Methodia Rascal

An artist, he painted the Battle of Koom Valley, a work of art fifty feet long and ten feet high that depicted the famous battle between the Dwarfs and the Trolls. During the painting of the picture (which took several years to complete) he went insane, often thinking he was being pursued by the Chicken and occasionally thinking he was the Chicken. He choked to death on feathers just after the painting was completed, with a note underneath him that read: 'Awk! Awk! It comes! IT COMES!'. He left behind many hundred notes to himself, stuffed in old chicken-feed sacks.

In the painting, over two thousand, four hundred and ninety individual dwarfs and trolls can be identified by armour or body markings. It was composed as cycloramic or "panoscopic" (as Rascal called it) art, and the viewer should be wholly encircled by the mural to feel right in the thick of the action.

The painting had been in the possession of the Ramkin family, before they gave it to the Royal Art Museum. If you cannot visit the museum, you should at least get a copy of the - unfortunately rather sensationalist - treatise Koom Valley Codex, which has many detailed sketches of the painting.

The picture plays an important role in Thud! to solve the mystery of the Battle.