Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki - User contributions [en]

Rincewind

2016-08-13T00:27:34Z

Richvanf: /* Unseen University Career */

{{Character Data
|title= The Wizzard
|Rincewind Illustrated by [[User:puggdogg|Michael Collins]] a.k.a. puggdogg
|photo= Rincewind.jpg|
|name= Rincewind, first name unknown. Has referred to himself as Rincewand (see {{TLC}}), but don't believe it.
|age= Possibly born in 1932 UC, making him 32 in {{COM}} and 57 as of {{TLH}}.
|race= [[:Category:Human characters|Human]]
|occupation= [[:Category:Wizards|Wizzard]], egregious professor of cruel and unusual geography
|appearance= Young, athletic, often disheveled
|residence= Currently Unseen University
|death=
|parents=
|relatives= possibly [[Bill Rincewind]]; [[Lavaeolus]] might be an ancestor. [[Dr Rjinswand]] on [[Roundworld]] is a parellel-world version who has discovered something as good and as dangerous as magic, in nuclear energy...
|children=
|marital status=
|books= [[:Category:Rincewind Series|Rincewind series]]
|cameos= {{M}}, {{UA}}
}}
'''Rincewind''' has been an important character since the ''[[Discworld]]'' series started. He is a polite yet cowardly [[Wizard's magic|wizard]] with (almost) no magical ability and whose ambition in life is simply to continue having a life. He has been on many adventures, but almost entirely by accident. He is however gifted with languages, speaking several including [[Chimeria|Chimeran]], [[Vanglemesht]], [[Sumtri]], [[Black Oroogu]], [[Borogravia|High Borogravian]] and [[Trob|beTrobi]].

==Character==
He starred in {{COM}}, {{TLF}}, {{S}}, {{E}}, {{IT}} and {{TLC}}, and was also a major character in the graphic novel, {{TLH}} as well as in {{SOD1}} novels. He was born under the "Small Boring Group of Faint Stars", a sign associated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plastic images of small religious significance and people allergic to pewter. Rincewind became the owner of [[the Luggage]] after it was given to him as a present by [[Twoflower]] in {{TLF}}.

He has a particular attraction to potatoes, and has in his time been mistaken for a demon, a god, lunch, a hero, a woman, and many other things. At one point he even very briefly visited [[Roundworld]], appearing on an aeroplane mid flight as Dr. Rjinswand, a nuclear physicist, in {{COM}}, who specializes in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors.

Maybe because he was the first major Discworld character, maybe because of his "hidden" bravery, or maybe because of his amazing incompetence, he has always been (and probably always will be) one of the most popular Discworld figures.

In ''The Art of Discworld'', Terry Pratchett mentions that Rincewind probably has at least one more story to tell, but also says that the character's cowardly nature limits what stories can be told.

==Magical abilities==
Rincewind's magical ability is almost nonexistent. He never passed an exam at [[Unseen University]]. The highest score he received was 2% for spelling his name right. In fact, we are informed that he actually managed to receive negative marks in Basic Firestarting, an issue still hotly debated by the Faculty - "''How the Hell did he manage that''!" - even in the early pages of {{IT}}. Even when we first met him however he still had the right to wear the brass octogram confirming he is a UU alumnus. One wonders how he got into Unseen in the first place.

It has been estimated that when Rincewind finally dies, the average magical ability for the species will go up a fraction. What he cannot spell right, apparently, is his job description, because he has ''WIZZARD'' written in large letters on his pointy hat. The reason for this incompetence lies within an incident where he opened the [[Octavo]] and one of the great eight spells of the [[creator]] jumped out and settled down in his brain. This spell frightened off any other spells which Rincewind tried to learn.

Nevertheless, he has managed to do some impressive magic on very few occasions (e.g. in {{TLF}}), most often without his consent, although once near ''The Light Fantastic's'' climax, he was able to mentally unlock a door through apparently no efforts or powers but his own (albeit at great strain). This interestingly echoes another magical misfit, [[Magrat Garlick]], who similarly forced a thick unyielding door to open to her by using the power of magic.

While woefully inept at performing magic of his own, Rincewind does possess all wizards' baseline ability to sense magical energies, including the colour octarine. In ''Sourcery'', the saturation of the Disc with thaumic force accumulated in Rincewind as in other wizards, temporarily endowing him with the power to utilize spells, albeit ''very'' clumsily and erratically.

== Age and Early Life ==
Not much is known about Rincewind's early life. In {{IT}}, it is mentioned that "''Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent''." He has stated on more than one occasion that his mother "''ran away before he was born'' (is there a possibility his mother just ran away from home to have Rincewind and Rincewind is just looking for an excuse to be far away?)." However, Rincewind clearly remembers a birthday card with a '''Now you are Five...''' badge attached to it - which is the worst possible present anyone could receive at the age of six. He also remembers having had a stuffed toy lamb plush as a child, (mentioned in {{TLC}}.)

In {{TLF}}, Rincewind remembers his grandad telling him about [[Cohen]], again implying he grew up without his parents. In the same book, [[Trymon]] obtains Rincewind's "''precise place and time of birth''," from university records, so that an astrologer can cast a horoscope, implying that there is some record of Rincewind's birth.

Rincewind, [[Trymon]] and the [[Librarian]] all attended the University at around the same time, and are presumably the same age. In {{IT}}, Rincewind remembers hanging around with Noodle Jackson when he, (Rincewind,) was a very young student, implying that Rincewind has spent much of his life at [[Unseen University]].

==Travels==
[[Image:Rincewind in Ankh Morpork.jpg|200px|left|thumb|Rincewind In Ankh Morpork]]
Rincewind must be one of the most travelled characters in the Discworld series. He has seen [[Hell]], the [[Dungeon Dimensions]], the end of the world and its creation (where he very probably started life with a discarded egg sandwich). He has been to [[XXXX]], [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]], the Moon, the [[Agatean Empire]], the [[Rim]] and all sorts of other interesting places. However, he probably cannot describe any of these places, because he was always running so fast that his feet barely touched the ground.

He seems to be constantly running away from danger (as such, most of his scars are on his back). He is the first to call himself a coward, although he's frequently frustrated by circumstances which cause him to be accidentally heroic. He always gets himself into dangerous situations, because he always has to help the helpless and innocent, even if half the time he would rather run away before it starts to happen to him. Also he is very realistic and rather cynical, so he knows when a situation is wrong and when, for instance, a bunch of poor foolhardy kids are going to get themselves killed (in {{IT}}).

He has been "''almost''" dead so often that [[Death]] calls Rincewind his hobby and does not actually know when he is going to die. Rincewind's [[life-timer]] has evolved in shape, much to Death's professional interest: far from resembling a simple hour-glass, it now manifests as a multi-dimensional glass nightmare, describing as having apparently been created by a glass-blower who had hiccups in a time machine. This is most likely due to his extensive dimensional and temporal travels while in constant fear of death. It is impossible to track the sand inside with any degree of accuracy, as occasionally it appears to move backwards.

Mentioned during the events of {{TLC}}, [[Death]] has come up with a theory about Rincewind: He is aware that many cultures and civilisations have the concept of the Eternal Champion, the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the Champion with a thousand faces. As Death is {{death|unable to enlighten, even by default, on conditions in the next world}}, He generally refrains from commentating. Privately, though, Death is aware of the particular Discworld condition that every condition and state of mind must have its opposite - thus Drunk - [[Knurd]], Crime - [[Anticrime]], Matter - Antimatter, etc. He has wondered, as He regards Rincewind's unique [[life-timer]], whether this belongs to the Eternal Coward, the anti-hero with a thousand retreating backs. Many cultures, after all, have the legend of an Eternal Champion who one day will be reborn in time of greatest need, (He even knows there is one in undying sleep underneath [[Lancre]], and there certainly was one in [[Holy Wood]].) It is possible that the balance of nature calls for an Eternal Coward who, when faced with waking up one morning to face down great threat, will pull the covers over his head and ignore the alarm clock.

==Unseen University Career==
After a failed career as a student, Rincewind was the UU library assistant for a while. He got on well with the [[Librarian]], and might well be the person who knows most about the Librarian, apparently even his name.

Aside from running away, his single greatest talent is an innate gift for languages: He can scream for mercy in nineteen languages and just scream in another forty-four.

Rincewind is currently the [[Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography]] at [[Unseen University]], along with at least eighteen other positions that none of the other wizards wanted (see {{SOD3}}), such as Health and Safety Officer. His degree is ''B. Mgc. Unseen University (failed)'' (see {{COM}}, 2. ''The Sending of Eight'', second paragraph).
However, in the opening chapters of {{IT}}, [[Ridcully]] ascertains the truth in a clear and businesslike fashion. Rincewind has effectively been operating under false pretenses and claiming a status for himself - as a full, graduate wizard - to which he clearly has no right.

While nobody is sorrier to have to point this out than Ridcully, the sanctions available under University lore for the punishment of imposters are quite clear-cut and offer no room for mitigating circumstances (absent corroborating testimony from university faculty), and he, Ridcully, would be quite shockingly negligent in his duties as [[Archchancellor]], if he did not order Rincewind to be nailed upside-down to one of the principal supporting pillars of the Brass Bridge at low tide, to be released at the next low tide.

After a pause to let this sink in, Ridcully then suggested that these things can be rectified and a retroactive honorary degree may be conferred if, for instance, a non-wizard in such an unenviable position were to go out and perform a great service of benefit to Wizards and all mankind, after which he, Rincewind, would be free to call himself a Wizzard, (and spell it with as many "z"'s as he likes), but with no wages, teaching no classes, but the full right to attend meals, have an office, and receive coal deliveries (he currently receives 19; one for each role he fills--in the summer, his office is an inferno, since if he does not burn all his coal, he will receive no more--in line with Ridcully's order that to receive a replacement, one must use up all of the previous supply of anything).

Rincewind eventually conceded (in as many words) that Ridcully was being very fair-minded, under the circumstances, and consented to let himself be sent to the [[Counterweight continent|Counterweight Continent]] as the University's [[Great Wizard|expeditionary force]]. It may be inferred from Rincewind's subsequent promotion to the post of Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography that Ridcully has been faithful to his word and the honorary degree has been conferred, at last making Rincewind officially a wizard, albeit by a back-door route.

By the time of {{SOD3}}, Rincewind appears to have gained ''some'' amount of respect from the senior Faculty, as he sits at their meetings, perhaps as a result of his ingenious plan in {{SOD2}}; this seems to have raised his self-esteem somewhat, as he tries to insist on being called ''Professor'' Rincewind.

He is now also, quite reluctantly, a member of the "[[Unseen Academicals]]" [[football]] team.

As of {{RS}} Rincewind is referred to as a Professor and is involved in research into the pharmacological actions of the flora of the [[Netherglades]]. His research has revealed the juice of a certain yellow flower induces absolute certainty about everything in the patient for up to fifteen minutes, while the juice of a floating water hyacinth causes absolute uncertainty in the patient for up to half an hour.

==Philosophy==
Rincewind's philosophy on life is noted for its simplicity. He spends most of his time running away, and never particularly bothers with where he's running away to - what he's running from is always more important.

Rincewind is also firmly convinced that there are no causes worth dying for. As he sees it, you can pick up another five causes on any street corner, but you only have one life.

He views positive developments in his life with deep suspicion, reasoning that they are usually just a setup for some newer and more horrible fate to befall him. He is, almost invariably, correct.

As his list of misadventures has grown longer, Rincewind has grown increasingly cynical about how his own life works, and recently went so far as to volunteer for a suicidal mission to prevent the [[Silver Horde]] from blowing up the gods, because he figured he would end up on the mission anyway, either by force or by accident (as is probably true).

He feels he suffers from a sort of pre-emptive karma. The universe, as soon as something nice is about to happen to him, causes something awful to happen that not only balances out the good thing, but goes on happening right through the time during which the good thing is trying to happen, thus effectively blotting it out. It has been mentioned that there is possibly an anti-Rincewind to which only good things happen. Rincewind would very much like to meet him, preferably while holding a big stick. This may or may not be [[Bill Rincewind]]. One could in fact say that the only good luck he has is how safely he escapes his bad luck.

Rincewind also very much values [[potato]]es, apparently associating them, at a subconscious level, with women, sex, or both. He eventually underwent therapy for the problem.

==Misc==

Rincewind will appear on [http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_9327000/9327675.stm Royal Mail stamps in 2011] along with [[Nanny Ogg]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Leading characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Wizards]]
[[de:Rincewind]]

Rincewind

2016-08-13T00:19:02Z

Richvanf: /* Unseen University Career */

{{Character Data
|title= The Wizzard
|Rincewind Illustrated by [[User:puggdogg|Michael Collins]] a.k.a. puggdogg
|photo= Rincewind.jpg|
|name= Rincewind, first name unknown. Has referred to himself as Rincewand (see {{TLC}}), but don't believe it.
|age= Possibly born in 1932 UC, making him 32 in {{COM}} and 57 as of {{TLH}}.
|race= [[:Category:Human characters|Human]]
|occupation= [[:Category:Wizards|Wizzard]], egregious professor of cruel and unusual geography
|appearance= Young, athletic, often disheveled
|residence= Currently Unseen University
|death=
|parents=
|relatives= possibly [[Bill Rincewind]]; [[Lavaeolus]] might be an ancestor. [[Dr Rjinswand]] on [[Roundworld]] is a parellel-world version who has discovered something as good and as dangerous as magic, in nuclear energy...
|children=
|marital status=
|books= [[:Category:Rincewind Series|Rincewind series]]
|cameos= {{M}}, {{UA}}
}}
'''Rincewind''' has been an important character since the ''[[Discworld]]'' series started. He is a polite yet cowardly [[Wizard's magic|wizard]] with (almost) no magical ability and whose ambition in life is simply to continue having a life. He has been on many adventures, but almost entirely by accident. He is however gifted with languages, speaking several including [[Chimeria|Chimeran]], [[Vanglemesht]], [[Sumtri]], [[Black Oroogu]], [[Borogravia|High Borogravian]] and [[Trob|beTrobi]].

