"Lancaster fire-"
Even with the high ceiling, the haze of smoke made the exit sign above the door hard to see. The point of view blurred, blacked out for an instant as the person blinked. “Lancaster fire-” the point of view said, more to himself. His voice soon rose to a bellow. “Don’t- don’t stampede! Don’t shove! We’ll get crammed at the exit!”
A character says these words in Ward, Chapter 4 interlude a
The leading hypothesis is that the character is referring to "Lancaster Fire Department", implying that either there's a fire department named this (possible) or that the city (which does not. have. a. name. yet.) is in a named county (or equivalent) (and probably Lancaster, PA equivalent in that case, based on the fact that I've heard of it.) Also, if it's "Lancaster Fire Dept" the F ought to be capitalized. ...but the listener might not know that and so the author needn't write it.
...but I read it as a reference to something Pact related that is on the tip of my brain. Something like we might say "Greek fire" or "backdraft" or a description of a fire-based social situation.
I'm literally in the final climax of rereading Pact right now, but I don't remember names dependably ever, and the medium it's stored on mean it's hard to search efficiently.
I'm not finding anything in the Pact wiki, or in Pact Dice anyway. So, the Occam's Razor would be to assume I'm just wrong. Maybe I'm remembering Game of Thrones/actual history/an undigested bit of beef/a blot of mustard etc.
But there are some Pact-themed stories online calling themselves "Lancaster stories" and it could be they all stem (er, originate) from this "Red Rose City" RPG. In which the story takes place in Lancaster PA, in the titular city, and in the Pact (now Pact/Pale) universe.
And there's this Spacebattles fanfic Swallowtail (I haven't read it yet) set in the Worm/Ward universe talking about the "Lancaster Powerset"
aaand I can't reproduce it now, but I believe, while I was websearching using both "Lancaster" and "Wildbow" as search terms, I found links that looked like Pact fanfiction and that called themselves something like "Lancaster stories".
Anyway, I've got “olfactory fatigue” on this one and am gonna stop tracking on it.