Greetings!
In my next gaming session, a Manor will be set on fire in a big city (Magnimar to be precise). I am wondering:
HOW would a big city such as this combat fires?
Is there any information on such anywhere?
Do they use horse-drawn wagons with water tanks and manual pumps?
Or do they have a more 'fantasy way' of taking out fires in cities?
THANK you for sharing your knowledge and ideas on this!
The Only Sheet
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Big cities like this that don't have dedicated fire departments rely upon a combination of city guards, the church of Abadar, and citizens to mobilize to fight fires. Magic might be used depending on the resources, but bucket lines are always an option. Depending on the city, the availability of water from cisterns, water towers, rivers, wells, or whatever will help set the stage for how that's handled.
Hopefully a bit better than in Ankh-Morpork.
The Guild of Firefighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the previous year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients’ houses in groups, making loud comments like ‘Very inflammable looking place, this’ and ‘Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?’
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In a medieval setting, I can easily see a bucket line forming to handle fires.
But in a Fantasy setting, that seem like a simplistic option for a city with so much magic as Magnimar!
So I've been pondering this and perhaps something like this:
The city owns a couple (or one per sector?) of Decanter of Endless Water that can be brought forth to the nearest blaze.
I am thinking that 'fire warriors' can be deployed using a magical way, like a Carpet of Flying to quickly reach the source of a blaze (flying over obstacles and houses allows the 'fire warrior' to go directly to the blaze, no obstacles, no wasted time!)
Special lookouts (guards) are trained to spot fires in the city and have a (magical) way of messaging the 'fire warriors' so they can be dispatched as soon as possible!!
Comments, additional ideas, tweaks welcomed!!
The Only Sheet
3rd Party Publisher
TheOnlySheet.com
|
Creative Director
|
In a medieval setting, I can easily see a bucket line forming to handle fires.
But in a Fantasy setting, that seem like a simplistic option for a city with so much magic as Magnimar!
So I've been pondering this and perhaps something like this:
The city owns a couple (or one per sector?) of Decanter of Endless Water that can be brought forth to the nearest blaze.
I am thinking that 'fire warriors' can be deployed using a magical way, like a Carpet of Flying to quickly reach the source of a blaze (flying over obstacles and houses allows the 'fire warrior' to go directly to the blaze, no obstacles, no wasted time!)
Special lookouts (guards) are trained to spot fires in the city and have a (magical) way of messaging the 'fire warriors' so they can be dispatched as soon as possible!!
Comments, additional ideas, tweaks welcomed!!
The Only Sheet
3rd Party Publisher
TheOnlySheet.com
That's probably overstating the amount of crossover between the amount of magic available in a city the size of Magnimar with the amount of people willing to let that magic be used for the good of the city, but magic certainy works. It's probably best to determine details suited to your own game, since we don't want to set up a setting where "magic solves all problems" becomes the assumption, since that doesn't encourage PCs to go out to be heroes quite as much.
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Hopefully a bit better than in Ankh-Morpork.
The Guild of Firefighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the previous year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients’ houses in groups, making loud comments like ‘Very inflammable looking place, this’ and ‘Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?’
Given the proliferation of guilds in Magnimar, there probably is just such an organization. There may also be a Crassus-like figure at its head.
