Fire Families in a Fantasy World

[Wicht]

So, while I was researching arrows recently, I ran across the Youtube channel of Lindybeige, which has some really excellent stuff on the medieval period.

One of his videos is on fire in the middle ages, and how they started it, or, more properly, how they didn't start fires...

Give it a watch...

[video=youtube;BFhXfmjwrUk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhXfmjwrUk[/video]

So I was thinking about this this morning and about Fantasy worlds, and about a book I just read, Land of the Silver Apples, by Nancy Farmer, in which a village is putting out all their old fires and starting a new fire for the new year in order to chase away the evil from the previous year, and it got me thinking about what you could do with this idea in a fantasy culture...

Like... What if all the fires connected to each other, all from the same parent fire, as it were, were actually the same fire entity and these "families" of fire were in fact distinguishable from each other. Different villages would be able to tell their fire from someone else's fire, and some allied villages might share a common fire.

Taking this further, different fires might even have different effects.

Perhaps one family of fire, or type of fire, did bring bad luck to all who used it, while another brought good luck.

Still another family of fire burned hotter, but faster. Another would not burn oak trees, but might only burn on pine. Maybe one fire shines brighter than another, but produces less heat. Another will only burn on glass, so that you can have glass wicks, and glass torches. You could do some pretty interesting things I think if you played around with the idea.

And then there is the sentient fire, which can call each piece of fire to itself; so that a village might have a fire spirit/elemental attached to it for protection, but when danger doesn't threaten, its this fire that is used in hearth and home.

Anyway, that was the thought I had, and I thought I would share as it seemed like it might have utility in world-building.

What could you do with this idea?

 

[MarkB]

I like it. It's rather reminiscent of the concept of the Olympic torch, with a single flame being carried across countries, passed from torch to torch, and finally brought to the new stadium to light the beacon for a new celebration. That could easily be spun out from merely a tradition to something that carries real power.

Perhaps a fire will naturally develop sentience if it is kept going long enough, down generations. Perhaps that is the way that fire elementals on the material plane tend to come into being.

Extend it to procreation - perhaps whenever two long-standing fires are brought together, the result is a shower of sparks that catch the wind and are carried afar. If a spark touches down somewhere flammable before it goes out, it begets a new fire 'family', one that begins already mature and sharing some of the traits of each parent fire.