Solo Firecraft I

[Nya Winters]

Timestamp: 30th of Fall, 516 AV

Nya met up again with Randal later in the month to work some more on her training. He’d saved certain things for this day, knowing she was nervous about them. The biggest thing was fire. Her natural feline instincts tended to make her wary of fire. But Randal had promised to teach her all about it once they both had some free time. She indeed was free now, so she waited quietly on the beach by his home until he could join her.

Randal greeted her as he walked up. He had a pack with him and was dressed for travel in the jungle similar to the way Nya was now dressed. He smiled as he greeted her and nodded in approval at both the belted kukri and the machete and hand axe she had sheathed at her side. Nya had never worn a belt before, but at this point, she needed one just to hold up her weapons. Learning leatherworking had come in handy, teaching her how to make the belt and the sheaths to hang on it for the weapons she had gathered.

“Are you ready to learn about fire?” Nya nodded to Randal’s question. She made a face at the same time but she knew it was important.

“Thanks for taking the time to come work with me again.” Nya answered, watching as Randal settled on a piece of driftwood he’d obviously used as a chair before. She settled into one opposite of him, a makeshift fire pit between them.

“What do you know about fire, Nya?” Randal asked, looking thoughtfully at the Forest Cat.

Nya smiled. “It’s hot. It burns. It’s hard to start if its wet outside and if its hot weather its hard to put out and can cause a lot of damage to forests.” She said, not sure what else he wanted to know. “People can make weapons with fire and things of metal. Fire is the only thing strong enough to change metal. It can kill. It has its own God.. Ivak.” The Kelvic answered as well.

Randal nodded. “There’s a lot more to it than that. But we are here to talk about fire in survival situations. I’m going to teach you about fire, how to select a site to build a fire, how to prep a site, what to build a fire out of, how to build one, and how to actually light one. There’s a lot more involved than you might think, Nya.” Randal said, ticking off some points on his fingers as he seemed to go through a mental checklist.

“Alright. There always is more to it than what we know. At least in my case.” Nya added, her mind wandering. Fire wasn’t her favorite topic. She liked spending time with Randal, but he was far more interesting when they were moving around doing things than he was sitting and talking.

“What does fire give you?” Randal asked, knowing it was important that Nya realized how fire affected people.

The Forest Cat took a long time to answer. When she did, it seemed she’d thought it over quite a bit. In fact, memories poured through her, recently of her and Shai around a fire, further back of her family and their kitchen hearth. Other memories had flooded her senses too. There was the fire of a forge and her hands working the bellows. Her hands but not her hands… the Forest Cat was shaken for a moment.

“It can give you warmth and comfort. You can cook around a fire and also preserve food. It can signal thing. It can also provide safety from animals. It can reassure you. You can make things from it.” She added, looking thoughtful.

Randal nodded. “You can also use it to purify water you cannot otherwise drink. It can sterilize bandages and comfort your mind, Nya, so you remain calm.” He replied, adding to her own mental list.

She had others then and felt free to add them in. “It isn’t always good. Fire can give you away if say the enemy can see your smoke. Like I said before, fire can start forests ablaze. It can burn you, destroy equipment, and other bad things.” She said, gesturing at the fire pit in distaste.

Randal chuckled. “All true. But in survival situations there’s another bad thing it can do. When you build a fire to close to you in a shelter such as a protected area or a cave that doesn’t vent well it can burn all the air you need to breathe or toxify it so you can’t breathe. You then die quietly, suffocating. Sometimes if you are asleep you just simply don’t wake up.” Randal said, looking serious. “For those reasons and more that’s why we need to learn about fire… all about it.” He added and Nya nodded, agreeing with him completely.

Her teacher reached down and picked up a long stick that was resting against his driftwood seat. He used his foot to smooth out the sand where she could see it beside the makeshift firepit. Then she watched him draw a large triangle in the sand. “Do you know what this is?” He asked carefully.

Nya nodded. “Is it a triangle?” She asked, carefully looking at his drawing then up at his face.