==Character==
He starred in {{COM}}, {{TLF}}, {{S}}, {{E}}, {{IT}} and {{TLC}}, and was also a major character in the graphic novel, {{TLH}} as well as in {{SOD1}} novels. He was born under the "Small Boring Group of Faint Stars", a sign associated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plastic images of small religious significance and people allergic to pewter. Rincewind became the owner of [[the Luggage]] after it was given to him as a present by [[Twoflower]] in {{TLF}}.

He has a particular attraction to potatoes, and has in his time been mistaken for a demon, a god, lunch, a hero, a woman, and many other things. At one point he even very briefly visited [[Roundworld]], appearing on an aeroplane mid flight as Dr. Rjinswand, a nuclear physicist, in {{COM}}, who specializes in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors.

Maybe because he was the first major Discworld character, maybe because of his "hidden" bravery, or maybe because of his amazing incompetence, he has always been (and probably always will be) one of the most popular Discworld figures.

In ''The Art of Discworld'', Terry Pratchett mentions that Rincewind probably has at least one more story to tell, but also says that the character's cowardly nature limits what stories can be told.

==Magical abilities==
Rincewind's magical ability is almost nonexistent. He never passed an exam at [[Unseen University]]. The highest score he received was 2% for spelling his name right. In fact, we are informed that he actually managed to receive negative marks in Basic Firestarting, an issue still hotly debated by the Faculty - "''How the Hell did he manage that''!" - even in the early pages of {{IT}}. Even when we first met him however he still had the right to wear the brass octogram confirming he is a UU alumnus. One wonders how he got into Unseen in the first place.

It has been estimated that when Rincewind finally dies, the average magical ability for the species will go up a fraction. What he cannot spell right, apparently, is his job description, because he has ''WIZZARD'' written in large letters on his pointy hat. The reason for this incompetence lies within an incident where he opened the [[Octavo]] and one of the great eight spells of the [[creator]] jumped out and settled down in his brain. This spell frightened off any other spells which Rincewind tried to learn.

Nevertheless, he has managed to do some impressive magic on very few occasions (e.g. in {{TLF}}), most often without his consent, although once near ''The Light Fantastic's'' climax, he was able to mentally unlock a door through apparently no efforts or powers but his own (albeit at great strain). This interestingly echoes another magical misfit, [[Magrat Garlick]], who similarly forced a thick unyielding door to open to her by using the power of magic.

While woefully inept at performing magic of his own, Rincewind does possess all wizards' baseline ability to sense magical energies, including the colour octarine. In ''Sourcery'', the saturation of the Disc with thaumic force accumulated in Rincewind as in other wizards, temporarily endowing him with the power to utilize spells, albeit ''very'' clumsily and erratically.

== Age and Early Life ==
Not much is known about Rincewind's early life. In {{IT}}, it is mentioned that "''Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent''." He has stated on more than one occasion that his mother "''ran away before he was born'' (is there a possibility his mother just ran away from home to have Rincewind and Rincewind is just looking for an excuse to be far away?)." However, Rincewind clearly remembers a birthday card with a '''Now you are Five...''' badge attached to it - which is the worst possible present anyone could receive at the age of six. He also remembers having had a stuffed toy lamb plush as a child, (mentioned in {{TLC}}.)

In {{TLF}}, Rincewind remembers his grandad telling him about [[Cohen]], again implying he grew up without his parents. In the same book, [[Trymon]] obtains Rincewind's "''precise place and time of birth''," from university records, so that an astrologer can cast a horoscope, implying that there is some record of Rincewind's birth.

Rincewind, [[Trymon]] and the [[Librarian]] all attended the University at around the same time, and are presumably the same age. In {{IT}}, Rincewind remembers hanging around with Noodle Jackson when he, (Rincewind,) was a very young student, implying that Rincewind has spent much of his life at [[Unseen University]].

==Travels==
[[Image:Rincewind in Ankh Morpork.jpg|200px|left|thumb|Rincewind In Ankh Morpork]]
Rincewind must be one of the most travelled characters in the Discworld series. He has seen [[Hell]], the [[Dungeon Dimensions]], the end of the world and its creation (where he very probably started life with a discarded egg sandwich). He has been to [[XXXX]], [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]], the Moon, the [[Agatean Empire]], the [[Rim]] and all sorts of other interesting places. However, he probably cannot describe any of these places, because he was always running so fast that his feet barely touched the ground.

He seems to be constantly running away from danger (as such, most of his scars are on his back). He is the first to call himself a coward, although he's frequently frustrated by circumstances which cause him to be accidentally heroic. He always gets himself into dangerous situations, because he always has to help the helpless and innocent, even if half the time he would rather run away before it starts to happen to him. Also he is very realistic and rather cynical, so he knows when a situation is wrong and when, for instance, a bunch of poor foolhardy kids are going to get themselves killed (in {{IT}}).

He has been "''almost''" dead so often that [[Death]] calls Rincewind his hobby and does not actually know when he is going to die. Rincewind's [[life-timer]] has evolved in shape, much to Death's professional interest: far from resembling a simple hour-glass, it now manifests as a multi-dimensional glass nightmare, describing as having apparently been created by a glass-blower who had hiccups in a time machine. This is most likely due to his extensive dimensional and temporal travels while in constant fear of death. It is impossible to track the sand inside with any degree of accuracy, as occasionally it appears to move backwards.

Mentioned during the events of {{TLC}}, [[Death]] has come up with a theory about Rincewind: He is aware that many cultures and civilisations have the concept of the Eternal Champion, the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the Champion with a thousand faces. As Death is {{death|unable to enlighten, even by default, on conditions in the next world}}, He generally refrains from commentating. Privately, though, Death is aware of the particular Discworld condition that every condition and state of mind must have its opposite - thus Drunk - [[Knurd]], Crime - [[Anticrime]], Matter - Antimatter, etc. He has wondered, as He regards Rincewind's unique [[life-timer]], whether this belongs to the Eternal Coward, the anti-hero with a thousand retreating backs. Many cultures, after all, have the legend of an Eternal Champion who one day will be reborn in time of greatest need, (He even knows there is one in undying sleep underneath [[Lancre]], and there certainly was one in [[Holy Wood]].) It is possible that the balance of nature calls for an Eternal Coward who, when faced with waking up one morning to face down great threat, will pull the covers over his head and ignore the alarm clock.

==Unseen University Career==
After a failed career as a student, Rincewind was the UU library assistant for a while. He got on well with the [[Librarian]], and might well be the person who knows most about the Librarian, apparently even his name.

Aside from running away, his single greatest talent is an innate gift for languages: He can scream for mercy in nineteen languages and just scream in another forty-four.

Rincewind is currently the [[Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography]] at [[Unseen University]], along with at least eighteen other positions that none of the other wizards wanted (see {{SOD3}}), such as Health and Safety Officer. His degree is ''B. Mgc. Unseen University (failed)'' (see {{COM}}, 2. ''The Sending of Eight'', second paragraph).
However, in the opening chapters of {{IT}}, [[Ridcully]] ascertains the truth in a clear and businesslike fashion. Rincewind has effectively been operating under false pretenses and claiming a status for himself - as a full, graduate wizard - to which he clearly has no right.

While nobody is sorrier to have to point this out than Ridcully, the sanctions available under University lore for the punishment of imposters are quite clear-cut and offer no room for mitigating circumstances (absent corroborating testimony from university faculty), and he, Ridcully, would be quite shockingly negligent in his duties as [[Archchancellor]], if he did not order Rincewind to be nailed upside-down to one of the principal supporting pillars of the Brass Bridge at low tide, to be released at the next low tide.

After a pause to let this sink in, Ridcully then suggested that these things can be rectified and a retroactive honorary degree may be conferred if, for instance, a non-wizard in such an unenviable position were to go out and perform a great service of benefit to Wizards and all mankind, after which he, Rincewind, would be free to call himself a Wizzard, (and spell it with as many "z"'s as he likes), but with no wages, teaching no classes, but the full right to attend meals, have an office, and receive coal deliveries (he currently receives 18; one for each role he fills--in the summer, his office is an inferno, since if he does not burn all his coal, he will receive no more).

Rincewind eventually conceded (in as many words) that Ridcully was being very fair-minded, under the circumstances, and consented to let himself be sent to the [[Counterweight continent|Counterweight Continent]] as the University's [[Great Wizard|expeditionary force]]. It may be inferred from Rincewind's subsequent promotion to the post of Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography that Ridcully has been faithful to his word and the honorary degree has been conferred, at last making Rincewind officially a wizard, albeit by a back-door route.

By the time of {{SOD3}}, Rincewind appears to have gained ''some'' amount of respect from the senior Faculty, as he sits at their meetings, perhaps as a result of his ingenious plan in {{SOD2}}; this seems to have raised his self-esteem somewhat, as he tries to insist on being called ''Professor'' Rincewind.

He is now also, quite reluctantly, a member of the "[[Unseen Academicals]]" [[football]] team.

As of {{RS}} Rincewind is referred to as a Professor and is involved in research into the pharmacological actions of the flora of the [[Netherglades]]. His research has revealed the juice of a certain yellow flower induces absolute certainty about everything in the patient for up to fifteen minutes, while the juice of a floating water hyacinth causes absolute uncertainty in the patient for up to half an hour.

==Philosophy==
Rincewind's philosophy on life is noted for its simplicity. He spends most of his time running away, and never particularly bothers with where he's running away to - what he's running from is always more important.

Rincewind is also firmly convinced that there are no causes worth dying for. As he sees it, you can pick up another five causes on any street corner, but you only have one life.

He views positive developments in his life with deep suspicion, reasoning that they are usually just a setup for some newer and more horrible fate to befall him. He is, almost invariably, correct.

As his list of misadventures has grown longer, Rincewind has grown increasingly cynical about how his own life works, and recently went so far as to volunteer for a suicidal mission to prevent the [[Silver Horde]] from blowing up the gods, because he figured he would end up on the mission anyway, either by force or by accident (as is probably true).

He feels he suffers from a sort of pre-emptive karma. The universe, as soon as something nice is about to happen to him, causes something awful to happen that not only balances out the good thing, but goes on happening right through the time during which the good thing is trying to happen, thus effectively blotting it out. It has been mentioned that there is possibly an anti-Rincewind to which only good things happen. Rincewind would very much like to meet him, preferably while holding a big stick. This may or may not be [[Bill Rincewind]]. One could in fact say that the only good luck he has is how safely he escapes his bad luck.

Rincewind also very much values [[potato]]es, apparently associating them, at a subconscious level, with women, sex, or both. He eventually underwent therapy for the problem.

==Misc==

Rincewind will appear on [http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_9327000/9327675.stm Royal Mail stamps in 2011] along with [[Nanny Ogg]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Leading characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Wizards]]
[[de:Rincewind]]

Rincewind

2016-08-13T00:12:46Z

Richvanf: /* Unseen University Career */

{{Character Data
|title= The Wizzard
|Rincewind Illustrated by [[User:puggdogg|Michael Collins]] a.k.a. puggdogg
|photo= Rincewind.jpg|
|name= Rincewind, first name unknown. Has referred to himself as Rincewand (see {{TLC}}), but don't believe it.
|age= Possibly born in 1932 UC, making him 32 in {{COM}} and 57 as of {{TLH}}.
|race= [[:Category:Human characters|Human]]
|occupation= [[:Category:Wizards|Wizzard]], egregious professor of cruel and unusual geography
|appearance= Young, athletic, often disheveled
|residence= Currently Unseen University
|death=
|parents=
|relatives= possibly [[Bill Rincewind]]; [[Lavaeolus]] might be an ancestor. [[Dr Rjinswand]] on [[Roundworld]] is a parellel-world version who has discovered something as good and as dangerous as magic, in nuclear energy...
|children=
|marital status=
|books= [[:Category:Rincewind Series|Rincewind series]]
|cameos= {{M}}, {{UA}}
}}
'''Rincewind''' has been an important character since the ''[[Discworld]]'' series started. He is a polite yet cowardly [[Wizard's magic|wizard]] with (almost) no magical ability and whose ambition in life is simply to continue having a life. He has been on many adventures, but almost entirely by accident. He is however gifted with languages, speaking several including [[Chimeria|Chimeran]], [[Vanglemesht]], [[Sumtri]], [[Black Oroogu]], [[Borogravia|High Borogravian]] and [[Trob|beTrobi]].

==Character==
He starred in {{COM}}, {{TLF}}, {{S}}, {{E}}, {{IT}} and {{TLC}}, and was also a major character in the graphic novel, {{TLH}} as well as in {{SOD1}} novels. He was born under the "Small Boring Group of Faint Stars", a sign associated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plastic images of small religious significance and people allergic to pewter. Rincewind became the owner of [[the Luggage]] after it was given to him as a present by [[Twoflower]] in {{TLF}}.

He has a particular attraction to potatoes, and has in his time been mistaken for a demon, a god, lunch, a hero, a woman, and many other things. At one point he even very briefly visited [[Roundworld]], appearing on an aeroplane mid flight as Dr. Rjinswand, a nuclear physicist, in {{COM}}, who specializes in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors.

Maybe because he was the first major Discworld character, maybe because of his "hidden" bravery, or maybe because of his amazing incompetence, he has always been (and probably always will be) one of the most popular Discworld figures.

In ''The Art of Discworld'', Terry Pratchett mentions that Rincewind probably has at least one more story to tell, but also says that the character's cowardly nature limits what stories can be told.

