Editing Discworld (section)

===Barbarian Heroes, Dark Lords, and Other Relics===
The last vestiges of [[Medieval Stasis]] and/or the pulp fantasy parody that the Disc began as in The Color of Magic/The Light Fantastic. Even at that point, they had been dying out for some time. While they don't have a major impact on the overall plot of the Disc, the story of the people on the edges and the edges themselves like Cohen is important to understand the setting. The story of how the barbarians became important characters instead of throwaway jokes and realized that the world they once lived in was dead is a tragedy worthy of a monumental saga.

All around the Disc, the world is changing. The warriors of the steppe settled down and became kings with governments and tax agencies. The cities grew, and with them so did the rule of law. Scammers and small-pond financial bullying replace Dread Kings and Dark Lords, ancient gnarled forests go to the lumber mills, and new coach roads make the frozen lands up by the Hub empty, save for the last few Heroes and the occasional troll still holding out hope for the ancient family bridge. What were once trackless wastes filled with the promise of adventure are now fenced and divided into farmland. The world is shrinking, moving fast and leaving behind those who carved a swath into the darkness of the great [[Frank Frazetta]] painting of the untamed Disc for civilization to follow behind. This is where the Barbarian Heroes find themselves: obsolete, nearly forgotten, and quickly shrinking in numbers. Some settled down and became innkeepers, or some other such trade as someone who spent a lifetime living by the sword would consider acceptable. Others ended up in city watches across the plains, or working as bodyguards. Most of them died in their prime, off on some adventure, and were sent to the feasting halls of their various afterlives. Some of them, however, got too good at being Heroes. They still followed The Code, a set of fantasy tropes that are treated as rules that bind them to others in the hero business and related trades, they still carried their swords and axes, albeit somewhat stiffly, and they never stopped looking for new worlds to conquer. They were the Silver Horde, and not one of them was younger than seventy.

Cohen the Barbarian, introduced in The Light Fantastic, was a world-renowned fighter, the feature of half the songs and stories of his time. He was also an old, old man, too tough to die but suspicious enough to know he probably should have done. The Silver Horde, a group of barbarians and a former schoolteacher who formulated a plan to topple an emperor and seize the throne of the Agatean Empire, were of a similar age. In the end, their absurd plan paid off: once Teach had led the traditionalist Heroes reluctantly through the back lines to seize control of the palace, they managed to defeat the massed armies of the Agatean noble families through the power of Rincewind getting into trouble at the right time and a lot of stubbornness. During this fight, Cohen and his Horde find out, in asking each other, that they're the only ones left. All the old heroes were retired, working for wages, or had died in battle. Atop the throne in the capital city in Hunghung, Ghengiz Cohen, conqueror of the Agatean Empire, never felt secure in his victory. When Old Vincent, one of the company, died an unheroic death choking on a cucumber, he started thinking hard about why the hell he didn't get the glorious death everyone else did. For that matter, why had any of them lived this long? What was the point? As is common in this sort of situation, Cohen looked to the gods. However, this being the Disc, the Discworld gods being capricious bastards who are immortal only for a given value of immortal, and Cohen being Cohen, this was not to pray for guidance. The gods had had it their way for long enough, and Agatean alchemy provided access to "thunderclay," a possibly semi-magical explosive compound theoretically capable of blowing Dunmanifestin off of Cori Celesti.