Fire is Alive

A while ago, as in several years ago, I watched a video by this youtuber named Wendigoon who did a conspiracy theory iceberg. Basically going over a shit ton of conspiracy theories and giving a short synopsis on them. I like to watch those types of videos to introduce me to concepts i'd like to try and make my own like this instance. The theory is that fire shares several qualities that are required for something to be considered "Alive"

It grows, it consumes things to produce energy, it produces waste, and reproduces (in a way). I can't remember if there were any more that it has but those are the major ones. The reason it's not taken seriously is because it lacks a good few other requirements. Those are just the major ones so people latched onto it.

I run a dnd game where i make my world and setting to use for it, so i have an actual "modern" point where events are unfolding and becoming lore. There's an event coming up where i'll have it so this theory will become real in my world. The context doesn't have to matter so if you don't want it just ignore the next text block.

I have a pantheon and one of my gods is named Scintilla. She's the godess of fire and progress. Kind of a not so subtle adjacent domain to Prometheus, only minus the torture. There's a holiday where she will manifest in the world in her central church. The people of my world, more specifically the inventors and creators will travel to that church. A week before her arival they'll have a giant science fair basically where inventors will present their creations, innovations, discoveries, and anything else in that similar field to the priests of the church who act as judges for the fair. They allow for 10 creators to present their creations and findings to scintilla. If she's impressed with the world's progress since her last visit she'll grant the world a blessing. It can be some small tweak to physics, some key information, or just a brand new concept to introduce to the world. Basically something to help advance humanity just a bit more. I don't have any examples already made but one that could have been (and honestly may just be one now that i thought of it) would be lowering the melting point of iron. That could have been the key change that allowed it to become widespread. Another may have just been her mentioning the fact that the solar system is heliocentric. Stuff like that. You can see why people would wanna impress her so bad.

If it's not obvious, my player (solo campaign) intends to participate in the holiday this time around and i decided it's gonna be a year where Scintilla is impressed. If my player invents something good enough she'll be the one to do it, otherwise another inventor (probably a rival i make for her) will be the one to do it. And the blessing will be her giving fire that final push into becoming a true living organism. Fire elementals or genasi already exist in dnd and in my world because of that, but i want this to be different. It wont be like an animal or a human so my image i used is a bit misleading, im intending for it to act more like a fungi, or bacteria culture, basically a living organism with new unique predictable behaviors based on that "living" status.

I need help coming up with consequences or new norms with this concept. Basically i just want a really wide array of effects on the world this would have so any and every idea is appreciated. I do have some parameters im limiting myself with to not just make this "fantasy race that is just fire person number fivehundred"

1 – It will not have human or even intelligent animal (dolphin, dog, cat, ect) cognition. The most advanced behavior it could develop are preferences, like if a fire is started and it's fed spruce wood for a year straight it may grow to hate it, and if presented with an equal amount of spruce wood or birch wood, it may only burn and consume the bitch, and not burn spruce at all until it's at threat of going out or "starving" this is so it's trainable, but not sentient.

2 – This is ALL fire. If you start a campfire, it's alive, if you light a match, it's alive. Every torch currently active becomes alive, every housefire becomes living.

3 – This is only normal fire. Magical fires DO NOT have these traits. I still want there to be the potential for average fire in case there's an unforeseen consequence that i need to avoid, but it's only obtainable by using a magical spell or effect to make fire, like using firebolt on some logs. That fire will not have the same traits as if the log was ignited with flint sparks. Same applies to the fire in a fire elemental or from a firegenasi.

4 – General behavior rules is that fire wants to live. It avoids things that are not flamable, and will seek out flamable things to survive even if it's built up a distaste for it if it's about to die. It's not like an animal where it will fight back traditionally if someone goes to put it out. However it does react to stimuli and it's enviorment and adapts to them. If a fire is doused with not enough water to put it out but dampen it, it may respond by surging at the exposer of water or when someone with water, or just a person in general gets too close as a defence mechanism. Basically, if it were a homeowner, it wont stop a robber, but after the robbery it'll install a home security system. Like mentioned before it can be trained with prefrences and exposer to danger. Those preferences are case by case, so giving one fire a bunch of spruce may make it hate it, or make it learn to love it, not all fires are the same, some fights harder to survive, some is passive, some are picky, some consume too fast, some consume super slow. Finally, fire reproduction and lineage is a bit weird so it'll have the next section.

4.2 – If a fire is started with a spark it is a blank slate save for those adjustable traits i mentioned before. A fire can do reproduction by being the source of fire used to ignite something else, like holding a stick in the flames and taking it out produces a new flame. This flame has traits and prefrences that pass onto it from it's parent flame. So if the parent flame hates spruce, birch, and oak, this new flame will have it's own starter traits, but has a greater chance to hate those three as well. This makes generational training, or training a base fire for the purpose of producing fire with specific traits possible. This can go on forever. If you do nothing to change a fire's prefrence to oak, and the 1st generation fire HATED oak, then the 88th genoration of the same fire may still hate oak just as much. (the birth of a new fire always can theoretically affect traits like this, but it's more likely that those traits will be shared). These genorational traits can be overwritten though. If you need a flame who hates birch and oak but hates spruce, you can produce a flame that loves spruce and oak, but hates birch, and train it or its child to hate oak, or simply just use a pile of sticks and logs to spawn dozens of new fires off the original until you get one that happens to have your desired traits.

5 – The fires always start off as easily to extinguish as normal fires. But the longer a fire has lived, and the more fires it has spawned will make it harder to put out. Im gonna use numbers as examples so this makes sense. Imagine a fire requires 1 gallon of water to put out. Every day that fire exists adds .01 gallons required to put it out, and every fire spawned from that flam would add .01 as well. If you let a fire live for 100 days, it would then require 2 gallons of water to be put out. It's rate of consumption would go down by the same as well. If a fire would consume 1 log in one hour, after those 100 days it could survive on one log for two hours. All of these are pure example but you get the gist.

That's all. I'm willing to change these rules in case they get in the way of something cool and not broken or enable something broken or stupid and uncool. Sorry for the yapathon.