The main character is an incompetent and cynical wizard named Rincewind. He involuntarily becomes a guide to the rich but naive tourist from the Agatean Empire, Twoflower. Forced to flee the city of Ankh-Morpork to escape a terrible fire that was caused by a bartendor who misunderstood the concept of insurance, which Twoflower told him about, they begin on a journey across the Disc.Unknown to them, their journey is controlled by the Gods playing a board game. Rincewind and Twoflower are controlled by the Lady, and is pitted agaist the champions of Zephyrus, the god of slight breezes, Fate and Offler the Crocodile God, in the game supervised by Blind Io. The duo face a mountain troll and are separated. The ignorant Twoflower ends up being led to the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth, and Rincewind ends up in a tree-nymph inhabited tree. Rincewind manages to escape while the tree-nymphs try to kill him and is reunited with the tourist. Together with Hrun the Barbarian, they escape from the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth the Soul Eater, which collapses. Later, Hrun agrees to travel with and protect Twoflower and Rincewind in exchange for Heroic pictures of him from Twoflower's magical picture box.
They visit Wyrmberg, an upside-down mountain which is home to dragons that only exist in the imagination. The names of the dragons' riders feature punctuation in the middle, making reference and parody of the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffery. They nearly go over the waterfall on the edge of the Disc, only to be rescued and taken to the country of Krull, a city perched on the very edge of the Discworld inhabited by hydrophobic wizards. The Krullians wish to discover the gender of Great A'Tuin, the giant turtle which carries the Discworld through space, so they have built a space capsule to launch over the Edge. They intend on sacrificing Rincewind and Twoflower to get Fate to smile on the voyage. Instead, Rincewind, Twoflower and Tethis the water troll hijack the capsule in an attempt to escape and are launched off the Disc themselves.
