Dhur just put one whole point into his Bluff skill and is itching to use it!
While I was drawing this strip, something occurred to me: how would a Dungeons & Dragons-style city handle emergencies like fires, giant sinkholes, hurricanes, and earthquakes? Would there be a department that handles such matters, like a fantasy-world version of FEMA? I mean, sure, you might be able to call upon the Royal Mage or whoever for the occasional fix, especially if whatever happened actually affects them directly (i.e. There is a fire threatening the city library, or a giant's hurled boulders just smashed the best brewery in town). However, after being called upon for the 12th time to help with a fire at the local creamery, any wizard might get a bit… testy and resent the time taken away from their studies.
Given that I have established that in Ardris (the world MeatShield takes place in) there are artificers (which, for the uninitiated, are kind of like magical MacGyvers, making magical devices out of almost anything), I imagine they would be the ones called upon to help in this manner. Not that they would be terribly happy about it either.
Do you have any ideas for how the City-State of Kilanio might normally put out a fire like this? Leave me your ideas below in the comments!
Take care,
~Rob
Hmm. I guess for small fires affecting poor districts it’d be down to citizens instructed by the district watch/guard/militia to deal with things.
Richer districts would have a sort of resident’s committee that would manage a voluntary fund to pay part-time firefighters (magically talented or otherwise, depending on who they could recruit).
Large fires that threatened the city as a whole would be dealt with as a state of emergency with the military having the power to press-gang any and all citizens (however powerful) into dealing with it. The truly powerful would be compensated for their trouble from the royal purse.
Quench. As a regular player of healers/support casters in tabletop RPGs, I make sure to keep a fire-reducing spell of some kind on hand at all times, whether it’s simple Create Water or the higher-level Quench-type spells, which just snuff out nonmagical fires in X radius with one spell.
And I have needed to use it more often than not. If it’s not our enemies setting things on fire, it’s my fellow PCs… especially the pyromancer I was once in a party with. (Not on purpose, he’d just set down an AoE and suddenly everything was burning… XP)
Actaully, it’s not Dhur’s fault. You see, the innkeeper bought this thing called in sewer ants from a guy named two flower just an hour ago.
Not holding my breath to see when anyone gets that reference. :/
First, @Yakumo- Pratchett FTW.
Second, I have given this some thought before and my conclusions were that the primary responders would be the temples and clerics. They have the spells to help people, and as for the fires/etc themselves I feel like summoning appropriate elementals would probably be the standard response. Water for a fire, air to turn down or deflect tornado’s, and then clerics and paladins running the search and rescue and cleanup. Mages I feel would have to be dragged out by the appropriate authority usually.
@Yakumo: I got it!
Also Rob, your inns have the best names. Moaning lungfish? Great stuff. And because it’s a bar you know there’s a story behind it’s name
He was getting a lesson about reflected sound of underground spirits.
To handle fires, I think they’d have some good pumps attached to a water cart or some bronze golems with water tanks built in to handle fires in larger settlements or cities.
I’m going with a bound water elemental, using their hatred with the eternal fire as a reason to bind them willingly and happily to extinguish any blaze that springs up with geysers of water.
Give them a clause of time that they get sent back after, and you get happy and willing elementals lining up to fight.
Of course, the guild of firefighters would also walk around town speculatively looking at houses, making sucking-in noises through their teeth, tutting, and saying things like “Bit inflammable there, squire. Could catch fire so easily, know what I mean? ‘Course, if you pay us a regular insurance premium we can see to it that it won’t…” (another reference there from the same place Yakumo gets his/hers…)
@Paul C, clearly a later book in the series, as the inhabitants of that fine metropolis had obviously fully embraced the concept, and pronunciation, by that quote.
@Yakumo: From memory, the actual quote doesn’t mention insurance specifically, just the concept that people might want to keep the fire brigade well paid up out of their own pockets or… well, who knows what might happen? The impression I got out of the section as a whole was that fire brigades got banned in Ankh-Morpork because they kept turning into protection rackets.
On the topic at hand… my first thought was similar to DrCryllus. Clerics of more civic-minded gods would probably be the sort to be the first magical responders to that sort of thing, and the city might have an arrangement to reimburse the spellcasters the standard spellcasting rate for spells used in putting out a fire and administering first aid.
Beyond that – the modern system of good plumbing and easily accessible fire hydrants has advantages due to its simplicity, even if magic is used to supply the pressure. A more fantastical approach, however, might be for the city to have a small supply of decanters of endless water. The price (in 3.5, don’t know about other editions) is low enough (equivalent to six sets of full plate) that it’s probably not unreasonable to assume that the capital of a prosperous nation would be able to procure a handful for firefighting and as a clean water supply, and the ‘geyser’ mode seems to be similar in force to a fire hose, and possibly more convenient to move around – although you’d probably want to have a good means of bracing it when in that mode!
(SRD: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Decanter_of_Endless_Water )
Heh. I am proudest of making the base of player operations in my Earthdawn campaign an inn called The Fool’s Rush.
I’m a fan of the assorted force-descriptor spells that allow somebody to lift hundreds of pounds. Surround the burning thing with a ring of spellcasters, each lifting as much water as they can using force-descriptor spells, and have them let go simultaneously. SPLOOSH!
Reflected sound of underground spirits?
Too late already been said.
There is a triangle of things needed to sustain a fire; Air, heat, and fuel. Remove any of them and the fire dies. Rays of frost could work.
I thought Waterdeep handled this fairly well. The city contracts with the local Wizards Guild to have a team of spellcasters on standby at all times for these types of emergencies. It’s actually a decent way for mid-level mages to earn some money.
@ Paul C,
That’s actually the sort of thing Roman firefighters were accused of at one point. According to Plutarch (If I recall correctly!), the other thing they were known to do at the time they were organized at the time by Crassus in the Late Roman Republican period was to stand around while Crassusor his agents bargained with the owner of the house for buying it and it would only be after the purchase was made that they then would go about putting the fire out.
That said, I have to go along with Liatai and Janessa R on this. It would make sense to me to have a couple of town wizards or sorcerors with the “Extinguish Fire” spell on permanent retainer to handle this sort of thing and maybe a couple of low level clerics to act as paramedics for those who get hurt or inhale smoke. Stardrake’s idea of decanters of endless water if modern plumbing isn’t available makes sense to me as well. The real challenge would be the rescue of people who get trapped in collapsed or burning buildings. Perhaps “Earth to Air” for that one? Or possibly just send in a few fighters/barbarians with lots of hit points to get them out instead. @_@
@Paul C
You laugh, but in rural America, you get fire protection by subscription. If there is an immanent threat to life they’ll get you out, but if you aren’t paid up, break out the marshmallows.