Julia

Julia is a well-known tinker and long time companion of the Avatar of legend. While her origins are not explicitly known, she is possessed of a longevity characteristic of Earth natives living in Britannia, and has dewelt in the realm for several centuries, having been present in Lord British's lands from Ultima IV through Ultima IX,

Age of Enlightenment
The Stranger first met Julia shortly after Lord British's establishment of the Eight Virtues, when she was engaged in tending to the the kingdom's impoverished in the newly founded city of Minoc, dedicated to the concept of Sacrifice. The sole operator of the settlement's first shelter for the poor, Julia would ask the aspiring Avatar to help her in her work, and would join the hero's company once they agreed. Traveling to the depths of the Abyss with the Stranger, Julia was present when the hero first attained the wisdom of the Codex.

Later, this alliance would serve to single out Julia for persecution, and the fiery tempered tinker was one of many targeted by the oppressive government of Lord Blackthorn, following the disappearance of Lord British. Forced with the other companions into hiding, Julia found sanctuary at Empath Abbey under Lord Michael, and stayed at the keep awaiting the return of the Avatar in the hopes of fighting alongside the hero again. . After the eventual restoration of the true king and Blackthorn's exile, the tinker returned to Minoc, joining the nascent Artisan's Guild and taking up the manufacture of musical instruments in the years that followed.

By the time of the gargoyle wars, Julia was an accomplished craftswoman, and had made numerous pieces for Minoxian musicians, ranging from lutes to panpipes. As the guild had grown over the years to incorporate the art of song into its initiation rituals, a syrinx was, in fact, necessary for the Avatar to join the collective, which the hero had need of doing that they might obtain the Rune of Sacrifice. Sent to their old companion by the guildmaster Selganor, the champion of legend commissioned a set of Yew panpipes from the tinker, and had the opportunity to invite her to join in their wanderings once again - although the irascible artisan would grow rapidly indignant if ever asked to leave the company, not happy to be abandoned in the course of the quest. .

Age of Armageddon
Following the peaceable end to the war, Julia remained in Minoc as a tinker, although the centuries left her somewhat weary of the profession. By the time of the Avatar's eventual return, two-hundred years later, the city was embroiled in political drama, with the Artisan's Guild facing financial dissolution in the wake of a Fellowship commissioned monument to the town's shipwright, Owen. When the Avatar arrived on the heels of a pair of mutilation killings at the local sawmill, Julia proved eager to join her former adventuring companion again, and would jump at the chance if asked.

She was able at the time to assist in helping a local hermit, named Karl, analyze a set of blueprints he had stolen from Owen - a man whose faulty craftsmanship he blamed for the death of his brother. If shown the plans, Julia would confirm that the shipwright's outlines were grossly incompetent, potentially sparking a series of events which would lead to the cancellation of the monument and Owen's death by his own hand. .

Tiring of her lot tending to Minoxians' repairs and odd-jobs, Julia felt a need for new direction in her life. Regardless of whether or not she joined the quest to stop the Guardian, she eventually took to the roads in the years after the destruction of the Black Gate - traveling Britannia and seeing the sights of the world during the Reconstruction which followed the Fellowship's disbandment.

During these days of organized reform, Julia found herself among the guests attending an ill-fated festival at Castle Britannia to celebrate the progress which was made in these rehabilitative efforts, and here she was trapped inside of the great blackrock dome which the Guardian crafted to imprison the revelers. During the stress of this tribulation, her quickness to anger came to the forefront, with her taking out her wrath on the oft-times incompetent mayor of Britain, Patterson, who she insinuated she would feed to the castle's lurkers. During the eventual raid upon the castle by otherworldly invaders, she was injured by the Guardian's champion, Mors Gotha, but survived to see the Avatar break the blackrock prism and win the castle's inhabitants their freedom.

In the years that followed this failed assault on Britannia, Julia lived to see the damage visited by the storms of the Imbalance and the upheavals wrought by the Great Cataclysm. When the earth began to birth the strange columns of the Guardian's devising, the tinker was sent by Lord British to investigate one near to Minoc. Like many of the Avatar's other companions, she was slowly seduced by the power of the columns, taking on the name Ailuj and the mantle of the Wyrmguard.

