Ages of the Companions

[SepiaAndDust]

Do we have any information on the ages of the Avatar's Companions? Not their chronological ages--they're all over 200!--but their biological ages.

It seems that Iolo is the old man of the group... pushing 50, you think? Shamino seems to be reaching middle-age... 35-ish, maybe? The others I really have no clue about (excluding Spark, of course.)

[Oblivious]

I have no idea, however, I believe the age tiers go like this:

Geoffrey and Katrina are in their 40's
No idea about Julia or Gorn.
Shamino, Jaana, and Dupre are around the same age I think. Mariah might be a year or two older or younger (probably older). Dupre and Jaana might possibly be a couple years older than Shamino.

I believe Iolo and Gwenno are in their 60's

I'm just going by looks, here and descriptions in Ultima 5 and 6 (in 5 Jaana is described as a 'lass', and in 6 Mariah as a 'young lady').

No clue on Tseramed, either.

[Earthquake Damage]

I suspect they've aged to match their real life counterparts. So, however old Garriott was circa 1992, that's how old Shamino is in Black Gate. And so forth.

[Oblivious]

Lemee see... In 1981 or 82 Garriot was 21 (so it says in an old Antic magazine I have; some funny pictures of him in there, too) Unfortunately I don't remember what year Black Gate came out.

[Oblivious]

Dammit, I forgot to mention it in my last post. I've been meaning to say this for awhile, but I didn't want to clutter the board with its own topic. While we're slightly off topic, though...

Does anyone else think Batlin looks like an obese Emperor Palpatine in SI?

[SepiaAndDust]

Ah! I hadn't considered that they might be the same age as their Earthside counterparts. Excellent point! Is each of the QotA Companions based on an identifiable person?

[Dominus]

Oblivious: do not hijack threads. True it is an off topic thread but no reason to get the thread much more off topic.

@all:
Isn't there a more general ultima forum? An off topic once in a while is ok, but if you really want to just talk about general ultima themes another forum might be better.
But this "outburst" by me was just prompted by the off topic off topic post

[Slann]

The age is a strange theme on this game. There pass 2 hundred years but the main and secondaries characters seems not matured

[MeddlingMonk]

Time is strange, you mean. As others pointed out above, some characters are fictional incarnations of Richard Garriott and people he knew/knows. So in the world of Ultima, LB and the companions are from Earth. In order to keep these characters around from one game to another despite the big leaps in time, time is meant to run faster in Britannia but the Earth people age by the rate of the passage of time on Earth.

Of course, that's all complete nonsense but like I said, it's just an excuse for keeping some characters around from game to game.

[alagner]

Guys, but that's fantasy. It doesn't need to be possible to explain and prove everything using science. And maybe that's one of the biggest charms of that game [or even the whole genre]

[MeddlingMonk]

What are you on about? Garriott put his friends in the games and made up an acknowledged BS explanation as to how they could be in all of them despite the elapsed time, an explanation that he told people and I merely pointed out. Sheesh. Maybe you don't care to examine the bones that went into the soup, but others do.

[Oblivious]

He seemed to have a different explanation in Ultima 6, as all the people in Skara Brae spoke as though they were alive in Mondain's time, and that Marney had only aged what, 12-15 years since Mondain was terrorizing Sosaria?
There are other recurring characters in Ultimas 5-6 that age very little between 20-30 years, such as Nomaan and Max/Maxwell.
RG's explanation also makes little sense when you take LB's backstory into consideration (the one where Shamino dropped the hatchet on his leg), because Shamino was originally OLDER than LB, but now they seem to be around the same age.

[alagner]

MeddlingMonk, mind the ";)" at the end. If you took my earlier post as sth offensive, then sorry, I never meant it be like that. What I wanted to point out is the fact, that such understatements like timeflow are nice to discuss but rather cannot be explained using common sense. For me it adds up a bit to the game atmosphere making it more....magical? I hope you get my point.

[?]

MeddlingMonk: What makes it a "BS explanation", exactly?

Others: Was it ever explained how come that Shamino ages as slow as the other companions? He didn't come from Earth.

[SepiaAndDust]

Rumor (Wiki, I think) has it that Shamino doesn't seem to age at all, so he could be from some as-yet-unknown world.

[Andrae B Previtera]

Actually when you first meet Shamino in Ultima VII the description says something like "He seems to have finally progressed into middle age". Indeed he ages even slower than the people coming from Earth.

(by the way: who are they exactly? When was told/explained for the first time that other characters came to Britannia from Earth?)

[Oblivious]

""Indeed he ages even slower than the people coming from Earth.""

I don't think that's the case. He's supposed to be one of the youngest companions since he's based on Richard Garriott.

[Scythifuge]

Perhaps the Companions are Chosen and preserved by the Timelord for their importance to the Ultima universe and the Avatar.

In my spinoff/interpretation of Ultima since RG left Origin, there are other Lords as well, for example maybe a Fatelord or Lady, and so on and so forth, which could explain many inconsistencies in the Ultima storyline, as well as my previous statement that I blame the machinations of the Triad of Evil for screwing up the space-time continuum. I mean, we have time doors, moongates, continents disappearing and reappearing (Serpent Isle) in strange places, earth quakes changing Sosaria/Britannia, Shadowlords and the Guardian...many things can be used to explain the surreality of the Ultima games.

[Wizardry Dragon]

I remember RG quoted somewheres as seeing LB as him plus several years, and Shamino as him minus several years.

Cheers, Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer, Utima VII: The Feudal Lands
www.thefeudallands.ca