Britannia is unrecognizable. Lord British has vanished, and the usurper Lord Blackthorn, warped by creatures called the Shadowlords, now enforces the Eight Virtues at sword-point. Honesty means compulsory confession. Compassion means feeding strangers at gunpoint. The Virtues have become instruments of control. Called back to a land living under martial law, the Avatar must navigate a society of informants and hidden resistance fighters. Ultima V is about what happens to an ideal when it is enforced rather than chosen, and the game handles that question with a seriousness the genre rarely matched in 1988.