“It’s the fire triangle. Each side represents a component of fire… what it needs to exist.” He said, moving to one side and writing the name ‘heat’ on one side. On the next side he wrote ‘air’. On the final side, he wrote ‘fuel’.

Nya studied the drawing carefully. She reached down and touched each word, committing the letters to memory. ‘Can you explain more?” The cat needed a reference, not just a list. She needed things set firmly in her mind.

Randal laughed. By now he was used to how the kelvics mind worked and was more at ease with her natural tendencies including how she rarely spoke. “Yes. I can explain.” He said, shifting to get comfortable on his seat before he continued.

[Nya Winters]

“So, we take the three elements of the fire triangle and break them down. The first is heat. You always need a heat source to ignite a fire. You need heat to sustain a fire and enable it to spread. Heat is what keeps the fire going by drying out fuels and then preheating them before it reaches them to ignite them. Heat is also what raises the temperature of the surrounding air.” The jungleman said, smiling slightly at Nya’s bored look.

“I got it. Heat. You need heat to burn things.” Nya said, thinking about what Randal was saying. She fidgeted restlessly on her seat and wondered what fuel actually was. Twigs, leaves, wood right? The Forest Cat tilted her head and looked at Randal curiously.

“Fuel is your next part.” He tapped the sand right next to the word. “It really just means any sort of combustible burnable material. It tends to be rated on the good or bad side depending upon its size, shape, quantity and how much moisture it has in it. The wetter the material the harder it is to burn. If you look in a traditional forest, like around Syliras, there’s a thing called ‘fuel load’. It just means how much fuel is laying around… branches, pine needles, leaves, fallen dead trees, etc. Here in the jungle there’s a high fuel load, but it’s of poor quality because it’s moist always sometimes downright sodden. The Colbalt Mountains has a high fuel load with really good quality of fuel, especially in the summer, when it’s incredibly dry. Finding good burnable fuel is definitely a hard thing in the jungle. On the beach, like where we are, flotsam is easier. Go high, up on the high water mark past were the waves are washing the shore and gather the dry wood. That’s the best fuel on the beach. Sometimes there is a noted lack, especially if we’ve had high water. But a few days after a storm, when the water has retreated but left treasure, its much better.” He said, pointing with his stick as he said things like ‘high water mark’ and ‘flotsam’.

Nya understood. “That makes sense.” She said, wondering now what air meant.

“The third component is air. Whether you realize it or not, Nya, fire is like a living thing. It needs air to breathe. If it doesn’t have any, it dies. That’s why you can put out a fire with a blanket sometimes, just by smothering it. You can snuff a candle by pinching it between your thumb and forefinger. And you can put out a fire like the one that was in this fire pit here with a few shovelfuls of sand.” Randal instructed.

Nya looked stunned. “It’s living? And that’s why?” Randal nodded. “Is that why I’ve seen Abashai blow on a fire to make it catch better when he’s starting one? Like this?” Nya asked as she leaned over and pretended to blow on something down between her hands as if she was catching tinder.

Randal laughed and nodded. “Exactly. He’s giving the fire a little more air to get it started.” The man answered nodding his approval at what Nya was saying. Nya was thinking though. Not like a cat, not in that moment, but more like a scientist that she’d been in the past.

“Randal, you talked about fuel load in a forest. So that means you think about wildfires in forests. They seem horribly destructive and yet I know the lightening starts them sometimes and sometimes they get away from people with campfires. Does fire benefit the wildlands like it does us? The jungle too?” Nya asked, curious, perhaps more so than she should be.

“I wasn’t going to get into this, Nya, truth be told, but there’s a lot more to fire than just making one. And honestly its going to be a big stretch of your mind for you to believe me, but I’ll try to answer your question. Fire is probably the single most important thing to wildlands that involve keeping it healthy. There is rarely a place you can go in the world where there isn’t a fire dependent plant or tree. That’s when it needs fire to do something to it in order for it to be healthy or happy. The most common thing I can think of is those big trees south of Syliras in the Fringe Forest around Riverfall. Those ponderosa pines require fire to burn their seeds. Their seeds have a really tough coat on them and when the fire burns it off, its telling the seed its okay to grow because a lot of the adults are now gone, there’s more light under the canopy, and they can germinate. At the same time there are a lot of plants that have evolved to survive fire too. When fires come through wildlands, they burn off the pine needles, leaf litter and all the dead fallen branches and even dead trees. This house cleaning is a lot like you sweeping your floor at home and cleaning up. It can allow all sorts of things to grow.” He said, looking thoughtful and wondering what had brought on her questions.

