GODDAMSHITTINMUTHERFUCKINSONUVABITCH!!!! 
Sorry, but I just spent TWO DAYS typing out a great idea for a pyre domain that just got lost in a computer crash!!
NGAAAAARRRR!!!! Anyway, here's a redux. For further reading go here:
http://damrellsfire.com/
This domain is a nineteenth century stream engine victorian type city. This city is ON FIRE!! And there is nothing anyone can do about it. There is not a single building in town that is not in process of being consumed by flames and there is not a single person who is not engaged in fighting the fire in some capacity or another. There is precious little water so most of those engaged in fighting fires are using smothering techniques, usually with very poor results. A common sight is someone completely engulfed in flames falling from a high window or running down the street screaming.
The Darklord of this domain is Simon Brahman. He is a proud descendant of one of the cities founding families. He served just as proudly in the cities administration. As a man of wealth and station, Brahman owned many properties and businesses around town. As water commissioner, he became the nemesis of the cities distinguished, if lowborn, fire chief. This chief took his job seriously. He studied great fires in other cities attempting to develop modern techniques for fighting modern fires as fed by modern buildings. Most of the city council dismissed the chief as unnecessarily alarmist. Most of the fires he studied, they said, were, while tragic, newer wooden cities. A brick and granite city like theirs was surely immune to such things. Brahman openly pooh-poohed his ideas. He considered the chief an upstart product of commoners and ruffians. What could he possibly know that educated men of breeding did not? Brahman continued to thwart the chief everywhere he could. The chief managed to get building codes put in place to make buildings less fireprone but couldn't convince the city to redo the current buildings' wood finished mansert roofs. He was able to get new steam pumping wagon engines but could not convince Brahman to repipe the city so that pumped water would actually REACH the top floors of the buildings. Meanwhile, buildings continued to get taller and business owners, more careless.
It had been a long hot summer that year and in that fall, another disaster plagued the city. The cities horses were struck down by a mysterious disease that left even the chief's highly trained teams dead or dying. The chief was forced to organize teams of men to pull the heavy steam pumpers which meant they could only get to fires half as fast.
It was a warm October evening when a spark flew into some packing material in one of Brahman's warehouses in the Downtown business district, with the cities weakest water. The fire had travelled up the wooden elevator shaft of the five story building and shattered windows with it's heat before anyone noticed and raised the alarm. Between further delays and difficulties, the building was one vast furnace by the time the chief and his men arrived. The chief had already sent out the general alarm for all companies to converge on the fire but without horses, they arrived too few and too late. What's more, with every new engine that arrived, water pressure was reduced, and before long no water was reaching the mansert roof. Suddenly, flaming whirlwinds arched over the streets and within seconds, all buildings on all corners were burning. The chief gave the order for the message to be sent to all towns within 50 miles: Send men and engines! Despite the chief's further ingenius techniques and courageous stand, there was nothing he could do to change the fact that beneath the granite facades of the cities buildings, the wooden frame interiors were quickly being devoured by the flames. Buildings began to implode, some of them brand new, at a rate of almost a block an hour. Ash filled the air like snow and the chief knew the fire was getting ahead of him. He climbed to the top of a tall building to see the extent of the fire. What he saw was daunting. The firestorm was spreading in all directions but he saw a chance to stop it at one of the cities' squares and raced back to the fireground. He found both the streets and the square overrun with hundreds of people trying to flee or save their homes or businesses. The engineers were finding it impossible to get their engines into position and hooked to the water. Thieves plied their trade and, perhaps worst of all, everyone seemed to have an opinion on the best way to fight the fire. These well-meaning blowhards became maybe the greatest obstacle to the firefighters. Despite all of this, the chief managed to push his way through the crowds and get his men and engines into position. They held back the wall of flame at the square with over a dozen engines and companies ... for all of ten minutes before the water gave out. The brave firefighters watched as their hoses just petered out in front of them, and barely found the strength to retreat before the blaze.
