Sawmill

The sawmill of Minoc is the sole visible means of processing lumber in Britannia. Appearing in the centuries that span Ultima VI through Ultima VII, it provides much needed materials to the artisans and workers of the nearby city.

Age of Enlightenment
Powered by the nearby river emptying into Lock Lake, the Minoxian sawmill long served to plane bucked logs harvested from the Western forests of the continent, supplying the tinkers of the City of Sacrifice with treated wood for their numerous projects. During the Avatar's journeys throughout the gargoyle wars, the mill was operated by Aaron, who helped the wandering hero to process a yew log cut by Big Ben that they might have it cut into panpipes by Julia.

Age of Armageddon
The mill continued to operate over the next two-hundred years, increasingly working Silverleaf trees hewed for their delicate tasting root pulp. By the time of the Avatar's return to the realm in Ultima VII, the mill had passed into the hands of William, and now had the majority of its timber supplied by a younger Ben working out of Yew.

The hero's first visit to the city in this span came on the heels of a horrific double murder, which had transpired in the mill the night before. Two gypsies, Frederico and his wife Tania, had been found by William as he attempted to open for the day - their body's grotesquely rent and mutilated in a ritual fashion. Should the Avatar investigate the scene of the killings, they would find abundant evidence: a candelabra bearing the trigraph of the Fellowship, and a serpentine dagger made in the style used by the Jhelomian Library of Scars. Both of these things would come to implicate the seemingly pacifist philosophical organization in the slayings, and it could eventually be revealed that the infamous Fellowship assassin, Hook and his partner Forskis were responsible.

Eventually, the sawmill ceased to be - perhaps having closed in light of its ill associations with death, or perhaps having carried on until such a time the that upheavals of the Imbalance and the Great Cataclysm destroyed it. Whatever the cause of its downfall, however, no similar plant was to be found in the re-settled Minoc of Ultima IX, with the small motley of gypsies and former Covites having little by the way of industry.

Services

 * In Ultima VI, it costs a sum of five gold coins to plane a log.

Ultima VI Project
In The Ultima 6 Project, the sawmill plays a larger role in gameplay, and many logs require processing there.