==Magical abilities==
Rincewind's magical ability is almost nonexistent. He never passed an exam at [[Unseen University]]. The highest score he received was 2% for spelling his name right. In fact, we are informed that he actually managed to receive negative marks in Basic Firestarting, an issue still hotly debated by the Faculty - "''How the Hell did he manage that''!" - even in the early pages of {{IT}}. Even when we first met him however he still had the right to wear the brass octogram confirming he is a UU alumnus. One wonders how he got into Unseen in the first place.

It has been estimated that when Rincewind finally dies, the average magical ability for the species will go up a fraction. What he cannot spell right, apparently, is his job description, because he has ''WIZZARD'' written in large letters on his pointy hat. The reason for this incompetence lies within an incident where he opened the [[Octavo]] and one of the great eight spells of the [[creator]] jumped out and settled down in his brain. This spell frightened off any other spells which Rincewind tried to learn.

Nevertheless, he has managed to do some impressive magic on very few occasions (e.g. in {{TLF}}), most often without his consent, although once near ''The Light Fantastic's'' climax, he was able to mentally unlock a door through apparently no efforts or powers but his own (albeit at great strain). This interestingly echoes another magical misfit, [[Magrat Garlick]], who similarly forced a thick unyielding door to open to her by using the power of magic.

While woefully inept at performing magic of his own, Rincewind does possess all wizards' baseline ability to sense magical energies, including the colour octarine. In ''Sourcery'', the saturation of the Disc with thaumic force accumulated in Rincewind as in other wizards, temporarily endowing him with the power to utilize spells, albeit ''very'' clumsily and erratically.

== Age and Early Life ==
Not much is known about Rincewind's early life. In {{IT}}, it is mentioned that "''Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent''." He has stated on more than one occasion that his mother "''ran away before he was born'' (is there a possibility his mother just ran away from home to have Rincewind and Rincewind is just looking for an excuse to be far away?)." However, Rincewind clearly remembers a birthday card with a '''Now you are Five...''' badge attached to it - which is the worst possible present anyone could receive at the age of six. He also remembers having had a stuffed toy lamb plush as a child, (mentioned in {{TLC}}.)

In {{TLF}}, Rincewind remembers his grandad telling him about [[Cohen]], again implying he grew up without his parents. In the same book, [[Trymon]] obtains Rincewind's "''precise place and time of birth''," from university records, so that an astrologer can cast a horoscope, implying that there is some record of Rincewind's birth.

Rincewind, [[Trymon]] and the [[Librarian]] all attended the University at around the same time, and are presumably the same age. In {{IT}}, Rincewind remembers hanging around with Noodle Jackson when he, (Rincewind,) was a very young student, implying that Rincewind has spent much of his life at [[Unseen University]].

==Travels==
[[Image:Rincewind in Ankh Morpork.jpg|200px|left|thumb|Rincewind In Ankh Morpork]]
Rincewind must be one of the most travelled characters in the Discworld series. He has seen [[Hell]], the [[Dungeon Dimensions]], the end of the world and its creation (where he very probably started life with a discarded egg sandwich). He has been to [[XXXX]], [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]], the Moon, the [[Agatean Empire]], the [[Rim]] and all sorts of other interesting places. However, he probably cannot describe any of these places, because he was always running so fast that his feet barely touched the ground.

He seems to be constantly running away from danger (as such, most of his scars are on his back). He is the first to call himself a coward, although he's frequently frustrated by circumstances which cause him to be accidentally heroic. He always gets himself into dangerous situations, because he always has to help the helpless and innocent, even if half the time he would rather run away before it starts to happen to him. Also he is very realistic and rather cynical, so he knows when a situation is wrong and when, for instance, a bunch of poor foolhardy kids are going to get themselves killed (in {{IT}}).

He has been "''almost''" dead so often that [[Death]] calls Rincewind his hobby and does not actually know when he is going to die. Rincewind's [[life-timer]] has evolved in shape, much to Death's professional interest: far from resembling a simple hour-glass, it now manifests as a multi-dimensional glass nightmare, describing as having apparently been created by a glass-blower who had hiccups in a time machine. This is most likely due to his extensive dimensional and temporal travels while in constant fear of death. It is impossible to track the sand inside with any degree of accuracy, as occasionally it appears to move backwards.

Mentioned during the events of {{TLC}}, [[Death]] has come up with a theory about Rincewind: He is aware that many cultures and civilisations have the concept of the Eternal Champion, the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the Champion with a thousand faces. As Death is {{death|unable to enlighten, even by default, on conditions in the next world}}, He generally refrains from commentating. Privately, though, Death is aware of the particular Discworld condition that every condition and state of mind must have its opposite - thus Drunk - [[Knurd]], Crime - [[Anticrime]], Matter - Antimatter, etc. He has wondered, as He regards Rincewind's unique [[life-timer]], whether this belongs to the Eternal Coward, the anti-hero with a thousand retreating backs. Many cultures, after all, have the legend of an Eternal Champion who one day will be reborn in time of greatest need, (He even knows there is one in undying sleep underneath [[Lancre]], and there certainly was one in [[Holy Wood]].) It is possible that the balance of nature calls for an Eternal Coward who, when faced with waking up one morning to face down great threat, will pull the covers over his head and ignore the alarm clock.

==Unseen University Career==
After a failed career as a student, Rincewind was the UU library assistant for a while. He got on well with the [[Librarian]], and might well be the person who knows most about the Librarian, apparently even his name.

Aside from running away, his single greatest talent is an innate gift for languages: He can scream for mercy in nineteen languages and just scream in another forty-four.

Rincewind is currently the [[Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography]] at [[Unseen University]], along with at least eighteen other positions that none of the other wizards wanted (see {{SOD3}}), such as Health and Safety Officer. His degree is ''B. Mgc. Unseen University (failed)'' (see {{COM}}, 2. ''The Sending of Eight'', second paragraph).
However, in the opening chapters of {{IT}}, [[Ridcully]] ascertains the truth in a clear and businesslike fashion. Rincewind has effectively been operating under false pretenses and claiming a status for himself - as a full, graduate wizard - to which he clearly has no right.

While nobody is sorrier to have to point this out than Ridcully, the sanctions available under University lore for the punishment of imposters are quite clear-cut and offer no room for mitigating circumstances (absent corroborating testimony from university faculty), and he, Ridcully, would be quite shockingly negligent in his duties as [[Archchancellor]], if he did not order Rincewind to be nailed upside-down to one of the principal supporting pillars of the Brass Bridge at low tide, to be released at the next low tide.

After a pause to let this sink in, Ridcully then suggested that these things can be rectified and a retroactive honorary degree may be conferred if, for instance, a non-wizard in such an unenviable position were to go out and perform a great service of benefit to Wizards and all mankind, after which he, Rincewind, would be free to call himself a Wizzard, (and spell it with as many "z"'s as he likes), but with no wages, teaching no classes, but the full right to attend meals, have an office, and receive coal deliveries (he currently receives 18; one for each role he fills).

Rincewind eventually conceded (in as many words) that Ridcully was being very fair-minded, under the circumstances, and consented to let himself be sent to the [[Counterweight continent|Counterweight Continent]] as the University's [[Great Wizard|expeditionary force]]. It may be inferred from Rincewind's subsequent promotion to the post of Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography that Ridcully has been faithful to his word and the honorary degree has been conferred, at last making Rincewind officially a wizard, albeit by a back-door route.

By the time of {{SOD3}}, Rincewind appears to have gained ''some'' amount of respect from the senior Faculty, as he sits at their meetings, perhaps as a result of his ingenious plan in {{SOD2}}; this seems to have raised his self-esteem somewhat, as he tries to insist on being called ''Professor'' Rincewind.

He is now also, quite reluctantly, a member of the "[[Unseen Academicals]]" [[football]] team.

As of {{RS}} Rincewind is referred to as a Professor and is involved in research into the pharmacological actions of the flora of the [[Netherglades]]. His research has revealed the juice of a certain yellow flower induces absolute certainty about everything in the patient for up to fifteen minutes, while the juice of a floating water hyacinth causes absolute uncertainty in the patient for up to half an hour.

==Philosophy==
Rincewind's philosophy on life is noted for its simplicity. He spends most of his time running away, and never particularly bothers with where he's running away to - what he's running from is always more important.

Rincewind is also firmly convinced that there are no causes worth dying for. As he sees it, you can pick up another five causes on any street corner, but you only have one life.

He views positive developments in his life with deep suspicion, reasoning that they are usually just a setup for some newer and more horrible fate to befall him. He is, almost invariably, correct.

As his list of misadventures has grown longer, Rincewind has grown increasingly cynical about how his own life works, and recently went so far as to volunteer for a suicidal mission to prevent the [[Silver Horde]] from blowing up the gods, because he figured he would end up on the mission anyway, either by force or by accident (as is probably true).

He feels he suffers from a sort of pre-emptive karma. The universe, as soon as something nice is about to happen to him, causes something awful to happen that not only balances out the good thing, but goes on happening right through the time during which the good thing is trying to happen, thus effectively blotting it out. It has been mentioned that there is possibly an anti-Rincewind to which only good things happen. Rincewind would very much like to meet him, preferably while holding a big stick. This may or may not be [[Bill Rincewind]]. One could in fact say that the only good luck he has is how safely he escapes his bad luck.

Rincewind also very much values [[potato]]es, apparently associating them, at a subconscious level, with women, sex, or both. He eventually underwent therapy for the problem.

==Misc==

Rincewind will appear on [http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_9327000/9327675.stm Royal Mail stamps in 2011] along with [[Nanny Ogg]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Leading characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Wizards]]
[[de:Rincewind]]

Rincewind

2016-08-13T00:11:10Z

Richvanf: /* Unseen University Career */

{{Character Data
|title= The Wizzard
|Rincewind Illustrated by [[User:puggdogg|Michael Collins]] a.k.a. puggdogg
|photo= Rincewind.jpg|
|name= Rincewind, first name unknown. Has referred to himself as Rincewand (see {{TLC}}), but don't believe it.
|age= Possibly born in 1932 UC, making him 32 in {{COM}} and 57 as of {{TLH}}.
|race= [[:Category:Human characters|Human]]
|occupation= [[:Category:Wizards|Wizzard]], egregious professor of cruel and unusual geography
|appearance= Young, athletic, often disheveled
|residence= Currently Unseen University
|death=
|parents=
|relatives= possibly [[Bill Rincewind]]; [[Lavaeolus]] might be an ancestor. [[Dr Rjinswand]] on [[Roundworld]] is a parellel-world version who has discovered something as good and as dangerous as magic, in nuclear energy...
|children=
|marital status=
|books= [[:Category:Rincewind Series|Rincewind series]]
|cameos= {{M}}, {{UA}}
}}
'''Rincewind''' has been an important character since the ''[[Discworld]]'' series started. He is a polite yet cowardly [[Wizard's magic|wizard]] with (almost) no magical ability and whose ambition in life is simply to continue having a life. He has been on many adventures, but almost entirely by accident. He is however gifted with languages, speaking several including [[Chimeria|Chimeran]], [[Vanglemesht]], [[Sumtri]], [[Black Oroogu]], [[Borogravia|High Borogravian]] and [[Trob|beTrobi]].

==Character==
He starred in {{COM}}, {{TLF}}, {{S}}, {{E}}, {{IT}} and {{TLC}}, and was also a major character in the graphic novel, {{TLH}} as well as in {{SOD1}} novels. He was born under the "Small Boring Group of Faint Stars", a sign associated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plastic images of small religious significance and people allergic to pewter. Rincewind became the owner of [[the Luggage]] after it was given to him as a present by [[Twoflower]] in {{TLF}}.

He has a particular attraction to potatoes, and has in his time been mistaken for a demon, a god, lunch, a hero, a woman, and many other things. At one point he even very briefly visited [[Roundworld]], appearing on an aeroplane mid flight as Dr. Rjinswand, a nuclear physicist, in {{COM}}, who specializes in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors.

Maybe because he was the first major Discworld character, maybe because of his "hidden" bravery, or maybe because of his amazing incompetence, he has always been (and probably always will be) one of the most popular Discworld figures.

In ''The Art of Discworld'', Terry Pratchett mentions that Rincewind probably has at least one more story to tell, but also says that the character's cowardly nature limits what stories can be told.

==Magical abilities==
Rincewind's magical ability is almost nonexistent. He never passed an exam at [[Unseen University]]. The highest score he received was 2% for spelling his name right. In fact, we are informed that he actually managed to receive negative marks in Basic Firestarting, an issue still hotly debated by the Faculty - "''How the Hell did he manage that''!" - even in the early pages of {{IT}}. Even when we first met him however he still had the right to wear the brass octogram confirming he is a UU alumnus. One wonders how he got into Unseen in the first place.

It has been estimated that when Rincewind finally dies, the average magical ability for the species will go up a fraction. What he cannot spell right, apparently, is his job description, because he has ''WIZZARD'' written in large letters on his pointy hat. The reason for this incompetence lies within an incident where he opened the [[Octavo]] and one of the great eight spells of the [[creator]] jumped out and settled down in his brain. This spell frightened off any other spells which Rincewind tried to learn.

Nevertheless, he has managed to do some impressive magic on very few occasions (e.g. in {{TLF}}), most often without his consent, although once near ''The Light Fantastic's'' climax, he was able to mentally unlock a door through apparently no efforts or powers but his own (albeit at great strain). This interestingly echoes another magical misfit, [[Magrat Garlick]], who similarly forced a thick unyielding door to open to her by using the power of magic.

While woefully inept at performing magic of his own, Rincewind does possess all wizards' baseline ability to sense magical energies, including the colour octarine. In ''Sourcery'', the saturation of the Disc with thaumic force accumulated in Rincewind as in other wizards, temporarily endowing him with the power to utilize spells, albeit ''very'' clumsily and erratically.