“Do you know how wildfires behave?” Nya asked, wondering if there was a behavior to them. “It seems to me that Wilderness Survival should include a bit of knowledge on wildfires and how they burn so that if we are out in the wilderness or jungle like here, we know enough about what a fire will do to help save our lives.” Nya pointed out, knowing she wanted this knowledge if he would teach her.

Randal looked thoughtful and nodded. “I know some. And I’ll be willing to teach you, Nya, but first lets let us cover the other points I wanted to talk about before we got to far along. I don’t want to neglect your firecraft education in favor of talking about Wildfires when you may never see one.” He added, getting her back to the topic on hand.

Nya was satisfied with that answer. Later was a reply she often received from Abashai.

[Nya Winters]

Nya looked thoughtful. She was grateful for the explanation on Wildfires, but she did understand the need to stay on task. The kelvic woman looked thoughtful and decided to tactfully sum up what she'd just learned.

"So to build a fire, I need to understand fire. To understand fire I need to understand the fire triangle. Fuel, Heat, and Air. Fuel doesn't burn directly, but if you apply heat to it, it can become something more apt to burn. If you add Air in there, the fuel burns. I understand what your saying." Nya said, leaning over to run her finger tips across the triangle he'd scratched in the bare sand.

"Indeed, Nya. You see, if you want to correctly construct and maintain a fire, you need to know the why of it, just not the how. The why of it makes you think. The how of it makes you ignorant without the why. On the flip side, if you remove any of these three from the triangle, your fire will burn out. That's why you can smother a fire with a blanket, a lid, or even water. Water can also cool the heat, killing the combustion as well. Building a successful fire means you know the correct ratio of these components. And the only way to really learn these ratios is practice. That's why we are here today." He said, rounding out the lesson and transitioning into the next topic he was going to cover for her.

"So now we get to build the fire?" Nya asked, eagerly, seeming to warm up to the idea of starting fires now that she understood more what exactly a fire was. Randal shook his head with a slight chuckle.

"There's more to discuss. First we need to talk about site selection and preparation, because all the good solid ingredients in the world won't cause a good fire if you don't have a good site to build it in." The man instructed her. Nya nodded, thinking what Randal said made sense.

"You will have to decide what site and arrangement to use and to do this we need to consider a few things. What is the area like you are building the fire in? What materials do you have available? I will talk to you about materials in a moment. Time. Time is always important. How much time you have might determine what kind of fire you build. Then there's need. Do you need a fire? Some predators will be deterred against fire, so its a necessity. Others, won't care. And sometimes if its cold, a fire is a necessity not a luxury. And finally, there's enemies. This falls under Security. How close are you? Will the fire keep you alive but give away your location? All these things are important and I can't teach you right or wrong for each individual situation, because the situations are infinite. But I can teach you a few things that might help." Randal said, then added. "Don't build a fire unless you need one. Sometimes, that need is just to sooth your mind or comfort you especially in a survival situation. If you need its comfort but don't have enemies out stalking you, then by all means build it. Heat a necessity? Build it. Don't just build it because you think its not a good camp without one." He added, then let her step a way a moment, stretch, and ask any questions she might have.

Nya really didn't have any questions. What Randal said made sense to her.

"Okay, what's next? Placement? Where we select to build a fire?" She asked. Randal smiled, pleased. "Now tell me what you would look for in a suitable spot for a fire." He asked, testing her.

Nya thought a moment before answering. "I would look for a dry spot that was protected from the wind. I would make it close enough to any shelter I had to heat it but far enough away from it not to light it on fire?" She asked questioningly.

