What if you found a torch in your attic or basement that can light up anything you -think- of?

Full disclosure, I'm foraging that game of thrones inspired this idea, but here's my spin on it.<br><br> <br> <br>Imagine a torch that has a strange, blood-stained wooden torch with a strange metal head that -will- light up -anything- you think of, as long as you’re holding the torch and you look at what you want to light up. There are no restrictions on what you can light up. If you point it at yourself, you’ll light up. If you think of lighting up the entire universe, it might come close to doing that if you look at the stars. However, there are a couple of things you have to remember about this torch. <br><br>1) You have to physically hold the torch. If you throw it at something or drop it, it will go out until you pick it up again. However, if you drop the torch while still focusing on the object, the flames will stay on the object until you pick up the torch again.<br><br>2) You have to remember what you want to light up. If you completely forget about the torch or what you want to light up, it will go out. For example, if someone knocks you out and leaves you in a location where you can’t remember anything, the torch will go out. If you have the torch and you light up a forest of trees for a day, but that night you forget that you lit up the trees, the forest will burn out.<br><br>3) The fire will not be extinguished by anything but lack of memory of the flames, the lack of a fuel source, or running out of the fuel source. For example, if you light up a pile of horse manure, it will eventually run out of fuel and burn out. If you -remember- the pile of manure burning, the pile of manure will just keep burning.<br><br>Imagine if this torch was used in a war, a battle, an assassination, or for arson that you could never be caught for. How were ancient societies impacted by such a weapon?<br><br>The torch was first found by a man named Pogo, who used it to burn the entire contents of his attic that he didn’t need anymore. For several days, Pogo used the torch to burn a hole through his attic floor and into the room where he slept, lighting anything in the room that was too tall and -wouldn’t fit- through his door. This woke up his entire family, who thought Pogo might have gone insane or Pogo might have bought a bunch of fire to light up the rooms.<br><br>Pogo was very surprised to see his family, who he had thought he had burned alive. He immediately thought about the torch, now resting on the floor, and saw that he had left the flames burning. This woke him up, and he realized the truth. He was so surprised that that shook his head back and forth, and when he did, the entire contents of the room Pogo shook his head in now burned down.<br><br>This Pogo shook his head even -harder-, and the flames ended up burning down half of the town he lived it. He ran out of the house in order to escape the flames, shook his head once again, and the entire town burned to the ground.<br><br>The town council met a few months after the incident and decided to ban Pogo from owning -anything- that could be used as a weapon -or- a fire source. They tried to make Pogo live in a cabin a few miles away from the town, but he burned down the cabin and ran away from the town. <br><br>A few months after that, the torch was found by a band of bandits who used it to destroy an entire kingdom. This sparked the torch wars across an entire continent, with continents of people that burned through cities and armies of enemy forces. Some torch-wielders were hailed as heroes for their ability to destroy that which threatened their nations, and others were seen as dark forces of nature that could only be defeated by drowning.<br><br>The wars lasted for several hundred years, with several torch-wielders forming kingdoms of their own. It wasn’t until several hundred years that the continents of the world woke up, shook their collective head, and stopped the wars. This was because for several centuries, Pogo had been going from torch-wielder to torch-wielder and shaking his head for a few minutes until they couldn’t remember what they were supposed to be torching.<br><br>At this point, Pogo had become a legend and in some cultures a god. He became known as the one who had started the wars, the one who had ended the wars, and the one who had burned down what would have been the world -twice-.<br><br>The torch was eventually buried in a grave that was so deep that no one could find it but Pogo, and Pogo spent the rest of his life torching random things for fun in order to see what burned well and what didn’t. -But that’s a story for another time.-