== Age and Early Life ==
Not much is known about Rincewind's early life. In {{IT}}, it is mentioned that "''Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent''." He has stated on more than one occasion that his mother "''ran away before he was born'' (is there a possibility his mother just ran away from home to have Rincewind and Rincewind is just looking for an excuse to be far away?)." However, Rincewind clearly remembers a birthday card with a '''Now you are Five...''' badge attached to it - which is the worst possible present anyone could receive at the age of six. He also remembers having had a stuffed toy lamb plush as a child, (mentioned in {{TLC}}.)

In {{TLF}}, Rincewind remembers his grandad telling him about [[Cohen]], again implying he grew up without his parents. In the same book, [[Trymon]] obtains Rincewind's "''precise place and time of birth''," from university records, so that an astrologer can cast a horoscope, implying that there is some record of Rincewind's birth.

Rincewind, [[Trymon]] and the [[Librarian]] all attended the University at around the same time, and are presumably the same age. In {{IT}}, Rincewind remembers hanging around with Noodle Jackson when he, (Rincewind,) was a very young student, implying that Rincewind has spent much of his life at [[Unseen University]].

==Travels==
[[Image:Rincewind in Ankh Morpork.jpg|200px|left|thumb|Rincewind In Ankh Morpork]]
Rincewind must be one of the most travelled characters in the Discworld series. He has seen [[Hell]], the [[Dungeon Dimensions]], the end of the world and its creation (where he very probably started life with a discarded egg sandwich). He has been to [[XXXX]], [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]], the Moon, the [[Agatean Empire]], the [[Rim]] and all sorts of other interesting places. However, he probably cannot describe any of these places, because he was always running so fast that his feet barely touched the ground.

He seems to be constantly running away from danger (as such, most of his scars are on his back). He is the first to call himself a coward, although he's frequently frustrated by circumstances which cause him to be accidentally heroic. He always gets himself into dangerous situations, because he always has to help the helpless and innocent, even if half the time he would rather run away before it starts to happen to him. Also he is very realistic and rather cynical, so he knows when a situation is wrong and when, for instance, a bunch of poor foolhardy kids are going to get themselves killed (in {{IT}}).

He has been "''almost''" dead so often that [[Death]] calls Rincewind his hobby and does not actually know when he is going to die. Rincewind's [[life-timer]] has evolved in shape, much to Death's professional interest: far from resembling a simple hour-glass, it now manifests as a multi-dimensional glass nightmare, describing as having apparently been created by a glass-blower who had hiccups in a time machine. This is most likely due to his extensive dimensional and temporal travels while in constant fear of death. It is impossible to track the sand inside with any degree of accuracy, as occasionally it appears to move backwards.

Mentioned during the events of {{TLC}}, [[Death]] has come up with a theory about Rincewind: He is aware that many cultures and civilisations have the concept of the Eternal Champion, the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the Champion with a thousand faces. As Death is {{death|unable to enlighten, even by default, on conditions in the next world}}, He generally refrains from commentating. Privately, though, Death is aware of the particular Discworld condition that every condition and state of mind must have its opposite - thus Drunk - [[Knurd]], Crime - [[Anticrime]], Matter - Antimatter, etc. He has wondered, as He regards Rincewind's unique [[life-timer]], whether this belongs to the Eternal Coward, the anti-hero with a thousand retreating backs. Many cultures, after all, have the legend of an Eternal Champion who one day will be reborn in time of greatest need, (He even knows there is one in undying sleep underneath [[Lancre]], and there certainly was one in [[Holy Wood]].) It is possible that the balance of nature calls for an Eternal Coward who, when faced with waking up one morning to face down great threat, will pull the covers over his head and ignore the alarm clock.

==Unseen University Career==
After a failed career as a student, Rincewind was the UU library assistant for a while. He got on well with the [[Librarian]], and might well be the person who knows most about the Librarian, apparently even his name.

Aside from running away, his single greatest talent is an innate gift for languages: He can scream for mercy in nineteen languages and just scream in another forty-four.

Rincewind is currently the [[Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography]] at [[Unseen University]], along with at least eighteen other positions that none of the other wizards wanted (see {{SOD3}}), such as Health and Safety Officer. His degree is ''B. Mgc. Unseen University (failed)'' (see {{COM}}, 2. ''The Sending of Eight'', second paragraph).
However, in the opening chapters of {{IT}}, [[Ridcully]] ascertains the truth in a clear and businesslike fashion. Rincewind has effectively been operating under false pretenses and claiming a status for himself - as a full, graduate wizard - to which he clearly has no right.

While nobody is sorrier to have to point this out than Ridcully, the sanctions available under University lore for the punishment of imposters are quite clear-cut and offer no room for mitigating circumstances (absent corroborating testimony from university faculty), and he, Ridcully, would be quite shockingly negligent in his duties as [[Archchancellor]], if he did not order Rincewind to be nailed upside-down to one of the principal supporting pillars of the Brass Bridge at low tide.

After a pause to let this sink in, Ridcully then suggested that these things can be rectified and a retroactive honorary degree may be conferred if, for instance, a non-wizard in such an unenviable position were to go out and perform a great service of benefit to Wizards and all mankind, after which he, Rincewind, would be free to call himself a Wizzard, (and spell it with as many "z"'s as he likes), but with no wages, teaching no classes, but the full right to attend meals, have an office, and receive coal deliveries (he currently receives 18; one for each role he fills).

Rincewind eventually conceded (in as many words) that Ridcully was being very fair-minded, under the circumstances, and consented to let himself be sent to the [[Counterweight continent|Counterweight Continent]] as the University's [[Great Wizard|expeditionary force]]. It may be inferred from Rincewind's subsequent promotion to the post of Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography that Ridcully has been faithful to his word and the honorary degree has been conferred, at last making Rincewind officially a wizard, albeit by a back-door route.

By the time of {{SOD3}}, Rincewind appears to have gained ''some'' amount of respect from the senior Faculty, as he sits at their meetings, perhaps as a result of his ingenious plan in {{SOD2}}; this seems to have raised his self-esteem somewhat, as he tries to insist on being called ''Professor'' Rincewind.

He is now also, quite reluctantly, a member of the "[[Unseen Academicals]]" [[football]] team.

As of {{RS}} Rincewind is referred to as a Professor and is involved in research into the pharmacological actions of the flora of the [[Netherglades]]. His research has revealed the juice of a certain yellow flower induces absolute certainty about everything in the patient for up to fifteen minutes, while the juice of a floating water hyacinth causes absolute uncertainty in the patient for up to half an hour.

==Philosophy==
Rincewind's philosophy on life is noted for its simplicity. He spends most of his time running away, and never particularly bothers with where he's running away to - what he's running from is always more important.

Rincewind is also firmly convinced that there are no causes worth dying for. As he sees it, you can pick up another five causes on any street corner, but you only have one life.

He views positive developments in his life with deep suspicion, reasoning that they are usually just a setup for some newer and more horrible fate to befall him. He is, almost invariably, correct.

As his list of misadventures has grown longer, Rincewind has grown increasingly cynical about how his own life works, and recently went so far as to volunteer for a suicidal mission to prevent the [[Silver Horde]] from blowing up the gods, because he figured he would end up on the mission anyway, either by force or by accident (as is probably true).

He feels he suffers from a sort of pre-emptive karma. The universe, as soon as something nice is about to happen to him, causes something awful to happen that not only balances out the good thing, but goes on happening right through the time during which the good thing is trying to happen, thus effectively blotting it out. It has been mentioned that there is possibly an anti-Rincewind to which only good things happen. Rincewind would very much like to meet him, preferably while holding a big stick. This may or may not be [[Bill Rincewind]]. One could in fact say that the only good luck he has is how safely he escapes his bad luck.

Rincewind also very much values [[potato]]es, apparently associating them, at a subconscious level, with women, sex, or both. He eventually underwent therapy for the problem.

==Misc==

Rincewind will appear on [http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_9327000/9327675.stm Royal Mail stamps in 2011] along with [[Nanny Ogg]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Leading characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Wizards]]
[[de:Rincewind]]

Rincewind

2016-08-12T23:51:07Z

Richvanf: /* Character */

{{Character Data
|title= The Wizzard
|Rincewind Illustrated by [[User:puggdogg|Michael Collins]] a.k.a. puggdogg
|photo= Rincewind.jpg|
|name= Rincewind, first name unknown. Has referred to himself as Rincewand (see {{TLC}}), but don't believe it.
|age= Possibly born in 1932 UC, making him 32 in {{COM}} and 57 as of {{TLH}}.
|race= [[:Category:Human characters|Human]]
|occupation= [[:Category:Wizards|Wizzard]], egregious professor of cruel and unusual geography
|appearance= Young, athletic, often disheveled
|residence= Currently Unseen University
|death=
|parents=
|relatives= possibly [[Bill Rincewind]]; [[Lavaeolus]] might be an ancestor. [[Dr Rjinswand]] on [[Roundworld]] is a parellel-world version who has discovered something as good and as dangerous as magic, in nuclear energy...
|children=
|marital status=
|books= [[:Category:Rincewind Series|Rincewind series]]
|cameos= {{M}}, {{UA}}
}}
'''Rincewind''' has been an important character since the ''[[Discworld]]'' series started. He is a polite yet cowardly [[Wizard's magic|wizard]] with (almost) no magical ability and whose ambition in life is simply to continue having a life. He has been on many adventures, but almost entirely by accident. He is however gifted with languages, speaking several including [[Chimeria|Chimeran]], [[Vanglemesht]], [[Sumtri]], [[Black Oroogu]], [[Borogravia|High Borogravian]] and [[Trob|beTrobi]].

==Character==
He starred in {{COM}}, {{TLF}}, {{S}}, {{E}}, {{IT}} and {{TLC}}, and was also a major character in the graphic novel, {{TLH}} as well as in {{SOD1}} novels. He was born under the "Small Boring Group of Faint Stars", a sign associated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plastic images of small religious significance and people allergic to pewter. Rincewind became the owner of [[the Luggage]] after it was given to him as a present by [[Twoflower]] in {{TLF}}.

He has a particular attraction to potatoes, and has in his time been mistaken for a demon, a god, lunch, a hero, a woman, and many other things. At one point he even very briefly visited [[Roundworld]], appearing on an aeroplane mid flight as Dr. Rjinswand, a nuclear physicist, in {{COM}}, who specializes in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors.

Maybe because he was the first major Discworld character, maybe because of his "hidden" bravery, or maybe because of his amazing incompetence, he has always been (and probably always will be) one of the most popular Discworld figures.

In ''The Art of Discworld'', Terry Pratchett mentions that Rincewind probably has at least one more story to tell, but also says that the character's cowardly nature limits what stories can be told.

==Magical abilities==
Rincewind's magical ability is almost nonexistent. He never passed an exam at [[Unseen University]]. The highest score he received was 2% for spelling his name right. In fact, we are informed that he actually managed to receive negative marks in Basic Firestarting, an issue still hotly debated by the Faculty - "''How the Hell did he manage that''!" - even in the early pages of {{IT}}. Even when we first met him however he still had the right to wear the brass octogram confirming he is a UU alumnus. One wonders how he got into Unseen in the first place.

It has been estimated that when Rincewind finally dies, the average magical ability for the species will go up a fraction. What he cannot spell right, apparently, is his job description, because he has ''WIZZARD'' written in large letters on his pointy hat. The reason for this incompetence lies within an incident where he opened the [[Octavo]] and one of the great eight spells of the [[creator]] jumped out and settled down in his brain. This spell frightened off any other spells which Rincewind tried to learn.

Nevertheless, he has managed to do some impressive magic on very few occasions (e.g. in {{TLF}}), most often without his consent, although once near ''The Light Fantastic's'' climax, he was able to mentally unlock a door through apparently no efforts or powers but his own (albeit at great strain). This interestingly echoes another magical misfit, [[Magrat Garlick]], who similarly forced a thick unyielding door to open to her by using the power of magic.

While woefully inept at performing magic of his own, Rincewind does possess all wizards' baseline ability to sense magical energies, including the colour octarine. In ''Sourcery'', the saturation of the Disc with thaumic force accumulated in Rincewind as in other wizards, temporarily endowing him with the power to utilize spells, albeit ''very'' clumsily and erratically.

== Age and Early Life ==
Not much is known about Rincewind's early life. In {{IT}}, it is mentioned that "''Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent''." He has stated on more than one occasion that his mother "''ran away before he was born'' (is there a possibility his mother just ran away from home to have Rincewind and Rincewind is just looking for an excuse to be far away?)." However, Rincewind clearly remembers a birthday card with a '''Now you are Five...''' badge attached to it - which is the worst possible present anyone could receive at the age of six. He also remembers having had a stuffed toy lamb plush as a child, (mentioned in {{TLC}}.)

In {{TLF}}, Rincewind remembers his grandad telling him about [[Cohen]], again implying he grew up without his parents. In the same book, [[Trymon]] obtains Rincewind's "''precise place and time of birth''," from university records, so that an astrologer can cast a horoscope, implying that there is some record of Rincewind's birth.

Rincewind, [[Trymon]] and the [[Librarian]] all attended the University at around the same time, and are presumably the same age. In {{IT}}, Rincewind remembers hanging around with Noodle Jackson when he, (Rincewind,) was a very young student, implying that Rincewind has spent much of his life at [[Unseen University]].

==Travels==
[[Image:Rincewind in Ankh Morpork.jpg|200px|left|thumb|Rincewind In Ankh Morpork]]
Rincewind must be one of the most travelled characters in the Discworld series. He has seen [[Hell]], the [[Dungeon Dimensions]], the end of the world and its creation (where he very probably started life with a discarded egg sandwich). He has been to [[XXXX]], [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]], the Moon, the [[Agatean Empire]], the [[Rim]] and all sorts of other interesting places. However, he probably cannot describe any of these places, because he was always running so fast that his feet barely touched the ground.

