Dim and Mum-Ra-Lud were helping refugees to escape the burning city.

It wasn’t burning when they arrived-- they set it alight, as part of an effort to rescue the slaves.

Timinit was once a noble and bright city, a place of fortune and honor... but these days, it is a city of corruption and selfishness, a slave-trading gateway, where poor souls are brought out of their cold cages and dark dungeons only long enough to be bartered for on the auction stage.

Mum-Ra-Lud told Dim that the Sun had told him through noon-day dreams that they must release the slaves and other refugees of Timinit, and bring them into the lands beyond.

Along the way, Mum-Ra-Lud thought it would do well to just burn the place down... The auction stage was the first to go.

With Dim and Mum-Ra-Lud is Zula, an escaped slave girl of exceptional beauty and courage, who claims to know the true names of three forgotten Great Names... but they haven't had a chance to really discuss it with her. Mostly they've been fleeing from the city guards and the quickly-spreading fire itself.

Also present is a very old child... one never grown, but somehow aged as though 800 years old. A very, very old, child.

Nobody present seems to know her, or where she came from... and she doesn't know, herself, who she is.

She keeps asking, "Do you know who I am?" of others.

She seems harmless, and the kind among the crowd seem simultaneously compassionate to her and disturbed by her. "Do YOU know who I am?"

Others are merely disturbed, and find no compassion, and seem close to driving her out... with rock or stick, if need be. "DO you know who I am?"

But Mum-Ra-Lud suspects a truth: this is not mortal human, but a Great Name that has lost its identity.  "Do you KNOW who I am?"

He suspects that when he can divine her true Name, and return it to her, she will be revitalised... returned to her true form.

"... but, do you know WHO I AM?" she asks, full of confusion and sadness.

---

DIM! MUM-RA-LUD!

--One of you should do something, or the crowd will drive the old child away!
(possible options:
--Use TALK to convince the crowd to let the old child stay
--Use TALK to make it clear that the old child is under your protection
--Something else)

--One of you should do something, or the fire will catch up to the already-panicky crowd (or else they might just stampede-- people could be hurt!
(possible options:
--Use BODY to try to make a new exit from the city intersection you're in
--Use TALK to try to calm the crowd (a separate thing from the old child issue)
--Use TALK to just try to hurry the crowd up
--Use MIND to figure out where you are and what the best route out of the city might be
--Something else)

The child was... creepy. Even Dim could see that. But the child was a child, and there was no room in Dim's heart for people who would cast a child out. No, not even if she did set the hairs on his neck to standing. And there was no time for that sort of nonsense, for someone had set the city on fire.

"Couldn't wait until we were outside?" Dim asked, more muttering to himself than actually directing the question at Mum-Ra-Lud. Mum was the smart one of the two of them (generally), and Dim deferred to his greater wisdom in these matters. But even so, he was reminded of an old pirate expression: Pillage, then burn. Burning came last for a good reason.

And if the city was burning, the people needed to hurry themselves up and get out. Picking on kids was always a bad idea, but during a great fire it was just plain stupid.

"Anyone who wants to harm this child has to go through me," Dim declared. He waved the head of the Hammer of Kalmard over the child's head almost like a benediction. "Just go."

Coerce
Using +1 from Hammer of Kalmard
Dim rolled 8 using 2d6+1 ((1,6)).
• They agree to do what you demand, or you may harm them.

Some in the crowd approve, some are angry. "We'll remember this, 'Hero!'" some shout, but Dim doesn't see who exactly shouted that sort of stuff. The important thing is that everyone leaves the Old Child alone...

(Most of the refugees seem to accept that messing with the Old Child is off-limits, but some of the collective trust in Dim has gone down a bit. Let's hope that doesn't come back to bite Dim in the metaphorical tail.)

Mum-Ra-Lud had, meanwhile, climbed up onto a nearby building ... that was not yet on fire ... to figure out where they are and what the best route out of the city might be.
From this high vantage point, he felt he had a clear idea of how to Escape the city.

He called down to “Dim  DIM!”, pointing the way, “Herd them thataway, towards the gold and purple spires, then curve away from the smoke plumes, towards the sun”.

- rolled 10 using 2d6+1.  Escape the city.
• You get away.
• You may take a free +1 to save for a future roll

But from that high perch, he’d noticed something else, as well.  Something that he needed to think on a little, to make the most sense of it.

He began scrambling back down, to join the herd of refugees upon their exodus from this place.

The new path is both safe and city-guard-free, and the group of refugees hurry along to the edge of the city. Soon, the city walls are in sight.

The structures on either side of the city are, increasingly often, blackened and burned, but the fire has already moved through these areas, and has spread to the south.

"...It appeared that you saw something else from your vantage-point, dealer-of-names," Zula says to Mum-Ra-Lud. "Something that surprised you, I think...? Or did I read your countenance wrongly...?"
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:54, Sat 22 Aug 2020.

In the absence of anything else that he could think to do, Dim would follow Mum-Ra-Lud's instructions, as he usually did. Mum rarely steered him wrong, and when he did it was generally an accident.

Towards the spires, away from the smoke, towards the sun. Towards the spires, away from the smoke, towards the sun. He repeated this in his head as he followed the directions, lest he get them in the wrong order, or go awry in some other fashion. At least herding the townspeople was relatively easy. Dim was big and strong and loud, and carried a big hammer, so they tended to do what he said.