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The sky was dark. The clouds overhead swayed backwards and forwards in a slow sultry cycle. The rain completely failed to fall, dazed drought stricken farmers stared hopelessly at the bright sky. It came midnight. The silence was suddenly broken by the loud croaking of millions of frogs. This was the land of the midnight frog.

Welcome to Discworld, the place where all of your dreams can't come true. Based on the books by Terry Pratchett (with added frogs, sugar and flour, baked for seven minutes in an oven and you have frog surprise). As good introduction to this great and wonderfully modest mud I will give you a passage from one of Terry Pratchett's books.

'In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part...

See...

Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters. Through his sea sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust he stared fixedly at the Destination.

In a brain bigger than a city, with geological slowness, he thinks only of the weight.

Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen, the from giant elephants upon whose broad and star tanned shoulders the disc of the World rests, garlanded by the long waterfall at its vast circumference and domed by the baby blue vault of Heaven.

Astropsychology has been, as yet, unable to establish what they think about.'

So the Great A'Tuin (sex unknown) swims slowly through the mine field of stars towards his unknown destination. Meanwhile in the chaos and general madness on the disc itself, life goes on.

The gods of the disc live on the hub of the disc on a ten mile high spire of green ice where at its peak is the realm of Dunmanifestin, the abode of the gods. The disc gods themselves despite the splendour of the world below them, are seldom satisfied. It is embarasing to know that one only exists because every improbability curve must have its far end; especially when one can peer into other dimensions at worlds whose Creators had more mechanical aptitude than imagination. No wonder, then, that the disc gods spend more time in bickering than in omnicognizance. The disc is also unique in being the only place in the universe where the gods go around at night and break the windows of atheist's houses.

Magic, as you might imagine, is quite strong and exists in large quantities in the disc. Liberal doses of it are slathered over various bits of country side, where as other bits seem to have missed out entirely. The disc was never a fair place.

Ankh-Morpork, one of the major citys of the disc... In the thoughts of Captain Vimes of the watch, 'The city wasa, wasa, wasa, wossname. Thing. Woman. Thass what it was. Woman. Roaring, ancient, centuries old. Strung you along, let you fall in thingy, love, with her, then kicked you inna, inna, thingy. Thingy, in your mouth. Tongue. Tonsils. Teeth. That's what it, she, did. She wasa... thing, you know, lady dog. Puppy. Hen. Bitch. And then you hated her, and just when you thought you'd got her, it, out of your, your, whatever, then she opened her great booming rotten heart to you, caught you off bal, bal, bal, thing. Ance. Yeah, Thassit. Never knew where you stood. Lay. Only thing you were sure of, you couldn't let he go. Because, because she was yours, all you had, even in her gutters...'

'Spring had come to Ankh-Morpork. It wasn't immediately apparent, but there were some signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the river Ankh, the great wide slow waterway that served the double city as reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent green. The city's drunken rooftops sprouted mattresses and bolsters as the winter bedding was put out to air in the weak sunshine, and in the depths of the musty cellars the beams twisted and groaned when their dry sap responded to the ancient call of root and forest. Birds nested among the gutters and eaves of the Unseen University, although it was noticeable that however great the pressure on the nesting sites they never, ever made nests in the invitingly open mouths of the gargoyles that lined the rooftops, much to the gargoyles' disappointment.'

The disc also has a death. It has dragon's. It has the dungeon dimensions. It has frogs. It has an efficient postal system entirely run by frogs, in fact. Where this world has machinery and mechanical thingys, the disc has magic.

So, if all this interests you, don't bother visiting Discworld mud. You think we could write all this in a mud? But, do rush out and buy Terry's books.

Pinkfish, blue and former womble of Discworld mud.