Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki - User contributions [en]

Barman's friend

2010-07-15T09:46:27Z

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Every prudently run [[Pubs|pub]] has one, stored discreetly and kept within easy reach, to smooth over those unfortunate moments that can happen later on in the evening.
Usually made of blackthorn or some other particularly dense wood. The example kept under the counter in [[Biers]] is quite possibly unique: steeped in garlic oil (for vampires), studded in silver (for werewolves) and wrapped in strips of blanket (for bogeymen), it is an example of hedging one's bets on a grand scale.

Death very nearly fell foul of the one in the [[Mended Drum]].

[[Category:Discworld culture]]

Peggy Aimsbury

2010-07-14T09:43:14Z

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Peggy Aimsbury's role in life is the thankless task of looking after her father, a [[Aimsbury|chef]] with the embarrassing career drawback of being allergic to the very word [[garlic]]. She steers inadvertent speakers of the G-word away from harm, and as an encore, serves up a very creditable omelette for those human consumers her father occassionally has to cater for.

{{MM}}

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[de:Peggy Aimsbury]]

Ribcage Jack

2010-07-14T09:41:40Z

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A business associate of "Professor" [[Cranberry]], and by inference not a nice guy. It really isn't worth noting anything more about him nor commiting this Wiki entry to memory, as he appears briefly in {{MM}} as an [[Assassins' Guild|assassin]], who was killed during a botched inhumation where the inhumee fought back, using a [[Fools' Guild|very surprising but lethal weapon]].

{{MM}}

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[de:Rippenbruch-Jack]]

Heretofore

2010-07-14T09:36:02Z

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'''Heretofore''' has worked at the [[Patrician's Palace]], and as a secretary. The fact that he did not work ''as'' a secretary ''at'' the Palace, where he worked as a gardener, is not known to his employer, [[Cosmo Lavish]]. His job is to acquire items from [[Havelock Vetinari|Vetinari]] for his boss, at considerable expense.

It is clear from his actions that Heretofore shares a modus operandi and an operating philosophy with [[Moist von Lipwig]]. While not in the same league as Moist and while not capable of the same degree of versatility, it is clear that Heretofore has seen his main chance in a single rich employer, who desperately wants to believe that the items he provides (at a suitable price to compensate for the risk involved in procuring them) have genuinely been acquired from Vetinari. To satisfy his employer and ensure the largest possible operating profit, Heretofore commissions a [[stygium]] signet ring, discovers who does the Patrician's laundry, uses a Palace contact to steal a pair of [[Drumknott]]'s boots which he can then claim are the Patrician's, and finally has a sword-stick made, with a suitably lurid provenance, which he can then sell as Vetinari's.

So far, all this is showmanship of a sort at which Moist would be first to nod approvingly, but the maggot in the apple is Professor [[Cranberry]], who insists on killing people afterwards so as not to leave anyone who could tell a story. Like Moist's reaction to [[Cribbins]], Heretofore is deeply revolted and believes murder has no place in the life of a honest con-man. Yet greed (and fear of Cranberry) means he stays too long in Cosmo's service: Heretofore is last seen as the clerk in brown robes, leading his feverish and blood-poisoned master into the Presence at Moist's arraignment over the disappearance of a lot of gold. As Heretofore's actions and beliefs had a certain Lipwig-like style to them, one hopes he was still able to get away with at least ''some'' of the loot, with no Cranberry to hunt him down, and Cosmo incarcerated in the [[Havelock Vetinari Ward]] of the [[Lady Sybil Free Hospital]]...

Through a dialogue between [[Vetinari]] and [[Drumknott]] at the end of {{MM}} we learn that he is being sought by the Watch in [[Quirm]] after he bought a coach ticket to there but is more likely on his way to Genua. Vetinari wants a short clacks sent to "their man" in [[Genua]] but it remains unclear what his plans for Heretofore are. The Patrician hates to lose talented and resourceful people and there may be more impending projects than [[Moist von Lipwig]] can handle alone.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Supporting characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Making Money]]
[[de:Vorhinein]]

Brotherhood of Infernal Zoth, the Undying Renderer

2010-07-13T14:36:59Z

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The Brotherhood of [[Infernal Zoth, the Undying Renderer]], were an order of religious contemplatives who were the previous tenants of a site in [[Ankh-Morpork]] which is now occupied by the [[Fools' Guild|Guild of Fools and Joculators and College of Clowns]]. Little is known about this Order of monks, as in 1547 they were wiped out in their entirety by a mysterious fire and a highly localised earthquake. It is possible that, like the Jesuits or the Dominicans on Roundworld, their religious contemplations were designed to bring them into a state of ecstatic union with an aspect of the Godhead through which the essential character of the Deity would manifest on earth, for the mystical rapture of the monk and the spiritual education of the laity. This being the Discworld, it is thought that the monks collectively channelled the essential character of Infernal Zoth far too directly and, as it turned out, terminally.

