| First appearance: Ultima (Origin, PC, 1980) Favored tactics: Usurpation; The dark arts; Assumption of immortality Weaknesses: Power-leveling Nature of Demise: Self-righteous heroes |
| Profile by Jeremy Parish? | April 5, 2011 |
Ambition can shape a life or even a nation. Rarely, though, has the multiverse seen ambition so potent as that of the sorcerer Mondain, whose lust for power resonated through time, space, generations, and even the very planes of reality.
Spurned by his father, Wolfgang of Akalabeth, Mondain used his dark arts to slay Wolfgang and infuse his magick-infused gem with the power of immortality. Thus enchanted, Mondain could be defeated but never destroyed; not even the champion of his rival Lord British could fully thwart Mondain’s schemes. The wizard’s initial defeat merely renewed his resolve for power, and it was only a desperate act of time travel to an age before Mondain had achieved immortality that made possible his true destruction.
Yet even this wasn’t sufficient to end Mondain’s legacy; soon his apprentice and lover, Minax, took up her slain master’s mantle and attempted to destroy his killer’s homeworld. She, too, found herself defeated, lacking the support of the Gem of Immortality. In desperation, she unleashed upon the world her ultimate creation with Mondain—the demonic homunculus Exodus—but even this creature was unable to best Lord British’s champion.
Years later, the shattered fragments of the Gem later resurfaced to cause further troubles within the land. In time, Mondain himself returned. In fact, one could argue that he had the last laugh, as his resurrection was told in Ultima IX, the game that brought the long-running series to its disappointing end.
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