Thud!
Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office. With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him. Oh... and at six o'clock every day, without fail, with no excuses, he must go home to read 'Where's My Cow?', with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy. There are some things you have to do.
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- Azad - from Ian Bank’s player of games: not in its avatar as an entrance exam for Azadian civil services, but just for the complexity and sheer range implied by the game.
Then, Thud, the game loosely described by Sir Terry Pratchett in Thud!
- He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.
“No urns,” he said at last.
“What urns?” said Nobby.
“Nude women are only Art if there’s an urn in it,” said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added: “Or a plinth. Best is both, o’course. It’s a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it’s Art and okay to look at.”
“What about a potted plant?”
“That’s okay if it’s in an urn.”
— Thud (2005), Terry Pratchett
- > ‘... spies?' I thought we were chums with the Low King!’
> 'Of course we are,’ said Vetinari. ‘And the more we know about each other, the friendlier we shall remain. We’d hardly bother to spy on our enemies. What would be the point?’ - Lord Vetinari - Thud (Sir Terry Pratchett)
- Hnefatafl (and possibly other, similar games) inspired a fictional game played in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, Going Postal and Thud!. From wikipedia:
The game, supposedly called in Dwarfish "Hnaflbaflwhiflsnifltafl" (a reference to the Viking game Hnefatafl which it resembles), represents the famous "Battle of Koom Valley" between dwarfs and trolls.
The game was first directly referenced in Going Postal, being played by Vetinari, and became a central concept in the immediate sequel Thud!. (...)
Terry Pratchett devised a fictional history of how Thud was invented similar to the Shahnama theory of the origins of chess. In short, the clever dwarf who invented the game was asked by his king to name his reward. The answer was that he wanted his board filled with gold: One small gold piece on the first square, two pieces on the second, four pieces on the third, etc. Needless to say, this is more than all the gold of the Disc combined. The king then got angry and threatened to kill the dwarf who was 'too drhg'hgin clever by half'. The inventor then hastily changed his reward to 'as much gold as he could carry', whereupon the king agreed and simply broke one of his arms.