The chief abandoned the idea of fighting the fire block by block. He adopted the plan of containing the fire between the cities harbor and the cities main arteries where the water pipes were larger and the water more abundant. This plan did not sit well with many of the cities more distiguished citizens, however, most of whom were more concerned with preserving their own property than the lives of their neighbors. He had university presidents, church leaders, business owners, and worst of all, Brahman, trying to tell him how to fight the fire. Meanwhile the city council was watching their pride go up in flames. The chief was all but dragged from the fire line to meet with the council at city hall. These desperate city officials were in a panic and insisted that the chief adopt the proposal to use gunpowder to demolish buildings in the path of the fire to create firebreaks. This idea had been put forward vehemently by the postmaster who was one of Brahman's political allies so the chief knew full well where it came from. The chief knew that this course of action would at best create more fuel for the fire and at worst create smaller fires in need of fighting, and argued against it. The council overruled him to a man. The chief took a stand and refused to do it. He would not commit any of his men to this 'gunpowder folly' but because he had no authority except over the fire dept., there was nothing to stop them from going around him and sending out their own teams. Gunpowder teams were sent out under police escort to carry out the demolition ordered by the council. True to the fire chiefs predictions, the teams failed to demolish a single building, but succeeded in setting these buildings on fire when there was no one to fight them. Beyond the chief's predictions, the explosions ignited gas mains and showered flaming debris all around the targeted buildings. The chief recognized the damage being done by the teams and, with the help of a police captain who was a political ally, he had the rest of the teams put under arrest. Brahman was livid. He gathered a group of policemen who owed him favors and began pushing his way through the streets, intending to have the chief arrested on the spot.
The council's interference had nearly the worst possible results. North, south and east, the chief's plan had stopped and held the fire where it burned, but to the west, the gunpowder teams had spread the fire beyond the main artery and the firefighters were forced to fight block by block again. The cities most crowded tenements were right in the path of the fire. The chief rushed toward the tenement houses filled with people, many of whom refused to leave in spite of the fire. With the help of police, the tenements were being cleared even as they burned. Suddenly, a small hand grabbed his. He looked down and saw a little boy. The boy asked the chief to get his father and mother. The chief asked him where they were and the boy tearfully pointed to one of the burning tenements. The chief immediately charged into the building but could get no higher than the second story. Forced out by the flames and the heat, the chief fell to his knee in the street, nearly spent. The boy ran up, asking the chief about his parents. Before the chief could tell the boy about his parents, a giant ember, almost the entire corner of one story of it, broke away from the building burning above, The chief quickly siezed the boy and ran for their lives. The chief threw the boy to safety before the ember crashed down on top of him. This entire incident had been observed by Brahman who finally found the chief. Brahman kicked his way through the burning debris until he found the chief- still alive. The chief begged Brahman for help, to which Brahman responded by tearing the chief's coat and helmet from him, the symbols of his office, and spat on the ground in front of the chief. Guessing Brahman's purpose, the chief cursed him for a coward an a pig with his dying breath. Brahman kicked the chiefs corpse in contempt before stalking away.
At the railyard, reinforcements were arriving by train from towns as far away as 50 miles. Halfway to the glow in the sky that represented where the fire was burning, they met a man dressed in the coat and helmet of the city fire chief. He directed them away from the burning tenements and to commercial and residential properties further to the south. Brahman, wearing the chief's helmet and coat, had directed the reinforcements to the area where his last standing commercial ventures and ancestral estates were located. Mostly volunteers and knowing no better, the men did as they were told. At that moment the cities oldest church, which the city firefighters had been battling valiantly to save, fell to the fire, taking the lives of several firefighters in the process. It was at that point that the mists rose, not that anyone could see them through the smoke.
Current sketch:
What's actually happening is that the city, or more accurately, city fragments, are constantly repeating a 24 hour cycle. It begins just after Brahman's misdirecting of the reinforcements and ends with him burning to death a day later. At the beginning of the cycle, Brahman strides through the burning streets barking orders at the firefighters who obey him, believing him to be the chief. By the end of the cycle, Brahman is staggering through the streets suffering from smoke inhalation, heat exhaustion, and several bad burns. He finally get caught in explosion of a brewery that he owns and, doused in his own liquor, spends dozens of agonizing seconds burning to death, only to wake up again at the railyards to start the cycle all over again. He is interested in saving his own property and pride and nothing else, as far as he's concerned the rest may burn. He alters his strategies every time, often adapting techniques he witnesses firefighters using, never realizing that these very techniques were the ones developed by the chief. There is no escaping the city. A person travelling to the southern end of the city and stepping beyond it's borders will find themselves suddenly walking into the city from the north and the same thing with east and west, not that anyone even remembers where the city used to begin and end.
It is unknown whether the denizens of the domain are ghosts constantly reliving their last day of life, or actually living people constantly restored to life at the beginning of the cycle only to be possibly dead at the end.
Well it's finally done. I'd remove the first part, but I'm just not in a good enough mood to care.
sorry guys.
