Discworld

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

I dare say, this page is delightfully British. Spot of tea?

"A world, and a mirror of worlds."

– Terry Prachett

"It's no use, Mr. James — it's turtles all the way down."

– J. R. Ross

The Great A'tuin the Star Turtle upon whom's shell stands Tubul, Jerakeen, Berilia and Great T'Phon and upon who's mighty shoulders lies The Discworld

One of the most beloved book series' on /tg/, Discworld is a series of fantasy novels written by the late Sir Terry Pratchett (who seems to have been a fan of Warhammer!) set on the titular Discworld: a round, flat world carried on the back of four elephants who in turn stand on the back of a turtle that swims through the cosmos. The Discworld novels do not have a single core protagonist across the entire series: it has a variety of characters starring over the course of the books. Over time certain "series" with the same cast and sometimes setting emerged, creating several parallel (and sometimes overlapping) storylines.

More than just your standard fantasy novel, Discworld plays with the conventions of storytelling and how people and stories shape each other. The writing is one of incredible wordplay, going from clever plays on words that more than once have been plot points to forehead-slappingly dumb puns. The books also include large amounts of footnotes to serve as worldbuilding, a joke or both. Some of these footnotes can take up the majority of a page or have footnotes of their own.

Another notable thing is that over time the Discworld began to escape Medieval Stasis. Towers for semaphore telegraphs are built so that messages can be transmitted at previously unheard of speeds, paper money and postage stamps are invented, the newspaper and journalism take form and even the steam locomotive takes to the field. Meanwhile, magic is present but not commonly used, and over the course of the books the young generation of wizards build Hex, a magical supercomputer who can do in hours what would normally take days or weeks for a human wizard.

Furthermore, the books carry a great mix of gravitas and comedy, making them both poingnant and funny at the same time. All these factors have added up to a great series of fiction that has been, is, and will be held close to the hearts of many a reader and nerd for years to come.

Species on the Disc

Aside from humans, who appear to be in the majority, there are a number of other species living there as well.

Dwarfs

Discworld dwarfs (and yes, they use the same plural as Warhammer Fantasy Battle) are of the standard model: short, bearded, work in mines, enjoy booze and if you upset them they'll chop your knees off. Dwarf culture is... complicated, to say the least. Many fantasy authors have allegedly taken inspiration, good or bad, from Jewish culture/religion/stereotypes for their dwarfs; Terry Pratchett seems to have done something similar but unique. Their religious views can be summed up by a common saying about their god: "Tak does not require that you think of him, only that you think." They believe Tak got things started, creating life and so on, and then set out a few rules and let things go from there in the assurance that things will go right. In any case, Tak is more a character in a few myths and part of Dwarfish philosophical thinking more than a god in the sense of other Discworld gods. The thing dwarfs revere the way other races revere their gods is Tradition. The Way We Used To Do It, How It Was In The Old Days, The Real Dwarfish Life, etc. Dwarfs will often deny being religious, but they're as superstitious and observant of the things they would call holy as anyone else. Take their holy men, for example. Knockermen are dwarfs who venture alone into the dark to blow up firedamp in coal mines, alone in the dark in heavy leather clothing with the constant possibility of a cave-in, considered dead in the eyes of families that were nonetheless extremely proud of them. Knockermen became something apart but extremely important to dwarfish society, seen as communing with the darkness in mines where no one else dared to go. Kings (a title that translates literally as something like "chief mining engineer") and grags, the "rabbi" class of dwarfs, traditionally were successful knockermen, and the most traditionalist grags always wear the layers of protective leather clothing that keep knockermen safe from the heat of burning gases. A few years before the present of the setting, a dwarf living in Ankh-Morkpork invented a safety lamp that burns blue in the presence of gas, rendering the profession obsolete and preventing potentially thousands of deaths. Not everyone happy about this, to put it mildly.

Another quirk about them, the result of a fantasy trope being taken completely seriously and its implications on society being considered, is that dwarfs have two sexes but one gender. Everyone looks the same, there's only one set of Dwarfish pronouns, and once the kids are off breastfeeding there's no such thing as "women's work" among dwarfs. Letting anyone else know what's in your heavily armored pants is incredibly discouraged in dwarf society, which means that dwarf courtship rituals are all about finding out whether that dwarf you fancy actually has bits compatible with yours. However, through the influences of Ankh-Morpork a small but growing number of dwarfs want to "come out" as being female and embrace this new and exciting gender. While many city-born dwarfs see no problem with this, the older generations and the conservative dwarfs who live deeper underground see this as an abomination upon their culture, decrying the female dwarfs as ha'ak (exact meaning unknown, roughly translated as "not real dwarfs" and used in the same way 4chan uses "you will never be a woman").

It is also interesting to note that Sir Terry very clearly based his dwarfs on those of Tolkien (specifically the depiction of a proud Norse warrior race with Welsh or Northern English overtones, much like how those areas were taken over by the Vikings in real life). This shows another strength of the series: taking established cliches and conventions from genres and making them into something new simply by taking what's there to an endpoint that is both logical and humourous, bringing in other media as he does it. After all, if the dwarfs are miners, give them Welsh or Northern English accents, and if they've got Welsh accents, chuck in a stereotype about men's choirs, which makes them good for singing Hi-Ho songs, but that's a stereotype imposed by humans, see you, boyo... and so on. Incidentally, there is an urban legend that the Welsh are the lost 13th tribe of Israel... Terry was well-read, in short.

Trolls

Discworld trolls are not creatures of flesh and blood. Instead, they consist of metamorphorical rock: rock that takes the form of the stones and minerals around them. Trolls are nocturnal because of their biology: they have silicon brains, that work slower when exposed to warmth. This means that they're more intelligent and faster at night while being dumb and sluggish during the day. Likewise, trolls living up in the mountains become less intelligent when going down to warmer places like Ankh-Morpork. When a troll's brain is sufficiently chilled, the troll can become extremely intelligent, their silicon brains essentially serving as computer chips. Trolls can freeze to death this way, but they'd die long after any creature of living flesh would have perished.

While trolls are more or less immortal, growing their entire lives, as they get older and bigger they become more sluggish and more inclined to sit around and think (which is why trolls call getting old "getting philosophical"). Truly ancient trolls are the size and shape of mountains, eroding in interesting ways and eventually getting so lost in thought that they just never come back.

Because of their silicon-based biochemistry, their booze is hideously toxic to humans and will likely devour the glass it is served in as well as the table beneath it. Likewise, the trollish diet consists mostly of rocks. To chew their way through this they have diamond teeth, which are very valued by humans and dwarfs alike. As they are also highly valued by their owners, this has been one of the many points of contention between the species of the Disc. This all means of course that trolls can not digest organic matter such as plants, cats or humans, but that doesn't stop the more rural types trying occasionally.

Trolls hold that once in a while, a troll is born whose body consists of nothing but diamond. This physique helps immensely to cool down the troll's brain, making them extremely intelligent even when standing in the burning sun. These trolls are seen as semi-mythical beings, and when one is born they are destined to be kings amongst trolls. They all carry the same name, though it always refers to one individual at a time: Mr. Shine. Him diamond.

Dwarfs and Trolls have a lot of historic bad blood. It started out for fairly straightforward reasons: a quietly sleeping troll is rudely woken up by someone trying to cut off his arm with a pick-axe and a dwarf prospector investigating valuable minerals suddenly faces something big, stony, mobile and angry that's trying to pull his arms off. But the conflict just spiraled out from there with Dwarfs launching attacks against Troll tribes, which leads to Trolls attacking Dwarf holds in reprisal and so on. In particular, the Battle of Koom valley is seen as a rallying cry for both sides in the conflict, which as resulted in several repeats.

Goblins

Goblins are ugly, smell strongly(but not necessarily badly), and are extremely confusing to everyone else. They spent hundreds of years living on the edges of places, then, when the edges disappeared, they became vermin. Their societies are focused on survival at almost any cost and have gotten so used to living on a knife's edge that they didn't know how else to live until a bit of fuckery involving troll drug smuggling, a slave-trading enterprise, and Ankh-Morkpork's angriest policeman pushed them into the spotlight. Once allowed into general society, goblins have shown a great aptitude for extremely complicated human machinery. Allegedly, the inclusion of goblins in Discworld was inspired by the goblins in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and a rather hefty lore-mod that Pratchett was involved with as his Alzheimers progressed.

The Undead

There's a fair number of the Undead in Discworld.

• Vampires: You know the broad strokes of vampire lore (pointy teeth, burns to dust in the sunlight, repelled by Garlic and holy symbols, vulnerable to staking, we're walking). Pterry said that he used Hammer Horror films as a starting point. Where they break the mold is with fixation. Vampires need blood, but any mammal will do just fine. As a default they crave blood, but it is possible for that Craving to be transferred onto something else: Iconography, Coffee, history and geneology and political dealings.
• Zombies: Not the Zombie Apocalypse type. But occasionally the living dead animate themselves. Sometimes a Voodoo type person brings back someone with unfinished business. Sometimes you get shamblers which stir from the grave with some fragment of their old memories that wander about crypts. Sometimes there's a surplus of Life Force sloshing about. Occasionally someone just stays in their body and keeps it going. Usually people which get highly fixated on things.
• Ghosts: spirits of the dead with unfinished business.
• Animated skeletons: Show up occasionally. Why are they here? A: the same broad reasons as other undead and B: why not? These are distinct from Death, who was never alive in the first place

Werewolves are technically not Undead, but tend to get lumped in with them.

Igors

Technically human, the Igors are a clan distinct enough to notice. As their name suggests, they are based on the hunchbacked laboratory assistants from old Universal and Hammer horror movies: they lisp, they limp a bit, look quite ugly, help in their master's unwholesome experiments and so on. They are extremely skilled at appearing behind you as you call them, opening doors just before you knock them, gunking up door hinges so they creak, finding whatever unusual materials their master might need, and sensing thunderstorms days in advance. On top of this, they tend to act like butlers as well: they clean (except for cobwebs, they cultivate those), cook and run errands. The code of an Igor is simple:

• Never question the master
• Never pass judgement
• Never grumble

Igor freelancers are rare because they like to work for people like vampires, mad scientists and the nobility of Überwald (the Disc's version of eastern Europe). They can be quite the traditional sort, insisting on calling their employers "marthter" or "mithtreth" and like to generally indulge in the traditional things you'd expect from an Igor. They serve loyally but up to a point: when the angry mob comes a'knocking they will hightail it out of there with no regard for their master's safety. Vampires are a personal favourite to work for, because of their employer's schedule they have plenty of time to indulge in their calling: surgery.

Igors are immensely skilled with needle and thread, being able to patch up pretty much any wound that did not kill someone (or when it did, make it look like it didn't). This makes them incredibly valued as surgeons, being able to reattach limbs, stitch up anything up to and including decapitation and know how to improve the human body. Regions, where Igors are common, have something like a public health care system involving them: all injuries an Igor can heal are patched up free of charge. However, upon death (and Igors somehow know exactly when this is) they come knocking, asking to harvest any organs they might like in return for whatever procedure was done. This is done with the utmost respect for the dead, and once an Igor is done the body will look none the worse (not worse than dead, at least). Refusal is unheard of, mainly because if this is done the Igor will just shrug and leave, and no Igor will ever help the deceased's family ever again.

Igors are really into body modifications, but not on the level of Franken Fran. They will always look for ways to improve the body, whether through their own handiwork or byways of transplants. They can remove a damaged kidney and replace it with a fully functioning one with ease and good survival rates for patients, which is surprising given the technology level of the Disc. When an Igor dies they are completely taken apart so that the parts can, in essence, be given a second life. Even brains are removed if possible, so that when someone suffers brain death their dead brain can be replaced with another and, well, you keep meeting old friends like this.

The Igors are one big clan. When you mention one they immediately know which Igor you are talking about (but can get annoyed when other people don't get this). Female Igors exist as well and are called Igorina. Unlike their male counterparts who are quite hideous to behold, Igorinas are beautiful, with only a bit of stitching placed artistically to show their allegiance. This makes them quite the catch for men, but the same goes for male Igors. Young ladies seem to like them quite a bit despite their looks; it is hinted at that this is because of their huge, ahem, skill sets.

