Healer

Healers have shoppes in many cities and villages, and in some castles and keeps. They do specialise in healing injuries and curing sicknesses.

Description
A healer is important for society. The vast wildernesses of Britannia, though rich in beauty, also hold hidden dangers capable of causing travellers injury or illness. Bold knights frequently incur serious wounds during battle and the healer can treat these. Poison and plague also take their toll, fortunately, medicine is advanced in the treatment of just these problems by the healer, ridding the body of what makes it sick. In both cases, the quality of the healer decides on life or death. The greatest achivement of healers is the ability to return recently deceased people from death without any further problem - although only the most experienced healers are capable of such a feat and the prices for such a miracle are quite high.

While it is hard to say any price is unfair for saving a life, some healers are known for their reasonable prices and others are not. Skara Brae's healer has been known to heal even those who cannot pay at all. Few health problems are beyond the ken of the healers, whether disease, wounds, or poison.

Age of Darkness
The Age of Darkness was a real dark age for the art of healing, as during the times of Ultima I and Ultima II, the privilege of healing was limited to monarchs, who demanded a steep tribute in form of gold, before they would magically heal injuries.

Only starting with Ultima III did commercial healers appear, offering to treat wounds, cure poison or resurrect the dead. However, due to the inexperience of this craft at the time, there always was a chance of accidently burning a body to ashes instead of resurrecting it. The healers also could use Anju Sermani to recall from the ashes - a tactic that later got outlawed due to the steep price of this magic.

Age of Enlightenment
The art of healing stayed the same during the Age of Enlightenment, only that healers no longer could goof up at resurrections, thus the standard three services were offered from then on. While all healers were demanding money for all services in Ultima IV, curing would be for free if the party was unable to afford it. Some healers would do healing and curing for free in Ultima V, especially the one in Minoc. In Ultima VI, most healers would cure and heal even if the party was penniless - although some would deny their services anyway. Resurrection however was never for free any always carried a hefty price.

Gargoyle healers at that time had no concept of resurrection whatsoever and were confused when it was mentioned.

Age of Armageddon
In the Age of Armageddon in Ultima VII, the Fellowship waged an ideological war onto the healers of Britannia, calling them charlatans and their ways ineffective, promoting their own "help" in form of just strong faith, which was a sham. The disturbed ether at the time made resurrections a hazardous thing at best, with a high failure rate. Research during that time by the healer Csil indicated further medical progress.

This once abundant profession was almost entirely eradicated in the Great Cataclysm, thus only one healer was encountered during Ultima IX and her shop was closed because of a personal crisis.

Other Worlds
On the Serpent Isle, magical healing was not practiced in Moonshade - as even Erstam admitted that the mages didn't understand the healing arts - and in the cities of Fawn and Monitor, magic was mistrusted. Thus in the latter two cities, herbalists specialised in healing with non-magical means - logically excluding resurrections. Harnna and Delphynia were the respective healers in Ultima VII Part Two.

On Pagan, the Theurgists have monopolised healing powers. However, should one be encoutered, he or she would give healing for free.