You get your things in order and even if you didn't make as much as you'd hoped for, you still added a few good weeks living expenses to your purse.


There have been rumors lately of bandit activity on the road south so you talk to the other workers there to see what their plans are. One group is planning to leave on the day they are laid off and make good time down to the city because they want to get back to family there. The other south bound group plans to stay until all the small jobs are finished around the camp for a few extra coins then have a much more leisurely trip with stops off at way houses and farms along the way. The second group will turn up to the city nearly two full weeks after the first but your in no rush yourself.

You earn the last few coins and enjoy the leasurely trip back now you have no rush after all.

Your group numbers around a dozen workers and stays on over the weekend and most of the next week, dismantling old shacks and helping construct the permanent miners residences. The work is relatively easy after the hard labor of the mining and although the pay is low your still getting free food and a place to sleep. Once the work is done you all collect your pay from the overseer on the Friday, a week after the other group had left, and start a leisurely trip down the south road.


Your group sets an easy pace stopping for at least an hour each meal and taking the occasional day out in farms and way houses that some of the other men knew from previous trips. You don't encounter any or the rumored bandits on the road but a dozen well built and fairly well armed men must make a less appetizing target for bandits. All in all you make terrible time back to the city but you really don't care as you enjoy the company and find the lack of rush very relaxing.


Since you have plenty of time you all discuss future plans, some are just going to sit out the winter in the city living off their wages then head back out to new mines. A few are lifers and will be clocking in with their guild as soon as they get back ready to be sent on the next job and a couple like you are going to take a year or two out, one even gives you a name to ask about a flat in the Iron district.


Its only when you all wake one morning expecting to see your first glimpse of the far off city in the dawn light and instead see a plume of pure black rising miles into the sky that you all start rushing back to the city as fast as you can.

You blackened Homecoming

Your group practically runs the entire way back to the city making it back well before the sun is at its peak. You all go through the main gates into the Iron district and down towards the source of the smoke. It quickly becomes clear that its the old District, the area you grew up and where you know your closest friend should be running his fathers tavern. as you get close to the wall separating the districts of the city you start to meet groups of people just standing and staring, all seemingly in shock. Most are the better dressed of the affluent Iron district but you see the occasional Old district dwellers, standing alone or in twos and threes, but all equally lost or in shock.


You approach the nearest group and ask what is going on.


"Fire, just a bloody huge fire. It spread in seconds. we didn't have time to do anything. Just ran. We were bringing some fabrics up from the dock, only reason we made it, we were only one street from the gate. Oh God.."


You leave the man as he sinks to the ground and stares towards the high walls.


You had only been looking at the people and the smoke before but now you just stared blankly towards where the wall separated the districts and just see an orange glow over the wall with plumes of black filling the air above it. Thinking of you friend and his tavern located close to the docks you sprint down to the gates but once you get there you find them closed and barred shut. grabbing the nearest guard you shout for them to be open so you can get to your friend but he just stares blankly back at you obviously shocked dumb then walks away. The gate captain walks over and tells you that if anyone is still in there and didn't get out before the gates had to be shut, that there was no chance of them being alive. You start to tell him that he is wrong and needs to open the gates when he takes you over to them and tells you to put a hand on them.


You reach out and feel the gates metal almost hot enough to burn you. The captain quietly tells you that the fire started late the last evening. It came at the worst possible time. it had been dry for weeks and wooden buildings had been built right from the shore to the base of the wall, all stocked full of the years produce, hay, wheat, pelts and oils. most of it flammable. The wind blowing in from the sea had fanned it into an inferno almost as soon as the first warehouses had gone up. It had spread unnaturally quickly and only the closing of the huge gates had stopped it spreading through into this district too. The gates would stay closed until the embers were cold, and that could take a couple of days at least without any rain to quench them.


You stand and stare over the wall for what seems like an eternity then quietly turn and walk back up into the Iron district. You take your road companions advice and speak to the man he mentioned about a flat and find that he did have one free. You agree to the price almost without listening then buying a cheap bottle of mead you head back out to watch the place you grew up burn down to the ashes before collapsing into your bed long evening fell.