Orcs

A species created by the Dark Lord who ruled the Überwaldean Sorcerous Republic(known elsewhere as the Evil Empire, Unholy Empire, etc)as living weapons. Due to their involvement with the old regime as terror weapons, they have been hunted to near extinction, existing individually or in small tribes hiding in the mountains of Überwald. The orcs contain something known as the "little brother" that heals them from any wound even near-fatal, it also may contribute to their great strength and size changes that they go through: the more confident and proud the orc the bigger they get and vice versa.

Gods and Similar

What most people worship on the Disc are beings largely shaped by belief function. Gods start out as specks of near mindless consciousness floating about, little more than voices on the wind with an appetite for belief and there are billions of them out there. They have just enough power to do a few minor things like point out a dropped coin purse or stir up the simple thoughts of a sheep or whisper into the ear of one receptive. If they are lucky, one of them manages to stir things just enough that some passing human takes notice of some minor thing that they did and sets up a couple of stones or mumbles out a brief line of thanks, a small slice of belief which is enough to give the God a flash of power and intelligence, and the ability to speak to his new worshiper. This can easily snow ball as that worshiper gets new worshipers, the miracles flow and the ascendant God rises in power among the tribe. Many gods stay prominent among a single people, others end up smooshed together when the isolated peoples begin meeting up with each other and find out that their Thunder God is a lot like the Thunder God in the clans Hubward, Rimward, Turnwise and Widdershins. The biggest and most prominent Gods end up living on Dunmanifestin, the city of the God on top of Cori Celesti, the tallest mountain at the Hub of the Disc.

However, success can be it's own downfall. Around the worship of a God will emerge priests, monks, ecclesiastic hierarchy, temples, rituals and so forth. Eventually these mechanisms can divert belief away from the target god and towards themselves. The end result of which is that the God gradually declines, leaving only the shell of the religious institutions while the God once again becomes a small speck on the wind with the memories of the greatness they once had.

Gods (and their associated angels) are tied up in the Afterlife. Worship Blind Io and you get into a hall of Eternal Feasting, etc. On the same note Demons and Devils are technically a variety of God on (and metaphysically adjacent to) the Disc, even if they are less savory.

Anthropomorphic Personifications are Similar to Gods. The distinction is that they are not dependent on worship. Once the world produced beings which could comprehend the notion of death and at some point they would die, their thoughts, fears and worries was the germ which eventually grew into Death. A being which they gave a face and a bony form because the Human mind works that way. Other such entities include War, Famine, Pestilence, Chaos, the Boogeyman (an embodiment of fear) and the Hogfather (the Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus).

It should be noted that beyond the Gods there are the Olden Ones. There are eight of them, they exist at a universal level, are not born of belief and have little involvement with things on a discly level. These include The Creator and Azrael, the Death of the Universe.

The Auditors of Reality

The total opposite of Warhammer's Chaos Gods, but not in a nice way.

The Auditors of Reality are a Celestial Bureaucracy tasked with the administration of the Discworld's universe. Beings which are there to make sure that gravity works, chemicals react and particles collide properly. They are innumerable, immortal, intelligent, logical and formless, though they will assume the shape of empty grey robes when they interact with others or themselves. But more than anything else, they are creatures of Order. Unlike a lot of supernatural elements on the Disc, they are not products of Belief Function. They exist independently of conventional life, which they see as a blight on their universe. The world they desire is a simple one in which rocks move in arcs, suns burn hydrogen into helium and nothing happens which can not easily be calculated ahead of time. Life messes this up, especially intelligent life with dreams and beliefs which can distort reality in wildly unpredictable ways. To beings which only know the satisfaction of a system functioning smoothly, such messiness is an abomination which needs to be expunged.

Fortunately they can't simply do Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies with asteroids. They have a degree of latitude in their action within them, but they are entities of order and are bound to follow The Rules. Instead they generally contrive to steer Humans into wiping themselves out. Their understanding of human behavior is limited, but they worked out that they can usually get humans to follow instructions in exchange for Gold (which they can create out of thin air, the real deal rather than stuff magicked into gold which turns back the next day). To that end they can also Incarnate, assembling a body from random atoms and energy in the general area and (as the body has no life of it's own) sending an Auditor in to pilot it. But this carries it's own risks.

A particular quick of the Auditors is that of uniformity. Each Auditor is exactly like the other and they try to keep it that way. The Auditors themselves only really believe in their immortality, which is the immortality of forces. Individuals in contrast have lives and lives are by definition finite. If an Auditor becomes an individual (by referring to themself as "Me" more than a few times, displaying traits which set them apart from the others, etc) they quickly expire in a puff of smoke, as the life of an individual is infinitesimally short when compared to the immortality of the universe. There's a flaw in this logic, but they never figure it out before it's too late. As such they operate in groups of three, with each Auditor being monitored by the other two as they carefully avoid any tendency that could lead to becoming a personality. On the same note, they only come to decisions by discussing it to death and achieving consensus. Incarnating renders the Auditor resistant from displays of identity snuffing them out, but doing so can bind the auditor to it's body with all it's glands and stuff. Unless an Auditor deliberately abandons it's body, it dies with it and with each breath they draw that becomes more difficult. But more than that the sensation that a body has can overwhelm a Auditor and kill it.

Most Discworld villains are One Offs, usually dying or otherwise being taken out of the picture before the last page. The Auditors are somewhat unique in that they are recurring villains, never fully put to rout.

Elves

The other major reoccurring villains of Discworld, and kind of the antithesis to the Auditors, in that they represent a force of malevolent fantasy as opposed to cold mechanistic order.

Alien beings from a "parasite dimension" attached to the Disc, Elves are nasty, soulless creatures who naturally project an aura of glamour that makes them appear beautiful and wonderful. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a lot of people forgetting how terrifying they actually are over the generations (aided by the fact that it was considered taboo to talk bad about them less you get their attention). Imagine the Druchii if instead of relying on knives¹, wracks and hot brands to do their torturing they could get into your head and without the edgelord aesthetic. Weak against anything made of iron, due to it interfering with their ability to sense magnetic fields. Elvish mind tricks can work on essentially everyone that's unprepared to fight them, and only exceptionally powerful and skilled magic users can evade a focused attack from a powerful elf. However, this power is a double-edged sword: Without their glamours (and no elf would ever willingly drop its magical defenses while conscious) they're just foxy homonids that never left the Bronze Age.

There are also a few mentions of more "traditional" elves on the Disc: these are not true Elves but instead hybrids between Elves and the native inhabitants of the disc, and pretty much just amount to normal people with pointy ears.

¹This is not to say they aren't fans of knives per se, but mindfuckery is their preferred tool of torment

Locations

Ankh-Morpork

"Quanti Canicula Ille In Fenestra"

– The motto of the city of Ankh-Morpork

"We own all your helmets, we own all your shoes/We own all your generals, touch us and you'll lose! Morporkia, Morporkia, Morporkia owns the day! We can rule you wholesale, touch us and you'll pay!"

– The "threat" portion of the national anthem of Ankh-Morpork, "We Can Rule You Wholesale".

The largest city on the Discworld, the capital of mercantile, a cultural melting pot and a hive where scum and villainy rule by law. Something of a bizarre mix of London, Florence, and Amsterdam (with the author saying it resembles large parts of 19th century Prague), the Big Wahoonie (as it is sometimes called) is located at where the fertile Sto Plains meet the Circle Sea byways of the River Ankh. This river is one of the vilest, unhealthy, life-bearing (which in the case of a river like this is NOT a good thing) and toughest bodies of water in fiction. The sludge is tough enough to draw a chalk line on, you can walk across if you keep the pace up, no ship devised by the hands of man can sail its waters and the bloody thing tends to catch fire in the summer. Still, the people of the city are proud of their very own River of Life. Suggestions to improve the Ankh using new embankments and dwarf-built sewers have met with general protest from the citizens of the Disc's largest city, who will protest just about anything just for the hell of it.

The founding of Ankh-Morpork is shrouded in legend. Some sources claim it was founded by twin brothers raised by a hippopotamus. The animal is the royal animal of Ankh. Eight stone hippopotami decorate the Brass Bridge, and legend states that if the city is ever in danger they will come to life and run away. Another legend states that long ago there was a great flood, and an ark was built to save two of every animal from it. After forty days and forty nights, all the dung from these animals was thrown overboard and people called it "Ankh-Morpork".

Ankh-Morpork used to be a kingdom, but the last king, Lorenzo the Kind, was overthrown and subsequently executed for torture and (implied) paedophilia. His executioner, Stoneface Vimes, wanted to introduce democracy to the city. This was voted against, since the public saw it as "the rulers of the city don't want to do their bloody jobs", and in the end Old Stoneface himself got executed for regicide. Nowadays, Ankh-Morpork is run by an official called the Patrician as part of a non-hereditary oligarchic system, appointed by the various powers in the city. In practice, most Patricians were just as bad as their royal predecessors, but they were a lot more tolerable since they were also a lot more replaceable and didn't act like they had the Gods-given right to be tyrants, rising to power through honest corruption and despotism.

The current Patrician, Havelock Vetinari, has decided to do things differently. Inheriting a city that was corrupt and crumbling he began to train it like a dog. Thieves were allowed to found their own guild and work semi-legally (they have to carry ID cards and may only steal from people within certain quotas), the Seamstresses (hem hem) organized and even the guild of Assassins was allowed to function in the open. The guilds take the violation of the internal rules very seriously and are allowed to punish transgressors that would otherwise be tried by the city. Guilds were made clear that a lower, but continuous source of revenue is better than large chunks of it laced with daggers in the back. This allowed the city to not only grow but also prosper. Nobody (whether they are in power or not) likes Vetinari, but they prefer him in charge rather than someone under the thumb of a rival guild. Meanwhile, Lord Vetinari acts completely in the interest of the city with next to no ego, has no vices he indulges in, does not act like a despot despite being one and fully understands and acts on the human desire to have tomorrow be just like today. It also helps that he has now made his own presence (or more subtly, the presence of his kind of governance) an integral component of keeping the city going.

Unless you're a mime of course, in which case Vetinari will have you hung upside down in the scorpion pit. LEARN THE WORDS.

Under Vetinari's rule, the Pax Morporkia turned from "Resist and we'll kill you" that was common under the monarchy to "Resist and we'll call in your mortgage". Ankh-Morpork has no standing army and instead relies on being the primary business partner of the nations around them, allowing the city to financially ruin anyone trying to invade them. If it actually needs to fight, it "Calls up the Regiments" which means that anyone who's got a title and enough money for a thousand funny hats has the right to equip, recruit and retain a force of fighting men. The city has also started to see a large influx of migrants: humans, dwarfs, troll, gnomes and even the undead flock to the city in droves. While they generate some problems, above all they generate revenue. Vetinari has been very open to this growth, claiming that alloys are stronger.

Sto Planes

The Discworld's equivalent to Europe, a flat fertile area that grows a lot of cabbage. Ankh Morpork is located within it, as well as a few other city states.

Lancre

A small kingdom up in the Ramtops (the mountains near the centre of the world). For the most part, it's the Shire if it had been put up on a mountain Plateau, mostly home to simple set in their ways folk (not to be confused with stupid) as well as a trio of witches. Nominally based off of the West Country of England and more specifically South Buckinghamshire. Prone to invasion by a variety of fantastical forces and more than capable of being defended by the aforementioned witches. Keeps trying to make itself relevant to the modern world, which the outside world (and everyone in the kingdom barring its king) gently ignore.

Klatch

The not!India/Middle East/Mediterranean; it's hot, sandy, jungly or greeky, depending on the region. It's very diverse, from the Djelibeybi (not!Egypt), through Tsort and Ephebe (not!GreekCityStates), to Klatch and Klatchistan (the not!Indian countries) and Omnia (not!Jerusalem, kinda) as well as a bunch other minor areas. Its main exports are curry, philosophers, and Offler The Crocodile God.

