the rules of assassination are so utterly formalised and strict that anyone with a strategic mind, a decent budget, and a firm knowledge of their code can usually avoid death at their hands, as commander of the city watch sam vimes has proved many times. the commander has been so difficult to inhume that as of the events of "the fifth elephant", the last time the guild was approached, no one stepped forward to accept the contract, despite the six-hundred-thousand dollar fee (p. 131), and by "night watch" he was off the register entirely, preventing any one from taking out a contract on him, an order so powerful that only lord vetinari has ever been "struck off" before (though this was largely for political reasons—namely that vetinari was infinitely preferable to both most of the other patricians in recent history and any likely alternatives). vimes has petitioned for the decision to be overturned.