Our tale begins harmlessly enough. Life in Wheelsmoke goes on as it does every day. The military trains in the barracks, the cooks make feasts in the kitchens, the miners complain that there's no need to mine anymore thanks to the goblin's smelted down iron, and the metalworkers tell them all how lucky they are since they're overworked. Almost a full 150 dwarves live in the fortress, going about their daily lives as usual. Life was good, life was prosperous. Everyone lived well in this fort.
When something went wrong.
I never saw what caused the fire. I never saw how the legendary brewer managed to set himself ablaze. However, beleiving himself to be impervious to the pain (And at Unbeleivably tough, I was almost tempted to agree with him), he went to work as normal. And brewed up a very fine barrel of dwarven rum, before realising he was in fact NOT fine, and tore off screaming down the hallway.
Unfortunately, the barrel he had created had decided to combust as well. As did several haulers who came to pick it up. And all of them tore off screaming. One of them decided to try to douse himself in the well, but couldn't quite figure out how to, and simply sat next to it waiting to die. Another felt that the soldiers in the barracks would be trained in how to extinguish the flames. Unfortunately, the soldiers didn't, and the hapless dwarf attempted to do what he did best when facing danger - to hide. In this case, under the highly flammable wooden beds in the barracks. Of course, to the masterfully trained military of Wheelsmoke, a simple thing like fire is no deterrent from a good night's rest. Unfortunately for the military, they're just as flammable, if not moreso. Our military fell quite quickly, as more of them slept in the burning beds, sparred with burning friends, and caught on fire to blaze themselves.
Soon nearly the whole fortress was burning merrily, all the dwarves inside either running around screaming, or simply waiting to die. Many tantrumed in their final moments, unable to accept their fate. The mason was lucky - his death was swift, crushed in a horrible cave-in after the craftsdwarf nearby destroyed the stone support deep within the stone stockpile, one of the few places of non-flammable refuge in the fort.
It took nearly 15 years for Wheelsmoke to reach prosperity, and less than a month for the entire place to go into ruins. Not a single dwarf was spared the wrath of the ever-greedy flames, and as the smoke wafted through the corridors, the empty halls fell into ruin...
The moral of the story : When can we get a dwarven volunteer fire department? 
[ March 26, 2007: Message edited by: Khyron ]
Author
Topic: A tale of Fire and Woe. (Read 1040 times)