Uberwald

The not!Transylvania/Hungary; where it's not mountains, it's valleys and creeks, with hardly a flat surface to find. Überwald has a fairly high background magic level for such a large area of the Disc, and as a consequence the landscape is psychotropic: saying things like "the dark of the moon" and "the old castle" or "the dark eyes of the mind" is guaranteed to produce a rumble of thunder or a wolf howl or something. Überwaldeans abroad often take some time to adjust to this not happening. Vampires and werewolves make of the majority of Überwaldean nobility, possibly as a result of the background magic, and rule their lands in varying, often opposing ways. Efforts to unite Überwald under Lady Margolotta, a Black Ribbon vampire who has decided that political power is more likely to last than terror, are underway but moving slowly. It is important to note that while the human and humanoid races rule aboveground, Überwald beneath the topsoil is ruled by dwarfs, whose Low King resides in the great caverns beneath Bonk. The main export good of Uberwald is fat, mined from huge deposits beneath the mountains.

XXXX

The not!Australia and pronounced "Fourecks;" originally surrounded by a permanent storm that kept most sailors away from it and cut it off from the rest of the Disc. XXXX is the sandbox of the OTHER Creator, the one who goes in after a Creator has made a world and puts his own shit in because maybe that world could use a different perspective. Such lands are chock-full of weird hybrids, half-finished lifeforms, and creatures that just wouldn't be able to make it anywhere the evolutionary arms race was fiercer. Also, giant spiders. The name is a reference to XXXX Castlemaine, a brand of Aussie beer that was quite popular in the UK in the Nineties, and also to what you might put on a map if you were vaguely sure there was a wack of land somewhere but didn't know what it was called.

Counterweight Continent

The not!China/Japan; its name comes from the fact that it balances the weight of the rest of Discworld despite being, at most, 20% of the size of all the other continents combined. How? Well, it's very, very, very heavy... because it's full of gold. Gold is so common on the CC, that it's near worthless to its inhabitants. Their penny equivalent in Ankh Morpork would be worth at least several days wages.

3,000 years ago, the counterweight continent was united by One Sun Mirror with the aide of a Great Wizard who ruthlessly crushed all his opponents and founded the Agatean Empire. He then surrounded his Empire by a Great Wall and set an official policy that The Counterweight Continent was the one and only land fit for human habitation and that beyond it's boarders was nothing but a howling wasteland populated by vampire ghosts, though the leadership did keep covert tabs on foreign affairs and there was a small amount of smuggling. In spite of that, the Empire did prosper for some time in isolation. Then the Imperial Succession came into crisis leading to regular wars for dominance between the five noble houses of Hong, Sun, Fang, Tang and McSweeney.

The continent and its main city get invaded by a group of elderly barbarians, led by Cohen, and somewhat aided by Rincewind, the least lucky wizzzard to ever live.

Genoa

The not!Genua/New Orleans; they speak what would be French in Roundworld but it's unknown if the dialect they speak is mutually intelligible with Quirmian. The city's slums are fairly standard, but within the walls of the wealthier portions of the city, the populace and the architecture are as of the setting's present still recovering from a couple of decades of iron-fisted Fairy Godmother rule and resemble a twisted Disneyland. The city sits in the middle of a large swamp, the source of a good deal of its seafood and the refuge of its witches. The city is known for its not!MardiGras carnival event, excellent food, and voodoo magic.

Quirm

The not!Florence or an amalgamation of every relevant Italian Renaissance City-State, like Venice, Milan, Florence, Bologna, and what have you. Notable mostly for Leonard of Quirm, the incredible Inventor, who comes up with stuff like the Discworld's first rifle (the Gonne), or the clacks telecommunications system.

Groups and Institutions

Wizards

The Faculty of Unseen University: simultaneously some of the most brilliant and foolish men on the Disc

Wizards are not so much an association as a collective designation for male magic users¹. Because 8 is the most magically powerful number in Discworld, the 8th son of an 8th son is automatically a Wizard. If said Wizard manages to produce an 8th son of their own (an exceedingly rare occasion, given their scholarly nature and widespread (if utterly wrong) belief that such intimacies weaken their magic), the result is a Sourcerer or Wizard^2. Sourcerers are unique among Wizards, as they are a source of magic themselves rather than merely manipulating the abundance of magic that exists naturally on the Disc. Being loved by magic in a place built on magic means that a Sourcerer can essentially reshape reality to their will. The danger they represent, and the nature of their creation, are likely the real reasons Wizards are taught to practice celibacy (not that this is a hard and fast rule).

In the past Wizards lived solitary lives, isolated in tall wizard towers where they studied magic and ran experiments. However, any discoveries made were guarded jealously from other Wizards, viewed as unwelcome competitors. Inevitably this resulted in violent conflict between Wizards trying to remove rivals and plunder towers of their research, growing their own collection of knowledge and power. The resulting damage of these wars were often catastrophic, rendering large parcels of land uninhabitable by the persisting effects of unfettered magic.

In the interest of self-preservation for both themselves and everyone else living in the immediate area, Wizards finally decided to make peace and collaborate, forming universities where magic could be studied and taught freely. In fact, as the curriculum is almost purely academic, many Wizards tend to no longer bother to cast magic at all unless absolutely required - or there's an opportunity to show off to an audience. Their predilection for ambition and competitiveness does flare up on occasion, but for the most part, Wizards are mollified by overly-frequent feasting and a modicum of respect from the locals.

After the founding of these educational institutions, the oldest of which being Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, the damage of wizard rivalries was mostly only visited on the wizards themselves: once the rigors of undergraduate studies and the perils of postgrad work were complete, wizards rose up the ranks through a mixture of petty one-upmanship and assassination through mundane means. Currently, this system has become obsolete at UU due to the senior faculty choosing an Archchancellor who lived as a country gentleman for decades after completing a number of degrees and was, therefore, virtually impossible for weedy academic schemers to kill. As a result, with nobody being in danger of assassination, the faculty have taken to ignoring the student body as much as possible. In turn, with methods of advancement possible without murder, the students have been doing serious magical experimentation under the Department of Inadvisably Applied Magic, boiling down the old rituals to their bare requirements and doing the closest thing you can get to scientific experimentation in a place with such a ridiculous amount of concentrated background magic. Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly, given the previous methods for doing the same thing), the constant use of a magical-mechanical computer to run experiments has not caused any major disasters.

¹There is at least one exception to this rule, even going by the strictest definitions.

Witches

As fine a body of women as you'd ever hope to avoid...

Witches, much like their wizardly counterparts, are not so much an association as a collective designation for female magic users. Where Wizards tend to congregate and organize themselves into hierarchies, Witches tend to have an independent streak a mile wide and do their own thing. Witches do occasionally gather in Covens (usually thee, two witches can work even if they step on each others toes and you can go up to five witches before the whole thing breaks down into a flaming row, three is the sweet spot) and occasionally Witches will have larger meet-ups to discuss matters but there's a distinct lack of dancing naked in the moonlight and a lot more exchanging of local gossip and jam preserves.

Witches are generally far more reserved and austere than Wizards, even after the latter calmed down and stopped obliterating each other with fireballs. Instead of bright star-spangled robes, Witches prefer robust black cloaks that can safely get dirty and keep the chill off while flying by broomstick. Many younger (and foolish) Witches don't always agree with this sentiment, vainly going in for sheer silks and silver bangled jewellery to affect airs of enchanting mysticism. Ironically, while these have no affect on magical ability, they are in some cases detrimental to the job of being a village witch.

Good witchery actually relies very little on using magic, focused more on hard work and cultivating a Reputation of some kind. Medicine, herbology, animal husbandry, arbitration, midwifery, etc. are all often as equally important as spellcasting and potion brewing in witchcraft. Additionally, many witches employ "Boffo," a secret, nonmagical, and extremely powerful method of turning themselves into living legends and engendering respect/admiration/fear in a population. As Witches never ask for money in exchange for their services, they tend to rely on the land and goodwill (and mild intimidation) of their community, who gift foodstuffs and other essentials in appreciation. As such, anti-witch superstition is disastrous for a Witch, as even if she can easily escape an angry mob's bonfire with magic she will still likely be forced to relocate to a place more hospitable. Tragically, many lonely old women, with no family left to care for them and no magic to escape, often get caught up in anti-Witch persecution despite not being witches themselves.

This stigma is not completely unjustified (or perhaps it is the impetus?), as there are several infamous cases of Witches going insane and wreaking havoc. Witches are, by the nature of their relationships with the communities they live in, solitary people who have few friends who aren't also witches. Left alone, some witches might start to think that they're better than the people they help, that the world is full of stupid people and that she could help them if she could only set them on the right path... Conscientious witches make an effort to visit their colleagues for tea, watching their sisters for warning signs of "cackling," a kind of insanity born of physical and mental separation from the rest of the world. A cackling witch gives in to this kind of thinking and starts to shape the world to her will through magic, seeing everyone else as things instead of people and in some cases genuinely believing she's making a better world. A powerful witch who has been lost to the cackling (and the more powerful the witch, the stronger she has to fight against the urge to cackle) tends to end up having to be put down by her sisters or gets thrown in the oven in her gingerbread cottage- storybook villain witch behaviors often result from thinking with a cackling mind.

The Assassin's Guild

"Nil Mortifi Sine Lvcre" ("No Killing Without Pay")

Assassins with a Capital-A on the disc are more than just petty thugs hired to kill people for a few dollars. They are cultured and educated Ladies and Gentlemen of proven ability who are on occasion commissioned by other well-connected parties to eliminate their rivals, for a whole lot of money. The Assassin's Guild is allowed to operate in the open and its activities are legal for several reasons. First of all, the Assassins are very well connected (Vetinari was a member) and not the sort of people you want to get on their bad side. Secondly, they run one of the best schools in the City. Many nobles and wealthy people send their sons and daughters there, even if they are academic tracks within it where you don't partake in the stabbier part of the curriculum. Thirdly, the Guild has rules of conduct and a code of honor and while it is engineered to serve their purposes they are normally quite strict in following it. Notably, since that would be services provided gratis Assassins focus their efforts exclusively on their targets (or "clients"). Occasionally they might take out some guards (though bypassing and incapacitation is preferred), but with a few exceptions (that they themselves find distasteful) you don't get much collateral damage. Similarly they don't rob people and have no truck with torture. They consider themselves sportsmen and there is no glory in doing in (or "Inhuming") a poor girl with a limp and a baby working at a mustard factory near the Shades. Not that many people hate random factory workers so much that they'd pay the substantial fee for a Guild contract against them them. Mostly Assassination is a game by the Rich against the Rich which keeps them from going into an all-out war with each other. Given that it's the right of the nobles in Anhk Morpork to "Raise the Regiments" (recruit, arm, armor, train and retain forces of soldiers to serve the city) you can why this is the lesser of two evils.

As the books progress, the Guild's interest in maintaining the stability of Ankh-Morpork evolves. They cultivate a short, exclusive list of targets that they refuse to take contracts on, with Vetinari and Vimes being the key examples. Assassins are all about the game, and they recognize that killing certain people would be the equivalent of knocking over the game board.

Despite being mostly occupied with rich people trying to kill each other, Assassins are very clear that killing people is their business and they would not suffer any competition. While low-life thugs killing each other in gang wars or brawls generally fly under their radar, any licensed Thief or Seamstress Guild bouncer who accidentally applied too much force and killed their "client" would be "invited to have a word with an Assassin". Which usually does not involve words, but does involve daggers. And any freelancer actually killing people for money WOULD be made an example of, unless they're good enough to stay under Guild's radar, which is a really high bar (though not impossible one). In such a way Assassins actually prevent more murders than the city Watch does, much to the chagrin of the latter.

The Assassin's Guild mostly serves as a moderately antagonistic force in the book as well as a background for various characters. As mentioned Lord Vetinari and many of his Dark Clerks are alumni of the guild and a few other supporting figures. That said they generally don't initiate skullduggery in the books on their own, largely because their work is done on other people's behalf. There are a few exceptions, but these go against the grain by being fucking nuts.

