Skund

Skund
Established	not very
Motto
Neighbours	Lancre
Geographical Features	Forests, Lake containing the sunken wreck of the Potent Voyager.
Population	small
Size	variable
Capital
Type of government	Monarchy, current ruler alleged to be Queen Agantia
Notable Citizens	Black Aliss, Five-Headed Vampire Goat, Queen Agantia & Talking Trees
Imports
Exports
National Anthem
Books	The Light Fantastic, Wyrd Sisters

Skund and its surrounding forest contain the highest concentration of raw magic in the unnamed continent, and perhaps the whole Discworld. It was the birthplace of the greatest Witch in history (at least until Esmerelda Weatherwax), "Black Aliss" Demurrage. Nearby Lancre is known for a high concentration of magic and magicians, like Mss. Weatherwax, and has a mysterious, uncountable standing stone and a few trees that may walk around of nights; the entire town and forest of Skund seem to be mobile and furtive. The survey for A Tourist Guide to Lancre found it on the border of Lancre, hubwards of Bad Ass; a little later, another map in The New Discworld Companion shows it far across on the Widdershins side near the pass to Überwald. It is not surprising, then, that the area is little-known and rather mysterious to outsiders, and makes a handy location for tall stories which will be hard to disprove. Giamo Casanunda, for example, claims to have been granted the title of Count by Agantia, Queen of Skund, and who can deny it?

However, it cannot be denied that this is where Rincewind, Twoflower and the Luggage were returned to the Disc by the intervention of the Octavo, when at the end of The Colour of Magic they were all seen to be falling off the edge of the Disc somewhere in the Krull region. At the start of The Light Fantastic, the Octavo is aware one of its eight spells has fallen off the disc inside Rincewind's mind, and the spell book is forced to change reality to bring them back. It chooses to drop them in Skund, home of talking trees, gnomes (e.g., one called Swires) who live in toadstools, gingerbread cottages, and shamans who, when they encounter the Luggage, decide they've been overdoing the old peyote...

Raising Steam moves Skund again, a lot nearer to Ankh-Morpork than to Überwald. (Refer to Circle Plains map in endpapers of Raising Steam) Not even Moist von Lipwig chooses to drive a railway through the wood: the Überwald line skirts round the Turnwise side.

An Enchanted Forestry Commission has been created to manage the problems presented by mobile trees.

Skund is also the home of the dread Five-Headed Vampire Goat, as made rarer by Truckle the Uncivil.