Gem of Immortality

From Editable Codex

The black Gem of Immortality is Mondain's source of power and his key to immortality. Mondain has his soul bound to it, and as long as the gem exists, he also exists, with unbelievable powers. However, this is also the biggest weakness of the Gem.

The Gem came into being when Mondain turned his father's Sun Ruby Gem into it. With its help, he waged war against Sosaria, until the Stranger managed to breach his fortress in Ultima I and shatter the Gem, which cost Mondain his life. But that wasn't the end of this artifact of darkness, as three shards of it landed in the Underworld.

Years later, the three Shadowlords came from these shards. Only when the Avatar destroyed the shards in Ultima V, and with them the Shadowlords, was the evil of the Gem of Immortality gone forever.

In Ultima IX, the Gem appears in the Tapestry of Ages, but it has the wrong shape and color.

The backstory of Ultima Online explains that the shards of the Gem of Immortality contain a perfect copy of Sosaria, through which is explained how Britannia exists in a multiverse where each world has its own past, present and future. The term shard, in Ultima Online (and by extension, many of the other MMORPGs that followed), is used for an instance of a gameworld in a server. A "freeshard" is an instance of a gameworld that is not run by Origin.