The Fools' Guild

"Dico, Dico, Dico" ("I say, I say, I say")

Perhaps the single most depressing place on the Disc. The Fools' Guild is gravely serious about silliness, reducing jokes and slapstick routines to rote, carefully memorized, and rigidly executed performances. Custard pies must arc through the air at specific angles, rubber chickens must be slapped upside the face and not down, a set allotment of "hee-hees" and "hahs" must be recited at the correct predetermined moments, and under no circumstances is anyone to tell a joke that hasn't been through the Guild approval process. As a result, the Fools' Guild is a collection of terminally unfunny and morose clowns, each with their own signature face-paint pattern (regarded as their real face). It is implied that the guild is more than it seems: hiding under the guise of bad comedy, a small percentage of the Fools go to every court on the Disc, becoming spies that collect intelligence to be sent back to the guildmaster for unknown purposes while projecting the illusion of near-terminal harmlessness

The guild also teaches miming, however, any mime caught performing in Anhk-Morpok will find themselves sentenced to be cast into a scorpion pit by Lord Vetinari, who detests them, claiming that the world already has enough men silently trying to escape invisible boxes.

The Seamstresses' Guild

'"'Nil Volvpti Sine Lvcre" ("No Pleasure Without Pay")

A guild of women practicing the second oldest profession. (In Ankh-Morpork, the first profession is implied to have been theft.) A paying patron can enjoy a comfortable night in the arms of one (or more, if they have the funds) of the guild members with a guarantee of not being robbed blind and dumped in an alley in the Shades. Swift, brutal retribution is dealt out to any who skip the bill or mistreat the girls. Additional Guild activities include overseeing the distribution of pornographic material and protecting the legal rights of one Mr. Harris, the proprietor of the Blue Cat Club. It can be pieced together through information available in the books themselves and some of the companion guides that the Guild of Ecdysiasts, Nautchers, Cancanieres and Exponents of Exotic Dance were not willing to admit a gay establishment to their ranks, but the Seamstresses, after some debate, were, on the grounds that money is money, no matter the sexuality of the hands it passes through, and that "unnatural acts are only natural".

The Guild does house one actual seamstress, who seems to have wholly misunderstood the euphemism. She provides quality service for men who, making a similar error, bring hole-riddled socks and other garments that require mending to the brothel.

Although their profession is quite old, the Guild itself only organized officially under Lord Vetinari. Unlike with the Thieves' Guild, which was given guild status as a way to reduce disorganized, hard-to-control crimes and as a quiet replacement to the near universally defrauded Ankh-Morpork tax system, the Seamstresses' Guild had to lobby for recognition for years, finally succeeding when Mad Lord Snapcase was deposed shortly after the beginning of the series. Lord Vetinari was selected as the new Patrician, with no possibility of anyone suspecting that he might have had a hand in, say, the events of the Glorious 25th of May or the deaths of his predecessors. He promptly renamed the Whore Pits to the Street of Negotiable Affection and chartered the Seamstresses' Guild, a move that none but a very small circle would recognize as the completion of thirty years of political planning. While the day-to-day operation and internal structure is more like a trade union than a traditional guild, the Seamstresses still hold significant political sway in the city.

The Thieves' Guild

"Acutus Id Verberat" ("Whip it Quick")

Established by Lord Vetinari as a way to regulate crime in Anhk-Morpok. License-carrying thieves are legally able to steal, mug, rob, burgle, and otherwise shake down the populace, to a carefully measured and reasonably applied degree. Victims who play along are well-treated, given a notarized receipt, and a period of grace before another visit. One may exempt themselves from such meetings with proactive "charitous" donations to the Guild - drawing humorous parallels with tax collectors.

Crime dropped swiftly after the creation of the Thieves Guild, mainly due to providing most of the cities gangs and career criminals with a stable income, one that they viciously protect from any unlicensed competitors trying to operate in their turf.

Surprisingly, this is not that far off from history. In short, if the situation is lawless (like how things were in large preindustrial cities) the local gang of thieves running a protection racket can be the best defense against theft. Minor shakedowns every month for a few pennies are easier and in the long term more profitable than robbing people blind and ruining them, especially when you actually catch criminals who were threatening the clients in the protection racket.

Ankh Morpork City Watch

The Police Force of Ankh Morpork and is the subject of several Discworld Books. At it's introduction it was divided into the Day Watch and the Night Watch and it was a joke. An atrophied rump of an institution. Before Vetinari it did not much beyond round up cattle, the less violent of drunks for a night in the cells, guard the gates (IE stand by and wave people through), snatch the occasional unlucky petty crook and (in the case of most officers) extort bribes. Under Vetinari's early reign, it was left to rot away down to a handful of people led by a Rich Idiot and a worn out inebriate named Sam Vimes, at least until one Carrot Ironfounderson showed up and set things in motion to see its rebirth into a proper Law Enforcement Agency. This includes proper training, a sense of professionalism, preventative policing, detective work, community relations, an Igor based health plan and forensics.

The development of the Watch unfolds over several books, in each of which it grows and expands as an institution. The biggest themes in the book is the idea of that of law and self control. Before the Watch books, "justice" was a rubber stamp on the whims of the rich and powerful. If you messed with them or were in their way, they had goons deal with you. When they did something wrong, you looked away and pretended it never happened or (if was someone you knew) it was an accident/misunderstanding, possibly with a few dollars or veiled threats to buy your silence. In contrast, the Watch grows into something which can stand up to the Rich and Powerful. The Law is there and it's for everyone. But as important as making a stand is and catching thieves is, just as important is the self-control not to knock heads about in righteous anger at the drop of a hat or when you're worked up.

Barbarian Heroes, Dark Lords, and Other Relics

The last vestiges of Medieval Stasis/the pulp fantasy parody that the Disc began as in The Color of Magic/The Light Fantastic. Even at that point, they had been dying out for some time. While they don't have a major impact on the overall plot of the Disc, the story of the people on the edges and the edges themselves like Cohen is important to understand the setting. The story of how the barbarians became important characters instead of throwaway jokes and realized that the world they once lived in was dead is a tragedy worthy of a monumental saga.

All around the Disc, the world is changing. The warriors of the steppe settled down and became kings with governments and tax agencies. The cities grew, and with them so did the rule of law. Scammers and small-pond financial bullying replace Dread Kings and Dark Lords, ancient gnarled forests go to the lumber mills, and new coach roads make the frozen lands up by the Hub empty, save for the last few Heroes and the occasional troll still holding out hope for the ancient family bridge. What were once trackless wastes filled with the promise of adventure are now fenced and divided into farmland. The world is shrinking, moving fast and leaving behind those who carved a swath into the darkness of the great Frank Frazetta painting of the untamed Disc for civilization to follow behind. This is where the Barbarian Heroes find themselves: obsolete, nearly forgotten, and quickly shrinking in numbers. Some settled down and became innkeepers, or some other such trade as someone who spent a lifetime living by the sword would consider acceptable. Others ended up in city watches across the plains, or working as bodyguards. Most of them died in their prime, off on some adventure, and were sent to the feasting halls of their various afterlives. Some of them, however, got too good at being Heroes. They still followed The Code, a set of fantasy tropes that are treated as rules that bind them to others in the hero business and related trades, they still carried their swords and axes, albeit somewhat stiffly, and they never stopped looking for new worlds to conquer. They were the Silver Horde, and not one of them was younger than seventy.

Cohen the Barbarian, introduced in The Light Fantastic, was a world-renowned fighter, the feature of half the songs and stories of his time. He was also an old, old man, too tough to die but suspicious enough to know he probably should have done. The Silver Horde, a group of barbarians and a former schoolteacher who formulated a plan to topple an emperor and seize the throne of the Agatean Empire, were of a similar age. In the end, their absurd plan paid off: once Teach had led the traditionalist Heroes reluctantly through the back lines to seize control of the palace, they managed to defeat the massed armies of the Agatean noble families through the power of Rincewind getting into trouble at the right time and a lot of stubbornness. During this fight, Cohen and his Horde find out, in asking each other, that they're the only ones left. All the old heroes were retired, working for wages, or had died in battle. Atop the throne in the capital city in Hunghung, Ghengiz Cohen, conqueror of the Agatean Empire, never felt secure in his victory. When Old Vincent, one of the company, died an unheroic death choking on a cucumber, he started thinking hard about why the hell he didn't get the glorious death everyone else did. For that matter, why had any of them lived this long? What was the point? As is common in this sort of situation, Cohen looked to the gods. However, this being the Disc, the Discworld gods being capricious bastards who are immortal only for a given value of immortal, and Cohen being Cohen, this was not to pray for guidance. The gods had had it their way for long enough, and Agatean alchemy provided access to "thunderclay," a possibly semi-magical explosive compound theoretically capable of blowing Dunmanifestin off of Cori Celesti.

The Books

The Discworld series consists primarily of two series of books: the main series and the young adult novels. The former is the series of 34 books that people will think of when hearing "Discworld", and contains the most famous stories. The young adult novels are a half-dozen books aimed at younger audiences. Then there are the various spinoffs like a pair of children's books, the illustrated version of two other books and a variety of short stories and supportive material. Most of the books are parodying a specific thing first and foremost with some general asides.

Main series

The Color of Magic

• Sub-series: Rincewind
• Focus of Satire: General Fantasy.

The debut of Rincewind. The world's first tourist, Twoflower, shows up in Ankh-Morpork. Rincewind, a failed wizard, is tasked with protecting him. This book is notable for being a parody of various tropes common in the fantasy genre like Vancian magic and parodies things like D&D, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Conan the Barbarian, H.P. Lovecraft's work and more. This book is meant to set up the world of the Disc and, as a result, feels like only half of a greater story, part two of which is...

The Light Fantastic

• Sub-series: Rincewind
• Focus of Satire: General Fantasy.

It's a direct sequel to the first book, the first and last time this happens. This one has less of the world-building and single chapter adventures, replacing them instead with a more singular storyline. Makes fun of the fantasy genre as a whole again; Conan the Barbarian, the maiden in distress trope, the occasional dig at Tolkien and much more. Theoretically, you COULD skip book one and go straight to this (they sum the major information points up, and this one is, marginally, better) but, regardless, the first book is still a good, fun read, as is this one.

Equal Rites

• Sub-series: Witches of Lancre, even if it's only Granny Weatherwax.
• Focus of Satire: Gender Politics.

The debut of Granny Weatherwax, a witch who accompanies the little girl Eskarina to Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork to learn wizardry. The problem is that both witches and wizards feel very strongly that wizards can only be boys, and that witches can only be girls.

Mort

• Sub-series: Death

The debut of Death as a major character. Death feels like he should take on an apprentice and picks the farm boy Mort, which causes trouble when he tasks Mort to gather the soul of a princess. Mort doesn't want her to die so he saves her, causing all sorts of trouble.

Sourcery

• Sub-series: Rincewind
• Focus of Satire: General Fantasy, some Arabian Knights stuff.

The eighth son of an eighth son is a wizard. The eighth son of a wizard however is a Sourcerer, a wizard squared. Being an entity of intense magical power the Sourcerer Coin attempts to take over the world at the behest of the spirit of his father, who inhabits the boy's magical staff.

Wyrd Sisters

• Sub-series: Witches of Lancre
• Focus of Satire: Shakespeare (specifically Macbeth).

The debut of the Lancre Witches. King Verence of Lancre is murdered by his cousin Leonal Felmet egged on by his power mad wife. Taking the Throne Felmet is brought into conflict with the witches, which is, as he learns, a very bad idea.

Pyramids

• Sub-Series: Stand-Alone/Ancient Peoples
• Focus of Satire: Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. British boarding schools.

A standalone book (or part of an aborted sub-series). Prince Teppic of Djelibeybi finishes his education at the Guild of Assassins in Ankh-Morpork and learns that his father has passed on, making him the new king of a heavily Egyptian-inspired kingdom. He travels back home only to find the court dominated by the ancient high priest Dios.

Guards! Guards!

• Sub-Series: City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Police, monarchy, disposable fantasy mooks, Dragon focused fantasy and the bits of The Hobbit directly relating to Dragons.

