And the proto-gods got into the heads of the other two humans. That's why the proto-gods are present there. That's how Om got his very first believer.

Gods are more likely to be heard when people are desperate. He could not bear to think Brutha was a better and more godly man than he, he had to prove otherwise,to himself as well as others so he needed the public trial and condemnation, rather than just murdering him in the desert. Vorbis was mad by this time, and I think he had realised that he had no actual faith in a God but only in a church, and this is what took the last of his sanity. The fact that he takes Brutha out of the desert with him rather than kill him I think is partly for appearances sake, in case his body was ever found and to make himself appear heroic and godly, and partly to convince himself that Brutha was truly nothing but a heretic, he needed to break him and for others to see he was broken. At some level, whilst appearing insensible of his surroundings, Vorbis has heard Brutha speaking to the tortoise and fears how a new prophet might affect the structure he works to maintain.

Vorbis does not believe in Om so much as he believes in the whole structure of the church and the hierarchy that sustains it. I think Vorbis smashed the turtle because it was a symbol of what he feared. I’d really like to know if anyone else saw that differently, because I’ve just never really understood why Vorbis brained Brutha with a rock instead of ordering him around like in Ephebe plus I could be missing something really obvious. So I’m wondering if Vorbis was mostly awake and aware of everything, saw Brutha talk to a tortoise for a long time, and assumed the tortoise was a random small god trying to convert Brutha. While I know Vorbis is on a weird spectrum of psychotic, I wouldn’t think he’d make such an effort to kill a random turtle unless it was important. When Vorbis finally moves on his own, the first things he does is bash Brutha with a rock and smash a turtle. I think Small Gods might be one of my favorite Discworld books to date, but there’s one part I was never sure about when Brutha was carrying Vorbis and Om through the desert towards Omnia. Hello, first time posting and big fan of this thread and all the discussions here.

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