Shortly after the dissolution of the monastic order, the site and the remains of the monastery were bought up suspiciously cheaply by the Guild of Fools, who saved what was useful of the old occupants, such as the Chamber of Spikes and the monks' cells, and built up the rest according to their own design. (Although noted architect [[Bergholt Stuttley Johnson]], some time later, was responsible for the current facade of the Guild as it stands today).

Prior to its use by the monks, some of the oldest city records note that a building mysteriously known only as the Plague House stood on the site, at the intersection of [[God Street]] and Widdershins [[Broadway]].

All in all, an impeccable past history for a Guild pledged to bring is own unique brand of entertainment to the world, whether the World wants it or not.

[[Category:Streets of Ankh-Morpork]]
[[Category:Groups]]
[[de:Bruderschaft des teuflischen Zoth]]

Bill Door

2010-07-13T14:31:29Z

195.171.111.194: /* Bill Door - a timeline */

==Bill Door - a timeline==

The events of {{RM}} take place over about '''seven days'''.

The '''first day''' begins when the Death of Discworld finds that he has been given a liftimer. He has been suspended from office and will soon come to an end himself. When his servant Albert asks him if he was not afraid to die, Death answered that he did not know how to be afraid. "I could show you", said Albert, but Death said, “No. I should like to learn by myself. I shall have experiences at last... At last I have time. I am going to spend it.”
Riding through the heat and dust of summer in Discworld, Death came to the farm of [[Renata_Flitworth|Miss Flitworth]], who took him on as a farm hand at sixpence a week. When asked what his name was he answered Bill Sky, to Miss Flitworth's disbelief. His second suggestion - Bill Door - was considered believable, as Miss Flitworth had once known a Bill Doors. His first experience was of having a name. His second experience was sleep, or rather, it was a lack of experience. He woke up wondering how six hours of his life had been stolen.

The '''second day''', and the three days that followed that, were signalled by the crowing of Cyril the dyslexic cockerel. At first Bill Door was able to be a farm hand, cutting hay in the high meadow, albeit in his own particular way - one blade of grass at a time. Always he was aware of time passing. Although he knew wind and sunshine, he had never experienced the wind push at him before, nor how the sun made you hot.

On the evening of the '''third day''', Miss Flitworth invited him into the parlour of the house. She wanted to tell him about the disappearance of her fiance years before, the day before they were to get married. Nobody knew for sure what had happened to him. Some said he had run away, but she thought he had died on one last smuggling journey in the mountains. She had refused to let this become the story of her life, though she never married. She was testing what Bill Door thought about her.

On the '''fourth morning''' he woke from a dream with a cry of terror that roused the cockerel and Miss Flitworth. When she came to the barn to see what was wrong, he said to her, “I suddenly know that we are going to die.” In return, he encountered a new thing, human fortitude and endurance. "Keep busy and act cheerful." That morning he experienced the taking of life. First a chicken was to be killed for the pot. He recoiled from killing it with the cleaver. Later she put down poison for the rats. He felt like a murderer.

That night he tried to avoid sleep for fear of dreaming, but was woken by shouting. The tavern was on fire, and a little girl was still inside it. Now the gulf between human and Death's ways of looking at things showed its full extent. Death knew that "to tinker with the fate of one individual could destroy the whole world". But for Bill Door, with a degree of humanity, it was different, and stung by Miss Flitworth's response to his hesitation, he walked into the fire and rescued the child. She was alive but remained in a deep sleep. He was giving her time from his lifetimer. Everything moved very fast after that. Bill Door spent the rest of the night trying to bring a [[Death's_Scythe|scythe blade]] to total sharpness.

