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This is Usefulness of Pyris Enchantment for humans.

The Pyris Enchantment can be gained two (technically three) ways:

  1. Eating a Monster If your teeth and jaws or stomach and stomach acid are what kills a monster, its magic will go to your body, because a monster's Enchantment goes to what killed it. However, a Torchblow is the size of an adult pig, and they breathe fire, so they can't exactly be swallowed whole. Even if their shell is removed, their gelatinous insides are flaming hot and there's a lot of them, so you'd have to cool them off before you could even attempt to choke one down, and you'd have to swallow fast to avoid suffocation.

  2. Killing a Monster Yourself There are two ways to do this: use a weapon that incorporates part of your body (like a spear tipped with your own bone, or a club studded with your teeth, even a bone steel weapon made with the ashes of your own teeth, bone, or nails) or using your own body as the weapon. The thing is, while one can karate chop wooden boards in half, I'm not sure how effective a human can be in killing a Torchblow with their natural weaponry alone.

Someone who kills one Torchblow alone gains the Ember title, becoming fireproof (and smokeproof, they can breathe fire's gaseous byproducts without harm) and becoming a natural heat generator, their body, breath, and even sweat imbued with the cozy warmth of a small campfire. They can also glow, and this glow is as bright as the typical medieval torch.

Someone who kills twelve Torchblow, however, becomes a Blazer (and in the process, Pyris is maxed out). Blazers can generate and manipulate a bonfire's worth of heat or flame, even storing the heat they generate or absorb and either releasing it or converting it (into kinetic force) later. A Blazer can also release a bonfire's worth of heat or light from their body, even controlling the level of heat or light they generate so they are comfortably warm to the touch or to focus light into a beam capable of cooking an ant or starting a fire (think magnifying glass, not modern laser). They can even utilize heat and light to create a shimmering effect around them, making it difficult to hit them with ranged attacks.

As stated before, they can also absorb flame and heat, adding it to their natural energy to increase their mechanical output. In other words, if a Blazer has absorbed a bonfire's worth of energy, they can convert that into kinetic force, store that in their arm, and then punch you with that added force, all without hurting themselves. This should allow them enhanced strength and speed, as long as they can fuel it, and that requires concentration.

However, both Embers and Blazers have weaknesses. Water weakens them (the only exception being hot water). Warm water renders an Ember lukewarm and halves the power of a Blazer, while cold water (regular cold, we're not talking sub-Arctic temperatures here) all but extinguishes an Ember and reduces a Blazer to 1/4th their natural might. By "water", I mean liquid water that covers half or more of a Pyris-holder's body or condensed humidity (ie. fog) around an individual.

Additionally, the less oxygen an Ember or Blazer has, the less firepower they can unleash. Being short on breath halves their power while being oxygen-deprived (like being on the top of Everest or after a long dive or being choked by something, etc.) quarters their power. The reverse is also true; the more oxygen an Ember or Blazer has, the more power they have.

So, all that out of the way, my question is How Beneficial Would The Pyris Enchantment Be For Humans?

Specifications For Best Answer:

  1. The best answer will include the potential uses of both an Ember's natural warmth and a Blazer's literal firepower (ie. potential, possibly additional, employment options for holders of the Pyris Enchantment, such as colonizing cold areas and firefighting). This will also include ways they can help their community (we're talking medieval European village, noble's manor, or castle here).

  2. The best answer will also include potential uses of a Blazer's ability to functionally enhance their speed or strength by absorbing heat or flame ('fire energy') and converting it to kinetic force, as well as their ability to generate and focus light. The first allows them to run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and so forth and they can only absorb and therefore harness a bonfire's worth of (heat) energy. The second allows them to start fires, blind people, and make it harder to hit them, as stated before, but I am interested in other applications one could find when one can generate and manipulate a bonfire's worth of light.

  3. Finally, the best answer will analyze and sum up how beneficial the Pyris enchantment would be for those holding it (and why), whether they be an Ember or a Blazer.

