List of Ultima characters

This is a list of significant or recurring characters in the Ultima series of computer games, indicating the games in which they appeared.

The Avatar and his companions

The Avatar

The Avatar is the main character in the series. The Avatar is first known as the Stranger from another world, who defeats Mondain, Minax, and their spawn, Exodus. The Stranger becomes the Avatar once his goal changes to following the path of the Virtues, and retrieving the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom from the Great Stygian Abyss. This is noted as one of the first uses of "Avatar" in the virtual context. In the fifth episode, the Avatar defeats a repressive regime over Britannia, and in the sixth he brings peace between men and gargoyles. In the first part of the seventh episode, the Avatar infiltrates the Fellowship in order to stop the Guardian from entering Britannia; in the second part, the Avatar prevents imbalance from destroying the universe and receives the title of the Hierophant of Balance. In the eighth episode, the Avatar escapes the world of Pagan by defeating the four Titans, becoming the Titan of Ether. In the ninth and final episode, the Avatar defeats the Guardian by destroying both himself and the Guardian with the Armageddon spell. The Avatar is also the main character in both Ultima Underworld games.

Record of Lodoss War

Record of Lodoss War (ロードス島戦記, Rōdosu-tō Senki, lit., "Lodoss Island War Chronicle") is a franchise of fantasy novels by Ryo Mizuno based on the work he originally created for a world called Forcelia as a rules-free setting for role-playing games (RPGs). There have since been multiple manga, anime and computer game adaptations, several of which have been translated into English. The plots generally follow the conventions and structure of the RPG systems including Dungeons & Dragons and Sword World RPG, in which several characters of distinct types undertake a specific quest.

Origins

Record of Lodoss War was created in 1986 by Group SNE as a Dungeons & Dragons "replay" serialized in the Japanese magazine Comptiq, though they also used the setting with other systems such as Tunnels & Trolls and RuneQuest. Replays are not novels, but transcripts of RPG sessions, meant to both hold the interest of readers and convey the events that took place. They have proven to be popular, even to those who do not play role-playing games but are fans of fiction (including fantasy fiction). Similar to light novels, many characters and parties in replays have become popular as characters of anime. An example of such a character is the female elf Deedlit in Record of Lodoss War, who was played by science fiction novelist Hiroshi Yamamoto during the RPG sessions.

Ayla Ranzz

Ayla Ranzz, known originally as Lightning Lass (also known as Light Lass and Spark) is a comic book fictional character, who is a super heroine in a future DC Comics universe. She is a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes and was ranked 47th in Comics Buyer's Guide's "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" list.

There have been three versions of Ayla since her original debut; these versions are separated by the events of both the Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis limited series.

Fictional character biography

Silver Age

Ayla Ranzz (of the planet Winath, where twinning is normal) first appeared in Adventure Comics #308, (May 1963). She is the twin sister of fellow Legionnaire Garth (Lightning Lad) and the younger sister of the villainous Mekt (Lightning Lord). All three gained their lightning powers after being attacked by creatures called lightning beasts on the "lightning world" of Korbal. She originally joined the Legion disguised as her brother Lightning Lad, claiming to be her brother back from the dead, after Lightning Lad's apparent death at the hands of Zaryan. Her being an imposter was soon discovered, but she was admitted into the Legion as Lightning Lass.

Capital

Capital may refer to:

Architecture

Colleges, seminaries, and universities

Capital ẞ

Capital sharp s (ẞ) is the majuscule of eszett. Sharp s is unique among the letters of the Latin alphabet in that it has no traditional upper case form. This is because it never occurs word-initially in German text, and traditional German printing (which used blackletter) never used all-caps. When using all-caps, traditional spelling rules required the replacement of ß with SS. However, in 2010, the use of the capital ẞ became mandatory in official documentation in Germany when writing geographical names in all-caps.

History

There have been repeated attempts to introduce a majuscule ß. Such letterforms can be found in some old German books dating back to the late 19th century and some later signage and product design. One of the best known examples is the East German 1957 Duden.

Inclusion in Universal Character Set

A proposal by Andreas Stötzner to the Unicode Consortium for the inclusion of capital double s in the Universal Character Set was rejected in 2004, on the basis that capital ß is a typographical issue, and therefore not suitable for character encoding. A reworked version of Stötzner's proposal was submitted on 25 April 2007 by DIN. The proposal suggested the Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S. The proposal has been adopted and the character was added as Unicode character "ẞ" U+1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S when Unicode 5.1 was released, on 4 April 2008.

Capital (economics)

Capital is a type of good that can be consumed now, but if consumption is deferred, an increased supply of consumable goods is likely to be available later. Adam Smith defines capital as "That part of a man's stock which he expects to afford him revenue is called his capital." Capital is derived from the Latin word "caput" meaning head, as in "head of cattle". The term "stock" is derived from the Old English word for stump or tree trunk, i.e. something that grows over time. It has been used to refer to all the moveable property of a farm since at least 1510. In Middle Ages France contracted leases and loans bearing interest specified payment in heads of cattle.

In economics, capital goods, real capital, or capital assets are already-produced durable goods or any non-financial asset that is used in production of goods or services.

How a capital good is maintained or returned to its pre-production state varies with the type of capital involved. In most cases capital is replaced after a depreciation period as newer forms of capital make continued use of current capital non profitable. It is also possible that advances make an obsolete form of capital practical again.