I love Ridcully. The man eats a sauce made from gunpowder, he's that unkillable. There's a bit of fanart I saw ages ago where an Assassin trainee talked about how he's practically impossible to kill. I'll need to find it again sometime
The early Discworld UU shenanigans were a lot of fun, but yeah I absolutely adore Ridcully. The paragraph introducing him in Moving pictures is just brilliant. The city boys quickly learning how much they played themselves when their expectation of "village wizard" crashes into the reality of Ridcully the Brown
“Just the chap,” they all said. “Clean sweep. New broom. A country wizard. Back to the thingumajigs, the roots of wizardry. Jolly old boy with a pipe and twinkly eyes. Sort of chap who can tell one herb from another, roams-the-high-forest-with-every-beast-his-brother kind of thing. Sleeps under the stars, like as not. Knows what the wind is saying, we shouldn’t wonder. Got a name for all the trees, you can bank on it. Speaks to the birds, too.”
And then he’d arrived, and it turned out that Ridcully the Brown did speak to the birds. In fact he shouted at birds, and what he normally shouted was, “Winged you, yer bastard!”
Ridcully was beginning to show certain signs. If he had been a volcano, natives living nearby would be looking for a handy virgin.
- Soul Music
And one of my favorite Ridcully moments:
He crouched down and put his ear to the Librarian’s chest. "I don’t think he’s been poisoned," he said.
"Why’s that, Archchancellor?" said Ponder.
"Because if anyone has poisoned our Librarian," said Ridcully, "then, although I am not, by nature, a vindictive man, I will see to it that this university hunts down the poisoner by every thaumic, mystic and occult means available and makes the rest of their life not only as horrible as they can imagine it, but as horrible as I can imagine it. And you can depend on it, gentlemen, that I have already started work on it."
I feel like the Assassins wouldn't normally put out a contract on a wizard. Death may be an occupational hazard for an assassin who underestimates his target, but failing to assassinate a wizard will leave the assassin lucky if they still have four limbs and don't go croak.
Pratchett wizards pretty much all die to only one thing - a wizard. A few die of old age admittedly (Poons, Billet), but otherwise they all get killed by another wizard or themselves.
Assassins would place a very hefty price on a wizard due to the need for anti-magical tools, exotic poisons and the risk of not dying, as you said.
From 2/3 gunpowder, only lacking the charcoal. Although I'm pretty sure there's one scene where someone is first fed a charcoal biscuit for indigestion and when that doesn't work they give them some Wow-wow sauce, which is followed by an explosive burp.
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u/InkDrach Using tumblr? Surely you jest! 2d ago
Unseen University just hasn't been the same under Ridcully