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    $\begingroup$ What is a "Boltrunner" or is that an alias for "Blazer"? $\endgroup$
    – JonSG
    May 5, 2021 at 0:03
  • $\begingroup$ Your enchantments seem to be based on absorbing qualities of things killed/consumed. The killing task would be greatly assisted if the first thing people did was to kill something giving them a natural attack (claws/retractable wolverine claws/bone spike) or regeneration (cut off a leg, make a weapon out of it, & grow a new one). Once you kill one, you are fireproof, making the process of killing more torchblows easy. Probably a brisk monster-capture business on your world. Torchblows will be hunted to extinction. $\endgroup$
    – DWKraus
    May 5, 2021 at 16:52
  • $\begingroup$ "Blazers can generate and manipulate a bonfire's worth of heat or flame, but aside from generating heat or flame, they can only absorb and release it. " What is the different between releasing and generating heat? And why is this a "but"? $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    May 5, 2021 at 18:25
  • $\begingroup$ Are you looking for uses of flame-people that cannot be achieved with a simple flame-brick? You asked an earlier question and the answer was flame bricks start the industrial revolution. $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    May 5, 2021 at 18:39
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    $\begingroup$ @JonSG: thank you for pointing that out, that was a typo. I've fixed it now. $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 5, 2021 at 21:33

5 Answers 5

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The enchantment produces around 11 horsepower.

A water wheel which frees up 30 people might need 2 horsepower.

A blazer is worth about 165 people.

Assuming you can get them to turn a crank, they can replace around 165 people. You might not get perfect efficiency on them, but they also don't need set up time, so they might be valued at around 165 the normal wage for a base labourer, which is 330-660 pounds a year or in modern british pounds, £230,000-460000.

So, they would be immensely useful. There's a lot of things that power generation could help with. The earlier source notes a list- fulling cloth, sawing wood, shaping iron, boring pipes, crushing sugar, and pressing linseed oil.

They would also be immensely valuable for their ability to drain heat, as they could produce ice more easily. Ice allows transportation of meat and luxury drinks, and so they would be highly valued for their ability to produce lots of this.

Their ability to generate a lot of force would let them operate crank operated planes, increasing their mobility, as well as perhaps letting them learn to control their heat generation to focus downwards and generate hot air which would make them rise.

In warfare, their immense strength could power fast siege weapons, carry huge weights quickly, help dig tunnels quickly, and do many things far from the frontlines that wouldn't require risking an immensely valuable investment. Snipers and siege weapons and assassins could normally counter them in combat much more cheaply than they can be made, But their immense strength would let them carry very heavy shields large enough to block arrows and siege weapons, which combined with the heat and smoke could break buildings.

With their power to resist smoke, they could effectively rescue people from fires. The converse is also true. They would likely carry around smoke makers, so that they could put enemies into fires. An environment where you can breathe and your enemy cannot gives you a large advantage.

Their ability to blaze is not that useful for utility things- wood is a cheap replacement- but it is very useful for combat, where with enough smoke and fire they can become an essentially unkillable force of death and destruction.

Embers are less valuable.

Candles cost about a fourth of a shilling, and you might need two a day. That means that for light production, you might earn a pound every 40 days, or 9 pounds a year. This is quite a bit less valuable than a Blaze.

They are more feasible for combat. Dividing the blazer income per year, an an ember needs to earn 25-50 pounds a year to be valuable. A war horse might cost 50-80 pounds, from the above source, so this is a cost that is within the value a rich knight might pay. They could let you produce light at will to blind enemies, stun enemies with sudden heat, survive the coldest times with ease, and reduce your supply requirements in dangerous lands, and make them unstoppable in sieges with enough fire and smoke to obscure them.

Warm clothes and animal fat are enough to survive all but the coldest weathers. You don't really need it to colonize cold lands. The coldest places beyond that don't tend to have accessible natural resources. For an ember to be more valuable than a blazer, they need to be worth around 10 people, and 10 people can survive a cold place together. You might send one for the coldest winters, when supplies ran low, or if you spotted some pigs.

They would be excellent at deep sea diving, since they can breathe carbon dioxide. So long as they can keep their body dry, and contain their carbon dioxide they can swim underwater forever and hunt and gather rare resources.