When at last the Avatar returned to the blighted realm, the hero could find her guarding the column near Dungeon Covetous, ready to fight against her former comrade to defend it. In the course of such a battle, however, Julia would angrily confess her love for the hero, mentioning that she had harbored such unrequited passions for many years. Confronted with this revelation, the Avatar could work to coax her out of her madness - and if such a course were followed, the remorseful tinker could be found near Minoc following the cleansing of the Shrine of Sacrifice.

Later, Julia would aid in the final defeat of the Guardian, journeying to Covetous again to cleanse the corrupting column linked to it, helping to cut off the Guardian's power and to divert the catastrophic collision of Trammel and Felucca.

The Tale of Julia and the Clock: A Parable of Sacrifice
''In olden days Minoc was well known as the center of all the finest artisans and craftsmen of the land, and among that honored company two were most famous. Jervaise, the carver, was everywhere acclaimed one of the greatest artists Britannia had ever produced, being able to create items from rock or wood that were not only durable and practical, but also astounding works of fine art. A table or lamp from the hand of Jervaise was valued above many a marble statue or painted portrait in the great houses of the land. The other, younger, dean of Minoc's crafters was Julia, the Tinker. While Jervaise was, above all, an artist, Julia was an artisan. It was said her timepieces would remain accurate to the very second for a hundred years, if kept wound and properly tended. She also invented many cunning devices of the sort to make difficult tasks both simpler and more precise. ''

When one of the great nobles of the land wished something that was both beautiful and intricate, he would often commission both Julia and Jervaise to work together on it, and these collaborations became almost instantly the stuff of legends.

See the complete tale at: The Tale of Julia and the Clock: a Parable of Sacrifice



Trivia

 * Julia's counterpart in reality is a girl Richard Garriott once dated in the past.
 * Julia's hair color (like Gwenno's) is inconsistent throughout the series. While it is shown as red in Ultima VI and in Ultima VII, it later becomes brown in Ultima Underworld II and blond in Ultima IX.
 * Julia's accent, like her hair, tends to wander. She is portrayed as having a thick Scottish inflection to her speech in Ultima VI which disappears in Ultima VII and becomes a stereotypical "gypsy" accent in Ultima IX.
 * In Ultima I, there is a Princess Julia imprisoned in the Castle of Lord British (Each of the eight kings have imprisoned a princess for untold reasons). It is not known whether this character bears any relation to the famous tinker Julia.
 * In the NES port of Ultima IV, and in the manga adaptation Quest of the Avatar, Julia is replaced with a male character. In the former, her replacement's name is Julius; in the latter, despite the gender swap, it remains Julia.
 * In Ultima VI, Julia's dialogue, like Mariah's, reads as if she is meeting the Avatar for the first time, in spite of having been a potential companion in Ultima IV and Ultima V.
 * In Ultima VI, Julia will refuse to rejoin the party if she had previously been asked to leave it for any reason, saying, "Aye, and be dumped off in the middle of nowhere again? Not likely! Find some other sap to do your bidding!" She will also insinuate that the Avatar is insane if asked to join the party while still in it..
 * In Runes of Virtue II, Julia will sell the hero various arms and armour from her shop in Minoc.
 * In the SNES Port of Ultima VII, Julia is listed as the author of a book entitled You Can Do It Yourself, which offers a guide for various types of repairs.
 * The story of Ultima Underworld II assumes that Julia joined with the Avatar during the events of Black Gate.
 * While many companions end up under the influence of the Guardian's columns in Ultima IX, Julia is the only one whose gradual change can be witnessed. Her journal, which can be found behind a waterfall in Minoc, catalogs her descent into corruption.
 * In Ultima IX, the Avatar may opt to slay Julia when encountering her as a Wyrmguard. If this happens, Julia will later appear as a ghost, thanking the hero briefly for releasing her from her bondage to the Guardian. She never mentions her love for the Avatar while dead, and will later be restored to life along with Dupre and any other slain companions once the Shrine of Spirituality is cleansed.
 * Rather than fall to corruption as a Wyrmguard, Julia was to have been found taking refuge in Trinsic in earlier drafts of Ultima IX, along with her fellow companions Sentri and Katrina. In this version of events, conceived throughout Bob White's tenure as lead designer, the tinker had developed a valuable expertise for crafting armour and weaponry from the mineral blackrock, whose ethereally disruptive properties had proven to be an advantageous measure against the spell-casting Gargish forces of the Guardian.