Headscratchers / Raising Steam

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How did Ardent survive?

• The major protagonist for evil, Ardent the Dwarf, appears to have been pretty comprehensively killed at the end of Thud!. Here, he fights the good guy on the edge of a subterranean cliff, has his throat crushed by something akin to a karate chop, falls off, drops a long way, and ends up in a subterranean river that would have killed Sam Vimes if it wasn't for the fact Vimes was possessed by a powerful Dwarf entity. He was also wearing full Dwarf gear and could be presumed to have been semi-conscious and finding it difficult to breathe at the time. Yet he lived to fight again in this book. Is it that Dwarfs are hard to kill, or a reprise of Sherlock Holmes versus Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls?
  • Hmmm. Just read about the First Law of Resurrection....
  • Because you seem to have got the end of Thud! mixed up with something else. He got the chop to the throat, but none of the rest of that happened and he was explicitly captured alive and only slightly injured.
  • From the end of Thud!, after Ardent gets hit in the throat: "The grags and what's left of their guards are coming back to Ankh-Morpork with me. That includes Ardent, though I'm told it'll be weeks before he can talk again."

Diamond trolls

• Back in Thud!, Diamond King of Trolls was so bright that he had to be completely covered up so as not to blind people. Mr. Thunderbolt, though, is also diamond - yet he doesn't seem to be bright at all. What's with that?
  • Actually only part diamond, just enough to glisten a bit.
  • Maybe Thunderbolt resembles an uncut diamond, whereas Mr. Shine is faceted and polished.

Where is Carrot?

• In this book that focuses heavily on dwarven culture and the changed brought about by exposure of said culture to the cosmopolitan "I don't give a damn" attitude of Ankh-Morpork, where on the Disc is Carrot?
  • Since he is Vimes' second in command, and Vimes himself was sent to Uberwald, presumably he was running the Watch. After all, if you can only send one, send Vimes; one look at his wrist will give even the nastiest dwarf reason to pause.
  • Most of the book is set in Ankh-Morpork! Carrot doesn't even get a cameo!
  • But the grags are not active in Ankh-Morpork. The Fifth Elephant revolved a lot about dwarves too, but Carrot only got involved in Angua's story. Also, not even Vimes appears until they are about to leave Ankh-Morpork, and then Carrot is most likely to be busy doing his second in command job. Really, despite him being a dwarf, Carrot never seemed really that much into dwarves' politics.
    • Indeed, given how dwarf fears of cultural absorption and appropriation by humans is one of the social concerns that are luring foolish younger dwarfs to the terrorists' ranks, keeping out of things may be Carrot's best possible choice of action under the circumstances. The last thing he'd want is for the renegade grags to use him as an example of humans usurping dwarfs' traditions for themselves.
  • It's probably just because Moist doesn't see what Carrot is doing, and Moist is the POV character for the most part. On a meta level, I think it's because the book was full to the brim with characters already, though I agree that I'm surprised he doesn't even get a mention.
  • Moist can't "read" Carrot, and avoids interacting with someone so dangerously-honest. Carrot, beneath his simpleness, is very shrewd if the city's welfare is at issue, so may well humor Moist (a useful city official) in this, always finding some other pressing matter to attend to if an encounter with Moist seems likely.

Dwarf/human age difference

• During the set up for the dwarf and human wedding it's mentioned that the two knew each other as toddlers. Given that in Guards Guards it was mentioned that dwarfs are typically not considered not to start going through puberty till 55. Given that puberty in humans starts at around 12, by comparison dwarf equivalent of 18 human years old would be 82 and a half. Unless the dwarf aging curve is much different from the human one (and not just the entire thing happening at a slower rate), the groom should be most likely be damn near dead of old age by the time of his wedding. It's strange that this in no way touched on in the book itself.
  • Possibly they both already had some mixed ancestry, that made the bride mature faster and the groom, slower. The Llamedos mining community had been home to both races for a very long time, and we know from Nanny Ogg's pedigree and references to the Klatchian city that was overrun with Glods that humans and dwarfs can interbreed.
    • Although this book specifically says that they can't interbreed.
    • It says none of the locals are sure if they can or not. Possibly interracial weddings aren't something that's happened in Llamedos within living memory.
    • Possibly it's known that male dwarf / female human pairings can have children, but uncertain if the opposite is true.
  • Or they are talking about relative ages.
  • As another option, it could be that Dwarfs age at the same rate as humans and the bit about not marrying until 55 is a cultural thing rather than biological.
  • Maybe the human groom's family chose the wrong week to go visiting relatives in Lancre a while back...? He'd still be physically older, but not decrepit.

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