In Ultima I - The First Age of Darkness where the stranger faces Mondain one could come upon a strange pillar. It is found on an island near the Lands of the Feudal Lords. Those who visited the pillar were granted wisdom. Inscribed on the pillar was the following verse:
"My name is Ozymandias,
King of Kings:
Look on my works,
Ye Mighty, and Despair!"
Many have wondered which works these lines referred to and what Ozymandias was king of.
I have looked a little into the matter.
According to scholars Ozymandias was a Greek name for an Egyptian ruler, whom we know better under the name of Ramesses II. He had the following inscription written on a statue:
"I am Ozymandias, King of kings.
If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie,
let him surpass any of my works."
That inscription inspired the author Horace Smith to write the following:
On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.
by Horace Smith
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows.
"I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
"The King of kings: this mighty city shows
The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!
Naught but the leg remaining to disclose
The sight of that forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
But where do the lines in Ultima I - The First Age of Darkness then come from?
Inspired by Horace Smith’s work Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem named "Ozymandias" and the lines on the pillar in Ultima I come from exactly that poem.
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
(1818)
Now we know a little more about Ozmandias seen from an earth perspective, but what role Ozmandias/ Ramesses II played in the ancient history of Sosaria remains a riddle still.