destroyed by demons for its Pride (Pride's mantra is Mul, the reverse of Humility's mantra). New Magincia, built in its ruins, was founded on Humility.

The Embodiment of the Virtues in the game is the Avatar, the character who the player is roleplaying. He (or she) is commonly seen with an Ankh which represents life.

The relationship between the Principles and Virtues is often explained this way:

  • 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 and the world around
  • Humility is the opposite of Pride - the absence of Truth, Love or Courage

Humility is the most difficult Virtue to describe, as it cannot really be understood without its Anti-Virtue, Pride. Pride merely has nothing to do with Truth, Love and Courage; Humility is similar, but rather than being a complete antithesis, it exists independently of the Principles and acts as their foundation.

Meditating at a shrine
The New Magincian ghosts also have a few things to say about Humility and pride, from which the following may be constructed:

Humility: The absence of Truth, Love, and Courage is Pride. Pride is the surest measure of goals never attained. Pride goeth before, Shame cometh after. This Shame leads to awareness of Humility, the root from which all Virtues grow. Humility is to strip oneself of all conceits.

See also The Codex Symbol, which explains the relationships between the virtues through colors.

For a similar additive conceptual model applied in contemporary psychology, see Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love.

[edit] Real Life Development

In an interview with Computer Games Online, Richard Garriott revealed some things about how he developed the Eight Virtues for Ultima IV:

"I started with a whiteboard and wrote down all of the virtues and vices I could think of, the seven deadly sins, many, many others. Obviously I wanted to talk about a few of these, but I couldn't address them all."

"As I did more research, I began to notice things like greed and envy would have some overlap, so I needed to create a core set. You can easily split them up into virtues and vices, and eventually arrived at three primary aspects, which became the principle virtues of Truth, Love and Courage. Truth became Honesty, Love became Compassion, Courage became Valor, and I created the eight possible combinations of these three. Truth tempered by Love became Justice, Love and Courage became Personal Self-sacrifice, Courage and Truth became Chivalric Honor. Truth Love and Courage was kind of arbitrary, so I thought, "What is the all-encompassing virtue?" I said, "Spirituality," whether or not you're doing good or bad deeds in the world."

"And what if you do none of the above? If not being virtuous is part of your psyche, I call it pride. Pride is not a virtue, so I decided to use the opposite, Humility. Since the eighth combination created a non-virtue, I began to create bits of pseudo-science I was pretty pleased with."

"Ultimas are big in mathematical pseudo-science and alchemy, so I invented the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom to graphically illustrate their relationship. Then I associated the cities with the virtues, with the eighth one - which I called Magincia, the city of Pride - destroyed. Having these seven positive things with one eighth one that had to be flipped made for a nice variety of quests you could create."

"Once the eight virtues were created, I needed to come up with quotes that expressed why each was important. And had to think of tests for people to see if they were supporting that virtue. Honesty was easy - I let you cheat shopkeepers and steal things, but the game kept a record where it could, later in the game, come back to haunt you. Just like the real world. Why is it you don't steal from people? Because if you do they'll throw you in jail or disown you. So that's how I designed the game - people will reject you if you're not honest."

"So I went virtue by virtue and tried to craft these types of experiences."