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  • $\begingroup$ Great answer, thanks for the economic perspective! I edited to include that Embers and Blazers are smokeproof, somehow that didn't occur to me until now. $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 6, 2021 at 0:26
  • $\begingroup$ Does that resistance count even if they are short of oxygen? Fires are often pretty short of oxygen. $\endgroup$
    – Nepene Nep
    May 6, 2021 at 1:05
  • $\begingroup$ I would say an Ember and Blazer would be capable (through magic, obviously) of taking in carbon dioxide as oxygen or so on, essentially smokebreathing. $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 6, 2021 at 13:04
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the edit! Smokebreathing is really useful, isn't it? $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 9, 2021 at 1:44
  • $\begingroup$ In dungeons and dragons, fog spells are well known to be the best use of many spell slots, and super op. The ability to breathe in an environment others cannot is incredibly useful for combat, hunting, and endurance. $\endgroup$
    – Nepene Nep
    May 10, 2021 at 12:40
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The enchantment is extremely helpful

Getting the enchantment is hard, but worth it

To start off, everyone will want this, even though it is hard to do. You need to kill the beasts with your teeth or a club made out of your teeth. Clubs are awful weapons, so people won't be doing this on a whim. You are likely only to achieve this by capturing the beast and finishing it with a tooth club. Potentially you can embed a baby tooth in a sword and it will count, but it won't be like the tooth is helping. Most likely the people who will be getting these enchantments are people who have been supplied with captured animals to get the blazer thing. However, once people figure out how powerful this is these creatures will likely be hunted to extinction.

Assuming you get this enchantment

This would be a minor safety advancement for metal workers, or other professions that work with fire. while these people might volunteer for these things, the won't make most of their money from their old profession. This ability lets them cook food, boil water, and heat places for free. Not at low cost, but for free. Essentially, they produce the equivalent power of a few logs of wood per hour. When they go to sleep people can put pots over them to boil water, or cook food. In cold places this person would be hired to go to people's houses and just sit about. Furthermore, since they don't produce latent fumes, they are actually better than normal fires since you can enclose the space that they are in to let none of the heat out. Normally, to do enough work to feed yourself as a tree cutter you need to make dozens of logs a day, but with this you get the heat effect of that for free. This alone is worth it, but it gets better. If you get one kill you might want to have other people help capture animals to go for twelve.

Blaze it

While "A Bonfire's worth" of heat is subjective, it is definitely greater than a small fire. These guys can produce a greater output of heat and might even kick off the industrial revolution with steam power to exploit their energy use. A single one of these people could handle the cooking and heating requirements of a small village if the heated air can be pumped around the village, and pots can be placed around this person. Because this is free, there is basically no reason not to use it, and even though this person might sell their services for very little, they can still make a lot of money. This will become less common as more people get this enchantment and saturate the market with free heating.

Unlimited Power

Another thing your Blazer can do is generate and absorb heat instantaneously, and make their body a incredible power generator. A "Bonfire's worth" of energy is subjective, but this would probably be greater than a midsized power generator. Reddit says bonfires have about 14 horse power and since we don't know what kind of bonfire we are talking about that is as good an estimate as any. The world's strongest punch has about 96 horsepower. So you need to spend 6 times as much time not punching as punching to save up that energy. Since it takes 100 ms to throw a punch, you can throw out the strongest punch in the world once a second no problem. Since you are now essentially backed by a free energy generator there is less limits on what you can do.

Absorbing heat?

While it is possible to absorb heat, the heat you collect from the air normally will be nothing in comparison to what you generate on your own. Also, while you can absorb heat from fires, doing so will either put them out or generate less than what you make normally. Also, those fires cost wood to make, and you can get power for free, so investing in fires is just a waste of resources.

Power to the horses

When considering human-powered equipment, a healthy human can produce about 1.2 hp (0.89 kW) briefly (see orders of magnitude) and sustain about 0.1 hp (0.075 kW) indefinitely; trained athletes can manage up to about 2.5 hp (1.9 kW) briefly[15] and 0.35 hp (0.26 kW) for a period of several hours

By comparison your person has the strength of 40 trained athletes or 140 normal people. You don't need to take breaks, and you don't even need to eat more. Farmers could plough fields without horses and warriors would be many times stronger and incredibly more enduring than non users. Marathons would be a cake walk, the only problem is that you might not be able to harness all the power.