The debut of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Carrot Ironfoundersson is a dwarf who isn't. A human orphan, found and raised by dwarfs in the mountains, at the urging of his father Carrot goes to Ankh-Morpork to join the city's Night Watch, an esteemed and honourable institute. Or so he's told: in practice, the Dwarves have their info a few generations out of date, and by now there are only three people in the Night Watch: the alcoholic Captain Vimes, the bumbling Sergeant Colon and the petty thief Corporal Nobbs. Possessing an immense sense of duty and a matching heap of charisma, Carrot and the other watchmen get dragged into a plot involving a shadowy group summoning a dragon in an attempt to install a puppet ruler on the throne of the city.

Eric

• Sub-Series: Rincewind
• Focus of Satire: Faust.

The shortest of the mainline Discworld books, the titular demonologist summon what he thinks to be a demon, only to get Rincewind bound to him. Basically a bunch of loosely linked vignettes.

Moving Pictures

• Sub-Series: Industrial Revolution
• Focus of Satire: Hollywood

The debut of CMOT Dibbler as a major character and lays the foundation for the Wizards, as well as Gaspaud the Wonder Dog. Alchemists in Ankh-Morpork discover how to capture moving images and project them onto a screen. An entire industry dedicated to making these moving pictures pops up in the Holy Wood, located not too far from the city. But the threat to this new industry is not just because of Dibbler's business practices...

Reaper Man

• Sub-Series: Death
• (Secondary) Focus of Satire: Exurban development.

Debut of the Auditors of Reality. The agents of the cosmic bureaucracy, the Auditors of Reality, decide that Death has become too human and is sentenced to live amongst mortals. But with Death out of the way nobody dies, which floods the world with life. This turns out to be a Very Bad Thing when Ankh-Morpork is beset by a living shopping mall.

Witches Abroad

• Sub-Series: Witches of Lancre
• Focus of Satire: Vacations and Fairy Tales.

Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick travel to Genua (not-quite New Orleans Genoa) in an attempt to, for a change, prevent a servant girl from marrying a prince. While doing so they come into conflict with Lilith, a woman Granny Weatherwax knows all too well.

Small Gods

• Sub-Series: Stand Alone/Ancient Peoples
• Focus of Satire: Religion.

A standalone book, or a follow up to pyramids. The Omnian Empire (which is sort of like if the Spanish Inquisition was run by Friend Computer) holds that the worship of the Great God Om comes above all. The novice Brutha finds a turtle dropped by an eagle but is surprised to find that the turtle talks. Om has turned into a turtle because the people's faith has slowly been draining from Om into the church itself, meaning that he lost all his power and has been turned into this state. The book is infamous for fucking up the timeline: in Pyramids Omnia is as described in this book, but in later books, it is far different, with changes that could not have happened in the mere years between the books.

Lords and Ladies

• Sub-Series: Witches of Lancre
• Focus of Satire: Shakespeare (specifically A Mid Summer Night's Dream), friendly sparkly elves and fairies

The Lancre Witches come into conflict with the Fae, who enter the Discworld from their own parasitic universe. This happens right around Magrat's impending wedding with the king of Lancre.

Men at Arms

• Sub-Series: City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Policing in a diverse society, Firearms in Fantasy, Monarchism.

Debut of Angua and Detrius as a major character. Captain Vimes is going to marry and retire from the watch within the week. Before he goes, he has to train three new minority recruits he was forced to take on by Lord Vetinari: Detrius the troll, Cuddy the dwarf and Angua the w-, eh, that should be obvious. Meanwhile, a retired assassin deduces that corporal Carrot might very well be the heir to the throne of the city and hatches a plot to put Carrot there, all the while using an ancient and banned object.

Soul Music

• Sub-Series: Death/Industrial Revolution.
• Focus of Satire: Rock and Roll.

Debut of Susan. The elf-ish Llamedosian musician Imp y Celyn chafes at the rigid ways of making music in his native village and decides to make his way to Ankh-Morpork to make a living with his music there. After some initial hurdles and the breaking of his old instrument, he buys a guitar from a mysterious shop that disappears and appears all over the place. The instrument seems to have a mind of its own, and while it plays some very powerful music it takes a toll on his psyche. Meanwhile, Death's granddaughter Susan puts the powers in her blood that was passed down by her grandfather (somehow, it's the Disc and heredity means more than squiggly spirals when the Grim Reaper adopts you) to the test as she tries to save Imp from himself.

Interesting Times

• Sub-Series: Rincewind
• Focus of Satire: East Asia, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Communist Revolutions.

Rincewind is forced by the wizards to go to the Agatean Empire, located on the Counterweight Continent. Here he encounters old friends and is pulled into a rebellion against the overbearing empire, very much against his will.

Maskerade

• Sub-series: Witches of Lancre
• Focus of Satire: The Phantom of the Opera, Opera and broadly speaking musical theatre.

Phantom of the Opera redux. Now that Magrat is a queen Granny and Nanny need a third witch to fill out their coven. Their eye falls on Agnes Nitt, a sizable young woman with an amazing singing voice, who has recently moved to Ankh-Morpork to join the opera. The people there are very much impressed with her voice but finds herself an understudy to the much less talented, intelligent and sizable Christine. While Agnes doesn't want anything to do with witchery, she cannot help but think like a witch when faced with the mysterious and murderous Phantom. Of the opera.

Feet of Clay

• Sub-Series: City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Police Procedurals and Whodunits. AND robot fiction, e.g. Asimov.

Debut of Cheery Littlebottom. The City Watch is larger and more effective than ever. Their first major case is a pair of murders that may or may not involve golems, the clay automatons working in the city. At the same time, the Watch has to deal with the poisoning of Lord Vetinari, which puts the city in a delicate position.

Hogfather

• Sub-series: Death
• Focus of Satire: Christmas, belief systems.

Susan has taken up a job as a governess, trying to live a normal life despite all the supernatural things happening around her. Meanwhile, the Auditors of Reality hatch a plot to have the Hogfather (the Discworld equivalent of Santa) assassinated, forcing Death to take his place. Regardless of what she wants, Susan is roped into the investigation of what happened to the Hogfather and ends up entangled in a plot involving both the monsters under our beds and the completely mundane people who should scare us more.

Jingo

• Sub-Series: City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Nationalism, Racism, Militarism and the Middle East.

The island of Leshp rises out of the sea, smack dab between Ankh-Morpork and the not-Arabic Klatch. When diplomatic efforts go awry it is up to Commander Vimes of the City Watch to keep the peace and find the would-be assassin of the Klatchian ambassador.

The Last Continent

• Sub-Series: Rincewind
• Focus of Satire: Bladdy 'Straya, mate!

Rincewind is not dead, and in fact ended up on the continent of XXXX, where he does his usual running away from people who try to murder him. Meanwhile, the wizards try to find a cure for the Librarian's condition that interferes with his morphic field, causing him to switch into random animals and objects every time he sneezes. They discover that the only one who can help them with this would be Rincewind, and they set out on a quest to return him safely.

Carpe Jugulum

• Sub-series: Witches of Lancre
• Focus of Satire: Vampire Fiction

Aside from their usual weaknesses, vampires seem to have a psychological need to set up things for would-be heroes to easily slay them: curtains that can be pulled aside easily, objects that can be used as improvised holy icons, chairs with sharp legs that can be used as stakes and so on. A new generation of vampires, the de Magpyr family from Überwald, decides to adapt to this and set up shop in Lancre. This pits them against the witches and a soft-spoken Omnian reverend, the former of which know all too well how stories work.

The Fifth Elephant

• Sub-Series: City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Eastern Europe, post-Soviet Union politics, Nazism, Spy Stuff

Commander Vimes is sent to Überwald on a diplomatic mission to attend the coronation of the Low King. With the theft of the Scone of Stone however, this is made difficult, for without the Scone there can be no coronation. Meanwhile, Angua's past catches up to her and she needs to decide whether to return to her old life or stay with Carrot and the Watch.

The Truth

• Sub-Series: Industrial Revolution, with Watch cameos.
• Focus of Satire: Journalism.

A standalone book. Scribe William de Worde teams up with a bunch of dwarfs to invent the printing press and essentially create the first newspaper. Meanwhile, the people who made an attempt to dethrone the Patrician return with a plot to replace him with a body double and hire Mr Pin and Mr Tulip (pretty much the Discworld version of Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction) to help them to this end. Notable for signifying the end of Medieval Stasis in the setting; while previous books introduced analogues of real world technology for the purposes of parody, they'd always be exposed as some dangerous magic whatsit that is conveniently disposed of at the end. The Truth marks the first time one of these fads actually stays a permanent part of the setting.

Thief of Time

• Sub-series: Death
• Focus of Satire: Martial Arts, Spy Stuff, Time Travel, the Apocalypse and In-Universe Continuity.

The Auditors of Reality make an attempt to stop time. They employ clockmaker Jeremy Clockson to build a clock that, when turned on last time, stopped time and shattered history. The History Monks, a monastic tradition dedicated to the protection of time, apprentice the know-it-all student Lobsang Ludd to the sweeper Lu-Tze, who is far, FAR more than he lets on. Lobsang discovers that he has a knack for working with the Procrastinators, machines that can manipulate time. The two of them are sent to Ankh-Morpork by the abbot of the History Monks to discover what made the Procrastinators go haywire. All the while, Death attempts to recruit Susan and his fellow Horsemen to ride out to not end the world, but save it instead. This book also introduces a convenient explanation for every single continuity error and anachronism in the series: when the History Monks repair the timeline, sometimes they don't do a clean job.

The Last Hero

• Sub-Series: Rincewind, with City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Barbarian Heroes, Space Travel

Cohen the Barbarian, bitter at the heavens for making mankind mortal, teams up with his fellow barbarian adventurers and his former arch-nemesis Evil Harry Dread to climb to the realm of the gods Dunmanifestin and ensure that the "Last Hero will return what the First Hero stole". In other words, he seeks to return fire to the gods. Knowing that blowing up Dunmanifestin would result in the destruction of the Disc, Vetinari gathers up a crew of three individuals: Rincewind the Wizzard, Captain Carrot and the genius inventor Leonard of Quirm, to pilot a vessel of Leonard's design in order to reach Dunmanifestin in time to stop Cohen's plot.

Night Watch

• Sub-Series: City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Political Revolution and Les Miserables.

Commander Vimes is cast thirty years back in time, alongside the murderer that he was chasing, as a result of Thief of Time's plot. Vimes ends up taking the place of his old mentor John Keel and begins to take a pivotal role in the civil war against the mad Patrician Lord Winder. It's like Les Mis meets Terminator 2, except Valjean is a psychopath and Javert-slash-Ahnold doesn't die in the end... kind of.

While it has plenty of jokes, it's also probably the most serious and dark Discworld novel. When the time comes for it, it can be chilling.

Monstrous Regiment

• Sub-Series: Stand-alone with Watch cameos.
• Focus of Satire: British Military, Sharpe, Women dressing up as men to serve in the military and other gender-related matters.

Oliver Perks wants to join the army so that he can find out what happened to his brother. He has a rough time there not just because of the hardships his country is going through, but because he's actually a girl named Polly. She finds herself amongst a motley group of fellow soldiers lead by the naïve but dutiful Lieutenant Blouse and the hard around the edges but very protective Sergeant Jackrum. As the group make their way to the front to join the rest of the 10th Foot, they begin to realize that the war is going much worse than they thought, and the foundations of Borogravian government and religion (and the gender binary) begin to wobble.

Going Postal

• Sub Series: Industrial Revolution
• Focus of Satire: The Post Office, Communications, White Collar Crime, Public vs Private services.

Debut of Moist von Lipwig. Albert Spangler is caught for theft, tried, convicted, hanged, buried and receives an obituary. Moist von Lipwig, what he is actually called, wakes up in the Patrician's office instead. Vetinari makes him an offer: take a second round on the rope or become the new Postmaster of the defunct Ankh-Morpork Post Office. He is assigned a parole officer (a golem) and reluctantly sets out to do his new job. Moist is a man who not only takes refuge in audacity but builds up its defences, raises an army of shooting targets, and makes war on logic. The new AMPO turns out to be a success, but this pits him against the powerful Grand Trunk, the company running the semaphores. The Grand Trunk does not like competition ruining their bottom line, which consists of ruthlessly exploiting the workers and ruining the company's working culture.

