The pumice stone that replaces the Avatar's spellbook comes from Furnace. Talking with Harnna in Monitor about it, she will direct you to Krayg who in turn directs you to Standarr. Standarr tells you about MIA Pendar and his Quests of Courage into Furnace. Presumably Pendar died in Furnace, but does one ever come across his body? There are a lot of dead Pikemen and fighters in the Troll caves of Furnace and the fact they aren't yet skeletons means they likely died recently. However none of them have anything on them that suggests that they are Pendar. The game's usecode mentions two books by Pendar entitled "My Diary" and "Pendar's Treasure" but do these books actually appear in the game? Perhaps a subplot planned by the designers but never fully carried out due to the game's rushed release? I suspect Pendar's body is the one at the Serpent Gate in Furnace, but why it is a skeleton, I'm not sure. His diary mentions two fallen comrades at the Furnace Bath House, and the only dead bodies there are skeletons as well. Any help would be appreciated. I completed The Black Gate and got really close to finishing The Serpent Isle way back in the early to mid 1990s, but came across my copy of Ultima VII Complete Edition in a recent cleanup, and am revisiting the game in its original form now with DOSBox.

Edits made later for clarity. I was rather hasty in my original posting, to avoid being late for work!

Those books definitely don't appear in the game. It's possible and very likely that Origin scrapped this quest, since they scrapped so many things in Serpent Isle. They simply did not have the time to finish the game in the way they wanted.
(Thanks, EA.)

I don't think Pendar's body, if it even exists, would be the skeleton near the gate. That skeleton is most likely a mage, due to the scrolls it carries. I doubt a Monitorian would carry magic scrolls around.

About the bodies being skeletons; I think it's safe to say that any of the bodies near the bath house are not Monitorians. None of them carry any Monitorian equipment. I think it's safe to say that the developers did not implement anything related to this possible quest.
Maybe the 3 guys begging for water were once attached to this story. Perhaps the idea was to give them water and they'd have a story to tell, but yeah, it's all guesswork.

Long story short: It's not implemented, so the trail ends with Standarr. To get any real answers, you'd need to contact one of the original developers.

Wow! Thanks for the prompt reply! With as old as the game is, I wasn't sure if I'd see an answer.

Great points. I guess that skeleton by the gate did in fact have three magic scrolls on it. I must have been thinking more about the quill, weapons, armor and potions. Pardon my ignorance of Ultima magic, but is casting from a scroll the same as casting from a spellbook? Magic ability and reagents are still needed? Only difference then being the scroll can only be used once? In Serpent Isle, the Avatar starts with high magic and intelligence and with the ring of reagents easily obtained in Silver Seed, I never really paid much attention to it and I haven't revisited The Black Gate in well over 15 years.

My other question is this, different topic, but still pertains to Furnace....

I think it's one of the three books in the Furnace library. It's called "On Accessing the Serpent Gate" by Shalsaraiah. He mentions that he is the holder of the Key of Ice, which he keeps on him even when bathing in the bath house. Sure enough, one of the skeletons (must be the remains of Shalsaraiah himself) in the bath house has the key on him. The book also claims that the Hierophant is the holder of the Key of Fire and that he keeps it on him when he goes on walks in Furnace Park. So then, the skeleton in the park that has the key on him must be the Hierophant. What Hierophant is this? The Hierophant of Balance? After all Furnace is thought to be the City of Balance. This can't be for why would his corpse be in a coffin on the Isle of Crypts and his skeleton be in the park? Online I have seen reference to the Hierophant in the crypt as being the Hierophant of Order yet his portrait is that of Ssithnos, the Balance Hierophant....

I don't actually know for sure if anyone can use a magic scroll. Maybe any peasant can use a scroll of Create Food IF they can properly pronounce the words of power. Magic scrolls don't use up any mana, nor reagents, so they don't need to 'feed' off the caster.
It's never explained, but I figure the mages that created these scrolls infused them with the necessary ingredients and mana. After all, if they didn't, then these scrolls would be regular scraps of paper with letters written on them.



I don't know much about the ancients, it's been a long while since I read every book in-game and whenever I play through the game I rarely read any of the books. Maybe I should, next time I play through it.
Anyway, there could be more than one hierophant corpse lying around, since I figure a new hierophant would need to take the place of a fallen hierophant. Maybe the one in the park was the most recent one, since the one on the Isle of Crypts had a proper burial.

I would also not be surprised if it's just a developer's error. There are plenty of them in this game. For example, the book "The Structure of Order" is not the book that holds the answer to a certain automaton's question. He's actually giving a passage from the book 'Strength Through Ethics', which is one of the answers you can give him (but is incorrect according to the automaton).

Although the story to this game is very interesting, I never took anything too seriously, knowing that Origin's time restraints did not allow them to polish up the game.

Thanks for getting back to me. Yeah, it is unfortunate that the developers didn't have more time to polish up the game before releasing it. Despite it's flaws and idiosyncrasies, Serpent Isle and The Black Gate combined are, in my opinion, the best RPGs of all time, although I'm no die hard gamer and my exposure to games has been limited to a short time in the 1990s. They were certainly revolutionary for their time, and although dated now in some respects, I feel they have generally aged quite well.