Randal nodded. "Good. Very good. Now, you need to make sure the location will allow you to concentrate the heat in the direction you want. That's something I will teach you today. And you also need to make sure there's an ready supply of fuel available in the quantities you need to support your fire for however long you think you'll need it."

"Can you talk more about fuel?" Nya asked, wondering if he just meant wood like logs and fallen tree branches, or if other things burned as well.

[Nya Winters]

"Sure." Randal replied to Nya's question about talking more about the fuel. He paused a moment before he launched into this particular lesson. "Fuel comes in three categories. Three like the fire triangle. You have tinder, kindling, and actual fuelwood. Tinder is any small scale dry, easily lit, shredded material.... can you name me some examples, Nya?" Randal asked, enjoying the fact that the Kelvic just didn't listen to him but actively participated.

Nya nodded, glancing around for inspiration, her eyes resting on the jungle. She'd lived all her life in the woods and the beach was new to her. "Tree bark, sawdust, wood shavings, any dried grass or plants like straw or hay, sawdust, dead evergreen needles... like that thick duff layer under evergreen trees back home. Uh... dead palm leaves, punk... you know that dead inner layer of fallen trees filled with insects? Hrm.... what else?" She asked, tilting her head and looking thoughtful.

Randal ticked off more of the list. "Any sort of lint, shredded old fabric, bird down, plant seed heads, and even old wax, Nya." He said, adding to her already lengthy list. "Anything that's small, highly flammable, and easily moved can be used." He took a breath then moved on to the next item.

"Kindling is the second type of fuel we need. Kindling is anything bigger than tinder but not so big it smothers the fire. Kindling can be splinters of wood, small twigs, or even driftwood sticks. Dried seaweed can be kindling too. Kindling should be no bigger than the diameter of your finger." He added.

"And fuelwood is like regular bits of driftwood? Some big, some smaller, but all that is dried and flammable?" Nya asked, thinking she understood this concept well.

"Not exactly. Fuelwood should be around the size of your wrist. Sometimes you can go a bit bigger. For big roaring fires, your forearm is a good size estimate but there's no need to burn anything larger than that. Fuelwood is the heart and soul of the fire. The tinder and kindling is designed to create hot coals that will burn more forgiving and damper wood, so as long as you continue to feed fuel, the fire will continue to live. Fuelwood can be damp because the heat of the fire will pre-dry it and then it will burn as it heats." He finished.

Nya nodded. She definitely understood the three types now.

"So we've been talking for a while. Go take a half bell and start gathering wood. I want to see three piles. Tinder, Kindling, and Fuelwood." Randal instructed. Nya was glad for the break. She sprung up and began a loose hipped jog up the beach to the breakline where flotsam lay drying in the tropical sun. She gathered there, finding all kinds of bits of things to use as tinder. There was bird feathers, dried seaweed, kindling of all sorts in the form of driftwood, and even dried grass at the point where the beach met the wilderness she could pull for more tinder. She started three piles near the huge driftwood logs her and Randal were sitting on talking. Larger fuelwood she gathered by the armload until she had a nice pile laid out. Some of that she took the time to break and strip into kindling, which was by and large the hardest to find on the beach. When she was done she sat back down and waited for Randal to continue. He was happily munching on a journey cake and taking sips from his canteen as she worked.

He looked at her stash and pulled a couple of the dried coconut husks from the kindling group. "This belongs in the tinder pile. Just pull the coir.. these are the brown hair looking things... from the husk and make it into a neat fluffy pile. This is the best tropical tinder you have available... if its dry." He pulled out his long knife and showed her how to shred off the coconut fibers and pile them together. "The rest of this looks good. Let me see if I can remember any other good advice for fuel gathering..."

Randal looked intently at the pile for a moment before speaking. "Gather only wood that seems brittle.. stuff that snaps and breaks. If it bends instead of snaps, its too moist to burn. Collect twice as much or three times as much as you need, Nya. Too much is better than not enough. Collect only downed wood. Don't cut down trees even if they are dead. They are dangerous things, Nya and can get you killed falling them. Collect everything before you set your fire and spark it. Often your fire will go out when you go to collect more wood and that can mean your life or death. What else... lets see... gather as far away from camp as you can. You don't want to strip your immediate site. Plus if a place is bare of firewood its obvious that someone has a camp nearby. You just need to go look for it. Here, coconuts and downed fronds from palms are the way to go. On the other lands, where you are from, pine needles and cones are really the best tinder. Never use leaves for fire starting. They really just are consumed fast and give you nothing to work with." He said, meeting her gaze to make sure she understood.