He seems to be constantly running away from danger (as such, most of his scars are on his back). He is the first to call himself a coward, although he's frequently frustrated by circumstances which cause him to be accidentally heroic. He always gets himself into dangerous situations, because he always has to help the helpless and innocent, even if half the time he would rather run away before it starts to happen to him. Also he is very realistic and rather cynical, so he knows when a situation is wrong and when, for instance, a bunch of poor foolhardy kids are going to get themselves killed (in {{IT}}).

He has been "''almost''" dead so often that [[Death]] calls Rincewind his hobby and does not actually know when he is going to die. Rincewind's [[life-timer]] has evolved in shape, much to Death's professional interest: far from resembling a simple hour-glass, it now manifests as a multi-dimensional glass nightmare, describing as having apparently been created by a glass-blower who had hiccups in a time machine. This is most likely due to his extensive dimensional and temporal travels while in constant fear of death. It is impossible to track the sand inside with any degree of accuracy, as occasionally it appears to move backwards.

Mentioned during the events of {{TLC}}, [[Death]] has come up with a theory about Rincewind: He is aware that many cultures and civilisations have the concept of the Eternal Champion, the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the Champion with a thousand faces. As Death is {{death|unable to enlighten, even by default, on conditions in the next world}}, He generally refrains from commentating. Privately, though, Death is aware of the particular Discworld condition that every condition and state of mind must have its opposite - thus Drunk - [[Knurd]], Crime - [[Anticrime]], Matter - Antimatter, etc. He has wondered, as He regards Rincewind's unique [[life-timer]], whether this belongs to the Eternal Coward, the anti-hero with a thousand retreating backs. Many cultures, after all, have the legend of an Eternal Champion who one day will be reborn in time of greatest need, (He even knows there is one in undying sleep underneath [[Lancre]], and there certainly was one in [[Holy Wood]].) It is possible that the balance of nature calls for an Eternal Coward who, when faced with waking up one morning to face down great threat, will pull the covers over his head and ignore the alarm clock.

==Unseen University Career==
After a failed career as a student, Rincewind was the UU library assistant for a while. He got on well with the [[Librarian]], and might well be the person who knows most about the Librarian, apparently even his name.

Aside from running away, his single greatest talent is an innate gift for languages: He can scream for mercy in nineteen languages and just scream in another forty-four.

Rincewind is currently the [[Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography]] at [[Unseen University]], along with at least eighteen other positions that none of the other wizards wanted (see {{SOD3}}), such as Health and Safety Officer. His degree is ''B. Mgc. Unseen University (failed)'' (see {{COM}}, 2. ''The Sending of Eight'', second paragraph).
However, in the opening chapters of {{IT}}, [[Ridcully]] ascertains the truth in a clear and businesslike fashion. Rincewind has effectively been operating under false pretenses and claiming a status for himself - as a full, graduate wizard - to which he clearly has no right.

While nobody is sorrier to have to point this out than Ridcully, the sanctions available under University lore for the punishment of imposters are quite clear-cut and offer no room for mitigating circumstances (absent corroborating testimony from university faculty), and he, Ridcully, would be quite shockingly negligent in his duties as [[Archchancellor]], if he did not order Rincewind to be nailed upside-down to one of the principal supporting pillars of the Brass Bridge at low tide.

After a pause to let this sink in, Ridcully then suggested that these things can be rectified and a retroactive honorary degree may be conferred if, for instance, a non-wizard in such an unenviable position were to go out and perform a great service of benefit to Wizards and all mankind, after which he, Rincewind, would be free to call himself a Wizzard, (and spell it with as many "z"'s as he likes).

Rincewind eventually conceded (in as many words) that Ridcully was being very fair-minded, under the circumstances, and consented to let himself be sent to the [[Counterweight continent|Counterweight Continent]] as the University's [[Great Wizard|expeditionary force]]. It may be inferred from Rincewind's subsequent promotion to the post of Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography that Ridcully has been faithful to his word and the honorary degree has been conferred, at last making Rincewind officially a wizard, albeit by a back-door route.

By the time of {{SOD3}}, Rincewind appears to have gained ''some'' amount of respect from the senior Faculty, as he sits at their meetings, perhaps as a result of his ingenious plan in {{SOD2}}; this seems to have raised his self-esteem somewhat, as he tries to insist on being called ''Professor'' Rincewind.

He is now also, quite reluctantly, a member of the "[[Unseen Academicals]]" [[football]] team.

As of {{RS}} Rincewind is referred to as a Professor and is involved in research into the pharmacological actions of the flora of the [[Netherglades]]. His research has revealed the juice of a certain yellow flower induces absolute certainty about everything in the patient for up to fifteen minutes, while the juice of a floating water hyacinth causes absolute uncertainty in the patient for up to half an hour.

==Philosophy==
Rincewind's philosophy on life is noted for its simplicity. He spends most of his time running away, and never particularly bothers with where he's running away to - what he's running from is always more important.

Rincewind is also firmly convinced that there are no causes worth dying for. As he sees it, you can pick up another five causes on any street corner, but you only have one life.

He views positive developments in his life with deep suspicion, reasoning that they are usually just a setup for some newer and more horrible fate to befall him. He is, almost invariably, correct.

As his list of misadventures has grown longer, Rincewind has grown increasingly cynical about how his own life works, and recently went so far as to volunteer for a suicidal mission to prevent the [[Silver Horde]] from blowing up the gods, because he figured he would end up on the mission anyway, either by force or by accident (as is probably true).

He feels he suffers from a sort of pre-emptive karma. The universe, as soon as something nice is about to happen to him, causes something awful to happen that not only balances out the good thing, but goes on happening right through the time during which the good thing is trying to happen, thus effectively blotting it out. It has been mentioned that there is possibly an anti-Rincewind to which only good things happen. Rincewind would very much like to meet him, preferably while holding a big stick. This may or may not be [[Bill Rincewind]]. One could in fact say that the only good luck he has is how safely he escapes his bad luck.

Rincewind also very much values [[potato]]es, apparently associating them, at a subconscious level, with women, sex, or both. He eventually underwent therapy for the problem.

==Misc==

Rincewind will appear on [http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_9327000/9327675.stm Royal Mail stamps in 2011] along with [[Nanny Ogg]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Leading characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Wizards]]
[[de:Rincewind]]

Beggars' Guild

2016-07-20T04:43:46Z

Richvanf:

Motto: ''MONETA SVPERVACANEA, MAGISTER? '' (''Spare change, guv'nor?'')

Coat of Arms: a shield quartered. In the top quartered, three dragons, courant et or, on a field, gules. In the bottom-left quarter a dragon, gardant et or on a field, gules. In the top-left and bottom-right quarters a pattern of caltraps, argent, on a field, azure. Some visitors to the city have questioned the shield saying 'what a load of dragons got to do with beggars?' This misses the point, as it is in fact a second-hand coat of arms. In fact most visitors don't ask this. The two most common questions by visitors is 'Why don't I have any money left?' and 'Um...which way to...um...you know...the '[[Seamstresses' Guild|ladies]]'?

Current leader: [[Queen Molly]].

The oldest Guild in [[Ankh-Morpork]] and one of the more powerful, topped with a weather vane shaped like a beggar with his tin cup to the wind. The Beggars control the different sorts of beggars allowed to operate and how many of them in each area of the city. Divisions include Dribblers, Mumblers, Mutterers, Walking-Along-Shouters and [[Foul Ole Ron]], during his tenure at the Guild generally considered to be in a class of his own, if only because no one will share it with him. A certain amount of leeway would be given to, say, a Mumbler who risked the occasional Mutter, but no Mutterer would dare attempt Walking-Along-Shouting, on pain of pain. Enforcers of these rules are unknown.

The president of the Beggars' Guild is called Queen or King and wears the traditional velvet gown. He or she often finds life difficult because, due to the high rank, he/she will have to beg for something extravagant, and very few people are prepared to lend a 16-room mansion (see the coronation, in ''[[Book:Guards! Guards!|Guards! Guards!]]''). The Beggars' Guild has a guildhouse, like many other guilds. The true spirit of beggary is to always beg, never pay money or render services of any sort, for anything (see ''[[Book:Men at Arms|Men at Arms]]''). Members found buying things with money, running errands for people, and so on will be punished. Due to this, the Beggars' Guild is actually among the richest guilds in the city as they believe money is to be begged for not to be spent. A lot of the money has, however, been invested in property across the city via a series of agents and shell companies. Many of the richer citizens would be shocked to learn who they rent their well-to-do houses from. It is always a bad idea to kick a beggar in Ankh-Morpork, as karma can come round very swiftly, with the bailiffs.

Like the [[Thieves' Guild]], the Beggars offer a form of [[Inn-Sewer-Ants|insurance]] as well as the opportunity for direct charity. For a small fee, they can guarantee that no aggressive, unsightly, evil-smelling members will show up at your convention, daughter's wedding, or other special occasion. If you fail to take this simple precaution, you would be amazed at the number of beggars with 'interesting skin conditions' and infectious boils who will show up and start socialising with your guests.

The beggars guild runs a highly efficient intelligence service. Beggars are found across the city, often overlooked and ignored, but they see and hear everything. This knowledge can he sold to the highest bidder, who in many cases turns out to be the [[Havelock Vetinari|Patrician]] (whose best offer is often "Do not let me detain you"). They can also locate people in the chaos that is the city, as [[Heretofore]] is able to use the beggars' guild to find [[Cribbins]] for his master [[Cosmo Lavish]].

Politically the Guild has supported both the Patrician and the Watch in the power-plays of the city. In {{FOC}} Queen Molly opposed the City Council when they suggested replacing Lord Vetinari with a malleable king in the form of Nobby Nobbs and tipped off Commander Vimes that 'he needed to watch his back' as he was an impediment to the conspirator's plans. In {{J}} when Lord Rust demanded the guild leaders vote to remove the patrician from office, after the surrender to Klatch, the Beggar's Guild was one of four who refused to sign, the others being; the [[Seamstresses' Guild]], the [[Guild of Ecdysiasts, Nautchers, Cancanieres and Exponents of Exotic Dance|Strippers' Guild]] & the Washerwomen's Guild. One wonders at Vetinari's youth to attract such support...

[[Foul Ole Ron]] and several other [[Canting Crew|beggars]] in his group used to be members in good standing in the Beggars' Guild. They are no longer members of the Guild because, perhaps, other members of the Guild would like somebody to look down on (see ''[[Book:The Truth|The Truth]]''). Foul Ole Ron's group has been, and may still be, the street salesmen of the [[Ankh-Morpork Times]] newspaper. If the rule about true beggary is to be adhered to, this behaviour disqualifies Foul Ole Ron and his friends from the Beggars' Guild.

==Beggar Classes==

*Twitchers
*Droolers
*Dribblers
*Mumblers
*Mutterers
*Walk-Along-Shouter
*Demanders of a Chip
*People who call other people Jimmy
*People who need Tuppence for a cup of tea
*People who need eight pence for a meal
*People with a placard saying 'Why lie? I need a beer.'
*Beggar Lord
*Beggar King/Queen

*In a class by themselves; the [[Canting Crew]]

==Members of the Guild==

*[[Queen Molly]]
*[[Lettice Knibbs]] - maid to the Beggar Queen
*[[Cumbling Michael]] - Grade two Mutterer
*[[Dribbling Sidney]]
*[[Sidney Lopsides]]
*[[Cripple Wa]]
*[[Blind Hugh]]
*Ringo Eyebrows
*No Way José
*Whistling Dick

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

Seamstresses' Guild

2016-07-20T03:20:36Z

Richvanf:

[[Image:Seam01.png|200px|right]]
Motto: ''NIL VOLVPTI, SINE LVCRE.''

''No pleasure without pay.''

An embarrassed or meaningful clearing of the throat is generally used while speaking the name of this [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|guild]]. They call themselves seamstresses (hem, hem).

There seem to be many Seamstresses in [[Ankh-Morpork]], and yet bachelors or old widowers have difficulty when they try to find needlewomen who wield needles and threads to repair garments. Genuine ability with needle and thread and occasional mushroom is the province of [[Sandra Battye]], who retains the most cordial relationship with the Guild while, strictly speaking, not practicing as a Seamstress in the accepted sense of the word.

The seamstresses in the Seamstresses' Guild are, in the politically-correct language of the modern Ankh-Morpork, ''ladies of negotiable affection'', ladies whose company and loving attention, crudely put, could be hired for a night. A survey by the [[Guild of Merchants]] in the docks area of Ankh-Morpork found 987 women who gave their profession as "seamstress" – and two needles (according to {{MAA}}).

The Seamstresses' Guild does not have a formal school, most of the training being, so to speak, on the job. Some Seamstresses are based in ''houses of negotiable affection'' or, in older language, houses of ill-repute, although these houses are often highly spoken of. The head of the guild is Mrs. [[Rosemary Palm]]; "''Mrs''" indicating seniority rather than marital status. The guild enforcers are the [[Agony Aunts]], Sadie and Dotsie, prim, silent old ladies who will always catch up with a client that has behaved badly toward the Seamstresses. A punished client who is able to complain to the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] afterwards is considered to have gotten off lightly. Other veteran practitioners and holders of the title "''Mrs.''" comprise the Guild officers ... or "''Mr.''," in the case of Mr. Harris, proprietor of the [[Blue Cat Club]].

The Seamstresses regulate their own behaviours like other good guilds. For instance, the Guild prides itself that a customer may safely enjoy the services it provides, and will ''only'' end up battered, bereft of money and clothing, and otherwise ill-abused, in an alley in [[The Shades]] at midnight, if his personal tastes were to run that way. Any attempt to rob a customer might be viewed as provoking a [[demarcation]] dispute with the [[Thieves' Guild]], and it is certain the Guild Council will not view this favourably at all (and since the [[Assassins' Guild]] often expresses terminal displeasure with Thieves who employ excessive force, a customer who dies during such an act might provoke extreme measures from both Guilds--Mrs. Palm would not be amused; such events are very unprofitable).

