Editing Discworld (section)

==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.

===[[Dwarf]]s===

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 (methane) 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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_lamp 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. There was a full-scale underground war up in the mountains, in fact, a prelude to the massive culture shock that came up from the plains as a generation of dwarfs raised outside of the deep caverns began to question parts of the old tradition.

[[File:Dwarf sex life.jpg|thumb|400px|left|A pretty accurate summery of Dwarfen courtship]]
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").

The phenomenon of ''mine signs'' is another outward manifestation of traditional Dwarfish conceptions of society and justice. These are drawn for a variety of reasons- a simple glyphic marker, a form of protest, an outlet for stress, even a curse- and are what happens when a mine goes bad instead of riots. Dwarf mines can be somewhat like living in a submarine- everyone is in darkness, there's lots of complicated machinery around, nobody has any real privacy, and if something is going on, there's no way to keep it secret for long. On top of this, everyone is carrying sharp objects and various inflammable materials. Mine sign can be noticed by good chief engineers and used as an indicator for when action needs to be taken. In some of the rarer signs, certain conditions can give mine signs real power. These are discussed quietly and carefully if ever.

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 clichés 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.

As a minor point, there are two main Dwarfish foodstuffs that get attention. The first is Dwarf Bread, which is made with gravel, hard as rock, keeps forever, is horribly sustaining and can be used as a deadly weapon. The second is Rat, which is the primary protein in Hole Food, so much so that many dwarfs have hang ups about eating chicken or beef. If the [[Skaven]] somehow ended up on the Disc, they would not hear battle cries of "They have Wronged Us" but rather "Pass the Ketchup".

===[[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. Unfortunately, this has led to the plains people viewing trolls as a species of morons, and Pratchett passed away before troll culture could be given the same treatment as dwarf culture, but elements- references to the clan structures, the History Chant, stone music, and the Diamond Kings- can be glimpsed throughout the series.

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 [[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|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. Oddly enough, while trollish booze is an etching acid to humans, troll drugs have no effect on humans, no matter how hard they try.

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. [[meme|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 has resulted in several repeats. Both sides claim to have been ambushed by the other at the original battle, roughly a millennium before setting present, but until the fundamentalist mountain grags began to preach in Ankh-Morpork, nobody thought that it was possible to find out what really happened.

===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. [https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-29-the-story-behind-the-oblivion-mod-terry-pratchett-worked-on 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.
* [[Vampire]]s: 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. Occasionally the living dead animate themselves for various reasons. 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 driving them that wander about crypts. Sometimes there's a surplus of Life Force sloshing about. Occasionally someone just stays in their body after conventional life ceases and keeps it going. Usually people which get highly fixated on things.
* Ghosts: spirits of the dead with unfinished business, especially in areas of high background magic. Generally harmless and a transience more than anything.
* Animated skeletons: Show up occasionally. Why are they here? A: the same broad reasons as other undead and B: why not? Death may look the part, but is distinct as he was never alive.

Werewolves are technically not Undead, but tend to get lumped in with them. They are not Immortal, but they are hard to kill save by fire or silver. There's some variation in werewolves: you have the classic bimorph which can alternate between human and wolf, but you also have Yennorks (children of werewolves who are either wolf or human all the time, but carry the Werewolf gene) and a spectrum of individuals ranging from people which get a bit more hairy on the full moon and wolves that turn into half-wolf creatures once a month. Classic Bimorphs can mostly change at will, save for full moon. Some werewolves have a combination of feral aggression tempered by malign intelligence. Most are just people who occasionally wake up and find that they've stolen a chicken.

===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 Gods of 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 and Angel 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, numerous boogeymen (the first boogeyman to ever exist is also the tooth fairy) 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, showing up in three novels and never fully put to rout.

===Elves===
The other major recurring 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 creatures who naturally project a 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 speak of them lest you summon them.) Imagine the [[Druchii]] without the edgelord aesthetics and instead of relying on knives<sup>1</sup>, racks, and hot brands to do their torturing they could get into your head and use whatever they found in there.  Weak against anything made of iron due to the element interfering with their ability to sense magnetic fields, which is one of their primary senses. 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 [[Half-Elf|hybrids between Elves and the native inhabitants of the disc]], and pretty much just amount to normal people with pointy ears.

<small><sup>1</sup>This is not to say they aren't fans of knives per se, but mindfuckery is their preferred tool of torment</small>
Description	What you type	What you get
Italic	''Italic text''	Italic text
Bold	'''Bold text'''	Bold text
Bold & italic	'''''Bold & italic text'''''	*Bold & italic text*
Description	What you type	What you get
Reference	Page text.<ref>[https://www.example.org/ Link text], additional text.</ref>	Page text.^[1]
Named reference	Page text.<ref name="test">[https://www.example.org/ Link text]</ref>	Page text.^[2]
Additional use of the same reference	Page text.<ref name="test" />	Page text.^[2]
Display references	<references />	↑ Link text, additional text. ↑ Link text