He finished sharpening the scythe at the dawn of the '''fifth day''', and took it to the village forge, where he wanted it destroyed, killed. He planned to put up a fight against the new Death that would come, and in a ghostly form the scythe might be available to him. But the man he gave it to could not bring himself to destroy it.
That day, Miss Flitworth suggested Bill Door get on with the harvest of the corn. He ended up in a race against the Combination Harvester, a newly built machine that could do the work of many men. Brought back to the farm, exhausted and in pain, he said he could understand now why some people wanted to die. He was galvanized into action by a storm, which threatened to ruin "his" harvest.
At midnight Bill Door's timer emptied and the New Death him sought out. Bill Door was now in ghostly form, intangible. The prepared scythe had not been destroyed, so he could not use it. The New Death revealed himself with no visible features, just a gold crown. This assertion of rulership infuriated Bill Door. Just as the New Death was about to strike him down, Miss Flitworth willed to give Bill Door some of her time, and he was able to grasp the tangible scythe with which he had made the harvest, and destroy the New Death. "No crown. No crown," he said. "Only the harvest." From this point on he resumed his form as Death.

Death knew that Miss Flitworth had only a short span of life left. Wondering what to do, he went to her farm at sunset on the '''sixth day''', and quietly looked into her three treasure boxes. Two contained gold, one her bridal veil, and a music box, with two little dancers on it. He went before Azrael, the singular beginning and end of time, and made his argument, asking to be granted some time to repay what had been given. Azrael affirmed what he said, and the Auditors who had conspired against him were dismissed. Bill Door returned to the farm, to the surprise of Miss Flitworth. He brought her rich gifts, and offered to take her anywhere in the world, but she wanted only to go the Harvest Dance. To her surprise again, they danced till dawn. Finding that she was like an eighteen year old again, she realised she had died.

At dawn on the '''seventh day''', he reunited her to her fiance Rufus at the point at which he had died in an avalanche nearly sixty years before. "Wherever you go," he said to the young man before he saw Miss Flitworth again, "you go together.”

Once again in his own realm, Death felt it lacked something. He caused fields of golden wheat to appear, then the wind to move them, to remember. It was the first trace of colour in his domain. The memories of Bill Door gave him another knowledge of the world of life he served, irregular, untidy as it was. Faced with the [[Death_of_Rats|Death of Rats]], who had once been a part of himself, he allowed it to continue a separate existence, remembering the loneliness of the Alone.

[[de:Bill Tür]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]

Spirit guide

2010-05-20T13:01:31Z

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The essential partner for any spiritualist or medium. The person who picks up the phone when the medium dials the next world. Traditionally, the role calls for a North American Indian or nearest equivalent, who have something of a cachet in spiritualist circles.

On Discworld, Mrs. [[Evadne Cake]] has the services of [[One-Man-Bucket]]. ({{RM}})

On Planet Earth, [[Madame Tracy]] calls upon the services of Geronimo[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geronimo]. Tracy has read somewhere that Red Indians encapsulate the wisdom of generations, passed down from [[shaman]] to shaman, and among their number can be found some of the most spiritually pure, wise and compassionate discarnate entities who are, for instance, happy to assure mrs. Doris Williams that mr. Fred Williams (deceased) is here among us and is happy with his life in Spirit, and that death is but a sleep.

[[Newton Pulsifer]] has also read about the Apache chief Geronimo, and doesn't have the heart to tell Tracy that in life, Geronimo was a member of a tribe whose word for "person not an Apache" was cognate with "To be hung by the ankles with their head inches away from a roaring fire, until their skulls explode". In other words, just as [[Skund]] has the other sort of [[Elves]] to the wise and nature-loving beings envisioned by [[Twoflower]], this is the other sort of Indian: a murdering sadist with a yen for inventive and agonising torture.

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]

Quisition

2010-05-20T10:23:49Z

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The Quisition of [[Omnia]] was an organisation before the time of the Prophet [[Brutha]] with the holy mission of purifying the ungodly and expurgating sin. They perform this civic service by means of lovingly designed implements of torture.

To those who objected to the use of torture, the Quisition replied that they were only doing the will of the Great God Om - for if He allowed them to do it, he must want them to do it, therefore it must be all right. So there. Those who pursued this line of argument were granted a free tour of the Quisition torture chambers and given an unrivalled opportunity to get really up close and personal with the implements in question.

Before its abolition by Brutha, the Quisition was headed by [[Vorbis]], who bore the title of Exquisitor.

==Annotations==
Based, no doubt, on the Spanish Inquisition (16th to 19th c.) of infamous - and somewhat exaggerated memory. It should also be observed that monotheism while well known for persecuting 'heretics' was not unique in its demands for religious conformity; ask Socrates.

[[de:Quisition]]
{{stub}}

Butchers' Guild

2010-05-19T09:46:36Z

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The current leader of the butchers guild is [[Gerhardt Sock]]. Not one of the larger guilds but large enough to run its own guild hall, topped with a copper weathervane shaped like a pig.