Therefore, if [[Dolores Smother]] were ever a Guild member, her working ethos, of drugging and robbing unwary [[Borogravia|Borogravian]] soldiers, would result at the very least in the revocation of her membership, and possibly the cancellation of additional privileges such as being able to breathe or walk without assistance. After all, the Guild prides itself on its tradition of negotiated hospitality and on the safety of clients who are going about the pursuit of their pleasures.

References in the Post Office edition of the Discworld Diary imply that this Guild also regulates the sale and distribution of pornography within Ankh-Morpork. Printed materials of an erotic nature that are shipped via post must be countersigned by a Seamstresses' Guild representative, and a ratings system apparently exists to evaluate whether content is too adult to be sent unsealed.

The Seamstresses had wanted to form a guild for decades. [[Mad Lord Snapcase|Lord Snapcase]] had promised to let them form one, but had since neglected them after he became [[Patrician]] (see {{NW}}). Later, the new Patrician, Lord [[Havelock Vetinari]], allowed the Seamstresses to form a guild. This is now one of the more powerful [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|guilds]] in [[Ankh-Morpork]].

Women who actually use needles and [[wikipedia:sewing|sew]], along with other textile arts, are referred to as "'''''Needlewomen'''''," but no mention of a guild for them has ever been made. A Tailors' Guild exists, but as yet it's unknown if this guild is open to females.

==Annotation==
Roundworld rock band '''The Rolling Stones''' - surely by now their trade's equivalent of [[Cohen the Barbarian]] and the [[Silver Horde]], as they are currently in their fifth decade as a rock band - once recorded a song called ''Walking The Dog'', which has a lyric running

"''Hi-ho, tippytoes; She'll thread the needle, but she can't sew''!"

This is an old blues standard and appears to contain a reference to Seamstresses.

==Seamstressing is older than even the blues... ==
This is entirely true. Threadneedle Street in London, (now very rich indeed,) was probably known as Gropec**te Lane in the fourteenth century. If ever there was a euphemism that has stood the test of time, threading the needle ''certainly'' has.

Also, during Seattle's earlier days, brothels were illegal, so prostitutes would list their jobs as "''Seamstresses''" when the cops came calling. During a period of minimal city revenues, it was required that Seattle prostitutes possess a "''Seamstress license''," and these fees became a major source of revenue for the city.

And of course in Dutch/Afrikaans, the verb ''naaien'', formal meaning to stitch or sew, is slang for [[-ing]], so the Dutch translator probably got the joke immediately... the English euphemism is also found in Dutch, where the term 'naaister' or 'naaistertje' carries the same connotation as 'seamstress' does.

[[Category:Guilds|Seamstresses' Guild]]
[[Category:Ankh-Morpork Businesses|Seamstresses' Guild]]
[[de:Näherinnengilde]]

Seamstresses' Guild

2016-07-20T03:10:47Z

Richvanf:

[[Image:Seam01.png|200px|right]]
Motto: ''NIL VOLVPTI, SINE LVCRE.''

''No pleasure without pay.''

An embarrassed or meaningful clearing of the throat is generally used while speaking the name of this [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|guild]]. They call themselves seamstresses (hem, hem).

There seem to be many Seamstresses in [[Ankh-Morpork]], and yet bachelors or old widowers have difficulty when they try to find needlewomen who wield needles and threads to repair garments. Genuine ability with needle and thread and occasional mushroom is the province of [[Sandra Battye]], who retains the most cordial relationship with the Guild while, strictly speaking, not practicing as a Seamstress in the accepted sense of the word.

The seamstresses in the Seamstresses' Guild are, in the politically-correct language of the modern Ankh-Morpork, ''ladies of negotiable affection'', ladies whose company and loving attention, crudely put, could be hired for a night. A survey by the [[Guild of Merchants]] in the docks area of Ankh-Morpork found 987 women who gave their profession as "seamstress" – and two needles (according to {{MAA}}).

The Seamstresses' Guild does not have a formal school, most of the training being, so to speak, on the job. Some Seamstresses are based in ''houses of negotiable affection'' or, in older language, houses of ill-repute, although these houses are often highly spoken of. The head of the guild is Mrs. [[Rosemary Palm]]; "''Mrs''" indicating seniority rather than marital status. The guild enforcers are the [[Agony Aunts]], Sadie and Dotsie, prim, silent old ladies who will always catch up with a client that has behaved badly toward the Seamstresses. A punished client who is able to complain to the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] afterwards is considered to have gotten off lightly. Other veteran practitioners and holders of the title "''Mrs.''" comprise the Guild officers ... or "''Mr.''," in the case of Mr. Harris, proprietor of the [[Blue Cat Club]].

The Seamstresses regulate their own behaviours like other good guilds. For instance, the Guild prides itself that a customer may safely enjoy the services it provides, and will ''only'' end up battered, bereft of money and clothing, and otherwise ill-abused, in an alley in [[The Shades]] at midnight, if his personal tastes were to run that way. Any attempt to rob a customer might be viewed as provoking a [[demarcation]] dispute with the [[Thieves' Guild]], and it is certain the Guild Council will not view this favourably at all (and since the Assassin's Guild often expresses terminal displeasure with Thieves who employ excessive force, a customer who dies during such an act might provoke extreme measures from both Guilds--Mrs. Palm would not be amused; such events are very unprofitable).

Therefore, if [[Dolores Smother]] were ever a Guild member, her working ethos, of drugging and robbing unwary [[Borogravia|Borogravian]] soldiers, would result at the very least in the revocation of her membership, and possibly the cancellation of additional privileges such as being able to breathe or walk without assistance. After all, the Guild prides itself on its tradition of negotiated hospitality and on the safety of clients who are going about the pursuit of their pleasures.

References in the Post Office edition of the Discworld Diary imply that this Guild also regulates the sale and distribution of pornography within Ankh-Morpork. Printed materials of an erotic nature that are shipped via post must be countersigned by a Seamstresses' Guild representative, and a ratings system apparently exists to evaluate whether content is too adult to be sent unsealed.

The Seamstresses had wanted to form a guild for decades. [[Mad Lord Snapcase|Lord Snapcase]] had promised to let them form one, but had since neglected them after he became [[Patrician]] (see {{NW}}). Later, the new Patrician, Lord [[Havelock Vetinari]], allowed the Seamstresses to form a guild. This is now one of the more powerful [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|guilds]] in [[Ankh-Morpork]].

Women who actually use needles and [[wikipedia:sewing|sew]], along with other textile arts, are referred to as "'''''Needlewomen'''''," but no mention of a guild for them has ever been made. A Tailors' Guild exists, but as yet it's unknown if this guild is open to females.

==Annotation==
Roundworld rock band '''The Rolling Stones''' - surely by now their trade's equivalent of [[Cohen the Barbarian]] and the [[Silver Horde]], as they are currently in their fifth decade as a rock band - once recorded a song called ''Walking The Dog'', which has a lyric running

"''Hi-ho, tippytoes; She'll thread the needle, but she can't sew''!"

This is an old blues standard and appears to contain a reference to Seamstresses.

==Seamstressing is older than even the blues... ==
This is entirely true. Threadneedle Street in London, (now very rich indeed,) was probably known as Gropec**te Lane in the fourteenth century. If ever there was a euphemism that has stood the test of time, threading the needle ''certainly'' has.

Also, during Seattle's earlier days, brothels were illegal, so prostitutes would list their jobs as "''Seamstresses''" when the cops came calling. During a period of minimal city revenues, it was required that Seattle prostitutes possess a "''Seamstress license''," and these fees became a major source of revenue for the city.

And of course in Dutch/Afrikaans, the verb ''naaien'', formal meaning to stitch or sew, is slang for [[-ing]], so the Dutch translator probably got the joke immediately... the English euphemism is also found in Dutch, where the term 'naaister' or 'naaistertje' carries the same connotation as 'seamstress' does.

[[Category:Guilds|Seamstresses' Guild]]
[[Category:Ankh-Morpork Businesses|Seamstresses' Guild]]
[[de:Näherinnengilde]]

Seamstresses' Guild

2016-07-20T03:09:29Z

Richvanf:

[[Image:Seam01.png|200px|right]]
Motto: ''NIL VOLVPTI, SINE LVCRE.''

''No pleasure without pay.''

An embarrassed or meaningful clearing of the throat is generally used while speaking the name of this [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|guild]]. They call themselves seamstresses (hem, hem).

There seem to be many Seamstresses in [[Ankh-Morpork]], and yet bachelors or old widowers have difficulty when they try to find needlewomen who wield needles and threads to repair garments. Genuine ability with needle and thread and occasional mushroom is the province of [[Sandra Battye]], who retains the most cordial relationship with the Guild while, strictly speaking, not practicing as a Seamstress in the accepted sense of the word.

The seamstresses in the Seamstresses' Guild are, in the politically-correct language of the modern Ankh-Morpork, ''ladies of negotiable affection'', ladies whose company and loving attention, crudely put, could be hired for a night. A survey of the [[Guild of Merchants]] in the docks area of Ankh-Morpork found 987 women who gave their profession as "seamstress" – and two needles (according to {{MAA}}).

The Seamstresses' Guild does not have a formal school, most of the training being, so to speak, on the job. Some Seamstresses are based in ''houses of negotiable affection'' or, in older language, houses of ill-repute, although these houses are often highly spoken of. The head of the guild is Mrs. [[Rosemary Palm]]; "''Mrs''" indicating seniority rather than marital status. The guild enforcers are the [[Agony Aunts]], Sadie and Dotsie, prim, silent old ladies who will always catch up with a client that has behaved badly toward the Seamstresses. A punished client who is able to complain to the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] afterwards is considered to have gotten off lightly. Other veteran practitioners and holders of the title "''Mrs.''" comprise the Guild officers ... or "''Mr.''," in the case of Mr. Harris, proprietor of the [[Blue Cat Club]].

The Seamstresses regulate their own behaviours like other good guilds. For instance, the Guild prides itself that a customer may safely enjoy the services it provides, and will ''only'' end up battered, bereft of money and clothing, and otherwise ill-abused, in an alley in [[The Shades]] at midnight, if his personal tastes were to run that way. Any attempt to rob a customer might be viewed as provoking a [[demarcation]] dispute with the [[Thieves' Guild]], and it is certain the Guild Council will not view this favourably at all (and since the Assassin's Guild often expresses terminal displeasure with Thieves who employ excessive force, a customer who dies during such an act might provoke extreme measures from both Guilds--Mrs. Palm would not be amused; such events are very unprofitable).

Therefore, if [[Dolores Smother]] were ever a Guild member, her working ethos, of drugging and robbing unwary [[Borogravia|Borogravian]] soldiers, would result at the very least in the revocation of her membership, and possibly the cancellation of additional privileges such as being able to breathe or walk without assistance. After all, the Guild prides itself on its tradition of negotiated hospitality and on the safety of clients who are going about the pursuit of their pleasures.

References in the Post Office edition of the Discworld Diary imply that this Guild also regulates the sale and distribution of pornography within Ankh-Morpork. Printed materials of an erotic nature that are shipped via post must be countersigned by a Seamstresses' Guild representative, and a ratings system apparently exists to evaluate whether content is too adult to be sent unsealed.

The Seamstresses had wanted to form a guild for decades. [[Mad Lord Snapcase|Lord Snapcase]] had promised to let them form one, but had since neglected them after he became [[Patrician]] (see {{NW}}). Later, the new Patrician, Lord [[Havelock Vetinari]], allowed the Seamstresses to form a guild. This is now one of the more powerful [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|guilds]] in [[Ankh-Morpork]].

Women who actually use needles and [[wikipedia:sewing|sew]], along with other textile arts, are referred to as "'''''Needlewomen'''''," but no mention of a guild for them has ever been made. A Tailors' Guild exists, but as yet it's unknown if this guild is open to females.

==Annotation==
Roundworld rock band '''The Rolling Stones''' - surely by now their trade's equivalent of [[Cohen the Barbarian]] and the [[Silver Horde]], as they are currently in their fifth decade as a rock band - once recorded a song called ''Walking The Dog'', which has a lyric running

"''Hi-ho, tippytoes; She'll thread the needle, but she can't sew''!"

This is an old blues standard and appears to contain a reference to Seamstresses.

==Seamstressing is older than even the blues... ==
This is entirely true. Threadneedle Street in London, (now very rich indeed,) was probably known as Gropec**te Lane in the fourteenth century. If ever there was a euphemism that has stood the test of time, threading the needle ''certainly'' has.

Also, during Seattle's earlier days, brothels were illegal, so prostitutes would list their jobs as "''Seamstresses''" when the cops came calling. During a period of minimal city revenues, it was required that Seattle prostitutes possess a "''Seamstress license''," and these fees became a major source of revenue for the city.

And of course in Dutch/Afrikaans, the verb ''naaien'', formal meaning to stitch or sew, is slang for [[-ing]], so the Dutch translator probably got the joke immediately... the English euphemism is also found in Dutch, where the term 'naaister' or 'naaistertje' carries the same connotation as 'seamstress' does.

[[Category:Guilds|Seamstresses' Guild]]
[[Category:Ankh-Morpork Businesses|Seamstresses' Guild]]
[[de:Näherinnengilde]]

Agony Aunts

2016-07-20T02:03:47Z

Richvanf:

Dotsie and Sadie do not write for the [[Ankh-Morpork Times]]; they have been around quite a lot longer than journalism(1). The agony referred to is entirely real. The two elderly ladies provided protection for Ladies of Negotiable Affection for decades, before the [[Seamstresses' Guild]] and when the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] was neither willing nor able. Indeed,
after the Watch did recover its strength it didn't need to worry about Seamstresses, so efficient and notorious were the Agony Aunts. The rare individual who might make a complaint after one of their interventions would be told by the Desk Sergeant that he was blessed to be able to do so, and not to press his luck.

