Although, Discworld does make a distinction between objective knowledge and faith: sure the gods exist, but they don't believe in them, no sir. They are the gods of slightly significant places; the hair rising on the back of your neck as you enter a suddenly still glade. Perhaps the best is, "Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum", when Om hijacks the eagle.

When Brutha starts questioning this story, Vorbis tries using these to say that while they didn't kill him exactly, their not listening to him did. In the ethereal desert, Vorbis learns to his horror that what he thought was the voice of Om was in fact his own voice echoing inside of his own head, plunging him into despair and leaving him unable to cross the desert and face judgement. Like any great satirist, Pratchett knows when he wants you to take the proceedings seriously and is able to segue into these scenes without losing touch with his wit or the reader's attention. Used for drama, when Om starts thinking about his past, and remembers his old arch-enemy, Ur-Gilash, and realises he has no idea what happened to the guy.

However, Brutha is also considered unintelligent, since he never learned to read, and rarely thinks for himself. Vorbis outright states that he knows that he would be in league with the rebels if not for his father. Conveniently Coherent Thoughts: Averted - Om can't read minds because they're too chaotic, but he can get a feel for the general shape of them.

The Discworld is flat and is orbited by its sun, but Omnian doctrine says that the world is round and orbits the sun. Why Om is very uncomfortable when they take shelter in an abandoned temple in the middle of the desert. 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. Really 700 Years Old: The History Monks, who use 'circular aging' the way those who play wind instruments use 'circular breathing'. Searing in its satire but always deeply humane, it is packed with Pratchett’s familiar humour and witty footnotes.So when the great god Om accidentally manifests himself as a lowly tortoise, stripped of all divine power, it's clear he's become less important than he realised. False Prophet: Deacon Vorbis deliberately lied about a missionary being killed when the Ephebians were not responsive to the Omnian message, so as to create a casus belli for invading and annexing the country, then converting the people, by force, to Omnianism. During events detailed in The Last Continent, he briefly takes on Ponder Stibbons as an apprentice, but scares him off when he reveals his most perfect creation to be the cockroach. For instance, one minute they're wibbling on about beauty and truth, the next they're saying "incidentally, putting this mirror up on that tower would make for an interesting demonstration of optical principles", giving Ephebe their own death ray. He subsequently appears in The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch, where he is inadvertently responsible for a lot of confusion.

The Ephebian philosophers previously appeared in Pyramids (which caused a Continuity Snarl mentioned in Thief of Time since the books are set a century apart). He wants peace, justice and love - but that's hard to achieve in a world where religion means power, and corruption reigns supreme . Brutha is gifted with an eidetic memory and is therefore chosen by Vorbis, the head of the Quisition, to accompany him on a diplomatic mission to Ephebe as his secretary.

Meanwhile, Ephebe has gained the support of several other nations along the Klatchian coast and has sent an army against Omnia, establishing a beachhead near the citadel. Steam powered machines contradict Omnian dogma, which states that such devices cannot perform work as they have neither minds nor muscles.