Nya nodded.

Randal's tips proved to her that she hadn't gathered enough wood. So when she asked him if he had, a simple shake of his head affirmed her thought. He pointed to the beach again. Nya understood, she hadn't gathered enough. So, off she went again.

Round two of collecting doubled the pile, but still Randal sent her out for more. She had a really good stash of wood nearly a bell and a half later. And once she had, he continued his lesson.

"One thing I might add..." Randal stated, looking at some of her longer pieces the kelvic cat had dragged back to camp. "...is that breaking wood is dangerous. So if you gather long fallen branches that are unwieldy, be careful how you break them. You can get too rough and poke an eye out or snap a limb and that can cost you dearly out here in the wilderness." Nya looked surprised. She was a big kelvic and size never crossed her mind in terms of the wood or how to safely break the big pieces.

"How do you mean? How do I break them that's careful?" She asked, not liking what he was implying. Dumb accidents happened a lot in the world. She didn't want to be one of the people these things happened too.

"So if you have a long branch, use a forked tree. Stick your branch between two forks or trunks of a tree and push the branch against one and pull away from the other. It will break where the fuelwood contacts the main trunk. Break it so that you pull it towards you. Most people have more balance stepping back than falling forward. If you break it pushing away from you then you can fall forward." He said, giving a demonstration with one of Nya's pieces of driftwood. It wasn't overly long but he used a fork in the huge piece they were using as seats to break the smaller one away from him. Nya nodded understanding.

The man demonstrated other ways too. "Break a long piece over your knee by holding both ends of the branch and put your knee in the middle so you are pushing the wood away from you. Lift both ends, pressing in with your knee until it breaks." He demonstrated this as well.

"If you aren't barefoot, use your feet too. Lay a branch on the ground and place your foot on it where you want it to break. Gently and slowly lift one end until it breaks. Remember, always lift with your legs. Don't use your back. Save your back for the heavy work." He said with a laugh because Nya was already grabbing a longer branch and breaking it with her foot, following his instructions. The Kelvic was actually enjoying the fire lecture. It surprised her too because fire wasn't her favorite thing. But Randal made it fun.

"Finally you can stomp on it. Lay the branch on the ground with one end wedged under something like a bigger log, a rock, etc. Just stomp on it abruptly. It usually snaps the wood just fine." He added, moving on since Nya was already nodding her understanding.

"Now can we build the fire?" She asked, impatient.

Randal laughed. "Yes, now we can." He said, laughing at the Kelvic's impatience.

[Nya Winters]

"So now we learn to light the fire?" Nya asked more eagerly than she would of assumed she'd want to be. The Kelvic wasn't squirming anymore due to Randal sending her out to gather wood. But she was certainly eager to get too it. Nya liked to hunt and kill, with food being her reward. She was reward driven in a lot of ways. This was no difference, though the reward this time was a warm crackling fire rather than a hearty meal.

Randal chuckled and shook his head. "Almost, first we need to teach you how to lay a fire. So that you have where to build it, what to build it with, I'm going to teach you how to set up or lay your fire. There are numerous methods, but I'm going to stick to just the pyramid one for now. The more I keep triangles in your head, the better off I am." He added more for his own benefit than for hers. Nya was a kelvic through and through and the easier he made it for her the faster she'd learn.

"So I want you to keep a few things in mind as I teach you how to lay fire. Plan for the exact spot in the layout where you will light it and leave an opening to reach the tinder. Some people forget that and have to tear dowy their fire lay before they even get it lit. Always plan to light it on the upwind side so the breezes blow the air into the fuel." Nya smiled a secret smile at this. Breezes would never be a problem with her. "Leave space between pieces of wood so good air flow can occur. And finally build up, never out. You want a higher pile of wood rather than a larger diameter pile of wood." He said, and then launched right into his fire layout explanation. All Nya could do was nod.

