To Clasp the Fire (Patreon)

The dwarves of Ara were the most advanced technologically of all races on Quintus.  Though dwarves can and did study magic, such practices were inconsistent to their needs.  One mage might be more skilled than another, or cast a spell differently, or not have the right sort of magic prepared, and that wasted time.  A water wheel, in contrast, produced a calculable, predictable amount of work as it turned.  Thus dwarves tended to favor practical, technological solutions for their problems.

And despite their technology, the dwarves had no end of problems.  Life underground was a constant process of bringing good air in, blowing bad air out, draining mines, transporting ore, and occasionally relocating annoying fault lines.  The sewage guild was critical to keeping settlements from rotting in their own discharge, and field of mushrooms constantly worked to maintain a supply of food.  Canals and reservoirs were employed both to drain settlements and to supply water when necessary.

And to this end, the dwarves of the Dominion required a colossal amount of energy.  Melt waters would be collected behind dams to turn wheels.  Methane, coal, and peat would be combusted in boilers to try and maintain steam to run pulley systems.  While many humans like to imagine dwarves denuding mountains for trees to burn underground, there was not enough foliage in Aurum to feed their furnaces.

The most preferable and reliable source of energy was that of the heat of the earth itself.  Magic and suits of heat reflective armor had dwarves digging deep shafts into the earth.  Water would be poured in, flash to steam, and the steam would turn pistons.  A careful balance was maintained between keeping working pressure and allowing an eruption to take place.  More than one dwarven settlement was sterilized by a rolling cloud of scalding steam blasting the crown of the mountain clean off.

Something better was required.

And dwarven astronomers delivered.  The study of astronomy was of deep interest to the numerically, systemic minded people.  The arrangement of stars and movement of planets was used to determine time, seasons, and other phenomenon.  They theorized that the universe had once been comprised of four ideal primordial substances: earth, fire, water, and air.  These substances had been in different concentrations when the planets formed, thus giving rise to different characteristics.  The primordial elements then decayed, primordial earth forming minerals and metals, air forming various gasses, and water forming ice and vapor.  The sun however, was theorized to still retain the primordial fire that still produced heat for the world.

What if, some dwarves wondered, if they could get some of that primordial fire?  Nigh endless, portable, containable energy.  Of course the sun was unreachable... but what if the heat radiating out of the planet of Quintus was some lesser amount of primordial flame?

The dwarves of Ara got to work.  Deeper shafts than ever were sunk.  New spells devised.  New materials to block the heat.  Deeper.  Deeper.  Ever deeper.  And soon they found what they sought.  A magma plume, and in its heart a tendril of primordial fire.  With a relic, they cut off the smallest piece and brought it to the surface.  The container melting as it rose, they placed it in another, and in another, transporting it up to where it would be housed: the grand boiler of Firecrown.

It was the product of a century of work.  The most advanced power plant in the history of the world, equaling if not surpassing that of the works of the Ith.  The container holding the primal fire, red hot, sloshing with molten remains of the previous vessels, was inserted into its adamantine heart and a lake of frigid water poured into it.  Instantly, the water boiled, the steam turning thousands of spokes and wheels that ran for hundreds of kilometers through the Dominion.  The grand boiler turned water to power.

The dwarves celebrated as they never had before.  This was a new future.  There was already talk of building a second grand boiler in Litha.  But some of the engineers were concerned.  The boiler was working well.  In fact, it was working TOO well.  It boiled through the lake in weeks, and soon tunnels were routing steam to the tops of peaks to condense and be reused.  New channels had to be cut to try and cool the boiler.  Engineers noticed the very bedrock of Firecrown was getting too hot to touch, even with the cooling.  A failsafe did exist, a shaft twenty kilometers deep that the entire grand boiler could be dropped into, and then buried.  Some Dwarves began to wonder: 'What do we do if the boiler... breaks?'

This could not be allowed to happen, and yet the boiler grew hotter and hotter with every passing year.  Pipes were laid to try to cool the mountain itself, but even that simply spread the heat further.  The civilians of Firecrown soon baked in the sweltering heat as engineers worked endlessly to bring the boiler to heel.  Some of the spokes and flywheels transferring the power snapped with the incredible force the boiler exuded.

A meeting was called in Highcrown, with the engineers begging the other settlements to let them activate the failsafe and drop the boiler and bury it back in the earth.  But democracy failed.  The distant settlements saw no problem and did not accept the peril.  Much wealth and toil had been given up by the settlements to the project.  Many did not realize their broken shafts and power could not be fixed because the boiler could not be turned off.  They refused, demanding that Firecrown uphold its bargain.  Surely the primordial fire would eventually 'settle down'.