The Agony Aunts maintained order in the "entertainment district" on the margin of [[The Shades]] by a policy of Eventual Assured Destruction (parodying {{wp|Mutual_assured_destruction|Mutual assured destruction}}). They never hurried; they preferred to let a miscreant worry while they sought him out, but vengeance was as inevitable as sunrise. Eventually, their handbag and umbrella would come down like the Assyrian to the fold, and another example was displayed to warn other stiffs and lowlifes against troubling the seamstresses. Dotsie's unnaturally heavy purse was used for quick removal of any threat; [[Samuel Vimes|Sam Vimes]] thought she probably outclassed [[John Lawn|Dr. Lawn]] in the narrow field of mechanical anaesthesia. Sadie's parrot-headed umbrella was a double-ended instrument of terror which would provide much of the actual agony. The two were elderly more than thirty years ago and have probably retired (or died)(2), but their memory, with the strength of the new Guild and the improved Watch keep order around the [[Whore Pits]] still.

It might be that the Agony Aunts are more than they appear, like [[Bill Door]], [[Kaos|Ronnie Soak]] & [[Wilf]] they have adapted to a new role. Vimes recognises them 30 years in the past, yet they are still alive and apparently no older in the present time. Also they have a strange ability to hide in the darkness, or emerge from it, that even Vimes didn't spot them. [[Roundworld]] Mary Poppins also used a parrot-headed umbrella, and she was more than human. Described with their dark hood-like bonnets, perhaps the Aunts are female ring-wraiths or the forgotten virtues [[Bissonomy]] & [[Tubso]] standing up for women. But it is nice to think they are just two strict ladies who can put the fear of god into any men who take advantage of the Seamstresses.

(1) For Americans who don't get the joke, "agony aunt" is British for "advice columnist" 
(2) They were still active at the time of {{TFE}}, however. Perhaps they have acquired a staff (though it probably does not have a knob on the end).

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[de:Schmerzliche Schwestern]]

Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes

2016-07-17T02:13:27Z

Richvanf:

Motto: '''PROTEGO ET SERVIO'''

''[I] Protect and Serve''

Commander Suffer-Not-Injustice "''(Old) Stoneface''" Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Militia, Leader of the Ironheads.

Quote: ''In the Fyres of Struggle let us bake new New Men, who Will Notte heed the old lies.'' ({{FOC}})

The last king of [[Ankh-Morpork]] was [[Lorenzo the Kind]], whose reign was [[wikipedia:Regicide|brought to an end]] in 1688 UC, by an axe wielded by '''Suffer-Not-Injustice "(Old) Stoneface" Vimes''', the then-Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Militia, (predecessor to the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]]), who was also, technically, defender of the crown, but it had needed doing. But according to [[Samuel Vimes]], Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes' modern-day descendant; "''It wasn't even execution. You execute a human being. You ''slaughter'' an animal''".

Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes was described as a 'hard' man, "but they were hard times." He then went on to rule the city for several months. Whilst Vimes was of a noble family, his name was disgraced after the killing: after all, even if he did what everybody else wanted to do, he had still killed a king, and without trial, (when, in-fact, no judge was willing to preside over such a trial). In fact, later in the aftermath, he was betrayed, got hanged, dismembered, and then buried in five different graves. With Suffer-Not-Injustice dead and the Vimes Family name now in disgrace, the family's Coat of Arms was Banned; the family estate, lands, titles and fortune confiscated, and his descendents surviving one generation at a time, although it was noted in {{FOC}} that, over the generations, most of Suffer-Not-Injustice's descendents had served in the Watch, making it up to the rank of an officer.

Stoneface's case was re-evaluated by the [[Guild of Historians]] at Lord [[Vetinari]]'s 'request'. The name of "'''''Vimes'''''" has been re-established along with the Vimes Coat of Arms, much to the bewilderment, (and annoyance), of his modern-day descendant, Samuel Vimes, (but to the joy of Sam's wife, [[Sybil Ramkin|Sybil's]]). Commander Vimes is now forced to use a noble title and a coat-of-arms, but he insists that he just be addressed as "Commander". However despite the re-evaluation of history, many still see Stoneface as the murderer of the last king of Ankh, and so it may take time before he is exonerated.

In {{J}}, when Lord [[Vetinari]] makes Samuel Vimes a Duke, he also has the Vimes coat of arms resurrected and ordered a statue of Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes, which according to Vetinari had "long disgraced the city by its absence". Whilst Vetinari thought to put the statue somewhere in Peach Pie Street, Samuel Vimes insisted that it be placed "Top of Broadway. Right in front of the palace. ... And right up close to the wall. Out of the wind..." (where any sensible [[Watchman]] would stand whilst on duty.) According to ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes' statue remains free of graffiti because Commander Samuel Vimes has made it well known what he'll do to anyone who defaces it.

Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes was apparently proud of the nickname "Old Stoneface", so proud in-fact that he asked that a reference to it was included into the Vimes Coat of Arms. His descendent, Samuel Vimes, seems to have also inherited the same "Old Stoneface" nickname, (as well as the "Vimes profile"), and some of his officers call him "Old Stoneface", never to his face, but when they ''think'' he can't hear them.

According to {{FOC}}, Samuel Vimes had read his his ancestor's journal, having discovered it in the [[Unseen University]] library, (see quote at top of page).

The Vimes Family Coat of Arms features a Morpork Owl perched upon an Anhk, which is atop of a Shield divided into four-quarters, with a symbol in each quarter: A Crown with a Dagger through it, (a traditional symbol for the role as a defender of the Crown). A Fasces--a bunch of rods with an Axe amongst them, (A symbol of the role of an officer of the Law). A marble bust, (a nod to Suffer-Not-Injustice's nickname, "Old Stoneface", put in at his own request). A bunch of grapes, (word play on the words "Vimes" & grape "Vines").

===Known descendents===
* [[Gwilliam Vimes]]
* [[Thomas Vimes]]
* [[Samuel Vimes|Samuel Vimes SR.]]
* [[Young Sam Vimes|Samuel Vimes JR.]]

==Annotation==
A reference to {{wp|Oliver_Cromwell|Oliver Cromwell}} (in {{FOC}}, who was known as "Old Ironsides". Old Stoneface was described as having "warts and all"' (a misquotation of Cromwell, who desired that he be painted "warts and everything" by Sir Peter Lely). After having King Charles I of England executed, Cromwell was himself later ritually beheaded. Although he died in 1658, in 1661, Oliver Cromwell's body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey, and was subjected to the ritual of a posthumous execution by beheading. Symbolically, this took place on 30 January; the same date that Charles I had been executed. His body was hanged in chains at Tyburn. Finally, his disinterred body was thrown into a pit, while his severed head was displayed on a pole outside Westminster Hall until 1685. The head was eventually obtained in 1960 by Cromwell's alma mater, Cambridge University's Sidney Sussex College, where it is buried in a secret location.

[[category:Discworld characters|Vimes, "Stoneface"]]
[[category:Human characters|Vimes, "Stoneface"]] [[de:Ich-dulde-keine-Ungerechtigkeit-Mumm]]

Samuel Vimes

2016-07-17T01:53:09Z

Richvanf:

Vimes Family Motto: ''PROTEGO ET SERVIO''

''I protect and serve''

His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]; Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]].

{{Character Data
|title= Vimes
|photo= Vimes_Duck_Blanket.jpg | Sam Vimes by [http://tealin.dreamwidth.org/194944.html Tealin]
|name= Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|age= b. 1941? UC
|race= [[Humans|Human]]
|occupation= Commander of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] (Badge No.177)
|appearance= Skinny, balding and unshaven
|residence= Ramkin Residence, [[Scoone Avenue]], [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|death=
|parents= [[Thomas Vimes]] (father) [[Mrs. Vimes]] (mother)
|relatives= [[Gwilliam Vimes]] (paternal grandfather) [[Grandma Clamp]] (maternal grandmother). "Old Stoneface" Vimes (AKA [http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/%22Stoneface%22_Vimes "Suffer Not Injustice" Vimes])
|children= [[Young Sam Vimes]]
|marital status= Married to Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]]. A previous girlfriend, alluded to in passing in {{T!}}, is [[Mavis Trouncer]].
|books= {{G!G!}} {{MAA}} {{FOC}} {{J}} {{T5E}} {{NW}} {{MR}} {{T!}} ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]] [[Book:Snuff|Snuff]] {{RS}} [[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{TT}} {{GP}} {{MM}} {{UA}} {{ISWM}}
}}

== Biography ==
Sam Vimes was born in [[Cockbill Street]], [[the Shades]], [[Ankh-Morpork]], and went to the local school, where he was taught by Dame [[Slightly]] for 9 months and became blackboard monitor. After that, he spent some time in street gangs, including the [[Cockbill Street Roaring Lads]]. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Night Watch]], because his mate, Iffy Scurrick, had joined the year before and told him that there was "free food and a uniform and you could pick up the extra dollar here and there". This was shortly before the birth of the Glorious [[People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road]] during the [[Glorious Revolution|Glorious Revolution]].

What happens between then and {{G!G!}} is unsure, but prior to the events of ''Guards! Guards!'', Vimes had made it to Captain when the Night Watch consisted of four people: him, Sergeant [[Fred Colon|Colon]], Corporal [[Nobby Nobbs|Nobbs]], and newly appointed [[Lance-Constable]] [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]]. At this point, the legalization of the Thieves and Assassins Guilds had led to the Watch deteriorating into an obsolete entity. The watchmen are all there because they have nowhere else to go. In Guards! Guards!, Sgt. Colon claims that Vimes is there because he was Brung Low by a Woman, (if so than her name is [[Morporkia|Ankh Morporkia]]), although Vimes himself attributes it to his irreverent habit of speaking his mind to authority figures.

It is at this time that the Watch began to grow again, and Vimes was made Commander, with which came the unwanted rank of Knight, then, even more unwanted, the Duke of Ankh, by [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]], the [[Patrician]] of Ankh-Morpork. He also married [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, and has a son, called [[Young Sam Vimes|Samuel "Young Sam" Vimes II]]. He is a descendant of [["Stoneface" Vimes|'Old Stoneface' Vimes]], who committed regicide to end the [[Monarchy|monarchy]] in Ankh-Morpork; this relation causes frequent comparisons of Sam to his ancestor, in both his personality and his appearance.

==Characteristics==

Sam Vimes is by nature an extremely cynical person. He has few good opinions on people in general, and even fewer on the nobility, the guilds, [[Vetinari]], [[vampires]], the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], monarchy, democracy, [[Ankh-Morpork Times|newspapers]]...and the list goes on. In short, nearly everyone and everything is subject to his distrust. His first impression upon meeting someone is that they're guilty of some crime - 'the possibility that they were not guilty of anything he didn't think worthy of consideration' ([[Jingo]]) - though in a city such as Ankh-Morpork, this is more or less true.

Equally, he is known to be an angry person. His sheer, incandescent rage is barely suppressed by his desire to be lawful and administer justice properly (and also in a way, to not follow in Stoneface's steps). Due to his authority in {{MAA}}, when he finds himself in possession of the [[Gonne]], he struggles between his sense of justice and the Gonne's twisted desire to use him to kill in the name of justice. He can barely restrain himself from the Gonne's temptations. In {{T!}}, he nearly gives in entirely to those of the [[Summoning Dark]]. In the latter case, you have to consider that a [[Helmclever|dwarf]] stirs deliberately his anger, and the [[Dark Guards]] attempt later to assassinate not only Vimes, but also his wife and his fourteen-months-old son, using flamethrowers. On one side, there is Vimes, however rough and pessimistic he may seem, defender of law and order, and the other side is a Vimes who would kill for revenge and make his own law.

In {{T!}}, after years of nighttime patrols, Vimes's mindscape is described as the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], streets and all, in the dead of night, with the rains bucketing down over your head. When Vimes is angry, doors of some of the houses (the more angry he is, the more doors) will open. When the [[Summoning Dark]] trespasses into his mind, needing a host in order to track down the [[Deep-Downers]], it tries to enter through one of the doors that opens when Vimes becomes angry, only to be pulled away at every time. It is later revealed that the force preventing the [[Summoning Dark]] from making any progress in possessing Vimes is Vimes's own 'inner guardsman'.

His chronic alcoholism may be partially due to his natural state of extreme sobriety, known as being [[knurd]]. According to Vimes's long-time close friend and fellow officer [[Fred Colon]], it is because that every other normal person is naturally slightly drunk to some extent to conceal the true horrors of reality from them. However Vimes lacks the ability to produce his 'own alcohol', as it were. Vimes used to attempt to cure this by drinking heavily; unfortunately he often over-dosed himself, and became an alcoholic. After marrying Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]], he quit drinking and smoked cigars instead. In {{FOC}}, he still has the habit to reach in stress situations for the bottom desk drawer, where his bottle used to be. But he'd never bought a bottle since he got married, and Carrot and Fred Colon keep an eye on him, as well. As of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', even his smoking has been barred from the house (likely for Young Sam's sake), and he sates his cravings with non-alcoholic mixers whipped up by [[Willikins]].

Another reason for Vimes's past alcoholism may be his history; Vimes has been on the Watch since his late teens. He has lived through the successive regimes of Homicidal Lord [[Winder]] and [[Mad Lord Snapcase]], two patricians whose sobriquets more than adequately describe their tenures, as well as several wars, and the legalization of the Guilds under Vetinari, which more or less broke his spirit. His participation as a young copper in handing people to the [[Cable Street Particulars|Unmentionables]] has surely left him also with a deep feeling of guilt and shame, after witnessing the results in their headquarters.

