Djelibeybi really was a small, self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast super-natural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of Frog*.

*[It was quite a big frog, however, and got into the air ducts and kept everyone awake for weeks.]

King Pteppicymon rules over the little valley kingdom of Djelibeybi (if you don't get it, say it phonetically. Then kick yourself.) This must be the oldest kingdom on the disc; you can just feel eternity passing you by.

Rows and rows of pyramids, big and small, line the banks of the Djel. Nothing has changed in seven thousand years, largely due to the efforts of Dios, the lord high chief advisor type guy. Each hour has it's sacred ritual, each day, month and year its titulary deity. Several, in fact, are quite superfluous, performing similar functions, like rolling the sun across the sky, for example.

   It's a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the job spec.
High priests tend to get put in the same category. They have to face the implied assumption that no sooner do they get the funny hat than they're issuing strange orders, e.g., princesses tied to rocks for itinerant sea monsters and throwing little babies in the sea.

   This is a gross slander. Throughout the history of the disc most high priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they're getting it absolutely right.

The king's son, Teppic, grows up in an environment that is quite devoid of stimulation. He doesn't question the running of the kingdom, until he's sent to the Assassins's school in Ankh-Morpork, when a whole new world opens up to him. He gets pretty good - if not at assassinating, then at least in all the side skills required, like edificeering (climbing up the faces of buildings), use of weapons, knowledge of poisons and antidotes, and so forth.

Would he really enjoy ... going back? To Djelibeybi? The pyramids flaring blue actinic light into the sky all night? The simpering jackals, the crocodiles infesting the rivers, the complete lack of any stimulation? Oh yes, and the camel. One camel, named You Bastard, in fact. Humorous name, humorous camel.

   The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins.* [*Never trust a species that grins all the time.] They are so much brighter that they soon realised that the most prudent thing any animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronised rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don't find out about it. So they long ago plumped for a lifestyle that, in return for a certain amount of porterage and being prodded with sticks, allowed them adequate food and grooming and the chance to spit into a human's eye and get away with it.