[[Category:Guilds]]
[[Category:Ankh-Morpork Businesses]]
[[de:Metzgergilde]]

Ancient and Classical Mythology

2010-05-19T08:49:26Z

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'''[[Chaffinch]]''''s ''Ancient and Classical Mythology'' does exactly what it says on the tin. It is the seminal work on the ancient mythologies of the primitive and classical peoples of the Discworld. The witch [[Eumenides Treason]] kept a copy on her bookshelf, where sinister-looking elderly volumes whose names had faded from the spines of venerable leather-bound books were visibly restrained in place by a formidable-looking steel bar and padlock. [[Tiffany Aching]], when told to unlock the books and fetch forth the copy of Chaffinch, discovered that the shelf of perceived [[Grimoire|grimoires]] which had radiated evil and eldrich feelings over several generations of local villagers seeking their witch's advice, had titles like ''An Encyclopaedia of Soup'', when viewed from close-up. Noting this as another example of applied [[Boffo (Concept)|boffo]], Tiffany brought the book down for examination. Festooned with bookmarks, illustrated and randomly lettered by [[Don Weizen de Yoyo]], Tiffany found pages Eighteen and Nineteen to be most educative concerning her dealings with the [[Wintersmith]]. On the death of Miss Treason, she was allowed to take the book and call it her own.

==Annotation==

The [[Roundworld]] reference is to {{wp|Thomas_Bullfinch|Thomas '''Bull'''finch}} who wrote ''The Age of Fable or Beauties of Mythology'' and ''The Golden Age of Myth and Legend'' amongst other books.

[[Category: Discworld culture]]
[[Category: Discworld publications]]

Alchemists' Guild

2010-05-19T08:38:54Z

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[[Image:Alch01.png|200px|left]]
Motto: ''OMNIS QVIS CORVSCAT EST OR.''

''All that glitters is gold.''

Likely the loudest among the [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|guilds]] in [[Ankh-Morpork]], but not politically powerful. The Alchemists' Guild is known more for its failures than its successes. That is to say, more people (in fact, everybody in the city) are aware of the explosions produced by the guild's members rather than the actual products and services they render. The guild building is blown up a few times a month, and is therefore under a perpetual state of repair. Supposedly, an alchemist's goal is to turn things into gold; it is strange, then, because it should be hard to make metals explode. In reality, the alchemists also mess with all sorts of chemical reactions. Their development of the [[Octo-cellulose]] film led to the [[Moving Pictures|moving pictures]] industry, and the guild president was, for quite a while, leader of the industry (in {{MP}}). Another notable project was to transmute things into artificial ivory, so that billiard balls could be made without going to the trouble of getting the tusks off the elephants (appears in {{MAA}}). Alchemists dabble in everything they can get their hands on.

The Alchemists' Guild would make a very bad neighbor. Yet, the [[Gamblers' Guild]] likes their location right across the street. The reason probably has to do with [[the Lady]].

==Members==
*President: [[Thomas Silverfish]]
*Secretary: [[Sendivoge]]

Many Alchemists, or maybe apprentices in the guild, are likely to be ''former members'' rather than current members, because they tend to die of explosions or from drinking whatever chemicals they had mixed together. In a queer way, it is fortunate that Alchemists usually don't spend enough time in social company, or don't even live long enough, to marry and have children, otherwise, the widows and orphans fund would be in permanent deficit.

A notable former member who is still alive is [[Cheery Littlebottom]], now head of forensics in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]] (joined in ''[[Book:Feet of Clay|Feet of Clay]]''). Cheery was expelled from the guild through the roof while blowing up a much larger than usual part of the guild council hall. From what Cheery remembers, it is said that there are two signs of a good Alchemist: the athletic who can get behind an upturned bench very quickly, and the intellectual who knows exactly when this needs to be done.

== [[Demarcation]] ==

Alchemists are traditionally very, very, wary of anything that smacks of [[Wizard's magic|magic]] because they have no wish to meddle in the affairs of wizards. Who on the Discworld may not be all that subtle but are certainly quick to anger, especially towards amateurs poaching on their turf. Considering that if only one out of two is right, the anger of wizards is the ''important'' one to be wary of, this is the reason why the perceived magic of [[Moving Pictures|moving pictures]] was taken out of [[Ankh-Morpork]] to the safely distant location of [[Holy Wood]].

Meanwhile, the Alchemists may not be aware that the Wizards have developed an equal caution towards dabbling in anything that could be perceived as "science", and therefore by right the alchemists' province...
[[Category:Guilds]]
[[Category:Ankh-Morpork Businesses]]
[[de:Alchemistengilde]]