Small Gods: (Discworld Novel 13) (Discworld Novels)

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She has a small following that gathers in the Temple of Small Gods and worships the Sacred Lace of Hyperopia. Dropped a Bridge on Him: General Fri'it, one of the leaders of La Résistance, gets a fair amount of focus in the first quarter of the novel, but then is caught by the Quisition and Killed Offscreen. The Only Believer: As mentioned earlier, people believe in the structure of the Church and its rules, not the god they actually worship. Half the time he never even met or talked to them, and in one case the lengthy amount of things he said was actually no more than "hey, look what I can do".

Obfuscating Disability: Vorbis pulls a chilling example of this on Brutha as they are about to leave the desert. Oppose What You Suffered: Brutha is used (and abused) as a useful pawn (or sacrifice) by the authorities of the Church of Om, the god Om himself, and even by those opposing the church. Om's first follower was a shepherd who had 100 sheep only because he was willing to look for days to find one. The adaptation was written by Ben Saunders, a graduate of the University of Durham department of Archaeology. Monster-Shaped Mountain: The wind god has rather crude sense of humor, as demonstrated by the shape of an eroded rock pillar that Om points out to Brutha as a desert landmark.It appears for a moment that he is baiting him by asking an inquisitor if they know where the man lives, but never follows up on it.

In Monstrous Regiment Nuggan seems to have been reduced to an echo that sometimes whispers incoherent words, which are interpreted as new prohibitions, presumably by some priests. He has an imaginary friend, Angus, who is real enough to kill a lion that attacks him, and is therefore another small god. Death, who appears to several Omnians and conducts them to the edge of the great starlit black desert, which they must cross to face Judgement.

Sleep Learning: A king wants to become learned without actually taking the time to read anything, so Didactylos suggests having slaves whisper bits of knowledge in his ear while he sleeps. Sturgeon's Law: Om says that ninety-nine percent of the Ephebian philosophers' ideas are useless but they are tolerated because that last one percent is a "humdinger". It Came from the Fridge: The, ahem, live yogurt sold by Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, which was kept out in the sun too long. In Pratchett's biting but compassionate satire, it's somehow fitting that the sorts of lessons one might expect to come from a god instead come from the mind of a simple, decent young man.

Meanwhile, Vorbis, the fearsome head of the Quisition, tricks Brutha into helping him track down the heretics who insist the world is flat and attached to the back of a turtle travelling through space. Several characters throughout the book, when they're killed and find themselves in the spectral desert of the afterlife which they must journey through, ask Death "what awaits at the end of the desert? Om and Brutha came across a small god who knew genuine god-speech, which was such a rarity that given the location, Om reasoned that it was once Ur-Gilash himself.Vorbis has Didactylos summoned up to him, assuming the philosopher will do this and allow Vorbis to make An Example of him. Mary Shelley's darkly disturbing tale is illustrated by Angela Barrett and newly introduced by Richard Holmes.

But one simple lad, a hopeless little initiate named Brutha, does believe in Om, and so it is with some surprise that Brutha first encounters Om in his melon patch.The other, far rarer kind of small god is one that was once worshipped by large numbers of people across a vast area, but is all but forgotten now. He is now dead because belief has switched to his Abominations, similar to the events leading to Om's weakening in Small Gods.