"So all sorts of experts will have all sorts of names for their fire lays so don't worry if someone calls this something else. By and large this is the easiest and most useful firelays to build and light. The key to its success is to press a few pieces of kindling into the ground to supply support for the rest of the kindling. Firelays don't require fuelwood until they are truly burning. Here, I'll show you what I mean." Randal said, kneeling by the kindling pile.

He selected a site sheltered between the two big logs of driftwood they were sitting on and began building a firelay. First he placed a bundle of tinder on the ground then stuck four lengths of kindling into the ground to cross over the top of the tinder like a miniature shelter. The whole thing looked like a singular Drykas tent out on the Sea of Grass. Next he leaned small kindling twigs against the downwind side of the tinder, layering them in but not creating a wind block with them. He left a large opening on the upwind side big enough for his hand to reach in so he could light the tinder. Then he went back and layered more kindling until it looked like a miniature pyramid of wood sheltering a birds nest of tinder.

Nya watched fascinated, then unbidden went to copy him with her own structure when she figured out what he was actually doing. She still placed hers near his between the logs, but kept it far enough away that it wouldn't light when he lit his. She just wanted the practice and found the procedure easy enough.

"Very good." Randal said, inspecting her structure. He nodded in satisfaction then tore his down, adding the raw materials back into the piles Nya had gathered for the lesson.

"This style of firelay tends to produce a fast flame that quickly falls into itself to create a pile of coals. That's exactly what you want. The coals are what are going to keep your fire going. The heat is directed up to a single point and that is hugely useful for cooking or maybe even boiling water in a single pot directly above. Once the pyramid collapses, fuelwood can be laid crisscross pattern on top of the coals and flames. Don't put to much fuelwood on it too fast or you will find yourself smothering your fire." He added, ready to move on to lightening it.

"Are we finally going to light it?" Nya asked, all but impatient.

Randal laughed. "Yes, finally. You have flint and steel no?" Nya nodded. It was something she'd started carrying with her when she'd started traveling with Abashai.

At Randal's gesture, she took it out. He showed her how to spark a flame off of the carbon steel with the piece of flint by holding it close to the opening of the pyramid where the tinder could be reached. "Use a loose-jointed wrist, Nya, and practice. You can also substitute a sharp edged rock for a piece of flint if you need too. When the spark catches, blow gently on it. The spark will catch the tinder and burst it into flames. From that point feed it kindling gently, letting your kindling shelter catch fire and burn. Then let it collapse on itself.. once it does, add fuelwood in a cross hatched method across the top of it." He said, then handed her back her flint and steel. He had her strike the flint a few times to see if she could do it.

Nya could. Shai had taught her how to do so, even though he was the one that normally lit the fire. There was nothing else she could do but practice since Randal had already started the fire. And practice she did. She struck the flint to the steel over and over again until she learned a pattern and the fact that the spark that drove off the steel could in fact be aimed if one had enough skill.

She didn't, but practicing a while, she knew eventually Nya could get it to land near to where she wanted it too.

"Now, if you don't have flint and steel... no Nya put that away for a moment. There are two other forms of starting a fire." Randal said to get her attention. The big cat in the form of a human was fascinated suddenly by the sparks she was creating.

"Do you want to learn them?" Nya nodded. She did want to know. She'd always wondered how to get fire started if she didn't have any access to flint and steel.

OOC: Continued in Firecraft II & Orientation

[Nya Winters]

Grading

Wilderness Survival 5
Interrogation 5
Deduction 2
Socialization 2
Body building 2

WS: What Fire Gives You
WS: The Dangers of Fire
WS: The Fire Triangle; fuel, air, heat
WS: Fire – Best Fuels in the Jungle
Fire: Keeps Wildlands Healthy
WS: How to build a fire
WS: Fuel-Tinder, Kindling, Fuelwood
WS: How to safely break up wood
WS: The different types of fire lays