Thud!

• Sub-Series: City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Race Relations, reactionary politics, generations-old grudges and policing around said issues in a multicultural society.

Right before the anniversary of the Battle of Koom Valley (an old, grudge-setting battle between the trolls and dwarfs) a dwarfish grag gets his head smashed in. On the scene a troll club is found, driving up the tensions between trolls and dwarfs. Worse, the Watch is forced to employ a new recruit: Salacia von Humpeding, who is a vampire. While investigating the murder Vimes hurts his hand and it starts to itch strangely. With the threat of an all-out war looming over them Vimes and the Watch have to solve one of their most important cases yet.

Making Money

• Sub-Series: Industrial Revolution
• Focus of Satire: Money (duh) and Economics, Banking

After his success at the AMPO, Vetinari assigns Moist von Lipwig to the Royal Mint, tasking him with laying the foundations of a robust financial system that will support Vetinari's upcoming ambitious civic construction projects. He gets to meet the majority shareholder of the Royal Bank of Anhk-Morpork, a clever old lady who immediately makes Moist out for the crook that he is. She dies soon afterwards, leaving her shares to her dog Mr Fusspot, then leaving the dog to Moist... as well as a significant contract on his head if something were to happen to the dog, roping Moist into her final revenge on her scheming in-laws: With Mr. Fusspot owning a controlling share in the bank, the Lavishes, the family that the previous chairwoman married into, lose their centuries-old family claim to the running of the bank. As Moist tries to rebuild public confidence in banks and dodges attempts by members of the Lavish family, his name and face become well-known across the Sto Plains... and soon enough, his past life comes knocking.

Unseen Academicals

• Sub-series: Stand Alone
• Focus of satire: Football, classism and racism, Romeo and Juliette.

Romeo and Juliet... WITH FOOTBALL! The Patrician tries to civilize the old game of Foot-the-Ball, complete with the traditional Foot-The-Ball hooliganry. The wizards end up getting involved, but they require a coach. The UU servant Mr. Nutt helps them out with this, but he turns out to be far more than meets the eye.

Snuff

• Sub-Series: City Watch
• Focus of Satire: Pride and Prejudice, travellers and gypsies, and detective series such Poirot and Midsomer Murders.

Commander Vimes is dragged off on a holiday to the countryside. Being all too aware of what happened the last time he went on one (see The Fifth Elephant), he is none too surprised to find that there was a murder. But nobody in the area seems to care on account of the victim being a goblin. Vimes however disagrees: a crime is a crime and criminals must be punished. He finds no allies in the area, with the local police actually working against him. But this does not stop Vimes, putting him in what is one of the more heavy-handed stories in the series. And Nobby gets a girlfriend.

Raising Steam

• Sub-Series: Industrial Revolution
• Focus of Satire: Rail Transport, Reactionary politics

Moist von Lipwig is once again given a new job: help develop the train line from Bonk all the way via Zemphis, Sto Lat and Ankh-Morpork to Quirm. This to the ire of Dwarfish fundamentalists who try to sabotage the rail line in every possible way in an attempt to dethrone the Low King, who is currently in Quirm for an international summit. Moist is charged with bringing the Low King home safely, but few things go as planned.

The Shepherd's Crown

The last book Terry Pratchett wrote before he dies. mayherestinpeace. Anyway, The book begins with the death of Granny Weatherwax. maysherestinpeace. Her death not only felt by everyone in Lancre, but also weakened the barrier of the world that allows the lovecraftian Elves to invade the world. Tiffany the young witch has to stop the elves invasion.

Tiffany Aching series

These books pick up where the main Witches series left off. While ostensibly for younger readers than the original series, that's more about the age of the main character, who starts out at 9 years old in the Wee Free Men and grows up throughout the series. (Editor's note: If you've got problems with J.K. Rowling for any of the several reasons people usually do or have realized that the direction of Harry Potter after book four is politically extremely stupid, this is MUCH better if you're looking for "young magical person grows up learning about magic and themselves" material for your kids.).)

The Science of Discworld series

A trilogy of books in which each book alternates between a chapter telling a story set in the Discworld, and a chapter discussing one real-world scientific phenomena.

The overarching plot of the trilogy is that an experiment in High Magic overseen by the Unseen University creates something hitherto unimaginable: a demiplane containing a universe without any magic. Fascinated by this phenomena, the leading minds of the Unseen University observe the development of one particular planet, created when the Dean stuck his fingers into the nascent universe and wiggled them about a bit. Watching as sapient life arises several times, only to be wiped out by global catastrophe, they finally decide that enough is enough when a race of apparent humans arises, and they decide to subtly guide humanity to a future in which they develop space travel and leave Earth before the next mass extinction.

The first book focuses on the setup of this paradigm, whilst the second and third books revolve around the Unseen University responding to specific threats to their project.

In the second book, the Auditors of Reality, intuitively loathing this magicless universe, manipulate events so that Charles Darwin has an encounter with the Discworld's God of Evolution; thus, he writes a book championing Intelligent Design instead of evolution, which turns out to fuck up humanity's progress to becoming a spacefaring society - as a result, the wizards must step in and ensure that he is corrected of his mistake, which ultimately requires them to temporarily bring him into the Discworld so he can see the God of Evolution in his own natural habitat (read: as a pathetic weirdo even by the dubious standards of Discworld deities) and inform him of the lost civilizations of pre-human Earth.

The third book, by comparison, is a more straightforward battle between the Wizards and elves across "Roundworld's" time zones, in order to prevent Roundworld humanity becoming fodder for the imagination-sucking parasites.

Other books

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

• Focus of Satire: The Pied Piper

The first Discworld book intended for younger audiences. The titular Amazing Maurice is a sentient talking cat, who alongside his intelligent rats and a human boy named Keith sets up a scam where the rats will infest towns in order to get them to pay Keith to get rid of them. The rats, fed up with this racket, want to quit after doing one last job, but end up stumbling into a conspiracy involving the local ratcatchers and a monstrous "Rat King".

Where's My Cow?

• Focus of Satire: Children's picture books

A real-world adaptation of the children's book Samuel Vimes reads to his son every night. A basic kids book about a man looking for his cow, and finding other farm animals instead. Things get interesting when Sam Vimes, realizing someone born in the city would probably never see a cow in his life outside of the dinner plate, rewrites the story to feature people from Ankh-Morpork Sam knows.

The World of Poo

• Focus of Satire: Children's picture books

Another real-world adaptation of a in-universe children's book. The story is about Geoffrey, a boy that becomes fascinated with the different varieties of animal feces and decides to open a museum dedicated to it. Let's just say that Vimes was pretty disappointed when it replaced Where's My Cow as his son's favourite book.

Characters

The Discworld books have a vast amount of characters spread all over them, and the books frequently switch between points of view of the various characters. It's not as bad as A Song of Ice and Fire, but there's still a massive cast spread throughout the books, many of whom are recurring characters. The characters below are sorted by sub-series.

Ankh-Morpork City Watch

"Fabricati Diem, Pvnc" - AMCW motto (truncated from original "Fabricati Diem, Pvncti Agvnt Celeriter")

• Samuel Vimes is a cop through and through. He became captain during the decline of the Night Watch, which drove him to drink. During the events involving a dragon making a grab for power, Vimes met Lady Sybil Ramkin, one of the foremost nobles in the city. They fell in love and eventually got married, launching him to the top of the social ladder. This did little for his cynicism (but did cure his tendencies as a drunkard) as he now finds that he is the establishment that he opposes. It's all quite zen. Over the course of the books, Vimes develops a reputation as an incorruptible badass who arrested Vetinari and lived, arrested two armies for attempted murder, fought werewolves with his bare hands and (while not a lot of people know this) bested an ancient demon of vengeance in a battle of wills. He is a living example of the notion that being Lawful Good does not mean that you have to be nice: Sam Vimes knows that all cops are bastards and has resolved to be the biggest bastard around in service of preserving the spirit of the law.

• Sybil Ramkin is the only remaining scion of the Ramkin family, one of the foremost real estate owners of the city. This means that her wealth is well into the millions, making her one of the richest people in the city. A fair deal of money goes to her hobby and calling: the breeding of swamp dragons. She is an authority on the subject and gladly carries the burden of caring for the little things, namely having all your hair burned off. She is an extremely nice and pleasant woman who can get along with people almost as well as Carrot does. She eventually falls in love with and marries Vimes, who loves her dearly but chafes at the trappings of the rich nobility. She takes an old-fashioned approach to the wedded life, insisting on personally cooking for her husband (who tolerates her lack of skill as long as he isn't waited on hand and foot). Despite growing up in the comfort of nobility she's a massive woman who towers over her husband, a result of her barbarian-warlord genes.
• Willikins is the butler of the Ramkin family, having been with them since he was a boy. He appears to be the standard snarky-but-polite butler, but he used to be in a gang and can still kill you with whatever he's got on him. He is almost as dangerous in a fight as Vimes, with much less holding him back from straight-up murdering you if you threaten anyone in the household.

• Carrot Ironfoundersson is a dwarf... all 6'6" of him. A young man found and raised by dwarfs, he eventually came to Ankh-Morpork to have it make a man of him. He joined the Night Watch and was instrumental in making the Watch what it is today. Carrot possesses MASSIVE amounts of charisma and naivete, which serve as his main weapons of choice: he treats everyone like jolly good chaps, and they don't have the heart to prove him wrong. Despite this, he's also massively strong, possessing a punch capable of flooring a troll. Readers have noted that while some scenes describe him from another character's point of view and other scenes describe him, but not his point of view, there has never been a scene that describes things from his point of view. This has led people (both in-universe and real-life) to suspect that Carrot is a lot smarter than he lets on and might be playing everyone for some reason. It's pretty much said outright that he's the heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork, but all evidence of this fact tends to "disappear". Carrot wields what's described as the least magical sword on the Disc. No mysterious origins or supernatural properties; it's just an incredibly effective stabbing weapon. Plus Carrot is strong enough to pin it into a stone pillar, which helps. About as Lawful Good as you can get: he sticks to the rules and makes them work for him.
• Sergeant Frederick Colon has been with the Watch longer than anyone, even Vimes. He appears to be a fat bumbling old fool but underneath that he's... well, he's still a fat bumbling old fool, but he occasionally does something extremely useful. He is a very nice man even if not sharp on the uptake, and knows a lot of retired cops, old friends and former criminals with whom he'll gladly make small talk, which makes him the Watch's unofficial one-man intelligence division. He's "one of Nature's Sergeants" and is good at handling inexperienced personnel one on one or in small groups. However, putting him in command is ill-advised, as he will crack under the pressure.
• Corporal Cecil Wormsborough St. John "Nobby" Nobbs is human. No, seriously, he has an official-looking piece of paper proving it. Extremely ugly, has lots of bad habits, is a petty criminal in his own right and has an odour best left undescribed, Nobby still somehow manages to be liked by people by virtue of his "charisn'tma" and the fact that you could trust your life to him, though you'd be daft to trust him with tuppence. He gets along great with Sergeant Colon (often being on patrol with him), frequently popping up in books to comment on the crazy happenings "do jury", as he would say. Is skilled at peacekeeping (that is, being on patrol in areas with lots of peace to keep), crime prevention (staying away from certain areas so he doesn't steal anything there) and guarding city landmarks against theft (more common than it may seem in Ankh-Morpork thanks to one "Bloody Stupid" Johnson, a gifted-and-very-untalented architect who made landmarks that could double as novelty miniatures).
• Delphine Angua von Überwald came to the city to escape her deranged family and shameful past, then turned out to have a nose for sensitive cases. She has the tendency to be, in her own words, quite the bitch, but still gets along fine with the rest of the watch, including her boyfriend Carrot. While often cynical towards him and his innocence she cannot help but walk after him like a puppy. Dogged by the feelings that come up in her every month or so she tries her best to keep herself in check and do her job. The head of the City Watch's dog brigade, she can sniff out clues that no other member possibly could. She frequently finds herself being taken hostage, only to turn the tables on her hostage takers and turn them into whimpering wrecks. She also frequently works with special police informant Gaspode; the two of them like each other more than they let on.
• Sergeant Detritus is a troll on the rise. Starting out as a splatter (like a bouncer, but trolls use more force) for the Mended Drum, he joined the City Watch after a brief stint in showbiz. He quickly turned out into a natural sergeant, shouting at people until they got in line. Tends to be quite literal-minded and too dumb to fool, but is a good cop and a good troll nonetheless. His weapon of choice is the Piecemaker, a siege crossbow originally designed to shoot metal bars through city gates. He likes to load it with bundles of arrows, turning the thing into a massive shotgun capable of levelling anything and everything that is not directly behind him, including trees, birds flying several hundred feet overhead, and the occasional house. Is very staunchly anti-drugs, which makes sense given how overdose-related deaths by troll drugs are both incredibly common and incredibly messy.
• Cheery "Cheri" Littlebottom is the Watch's forensics expert. A former alchemist hired to fight crime WITH SCIENCE. A bit shy and hates to yell at people, which is why her promotion took a while despite her great competence. Became a leader in the dwarfish women movement when she started to wear makeup, earrings and wear skirts, kickstarting it with the encouragement of her close friend Angua.
• Salacia Deloresista Amanita Trigestatra Zeldana Malifee [...] von Humpeding, aka Sally. The first vampire in the Watch, much to Vimes' dismay. Despite her looks, she's in her early 50s, easily putting her in the top of oldest Watch members. A fine cop in her own right, she eventually leaves the Watch to join the Watch in Bonk, with her position as a Sammy (a cop who worked under Sam Vimes) carrying much prestige.
• Visit-The-Infidels-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets is an Omnian and the most religious member of the Watch. On his off days, he and his fellow Omnian "Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments" spread the good word of Om, much to the dismay of everyone else.
• Dorfl is a golem, hired by Vimes to piss off the establishment. The first golem who with the ability to talk, in and of itself an act of blasphemy. He is an unstoppable juggernaut capable of walking through doors and walls alike and can manhandle trolls the same way trolls take on humans. As a free golem, he saves up his wages to purchase other golems, whom he then frees and asks to help free other golems in the same way. Despite being incredibly intimidating, he is also an incredibly moral being, having forged his own personal code of conduct after Carrot gave him full responsibility for his own actions. Dorfl is one of the Disc's few atheists, which naturally infuriates the setting's very real gods. It's a good thing he's lightning-proof.
• Reginald "Reg" Shoe is a zombie and a natural activist. He died during the events of Night Watch and was allowed to join the Watch because Vimes wanted to stick it to the establishment. A good cop who keeps his stuff together despite he himself falling apart frequently.

