The campfire

Campfire

Kind	A tended fire
Where	the fire pit
Burns at	about 150 °C, lit from the start
Fed with	wood from the forest piles
Risk	the inn is next door
Since	Phase 1
Status	designed · Phase 1
Technical	FireSystem · Option bus

The campfire burns in the fire pit from the first moment, and it is the reason the village has a night-time. When the sun goes down and the square drops toward 5 °C, the fire pit is the warmest place a villager can see, and one by one they walk to it. That gathering is not scripted; it is fifty people each feeling the cold and each knowing where warmth is.

Keeping it lit

The fire burns through its fuel. As it runs low it gives less warmth, and a cold villager who can see a dim fire feels two pulls at once: tend it, if they have wood, or go and get some. The wood is in piles in the forest, two steps from the square. So on a cold night you will see someone leave the warmth, walk to the forest edge, pick up wood, come back and feed the fire. If nobody does, the fire goes out, the fire pit cools, and the whole village starts looking for warmth it cannot find.

The danger of a well-fed fire

The fire pit is next to the inn, and heat crosses that wall more easily than open air. A campfire that is fed too much burns hotter, and a hot enough campfire can warm the inn's wall past its kindling point. The design keeps the ordinary campfire well below that, but a Tinkerer who piles on fuel will find out exactly where the line is. See Fire and heat.

What you can do

• Watch the gathering. Speed the clock to evening and look at the fire pit.
• Let it die. Turn off the forest's wood piles (or take the wood away) and watch the village go cold.
• Over-feed it at Tinkerer and see whether the inn survives the night.

History

Phase	Change
1	Introduced: a tended fire that draws the village at night and needs wood; the inn's wall as the risk.

See also

Fire and heat · Needs · Time · Riverside Village · Technical: FireSystem