Café de Nuit

The great fire of Rome. The great fire of London. The great fire of Chicago. The great fire of Boston. There is a long history of great conflagrations in our society destroying vast parts of some our greater cities. Yet in 400 years of RavenLoft, not one city has been even partially destroyed by fire. What should we say prevents this? I suppose an Azalin or a Hazlik could conjure a cloudburst to douse a blaze and Adam might use one of his snowstorms, but how might a Dilisnia, a Drakov, a Renier, or a d'Honaire deal with a city-wide blaze? Would they even bother? Would there be fire brigades? evacuation plans? What? Let's think it out.

Paridon would be pretty boned.

Actually, there was a great fire in Il Aluk, I believe. Gaz II references fire damage still visible in one of the Darkonian cities. I'm pretty sure it was Old Il Aluk. (Now part of Necropolis, of course).

God bless you wikipedia:

The very first fire department was formed in Ancient Rome by Egnatius Rufus who used his slaves to provide a free fire service.[2] These men fought fires using bucket chains and also patrolled the streets with the authority to impose corporal punishment upon those who violated fire-prevention codes.

Fire departments were again formed by insurance companies in the 18th and 19th century. Benjamin Franklin is seen as the father of the fire department in western culture. In 1736, he established the first fire insurance company named the Union Volunteer Fire Company in Philadelphia.[3] The city of Boston established the very first publicly funded paid fire department in America in 1679.[4]

In the late 19th century, the demand of central command for fire companies took place within cities because the fire companies would fight over fires or not put out an fire because the owners didn't have fire insurance.[citation needed] Insured properties had plaques with the insurance company's names affixed to their exterior called fire marks. This caused areas of a city to be badly damage by fires and caused many deaths. Cities started to form their own fire departments as a civil service to the public, forcing private fire companies to shut down, and merging their fire stations into the city's fire department.

Also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting

I would guess most have some kind of plan for such things, even if that plan is about preventing the spread and just letting it burn the initial zone down. Though for all we know there has been a major fire in Dementleu and Dominic simply mesmerized people into forgetting about it for political reasons; might be interesting for the players to discover evidence of an old fire that no one seems to know anything about.

Think anyone would have hand pumper wagons yet?

To further jump on the ancient Rome bandwagon, one of the nobles around Caesar's time (Cassius?) grew wealthy by firefighting.

He had a crew of firefighters and they would bargain with the owner of the still-burning house to buy the house after they put out the fire. If the owner delayed or hesitated, the price of the house would steadily drop as the fire grew. Once they had agreed on a price, the noble's firefighters would put out the fire and allow the owner to reclaim anything he could of the belongings saved from the fire. Then the noble would pay the (former) owner on the spot and immediately take title to the house he'd just saved.

You could make a lot of money that way.

HuManBing wrote:To further jump on the ancient Rome bandwagon, one of the nobles around Caesar's time (Cassius?) grew wealthy by firefighting.

He had a crew of firefighters and they would bargain with the owner of the still-burning house to buy the house after they put out the fire. If the owner delayed or hesitated, the price of the house would steadily drop as the fire grew. Once they had agreed on a price, the noble's firefighters would put out the fire and allow the owner to reclaim anything he could of the belongings saved from the fire. Then the noble would pay the (former) owner on the spot and immediately take title to the house he'd just saved.

You could make a lot of money that way.

Crassus.

Manofevil wrote:The great fire of Rome. The great fire of London. The great fire of Chicago. The great fire of Boston. There is a long history of great conflagrations in our society destroying vast parts of some our greater cities. Yet in 400 years of RavenLoft, not one city has been even partially destroyed by fire. What should we say prevents this? I suppose an Azalin or a Hazlik could conjure a cloudburst to douse a blaze and Adam might use one of his snowstorms, but how might a Dilisnia, a Drakov, a Renier, or a d'Honaire deal with a city-wide blaze? Would they even bother? Would there be fire brigades? evacuation plans? What? Let's think it out.

Why would you assume no big fires? Because there are not "canon" references to city-destroying fires? You cannot expect the whole history of the setting to be given in a few sourcebooks. 'Canon' history is just a sketchy framework for the use of the DM and players.

I would assume that there have been big fires, as well as outbreaks of disease, floods, etc over the course of the Demiplane's history. It would be bizarre in the extreme to assume that such events never occur.

YMMV

Manofevil wrote:Think anyone would have hand pumper wagons yet?

I'd say that this is a possibility, at least in a few advanced domains.

Was I the only one that on seeing a thread about major city-devastating fires in Ravenloft flashed back to the end of the Secrets of the Kargatane site and Vallaki? Sure it was fan-written, but I remember a rather spectacular fire being mentioned in the town at the end of Nine of Hearts tied into the end of that particular little bookshop.

In my campaign, I had a rather spectacular "great fire" ravage Pont-a-Museau as part of a plot by a mad aristocrat to eradicate the wererats of the domain by burning them out of their holes. He basically stopped up as many of the sewer gas venting pipes as he could and let a good pocket of methane build up in the top couple of levels of the sewers, hired an alchemist to produce hundreds of gallons of kerosene, bought up warehouses scattered across the city to store the stuff, sabotaged as many of the city's water towers and reservoirs as he could, and set it all ablaze at the height of the biggest festival of the summer, while the river was at its lowest. The PCs had been following these breadcrumbs around for the better part of two sessions when the fireworks hit, and spent the next one scrambling around the city to do damage control, save friendly NPCs, and find the crazy bastard that had set it all off. Then they had to fight him at the top of a bell tower at the height of a lightning storm while Louise Renier was tied to the bell, which was set to ring (and then break free from its moorings and fall) at the stroke of midnight. Adventure was epic.


Jeremy Puckett

That does sound extremely cool!

Manofevil wrote:Think anyone would have hand pumper wagons yet?

A decanter of endless water is only 9K. Sounds like a great investment for a city fire brigade. Set it to "geyser" and anchor it to something that is solid but maneuverable.