Death and Company

• Death is the anthropomorphic personification of death, which manifests as a traditional "Grim Reaper" figure (a scythe-carrying skeleton in a black robe). Initially portrayed as an actively malevolent figure in the first two books, he was subsequently retconned as being a very devoted professional who has become increasingly fond of sapient life over his long service. Being a personification, he has absolutely no proper understanding of human life, but his fascination leads him to keep trying, which tends to go quite wrong.
• Susan is Death's granddaughter, by virtue of her mom having been Death's adoptive daughter and her dad had been Death's temporary apprentice. Unfortunately, her parents were so ashamed of their connections to Death that they brought Susan up with a strictly logical mindset and a belief in rationalism... which, given she lives in the Discworld, which can't make contact with either without the aid of a long stick and a lot of shouting, tends to leave her perpetually frustrated. She has white hair with a black streak in it, and when she blushes she develops three long red marks on her otherwise pale cheeks - when her father quit Death's service, the angry skeleton pimp-slapped him before letting him go, and that scar has carried down in a typical display of Discworld inheritance. This also gives her many of Death's inherent powers, like a mind-controlling voice and the ability to go ethereal when she wants.
• The Death of Rats is a rat, or at least the skeleton of a rat, who presides over the demise of rats, hamsters and other tiny rodents. Only speaks in capital SQUEAKS. Sometimes goes around mounted on a raven named Quoth (get it? Quoth the Raven?). Irks Susan on a regular basis by dragging her into events that involve her grandfather and/or the fate of the Disc.
• Albert, known back on the Disc as Alberto Malich is Death's manservant and the first Archchancellor of the Unseen University. Attempting to avoid death and therefore stay far away from all the things that would make a bid for his soul as a result of it becoming untethered from his body, he figured that he could become immortal by reversing the rite of Ashe-Kente, used to summon and interrogate Death. It... sort of worked? Essentially, it teleported him to Death's realm, where time stands still, and he's stayed there ever since as he finds it a comfortable enough existence. Most of the time he does the cleaning (which isn't a lot), receive guests (grumble at them), cook (he deep-fries EVERYTHING) and help out the workers to make Death's mansion more like a human mansion by installing plumbing and a kitchen. A proudly self-professed evil-tempered old bugger, Albert acts humble to his master but is still a wizard of the Old School, which means he's got a lot of boom hidden up his sleeves if he ever deigns to use it (and no small amount of disdain for the way UU is currently run- he's in agreement with Ridcully on points like Bracing Exercise and Keeping In Fighting Form).
• Binky is Death's horse (named by Susan's mother). In the past, Death experimented with traditional fantasy steeds suitable to his position but found them problematic. The flaming horse tended to burn down his stable, and bits kept falling off the skeletal horse. So now he relies on Binky, a white stallion that is beautiful and sedate but otherwise unremarkable. Oh, he's also capable of walking on air and carrying his master literally anywhere he needs to be.

Lancre, including the local coven of Witches

• Esmeralda "Granny" Weatherwax is the most infamous witch in the Ramtops Mountains and alongside Samuel Vimes is Pratchett's iconic "Good Don't Mean Nice" character. By her own admission born to be "the bad witch", that karmic role was screwed up when her psychotic sister Lily instead became a truly evil witch whilst still thinking of herself as the good one, leaving a void that Granny felt compelled to fill. She is short-tempered, abrasive, doesn't suffer fools, and imperious, but firmly believes in making the hard choices and doing what's right. It's well-acknowledged that she is "The Crone" of her personal coven, but everyone in the Ramtops discreetly refers to that archetype as "The Other One", especially if it appears she's not within earshot. Also by technicality 'The Maiden' (each of the original trio fill two roles by technicality) due to her one possible love interest - Chancellor Ridcully, see below - just not happening. A formidably powerful magic user, she is nonetheless a great advocate of not using magic and instead relying on "headology" - a mixture of down-to-earth common sense, folk remedies, observational skill and her own hefty reputation - to look more mystical and mysterious, because most of the time that’s all you really need.
• Gytha "Nanny" Ogg is the beloved matriarch of the sprawling Ogg clan of the Ramtops Mountains, an affable and rotund old lady who has lost none of the endearing raunchiness that she developed over youth as a lusty, highly sexual woman. She is "The Mother" of her coven, combining both a lecherously good-humoured attitude and a warm, maternal nature; people may fear and respect Granny, but they genuinely like Nanny, something that Granny Weatherwax sometimes shows signs of envying. Also by technicality 'The Crone', being of equal age to Granny. It's been implied that she's actually more magically powerful than Granny, but it's just that A: she's too lazy to really use it, B: she gets a lot more sympathy for coming in second and C: she doesn't want to upset Granny by letting her find out.
• Magrat Garlick is the much-put-upon youngest member of the original coven. If Granny Weatherwax is the fairytale wicked witch turned good and Nanny Ogg is the wise earth mother, then Magrat is the good-hearted but soft-headed neo-pagan, who finds herself in over her head when her blissfully dreamy ideals are confronted with the cold, hard realism of her superiors. Despite everything, Magrat does have a heart of gold and dearly wants to help - even if most just ignore her "clearly dotty" ideas and suggestions - and she's got a core of steel deep, deep down inside. By her final appearance in the series, Magrat fills both 'The Maiden' with her sheer naivete, and 'The Mother', by virtue of being a literal mother.
• Agnes "Perdita X Dream" Nitt is the chubby "replacement Maiden" for the coven after Magrat leaves it by marrying the King (ex-Fool) of Lancre. A generally mild, inoffensive and shy girl, she's not unattractive but is the result of Lancre selecting for a Brawn Hilda style of beauty and hates herself for it. "Perdita X Dream" is Agnes' idealised fantasy self, a sharp-tongued, aggressive, take-charge version of Agnes who would take no crap from anybody... unfortunately, being a witch caused this fantasy self to become its own split personality and she now lives in Agnes' head, snarkily commenting on Agnes' actions and looking for a chance to steal control of Agnes' body.
• Jason Ogg is the eldest son of Nanny Ogg. Said to be the greatest blacksmith and farrier in the world: as long as he's got the horseshoes for it he can put them on it. One of his frequent customers is Death, who occasionally drops by to get Binky shod. A soft-spoken giant of a man who can pick up a pair of adult men by the scruff of their necks.
• Shawn Ogg is the jack-of-all-trades at Lancre Castle. If it doesn't require special training he does it with enthusiasm and skill: he delivers mail and messages, serves food, patrols the castle and performs any other odd jobs that need doing. He is also a one-man army, in that he is the entire complement of Lancre's standing army (except when he is lying down).
• King Verence II is, as the title kind of hints, the king of Lancre. Originally, he was the official Fool of the Lancre Court and served under Verence I and then Verence's usurper, Duke Felmet. Got the job when his brother Tomjon, the "true heir to the kingdom of Lancre", took one look at the place and declared he was going to stay in Ankh-Morpork as an actor. Married to Magrat Garlick, he is a gentle-natured soul who really wants nothing but the best for his kingdom, but is convinced that the kingdom needs to modernize - which, to his irritation, results in him being patronized to and ignored by the Lancrefolk, who just continue doing everything as they always have. It says a lot of Verence II that, as a Fool, he felt duty-bound to sleep on the floor before his master's, the king's, bedroom door. When he became king, he simply took to sleeping on the other side. He does have a very pronounced distaste for other Fools and custard, which only makes sense given he was raised in the Guild of Fools. Generally believed by the Lancrefolk to be the bastard son of Verence I and the Old Fool's Wife; what the witches know is that he is actually the Old Fool's true and legal heir. Rather, Verence's supposed heir, Verence II's brother Tomjon, was actually the bastard son of the Queen of Lancre and the Old Fool, which Verence I never figured out (although, in fairness, he probably did have his own share of bastards running around, being a notorious philanderer).