Forgive me master, but I must go all out, just this once

Anime weapons are dumb. Like really dumb. Massive weapons that you need to be 10 times stronger than even the strongest people on earth to even move at a normal speed for combat is dumb. However, your users are much stronger than normal people, and they can't be hurt when using the weapon due to the force they apply to hold the weapon. Since they move the weapon at a speed needed to defend themselves they don't lose anything, but they do gain the momentum of using a much bigger weapon. These absurd weapons look weird, but they look even weirder when they shatter shields and crumple armor in one hit.

But what about cool fire stuff?

Since the people can control heat output they have a very simple defense they can use against attackers. Become a bonfire. Getting close to a bonfire is hard, the oppressive heat drive people away, and is very scary on a instinctual level. Convincing people to run at a guy who gives off heat like a bonfire and will burn you with heat if you get too close is going to be more than most people can do. When you add the fact that if you do get close enough they can just shut off the power and hit you with the force of 40 men, nobody wants to get close to these guys.

Conclusion

This enchantment is crazy strong and will be sought out by anyone who does manual labor or needs heating.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for your thorough answer! It looks like I've made an exceptionally powerful Enchantment here, one much more dangerous perhaps than the Quicken enchantment. The potential for using their firepower to wield anime-sized weapons is a possibility I haven't considered, so thanks for the new perspective! $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 5, 2021 at 13:10
  • $\begingroup$ It's not included in THIS question. But I should point out objects can get the enchantment as well as people. Many of the industrial uses work better if you have a simple heat-brick rather than than a flame-thrower-man. The bricks are also much much easier to create, but crushing a monster under a boulder and then breaking the boulder. $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    May 5, 2021 at 18:31
  • $\begingroup$ Yeah, heat bricks will jump start the steam based industrial revolution the minute someone puts one in hot water. $\endgroup$
    – user64888
    May 6, 2021 at 8:42
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for your answer, you and Nepene Nep answered the question quite effectively! I'll be using parts of both your answers, so I really appreciate your contribution. $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 10, 2021 at 12:13
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This is just a bonus idea, so you don't have to loose your teeth to become a Blazer: You can use a small animal horn/bone to make a spear, keep the small animal alive, then kill the Torchblow with this spear. Since the horn/bone is part of the body of the animal then the animal gains the Pyris Enchantment. Now, if you selected the right animal, you can kill it with your bare hands and gain the Pyris Enchantment.

First I'll talk about the amazing Blazers: They are basically both: "firebenders" and energy-converters. They can absorb enough heat from many sources and then launch a single blazing-fire. With enough intelligence, they can guarantee a waterless aura using their absorbed heat. Of course they can colonize a cold area, but, wouldn't a fireproof heat absorber benefit from living near/inside a volcano? With a higher heat source, they would convert it to speed and strenght: a single Blazer could make a volcanic castle alone. The Blazers' community can comunicate through light signals in the night-sky, dark-caves or dark-forests for an example.

The Embers are very interesting too: They can also live in a flaming-hot place, but since they lack the energy-manipulative powers of the Blazers, they could prefer a colder place. A group of Embers can travel at night in cold-dark-places and use their glow to see each other and the surroundings. They don't need campfires to keep warm: if they "turn-off" their glow, their camp site can't be seen in a dark night. Also, they don't need any protection from the weather, so there's no tent or blanket - it's really difficult to spot them!

Interesting differences between Embers and Blazers: Embers are are basically warm, fireproof and can emit light but these aside, they are almost normal people. Blazers can absorb all the heat near them, creating paradoxally a cold place, and throw this heat somewhere else burning everything. An Ember would probably try to live in a group, each one with different skills. A Blazer can live alone in a very hot place with very few water. An Ember would like to make money with their abilities, a Blazer doesn't need you, nor your money.

