1. Something Starts
Thunder cracked around foreboding Überwaldian peaks as the rain lashed through the woods. Somewhere, mournfully, a wolf howled. Flickering firelight marked the peasant villages that made up a large proportion of Überwald's population. And in the laboratory tower of the von Baronheim castle, a wild laugh echoed into the depths of the night.
"Start ze mechanism, Igor! My greatest creation vill haff life!"
"I can't, marthter."
Count von Baronheim lowered his arms from the traditional 'triumphant evil' position and blinked at his servant. "Excuse me?"
"I thaid I can't, marthter. Thith ith the firtht dethent thunderthtorm we've had in monthth, marthter, and it'th not even clothe." Igor sighed, gathering up scattered equipment from the Count's cluttered lab bench. "If you athk me, marthter, it'th not natural."
"You think I do not know zat, Igor? Ze whole purpose of ze experiment vos to create ze lightening I need to power my laboratory!" The Count sighed and shook his leonine head. "Ve just do not get ze same vezzer as ve used to. Vezzer vos better in ze old days."
"Actually, marthter, I don't think it'th that." In response to his master's raised eyebrow, Igor elaborated. "I wath talking to my couthin Igor…"
"Ze vun who vorks viz Mad Doctor Eyeball?"
"That'th what I thaid, marthter. Igor. And they have had abtholutely no problemth with the weather, marthter. In fact, Igor wath jutht telling me how the doctor…"
"Sorry I'm late, Father!" A skinny young man slammed open the door, sending several items of priceless apparatus shivering onto the floor. Count von Baronheim winced as the tinkle of glass died away, as did the boy. "Sorry. Did it vork? Ze device?"
The Count gestured wordlessly at the empty container, where all present were aware that manufactured lightening should be leaping around like very drunken dancers. The boy's face fell.
"Ze device is flawless, Erich," the old man informed him dolefully. "Ze vezzer, however, continues fine."
"It is a really interesting vezzer pattern, Father," Erich agreed. "I sink it might be a sort of permanent antizyclone around ze mountain…I'm goink to read up on it, but I'm sure it must be zat." Tapping his finger on his lip thoughtfully, he looked up at the great windows of his father's laboratory. The Count and Igor, however, just looked at him.
Erich von Baronheim was tall and skinny, like many Überwaldian boys his age, and could, at a stretch and in a fairly dark room, be called handsome, but although there was nothing wrong with any given feature of his face (except maybe the odd pimple), it looked sort of wrong, almost gangly, if such a term can be applied to a face. It looked like he had been put together in a hurry at short notice, and he was still waiting to grow into himself.
He stared up at the sky with a look of mild interest in his brown eyes, then turned away. "I haff to go und check my rain collectors and my vezzer vane readings, zen, Father. If I do enough research, I should be able to calculate vot is happenink viz ze vezzer." He barely even saw the worried look on his father's face begin to grow.
"Und zen?" the old man asked half-hopefully. "Ve can vork on ze vezzer-alteration-devices togezzer, father und son?"
"I don't know about zat, Father," Erich replied diplomatically. "Theoretically it's possible but I sink ve should be sinkink in terms of livink in harmony vis ze vezzer…I vill sink about it."
He headed back out of the poorly-lit room as abruptly as he had come in, albeit with less breakages. Behind him, the Count sank into his favourite leather chair, head in his hands.
"Whithky, marthter?"
"Haff ve got anyzink stronker?"
"Right away, thur."
As Igor filled the air with a comfortable clanking of mysterious bottles, the Count raised his head to stare blankly at the useless apparatus in front of him. He dragged one long-fingered hand through his wild white hair with a long sigh. "Vot am I goink to do?" he asked the distant lightening. "Nozzink has gone right in my life for sixteen years. Not since Marrietta died. Even ze volves haff forsaken me!"
"You have your thon, thur," Igor reminded him, pushing a very odd concoction into his master's slack hand. Igor was capable of producing alcohol from perfectly normal ingredients which gave a similar effect to drinking a dwarf tavern dry in one go, so when the Count sipped it, he did so rather gingerly.
"Yes, I've alvays got Erich." The Count let out another noisy sigh and risked gulping down a little more of Igor's potent cocktail. "But Erich is…you know ven it vos sunny ze ozzer day? He vent to ze Roots Plateau because he said it vos a perfect day for science! Science! On a sunny day! Vot good is science if you can't do it in ze stormy night? And zis whole business viz ze vezzer…research and vorkink in harmony viz nature…vot is ze von Baronheim name comink to? Vunce, ve vere ze greatest scientists in Uberwald…in ze vurld. And now…" He made a mournful noise in the back of his throat and raised his glass theatrically to the heavens. "Vot can I ever do to make him learn, though? Ze lightening has forsaken me, and ze magic of my science viz it! I am a broken man!"
Igor gave the Count a moment to recover, then leant slightly over the arm of the chair. "Marthter, if I may make a thuggethtion?" Taking his master's sullen silence as leave to continue, he duly did so. "My nephew Igor, he workth with the Watch in Ankh Morpork. They're alwayth on the lookout for promithing new recruitth, he thayth, thur. It could make a man of him, thur. Thtop him fooling around with thith rethearch buthineth and get down to thome real thienthe."
It had to be said, the Count was not utterly convinced at first. But Igor was very convincing, as was his potent alcohol, and so it was that Erich von Baronheim, last son of the great von Baronheim family, left home a few weeks later on the mail coach to Ankh-Morpork, earnestly clutching a bulging suitcase and a letter of recommendation addressed to Commander Samuel Vimes.
Almost as soon as he had disappeared out of sight down the long, winding road to the village, Igor heard a wolf howl in the woods. He smiled lopsidedly. It was the first time wolves had been heard so near the von Baronheim castle since Erich had been born. There was going to be a storm tonight, too. He could feel it in the sticky static of the air.
But most of all, what Igor felt as he hurried off to prepare the lightening rods was a sense of overwhelming lightness. For though he would never admit it, something about the young master evoked a very un-Igor-like sense of unease, as though the separate body parts sewn into the whole were trying to go back to being dead. No, it was certainly good that Erich had gone off to seek his fortune a long, long way from Igor.
Later that night, amid the cackling and flashes of lightening, Count von Baronheim made his first major discovery since the birth of his son, and very pleased it made him, too. But that's not relevant right now. What's relevant to the story…and could, in fact, be relevant to the survival of the Disc itself…was at that point fast asleep, sandwiches half-eaten on his lap, as the mail coach crossed the Überwaldian border on its fateful path to Ankh Morpork.
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A/N: This is a story which has been trying to chew its way out of my head for a long time now, and so I am finally setting it free to run through golden meadows or whatever the hell happy stories do. Concrit is more than appreciated, I am BEGGING for decent concrit.