Wizards

• Rincewind is a cowardly and cynical wizard who has absolutely no capacity whatsoever at magic but does have the attention of The Lady (the Disc's unnamed Goddess of Luck, both good and bad), which ensures his life is a neverending stream of dangerous and terrifying misadventures. Talented at running, jogging, sprinting, hoofing it, and surviving things that no man should. His only other skill is his knack for languages, allowing him to beg for mercy in nineteen spoken tongues, and an even wider variety of gestures. Is possibly alive due to being the possessor (or perhaps more clearly, being possessed by) one of the eight founding spells of creation. It certainly seems to have designs on Rincewind, and because of that, Rincewind can't learn other spells because they're all too terrified to be in the same brain as the creator spell. Sometimes, ignorance can be bliss.
• Mustrum Ridcully is the Unseen University's Archchancellor for most of the series, and effectively combines traits of the traditional wizard with that of the stereotype of the gruff, outgoing huntin'-and-sportin' British gentleman. Thick in a resilient sort of way and mistrustful of anything new, but not as stupid as people think.
• The Librarian is a wizard and the Unseen University's librarian (obviously) who was polymorphed into an orangutan by a surge of wild magic in the second novel and chose to stay in that form afterwards, as it allowed him to much more effectively work in the library. To be clear on this, he is NOT a monkey. In fact, the Librarian has taken steps to ensure that nobody can turn him back into a human, erasing every trace of his former name from the university archives.
• Ponder Stibbons: The youngest and most scientifically minded of UU's faculty who's basically running the Discworld's version of the Manhattan Project in the High Energy Magic building. Also technically holds the most power in UU, as he holds enough positions to give him the controlling vote on what little the faculty actually bother to decide on pursuing.
• The Dean is a big fat jerk. Basically, every flaw that's common in the faculty of UU (elitism, casual bigotry, gluttony, pomposity, close-mindedness, tendency to get caught up in things) is at its most pronounced in the Dean's considerable girth. Known as "two-chairs" by the rest of the faculty when they're unhappy with him but nonetheless missed when he becomes the Archchancellor at a rival university.
• The Bursar of Unseen University was originally a very mild-mannered chap whose only failing was not quitting his thankless job as UU’s accountant. Sadly, the constant abuse seems to have gotten to him over the years, as he is now quite insane. However, his skill with sums is completely unaffected by the madness, so all he needs to function in polite society is a hefty dose of dried frog pills, which more or less solve the problem by making him hallucinate that he's sane.
• The Chair of Indefinite Studies wander in and out of importance in the books, generally being a stodgy old study monster that admits that the state of magical research has passed him by in recent years, ever since dribbly candles fell out of favor. Pratchett seems to like using him to move the plot along, when involving a more notable wizard might derail the focus.
• The Lecturer in Recent Runes is a rotund, elderly gentleman with an ability to bicker finely honed by decades of interdepartmental meetings. Similar to the Chair of Indefinite Studies, he exists as a caricature of ivory-tower theorists. Primarily acts as a "good idea man", with the expected side effects of such.
• The Senior Wrangler is the last of the trio of academic-parodies, alongside the Chair and the Lecturer. A long-faced man who hates the sound of silence, his attempts to fill it up tend to do to conversation what it takes quite thick treacle to do to the workings of an intricate watch mechanism. It is crucial to note that no one seems to know exactly what he does within the University.
• Professor John Hix is the head of the Necrom-*ahem* Post-Mortem Communications department at UU. Required to be evil by University law, but actually quite mild-mannered, he is also a keen member of the local amateur dramatics society.

Citizens of Ankh-Morpork

• Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician is the official Tyrant of Ankh-Morpork, a trained Assassin who showcased his intelligence even as a youth by realizing how much the Guild's focus on style (wearing pitch-black clothes instead of drab camouflage patterns, for instance) impeded its actual effectiveness. Though he could, as he repeatedly points out, rule as a brutal despot, he favours instead using a network of spies and agents to manipulate the city into working the way he wants it (and because he's an extremely clever man, it actually works). A magnificent scheming bastard, he's often seen as invincible and prepared for absolutely everything, though he has been caught off-guard a few times due to truly ludicrous levels of wat.
• Rufus Drumknott is Vetinari's loyal and almost deliberately dull assistant. While you may suspect him of being an Assassin or a bodyguard, this is one more misdirection on Vetinari's part; Vetinari needs no bodyguard, as he is perfectly capable of disposing of any assailants himself.
• Moist von Lipwig is a former con artist with an addiction to adrenaline and a serious aversion to violence. Officially, he was executed under the name Albert Spangler for various cons, swindles, and flim-flams. Unofficially, however, he’s alive and well, having been recruited by Vetinari to clean up Ankh-Morpork’s antiquated civil services. Has such a ridiculously average face that it's nearly impossible to pick him out of a crowd unless he's wearing his trademark gold suit or acting with his usual dynamism.
• Adora Belle Dearheart is the sharp-tempered, abrasive, cutting-tongued, chain-smoking head of the Golem Trust, who gets on better with golems than she does with people. Eventually becomes Moist's girlfriend and subsequently wife.
• Lord Downey' is the head of the Assassin's Guild. A cheerful, honourable gentleman whose pleasant demeanour mostly covers the fact that he's in charge of some of the deadliest killers for hire on the Disc.
• William de Worde is an idealistic nobleman who becomes the leader of Ankh-Morpork's first newspaper.
• Gaspode the Wonder Dog is an ugly, disease-riddled mongrel of a dog who became sapient and capable of speech after eating out of the rubbish dumps of Unseen University. Cynical and sarcastic, he mostly makes a living begging for food, taking advantage of the fact that most people mistake his words for their own thoughts. Consistently caught between his primal, self-reliant nature and his desire to be a Good Dog.
• Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, also known as CMOT Dibbler or simply Throat is a surprisingly effective street vendor who specializes in selling goods of extremely dubious quality, most commonly his infamous series of mystery meat: meat pies, kebabs, and of course the inimitable, incomparable, and truly indigestible Sausage-Inna-Bun. Has a variety of lookalikes in every culture on the Disc, because wherever people are prepared to buy horrifically overpriced street food there will inevitably be somebody to sell it. Later novels reveal that CMOT didn't appear out of thin air - his full name is Claude Maximillian Overton Transpire Dibbler.
• Leonard of Quirm is the incredibly intelligent and multi-talented but super-naive and gentle mad inventor of Ankh-Morpork. Lord Vetinari keeps him secretly locked away in the Palace in order to protect Leonard from the world and the world from him. Invented the aeroplane, the handgun, the submarine, and the world's first unbreakable cypher.
• Chrysophrase is the head of the Breccia, a sort of Trollish Mafia operating out of the meatpacking district. Wears diamond cufflinks explicitly made out of the molars of his enemies, as Trolls' teeth are made of crystallised carbon.
• Hughnon Ridcully is the High Priest of Io and unofficial representative of all the priests and clerics in Ankh-Morpork. Mustrum Ridcully's brother and implicitly built along the same lines.
• Mr Slant is the city's most infamous lawyer, a man who came back from the dead to get his murderer acquitted, then refused to die until his fees were paid. Highly traditional, he continually gets involved in various schemes to disrupt Vetinari's reign, but always gets out unscathed even when they fail. Has an encyclopedic knowledge of civil and criminal precedent, thanks to being the person who was there when they wrote it.
• Harry King is a true Ankh-Morpork success story; a street kid who started out grubbing in the mud of the Ankh for lost valuables, but then made his fortune by realizing that there was serious money to be made in waste disposal in a city where "public sanitation" largely consists of "sling the chamberpot out the window". Especially because he figured out that a lot of nasty biological leavings are actually in demand as resources in other industries - you have no idea what a tanner will pay for good, fresh, quality dog turds. Is most relevant to the later Disc novels for his patronage of William de Worde's fledgling newspaper, Moist von Lipwig's revival of the Ankh-Morpork Bank, and the birth of the Ankh-Morpork Railway.

Others

• Twoflower is an accountant from the fantasy-China region of Agatea, who manages to leave the traditionally highly reclusive nation for a tourist visit to Ankh-Morpork. This ultimately leads to a revolution in Agatea when he publishes a book about what he did on his holidays, inadvertently revealing that life does not have to be the highly rigid, formalized tyranny under which the country exists.
• The Luggage is TwoFlower's luggage chest... and is sentient.. and walks on dozens of little human feet... and has massive white teeth... and you could swear it licked its 'lips' just after swallowing the unsuspecting seagull. Luggage is made out Sapient Pearwood, an extraordinarily rare, magical, and (duh) sapient wood; the last bits of SP in Ankh-Morpork are wizards' staves, and those guys would be very interested in obtaining some more from you through negotiation. Being a magical object means that Luggage has unlimited carrying capacity and a mind of its own - and The Luggage is like a nasty bulldog, suspiciously cuddly, loyal only to his master, and you can never be sure when he will bite anything else, just for the kicks of it. After TwoFlower's adventures with Rincewind, Luggage decides to change its master to the wizzzard, showing across later Rincewind's mishaps all of his abilities, which also include interdimensional travel.
• Cohen the Barbarian is essentially what you get if you ask "What if Conan the Barbarian lived to be an old codger but never stopped doing the Barbarian Hero schtick?" A cranky and bitter old bastard who is deeply offended at having outlived the era of the Barbarian Hero, sneering at how the world has gotten so soft and straitlaced since his youth. Ultimately, his dissatisfaction with the state of the world and its lack of respect for the Barbarian Heroes who ultimately carved out the foundations for civilization leads him to try and firebomb the gods themselves. Ultimately, Cohen sacrifices himself to save the world (from himself, of course), refuses to believe he’s dead, mugs the Valkyries sent to bring him to warrior heaven, and sets off to find adventure in worlds beyond.
• Rhys Rhysson is the current Low King of the Dwarves after the events of Thud! Making dwarves agree on most anything is difficult as it is, but Rhysson has spent his entire term dealing with the fallout of the cultural shocks caused by the dwarf diaspora on the plains interacting with humans and trolls much more than their mountain kin do.
• Mr. Shine is the current Diamond King of Trolls, a Diamond Troll whose unparalleled strength and intelligence makes him the traditional ruler of his race.
• Lady Margolotta is a female vampire and an intimate acquaintance of Vetinari. She was a founding member of the Black Ribbon temperance league and became the de facto ruler of much of (aboveground) Uberwald after the dissolution of the Evil Empire/Unholy Empire/Uberwaldean Sorcerous Republic, an unstable mix between the USSR's satellite state network, the Holy Roman Empire at its least functional, and a number of "evil wizard's dark domain" tropes that never really had much political organization beyond "Do what the Dark Lord says or he'll sic the orcs on you". Lady Margolotta spends much of her time trying to drag Uberwald out of its dysfunctional feudalism and into the modern era- this is probably mostly in service of continuing her long-distance Thud game with Vetinari with as much efficiency as possible.

Other Media

• TV Movies
  • The Hogfather
  • The Colour of Magic/The Light Fantastic
  • Going Postal

• Animated Series
  • Soul Music

• Tabletop Games
  • Discworld Role-Playing Game

Originally released in 1998, with a second edition coming out in 2016. Currently using a set of customised rules based on GURPS 4th edition. Expect all the snark and playing with tropes you can find in original books. http://www.sjgames.com/discworld/

• Video Games
  • The Colour of Magic, the first Discworld game and the only one based entirely on one book (guess which one). Text adventure, released 1986.
  • Discworld MUD, from 1991. It's a MUD. Set on Discworld. It's still being worked on today, and you can play it in your browser.
  • Discworld, a point-and-click adventure game from 1995. You play as Rincewind, (very) loosely based on 'Guards! Guards!'.
  • Discworld II: Missing Presumed..!?, another point-and-click, featuring Rincewind and the Luggage.
  • Discworld Noir, yet another point'n'click. Riffs off classic noir films, with you playing as the disc's first (and only) private investigator in Ankh-Morpork. Gets a little darker than most other Discworld stuff.

The Inevitable End

Everything comes to an end, and this fact became apparent for even the Discworld series in 2007 when Terry Pratchett announced that he'd been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Like the massive badass that he was, Pratchett took this fact in his stride becoming the forerunner of Alzheimer's advocacy and assisted suicide AND still managed to release books on a regular, consistent basis whilst suffering from a disease that causes most sufferers to spend the rest of their days babbling in a retirement home.

But, unfortunately, despite much protestations from fans and signs to prove he was doing very well despite this affliction, Pratchett died in 2015.

What makes this whole damn thing so sad is that, given his relationship both literary and philosophical with death, we know almost for a fact that he was probably completely fine with it. To add a bittersweet bow to the top of the sadness cake, he instructed his assistant to post the following to announce his passing:

"AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
Terry took Death's arm and followed him through the doors and onto the black desert under the endless night.
The End."

After his death the hard drive containing all of his unfinished work was, as per his explicit wishes, destroyed by a steamroller. The wish was granted on August 25th by Lord Jericho, a vintage John Fowler & Co steamroller at the Great Dorset Steam Fair and overseen by Rob Wilkins, manager of the Pratchett estate. The wry sense of humour behind this act was appreciated by many fans.

The copyrights to Discworld passed to Terry's daughter Rihanna after his death. An accomplished writer (and video game developer) herself, she immediately announced that nobody, not even her, would be continuing the Discworld series. It stands forever as Terry left it. Rihanna Pratchett has also been extremely cautious about multi-media adaptations, with the flow of adaptations notably slowing after Terry's death. A planned TV series centered around the City Watch, for example, fell into development hell after the author's passing.

TL;DR RIP GNU Terry Pratchett. You will forever live on in the heart of fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls the world round flat.