KtJ Dragon

This document was originally posted on rec.games.computer.ultima.dragons newsgroup by Dr. Cat, a desiner of Ultima VI. The document that quotes the original document can be seen at groups.google.com.

Ah, nostalgia. I remember scripting that. Well here's the whole story, right "from the cat's mouth" so to speak. The story wasn't left out because there wasn't a good one to tell... But because it was a little too raunchy for the standards the game was being written for at the time. As it was, I put a bawdy ballad in the game that Mandrake had sung for me at the High Fantasy Society here in Austin, and Warren Spector made me remove one verse because it has the word piss in it. So this story never would have made it in anyway...

It's based on one of Iolo's real life stories. Iolo is a terribly charming and entertaining fellow, and he welcomes people into his workshop while he's making crossbows, to keep him company and chat and listen to his stories. When I found out I was going to be head writer on Ultima VI, I went over with 'Manda (aka Penumbra, aka Talzhemir) who was also on my writing team (as well as doing art for the game) with a notepad and pencil to soak up some first rate Iolo anecdotes to use as inspiration for the game.

This particular story wasn't really a Iolo and Dupre incident in real life, it was Iolo and Jeremy at a weekend SCA event/tournament. I changed it to Dupre in the game using my artistic license (which I make sure to renew anually.) Anyway the story went something like this...

Saturday night, Jeremy's in the big tent with all the food and, more importantly, the wine. Drinking and carousing and womanizing - being a very good looking fellow and quite the ladies man. Iolo, having seen Jeremy behave similarly at many a previous event, reminds him that the tournament starts early on Sunday, and he has to be up even EARLIER to be ready for it, and not to stay out ridiculously late getting drunk so he won't be ready the next morning, as has apparently happened in the past...Jeremy repeatedly assures him everything's fine, he'll be up the next morning at 6 AM no problem.

Comes the next morning. Iolo goes over to Jeremy's tent to rouse him up out of whatever state he might be in after the previous night's debauchery. He says "Jeremy, are you awake?" Silence. Iolo embelished the story here in ways I don't remember well enough to do justice to, but he went through several queries and remarks, and each time he portrays Jeremy's "response" with a more dramatic adjective in front of the word "silence". Leading up to something like "Total silence".

So Iolo finally says, "Jeremy, if you're not out of there in 30 seconds, I'm going to pee on the side of your tent." And the response was... Stunned silence. So then there's the sound of fluid spattering against the side of the tent. And in a split second, Jeremy's rolled himself to the opening of the tent, unzipped it, stuck his head out the opening - to see Iolo standing there with a wineskin, squirting water out of it onto the side of his tent!

And that's the story of how Iolo woke Don Jeremy up in time to fight in the tournament.