A Short story to Illustrate:

The King of the Volcanic Castle: Lucious the Blazer reaches the volcanic area of Ghardon-Har. With his Blazer powers it starts absorbing heat and using his super-human strenght to break blocks of volcanic stones. With super-speed, super-strenght and super-jumps powered by a volcanic heat, Lucious constructs his own castle. Why does a Blazer need a castle? Lucious knows. In few days a great strong castle is created amoung rivers of lava. Lucious wants to capture the last TorchBlows in the world. Breeding them in the Volcanic Castle and sometimes killing some of them, Lucious is becoming the strongest Blazer. Lots of Embers, looking for TorchBlows to kill, come to Ghardon-Har, but none can pass through Lucious.

The few remaining Blazers of the world are concerned about Lucious but they are divided: there's no concensus in defeating Lucious.
One by one the Blazers are disappearing: first the alone-ones, but now the members of the Blazing-Alliance are being victims too.
There's finnally a concensus: Lucious is probably the feared Blazer-Crusher!

Lucious attack a Blazer trio in the central square of Mainopolis, killing one of them instantly with a super-fast super-strong heat-absorbing punch in the heart.
For the augmented shock of the now Blazer duo: Lucious absorbed all the Pyris of the dead one and...
Where is him? His super-speed is faster than any Blazer can imagine reaching, his strenght... 
It's late: Lucious is a meta-Blazer and names itself a Voucaner.

The last Blazers finnally unite against Lucious. It will be a pun-intended heated battle!
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  • $\begingroup$ Your bonus idea is genius, thank you! You also lent needed perspective on the abilities of both Embers and Blazers, though I regret to inform you that the Pyris enchantment maxes out once one reaches Blazer status, making a Vulcaneer almost impossible. However, thanks to another Enchantment, Paragon, it could happen..... $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 5, 2021 at 22:37
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The commonality of Torchblowers is important. If they are everywhere, then once a reliable method to kill them is developed then everyone will become at least an Ember. If they are increasingly rare though, people will make weapons that fit the needs to kill them themselves or pay others to kill them using the weapons they provide.

This enchantment has many practical and impractical uses, the person becomes a mobile space heater, the person becomes fireproof, the person (if a blazer) becomes inhumanly strong, and the person becomes a weapon of mass destruction (even an Ember).

Fire is incredibly destructive and if the current technology is medieval then one can assume most villages are made out of wood. You say that the embers give off the warmth of a small campfire, a campfire is hot, like hot enough to burn wood, anyone with the Pyris enchantment would almost need to sleep in a tub of water which due to the limitation of it temporarily nullifying the enchantment would make rather cold and uncomfortable for anyone with the enchantment. The Pyris Enchantment is useful in many cases but is also way more passively dangerous than you assume.

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  • $\begingroup$ Very good answer, welcome to the site! Torchblows are relatively rare and hard to find, like Jigglypuff in Pokemon, and I actually posted a question on how to clothe fire mages so clothing isn't an issue. $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 5, 2021 at 15:47
  • $\begingroup$ This is a pretty good response! Just remember that it's best to not ask questions in your answer. $\endgroup$
    – A Writer
    May 5, 2021 at 15:52
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It's worth noting that an individual with an ability to manipulate and store heat along with an immunity to fire and smoke would make an excellent metal smith.

A quick example to illustrate the point: A blazer can simply stick their own arm into a furnace while heating up some steel and absorb some heat, then they can expend that energy into the steel while working it, keeping the iron hotter while shaping it. This is just an efficiency boost in time. But a skillful Blazer could even make a rudimentary shop more productive; they could manipulate furnaces to help concentrate heat, heat treating and tempering activities are likely far more precise in their hands, etc.

So even if combat specialist isn't their job of choice a Blazer (master) with a handful of Embers (Apprentices) would make for skillful workers in any medieval setting.

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  • $\begingroup$ Ooh, thanks for sharing your perspective! Your point on Blazers making for good blacksmiths is invaluable, and would also add some interesting flavor to my setting. $\endgroup$
    – Alendyias
    May 17, 2021 at 15:46

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