MineArchiveKoom Valley
Fictional record. This page describes a mine from a fictional setting, not a real place. Information is based on the cited canon, with adaptations and interpretation distinguished where necessary. It is kept separate from the real MineArchive corpus — see Fictional.
| Setting | Discworld (Terry Pratchett) |
|---|---|
| Location | A valley in the mountains, reached from Ankh-Morpork by several days' travel. The site itself is a cave entrance matching an old painting, 'The Battle of Koom Valley', opening onto a tunnel and underground water below. |
| Worked | Ancient — B'hrian Bloodaxe, the dwarf king who founded the Scone-of-Stone coronation rite documented on the Schmaltzberg record, commanded the dwarf delegation there some fifteen hundred years before the novel's present – Resealed by agreement between trolls and dwarfs after the modern events of Thud!, as a shared, preserved memorial |
| Extent | A cave entrance leading to a tunnel and a body of underground water; no further depth, area or layout is described. |
| Controlled by | B'hrian Bloodaxe (At the ancient peace conference/flood, roughly 1,500 years before Thud!'s present) |
| Status | Researched |
Overview
A valley whose name gave Discworld's dwarfs and trolls a byword for their oldest hatred — the legendary Battle of Koom Valley — until a recording device recovered from underneath it revealed that no battle had been intended at all: a peace delegation, drowned together by a flash flood, mythologised for fifteen hundred years into a war neither side actually chose.
History
Some fifteen hundred years before the events of Thud!, the dwarf king B'hrian Bloodaxe — later remembered as the founder of the rite by which every subsequent Low King is crowned on the Scone of Stone — led a delegation to Koom Valley to make peace with the trolls, not war. A flash flood struck the cave where the two delegations had met; both sides drowned together, by tradition still playing a game of Thud as the water rose. The event was remembered ever after, wrongly, as the opening battle of the ancient dwarf-troll conflict — a lie that outlived every witness to the truth. In the present day, the traditionalist 'Deep-Downer' dwarfs of Ankh-Morpork, having recovered a talking cube recording Bloodaxe's own account of what really happened, went to Koom Valley itself to destroy the physical evidence before it could be found. Commander Vimes, working from his wife's copy of the old painting of 'the battle', identified the cave entrance and, without waiting for the rest of his party, dropped into the flooded tunnel below alone to investigate (see Disasters, below). Once the truth was recovered and played back publicly from the cube, trolls and dwarfs worked together to preserve the site and then seal it, this time by mutual agreement rather than to hide anything.
Workings
Filtered through the perception of a character possessed by an ancient, dwarf-associated spirit during the modern incident, the text describes 'a mine with dwarfs' inside the cave. Whether Koom Valley was ever an independent working mine, separate from this one crisis and the ancient tragedy, is not established — the 'mine' imagery may reflect the possessing entity's own preoccupations as much as the site's actual history, and this record does not resolve that ambiguity by assuming either way.
What became of it
Preserved as a memorial and resealed by agreement between trolls and dwarfs following the events of Thud!.
Disasters & major incidents
-
The Summoning Dark at Koom Valley
Not dated (contemporary with the events of Thud!) · Flooding / Inundation · 0 fatalities
Investigating alone at Koom Valley, Commander Vimes dropped into a flooded tunnel beneath the cave where the ancient dwarf-troll tragedy had taken place, and was possessed there by the Summoning Dark — the same malevolent spirit he had been infected by earlier in the case. He was found and subdued by Angua and Sally before the possession could run its course, inside the very mine the spirit's targets — Deep-Downer dwarfs attempting to destroy the site's evidence — were working in.
Related fictional records
Recorded claims
Each claim is marked with its basis — explicit canon, MineArchive inference, adaptation only, or fandom interpretation — and attached to the source(s) below. Where tellings disagree, both are kept.
- B'hrian Bloodaxe led a dwarf delegation to Koom Valley to make peace with the trolls; a flash flood drowned both delegations together in the cave where they had met, an event later mythologised as the opening battle of the ancient dwarf-troll war. (explicit canon) 1
- B'hrian Bloodaxe is the same king credited, in a separate record (The Fifth Elephant), with founding the rite by which every Low King since has been crowned on the Scone of Stone. (explicit canon) 1
- Following the modern recovery of the true account, trolls and dwarfs worked together to preserve the site and then reseal it by mutual agreement. (explicit canon) 1
Sources
- (primary canon) Thud! — Terry Pratchett, 2005 (Discworld #34)
Record created: 25 August 2026 · Last researched: 25 August 2026