runic. The runes are based on Germanic runes, but closer to Dwarven runes in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which creator Richard Garriott has stated he has read. They gained steadier use since Ultima V, which was the first game in the series to use a runic font for in-game signs. Runes in earlier games were mostly found in hard copy materials, such as maps and the decorative covers of booklets. Runes appear less in Ultima VII and in later games. Gargish is the language of the gargoyles of Britannia and the language used in spellcasting within the game. Unlike the runic script, which is usually used simply as a visual cipher for English, the Gargish script encodes a genuine constructed language, based on (but expanding greatly upon) the magical words of power that first saw use in Ultima V, as well as the mantras for each of the Shrines of Virtue, which had remained consistent since Ultima IV. The lexicon mostly comprises deformed or truncated Latinate stems (flam "fire" ← Latin flamma; lap "stone" ← Latin lapis; leg "to read" ← Latin legō), but other origins are also apparent (uis "wisdom" ← English wise; kas "helmet" ← French casque). But the grammar is de novo and bears little resemblance to Latin, being largely analytic in structure instead. Gargish uses suffixes to denote grammatical tense and aspect, and also in some forms of derivation. The Gargish alphabet is featured in Ultima VI, though it is seen only in specific game contexts. Ultima VII and onward does not feature anything written in the alphabet, with the sole exception of some books to be found in the gargoyle colony in the underwater city of Ambrosia in Ultima IX. The Gargish language and alphabet were designed by Herman Miller. The Ophidian alphabet, featured in Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, was used by the Ophidian civilization that inhabited the Serpent Isle. It is based on various snake forms. Ophidian lettering was quite difficult to read, so the game included a Translation spell that made the letters look like Latin letters. Reception In the United States, the first five Ultima games had collectively sold more than copies for home computers by 1990. In Japan, total sales of Pony Canyon's Japanese versions of the Ultima series had reached nearly 100,000 copies on home computers and over 300,000 units on the Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System),