All others either just fear the Quisition's wrath or go along with the church out of habit. With the help of Ephebe's Great Library, and the philosophers Didactylos and his nephew Urn, Om learns that Brutha is his only genuine believer. This begins to change after Brutha discovers Ephebe's philosophers the idea of people entertaining ideas they are not certain they believe or even understand, let alone starting fistfights over them, is an entirely new concept to him. However, Brutha is also considered unintelligent, since he never learned to read, and rarely thinks for himself. Om has a hard time convincing the boy of his godliness, as Brutha is convinced that Om can do anything he wants, and would not want to appear as a tortoise.īrutha 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. In the gardens of Omnia's capital of Kom, he addresses the novice Brutha, the only one able to hear his voice. He is surprised, however, when he finds himself in the body of a tortoise, stripped of his divine powers, except for the ability to singe eyebrows with tiny thunderbolts. The Great God Om tries to manifest himself once more in the world, as the time of his Eighth Prophet is nigh. In Omnian tradition there is a new Prophet every two hundred years. Om was once a Small God, but managed to speak to a shepherd, gained believers (despite the shepherd being stoned to death) and took over from Ur-Gilash as the God of what became Omnia. Omnians believe in a single god, Om, though the Discworld has many gods, including the billions of Small Gods who exist as points of desire searching for believers. The Discworld is flat and is orbited by its sun, but Omnian doctrine says that the world is round and orbits the sun. Omnia is a theocracy based on the Seven Books of the Prophets of Om. In the process, it satirises religious institutions, people, and practices, and the role of religion in political life. It tells the origin of the god Om, and his relations with his prophet, the reformer Brutha.

Small Gods is the thirteenth of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, published in 1992.

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