Rincewind the Wizzard (sic) never wanted an interesting life. Boredom suits him just fine! But when a carrier albatross arrives from the Counterweight Continent with an Urgent Request for a "Great Wizard", Rincewind is called upon to "volunteer". And so Rincewind finds himself transported to the endangered Empire of Hong, Sung, Fang, Tang, and McSweeney, where a new Emperor - and a Great Wizard! - are about to be chosen. In the Empire, swords are outlawed and only outlaws have swords. Luckily, one of the outlaws is Rincewind's oldest (literally) friend, Cohen the Barbarian, the 95-year-old master of the oath-uttering and heroic butchery. Rincewind and Ghenghiz (Cohen's first name) have other allies as well: an ant farm-powered computer named Hex; a fractal weather-making butterfly with mandelbrot wings; the dreaded Four Horsemen of the Common Cold (Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, and Lack of Tissues); and a ferocious, if slow-moving army of six old men, the Silver Horde. Their mission is to either defend or destroy the Forbidden City of Hunghung. The instructions are not entirely clear...