More efforts and engineers threw themselves at the task, trying to find ways to cool the boiler.  Coolant loops for coolant loops for coolant loops.  The vents were so hot that glacier mountaintops melted in the heat radiated by the pipes.  It was proposed to lay a thousand miles of pipes to try and draw sea water.  More than a dozen settlements threw themselves into the task, and celebrated as the pipes sucked cold water from the south sea to feed it to the Grand boiler.

It wasn't enough.  The engineers broke into factions, some thinking that they were on the verge of taming the primordial fire, but others were desperate to pull the plug.  The former pointed out that all their gauges said the temperature was in tolerances... barely.  But the later pointed out that those gauges could be wrong or damaged.  Investigation found some temperature gauges welded at their current display.  A team of dwarves went into the boiler to try and repair them.  All baked to death, but successfully fixed one gauge before perishing.

The temperature measured pegged the gauged at its maximum setting.

A desperate effort was made to evacuate Firecrown and drop the boiler.  The lead engineer of the project refused.  The team that had died had made a mistake, he insisted.  Had it been that hot, the adamantine containment would have melted.  It was simply impossible.  But then someone theorized that the immense pressure might simply be holding a thin sheet of liquid adamantine in place.  That, the lead engineer scoffed, was impossible...

Then a blinding blue droplet emerged out of the base of the grand boiler, dropping down the shaft far below.  Then another.  Then another.  As the dwarven engineers watched, the metal with the highest melting temperature in existence, drizzled out.  The heart of the grand boiler touched coolant and released a steam explosion that gutted the colossal structure.  One dwarven mage, who had infused himself with protective enchantments before hand, survived to describe the twisted wreckage of adamantine, stone, and steel.... all melting before his eyes as the primordial fire now raged unchecked.  The great work, and the mountain itself, started to flow into the enormous shaft.  The flame floated atop the molten stone.

The settlement had faired little better.  Many of the Engineer's families were casualties, and the steam powered trams were dead without the power provided by the great boiler.  Dwarves watched in horror as the foundation of their settlement started to shimmer, then melt before their eyes.  They fled for the surface, racing out in the snow to risk slow death under the sun rather than immediate death.  As the sun rose, they watched as Firecrown melted before their eyes.

But that was just the beginning.

The grand boiler had been connected to dozens of the largest settlements by tunnels, and it was down these tunnels that a wall of scalding steam flowed, followed by a trickle of blazing stone.  Any reservoir or canal became another source for explosive steam blasts.  Machines that had depended on the power of the boiler were now dead, and the gates and sluices they would have employed to manage the flood were useless.  And unlike other volcanoes where the magma would eventually crust over, there seemed to be no end to the magma from Firecrown.

The unthinkable was proposed: to evacuate as many as possible from Ara.  Millions of dwarves attempted to flee and found themselves stranded in the surface.  Sun poisoning set in immediately.  Starvation soon followed as many struggled for even the most basics of survival.

Worse, when their human neighbors found out the dwarven dillemia, the dwarves found their tables turned.  With dwarven fortunes lost, the kingdoms of Aran, Floria, and the Chaldean States saw little reason to help.  Even with the enclaves leveraging all the political power they could, many humans simply saw this as just deserts.  After all, the dwarven dominion had dominated their neighbors in hegemonic superiority for centuries.  Why did they now deserve charity?

The sole exception was the tiny nation state of Myrre, which had gotten their independence with help from the Dwarves.  They could not house nor feed their number, but they had a port and ships.  Money from the Enclaves, elves, and human nations further afield hired ships.  Many elves who had escaped the Bloodland now returned to find sun poisoned dwarves trapped on the surface and transported them to safety.  Seeing this, Floria and Aran grudgingly lent aid.  This was only given with the demand that the dwarven dominion abandon any and all claim to Ara.  The Chalda, who had suffered the most due to dwarven trade with Aran, utterly refused and murdered thousands of dwarves seeking refuge.

It would be a decade before expeditions travelled to the steamy, ashen ruins of the dwarven dominion.  One team reached the capitol of Highcrown and reported rivers of magma flowing through its canals.  In the heart of the dominion they reported a vast bowl of scalding steam and boiling rock.  There, floating on the surface like a tiny star, the primordial flame still burned bright.  Some dwarves, out of a feeling of responsibility, shored up the edges of the lava lake to prevent the flame from ever reaching the ocean.