Vimes is a firm believer in the institution of law. He has a soft spot for the poor and those otherwise unable to fend for themselves, as although he views them as equally able to commit crimes as any other demographic; he sees law as a great equalizer, regardless of race (however despite his acceptance of just about any species into the Watch, until he was forced to in [[Thud!]] he refused to have a [[vampire]].)

As Vimes's long-time close friend [[Fred Colon|Sgt. Colon]] puts it, Vimes could get drunk in better style, Vimes could be baffled about a case with better vocabulary, and Vimes could deal with the paperwork. To himself, Samuel Vimes is a not very intelligent man with a sordid personal history that he'd rather forget. To many others he is, somehow, the person to look up to. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] quotes Vimes's ideas about social justice, and tries to make them a reality. [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], Vimes's wife, thinks that he can sort out anything. The new policemen trained in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]] and then hired elsewhere, though they haven't seen Vimes in person much, are called ''[[Sammies]]'' (perhaps a nod to the "bobbies," so-called because of Sir Robert Peel).

Vimes is far from being perfect, and he knows the fact better than anyone. In addition to former alcoholism, Vimes has many prejudices. He hates many kinds of people and many things, and he has quite good reasons to. He hates the upper class because they look down on the rest of the society while exploiting it (e.g. charging high rent from the poor people living in slum properties).

He hates [[dwarfs]] and [[trolls]], but he has stated that he doesn't care that much for humans either so he can't be blamed. He hates [[zombies]], [[werewolves]] and [[vampires]]; for unashamedly discriminative reasons, among them being that they cannot be killed if police duty necessitates that Vimes should fight them, and he believes that vampires naturally or reflexively prey upon people, as well as often being rich and snobby.

He hates dishonest policemen. He accepts that a publican may offer a free pint or a meal to an officer just because having an officer on the premises at rush hour makes things go more smoothly is just a way of doing business, but draws the line at an officer taking money to look the other way. He also sacks, and may even prosecute, officers who abuse prisoners or participate in crimes. In his view, the law must apply to everyone, or it applies to noone. That was why, in Jingo, he reluctantly agreed to arrest Lord Vetinari.

He hates [[Assassins' Guild|Assassins]] and [[Thieves' Guild|Thieves]] because their crimes are legalized and he cannot arrest them, and their leaders are even city dignitaries now. He hates [[Alchemists' Guild|Alchemists]] because they blow things up.

Just about the only kind of people that he doesn't hate are gargoyles, who never commit crimes that anybody finds out about, and the [[wizard's magic|wizards]]; they may mess up the space-time continuum and destroy the universe, but such offenses seldom fall within Vimes's jurisdiction. Vimes hates the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], too. It has been said that he protects the city just as he protects the dwarfs and trolls, so that he can go on hating them. In truth, Vimes has seen too many bad things in his line of work, and now finds it difficult to have a good opinion of anything in general; he is far too cynical (and yet depressingly sometimes not cynical enough). He doesn't have too much animosity for the Seamstresses Guild, since the Agony Aunts handle any excesses by customers, and the Houses themselves make sure that a customer will not end up beaten, naked, and penniless in the streets, "unless his tastes run that way."

In {{J}}, Vimes finds himself in a difficult and tense situation where he is holding the [[Klatch|Klatchian]] Prince [[Cadram]] at bowpoint, and is prepared to kill him because (tenuous) evidence links him to a conspiracy to kill Prince [[Khufurah]], but there is no court which would try the case. He is saved by the arrival of [[Vetinari]], who defuses the situation.

According to [[Detritus]], when Vimes found a child-killer who has kept a "''memento''" of his deed, it was all the troll could do to prevent him from killing the perpetrator. This all comes to light during the events of {{T!}} where Vimes' internal Watchman - which describes itself as existing to keep the darkness in rather than keeping it out- battles with the [[Mine sign|Summoning Dark]] for supremacy of his soul and is ultimately victorious in dispelling the evil entity from its attempts to use Vimes to kill for it. This can be illustrated by the fact that when asked 'quis custodies ipsos custodes' ('Who watches the watchmen?') Vimes's immediate reaction is 'Me'. When asked who guards him, he replies, 'I do that too.'

He is capable of accepting specific individuals. He has married Lady Sybil and certainly loves her. He accepts members of ethnic minorities in his Watch, has personally trained some of them, and is quite proud of them. He promotes Watch officers according to merit and ability, regardless of gender, species, or seniority. He also has a soft spot for the poor, the working class, or the young. When he finds younger Assassins failing their attempts on him, for example, he lets them go with only minor wounds; older Assassins, on the other hand, have been known to be [[Richard Liddleley|painted and tied up left in public]], or even [[Eustace Bassingly-Gore|chained up and sent on a sea voyage]] all the way to the other end of [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]]. To put it very simply, he tries to look after those who have nobody else looking after them.

In attempting to carry out justice, Vimes has arrested sons of Ankh-Morpork nobles as well as city dignitaries, all the way up to [[Lord Vetinari]]. This has put Vimes high on the hit list of the Assassins at a price of $AM20,000 in {{FOC}} rising to $AM600,000 after 9 failed attempts at the time of {{T5E}}; recently, however, he has been taken off the register, and the Guild of Assassins no longer accepts contracts on his life. This may be because he is somehow vital to the running of the city, as [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]] is, or it may be because no sensible Assassin will volunteer for the task anyway. Vimes has personally designed and installed many traps and deadfalls all around the Ramkin family home and the Watch headquarters at [[Pseudopolis Yard]]. So far, Vimes hasn't been even injured by any Assassin. The Assassins Guild now has some of its trainees conduct "''dry run''" assassination attempts on Vimes as a matter of testing the trainee's skills - particularly if they feel the need to [[Jocasta Wiggs|bring the trainee's ego back down to the Disc]] (see {{NW}}).

He is also fiercely anti-authority, possibly a facet of his character which he inherited from Old Stoneface. That he manages this whilst actually being authority is, as [[Lord Vetinari]] put it, "''practically zen''." He regards being the Duke of Ankh as a job title and always prefers "Commander" or "sir" to any of his other titles, which include "''His Grace''," "''His Excellency''" and "''his blackboard-monitorship''" ({{T5E}} and {{T!}}). Continuing to call him by any of these titles after he's explained his preferences is an excellent way to get in His Grace His Excellency's bad graces.

Sam Vimes's full title of record is "''His Grace, His Excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes''." His "Blackboard Monitor" epithet is used like a title in ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', implying it may actually have been accorded some official weight by the Low King of the dwarfs. Ironically, the one title Vimes holds with genuine pride (as of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]''), aside from Commander, is "King" .. as in, "King of the River", an honorarium awarded in recognition of his role in saving the riverboat ''Wonderful Fanny'' from piracy and flood.

Members of the Watch earn the privilege, and it is a privilege, of calling him "''Mister Vimes''" only after very long association (i.e. [[Nobby Nobbs]] or [[Fred Colon]]), or after watching his back in a street fight to the extent that they have demonstrably saved his life ([[A.E. Pessimal]]). He does not tolerate the "''Mister''" from outsiders. [[Fred Colon]] sometimes calls him by his first name when he's worried. He has inherited his ancestor's nickname "''Old Stoneface''," but this is never said to his face.

==Activities and Duties==
As other noblemen might ride horses, wear laces, ruffles, and plumes, Sam Vimes walks the city on endless patrols and wears his old battered Watch armor and leather shirt and jerkin, with the standard sword and truncheon.

Since becoming the Commander of the Watch and as such a popular target with the clients of the [[Assassins' Guild]], Vimes also started the exercise of personally engineering pitfalls and death traps around his house and outside of his office at the police headquarters.

As Commander and top officer of the Watch, Vimes' job is to oversee its operations and has to deal with a lot of paperwork, a job which he hates but accomplishes adequately. He still tries to go on patrol whenever he has a chance; to him, walking the quiet streets in the dark is a calming, almost relaxing activity. When there is an important occasion on which crime is anticipated, for example, that a foreign dignitary may be attacked during a public appearance (in {{J}}), Vimes likes to personally check suspicious places such as an abandoned building that an assassin might use.

Deduction is not Vimes' favorite activity; he distrusts clues and loathes mysteries (''"mysteries get you killed"''), and he now has the [[Cable Street Particulars]] to deal with peculiar crimes, but sometimes Vimes still personally investigates a case. When he witnesses a crime occurring, he abandons everything and chases the miscreant. It is possible that he uses police work to escape the social life of "Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh".

As both urged by Lady Sybil and ordered by Lord Vetinari, Vimes now often has to appear at dinners and parties. Most of the nobles and government officials that he sees at such social occasions, he considers stupid or obnoxious. Should he be accosted by one of these people, he does not hesitate to make clear how and why he loathes them. Vetinari likes to use Vimes as a diplomat, and while more often than not Vimes is the cause of diplomatic incidents, these seem often the intention of Vetinari.

The former Lord Ramkin, Lady Sybil's late father, had always had servants to shave him, to lay out his bath, to scrub his back, to lay out his clothes, to clean his shiny boots, and so on. Vimes now allows the butler to lay out his clothes, but that is about all. He insists on shaving himself as he dislikes other people putting a [[razor blade]], (or indeed any sort of sharp edge) to his throat, and attempts to wear cheap boots with cardboard soles. He has been walking the city in such boots for decades, and he likes being able to feel the different types of cobblestones so that he can tell which street he is on. Besides watch armour, Vimes has some gentleman's suits, a dress uniform of the Watch Commander, and a dress uniform of the Duke. He is often required to wear the ducal dress uniform, which has ruby tights (''"you wouldn't wear tights to battle if you thought you would be taken prisoner"''), a spiky coronet, a gilt armour (''"toy armour"''), and no place to hang his sword (''"you got made a duke for fighting and then they gave you no sword to fight with"''). Vimes compromises by wearing the Watch Commander dress uniform.

Nowadays, Vimes has to eat fancy food as cooked in the Ramkins' house. Personally, he prefers simple, greasy food with burnt crunchy bits, and so he is happier when he eats things that Lady Sybil has personally cooked by a dragon's fire.

Upon becoming a father, Vimes swore to faithfully get home by 6 p.m. every evening to read a certain picture book called ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]]'' to his son, Young Sam. This has become such a point of pride that he now has nightmares about not being home by 6 p.m. There is absolutely nothing that takes precedence over this; Vimes believes that if he misses it even once for a good reason, the next time he might miss it for a bad one, and eventually this attitude might spill over into the rest of his life. By the time of ''Snuff'', Young Sam has become the reader and Vimes Senior, the listener, but their 6 p.m. reading sessions continue like clockwork.

His son's welfare is one of the few things Vimes is willing to cross even his wife about, such that he insisted that they hire a nursemaid, Purity, to attend to Young Sam over Sybil's objections. Presumably this is also why the protective flame-baffles between the Vimes residence and Sybil's dragon stables are much, much sturdier in ''Thud!'' than in previous books.

==Annotation==
Philip Jackson from the British ''Robin of Sherwood'' TV series provides the voice for Vimes in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of {{NW}}.

==Also See==
* [[wikipedia:Sam Vimes|Samuel Vimes's Entry]] on [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]]

:
[[Category:Discworld characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Leading characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Serial characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Human characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Watchmen|Vimes, Samuel]]

[[de:Samuel Mumm]]

Samuel Vimes

2016-07-17T01:51:41Z

Richvanf:

Vimes Family Motto: ''PROTEGO ET SERVIO''

''I protect and serve''

His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]; Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]].

{{Character Data
|title= Vimes
|photo= Vimes_Duck_Blanket.jpg | Sam Vimes by [http://tealin.dreamwidth.org/194944.html Tealin]
|name= Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|age= b. 1941? UC
|race= [[Humans|Human]]
|occupation= Commander of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] (Badge No.177)
|appearance= Skinny, balding and unshaven
|residence= Ramkin Residence, [[Scoone Avenue]], [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|death=
|parents= [[Thomas Vimes]] (father) [[Mrs. Vimes]] (mother)
|relatives= [[Gwilliam Vimes]] (paternal grandfather) [[Grandma Clamp]] (maternal grandmother). "Old Stoneface" Vimes (AKA [http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/%22Stoneface%22_Vimes "Suffer Not Injustice" Vimes])
|children= [[Young Sam Vimes]]
|marital status= Married to Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]]. A previous girlfriend, alluded to in passing in {{T!}}, is [[Mavis Trouncer]].
|books= {{G!G!}} {{MAA}} {{FOC}} {{J}} {{T5E}} {{NW}} {{MR}} {{T!}} ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]] [[Book:Snuff|Snuff]] {{RS}} [[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{TT}} {{GP}} {{MM}} {{UA}} {{ISWM}}
}}

== Biography ==
Sam Vimes was born in [[Cockbill Street]], [[the Shades]], [[Ankh-Morpork]], and went to the local school, where he was taught by Dame [[Slightly]] for 9 months and became blackboard monitor. After that, he spent some time in street gangs, including the [[Cockbill Street Roaring Lads]]. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Night Watch]], because his mate, Iffy Scurrick, had joined the year before and told him that there was "free food and a uniform and you could pick up the extra dollar here and there". This was shortly before the birth of the Glorious [[People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road]] during the [[Glorious Revolution|Glorious Revolution]].

What happens between then and {{G!G!}} is unsure, but prior to the events of ''Guards! Guards!'', Vimes had made it to Captain when the Night Watch consisted of four people: him, Sergeant [[Fred Colon|Colon]], Corporal [[Nobby Nobbs|Nobbs]], and newly appointed [[Lance-Constable]] [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]]. At this point, the legalization of the Thieves and Assassins Guilds had led to the Watch deteriorating into an obsolete entity. The watchmen are all there because they have nowhere else to go. In Guards! Guards!, Sgt. Colon claims that Vimes is there because he was Brung Low by a Woman, (if so than her name is [[Morporkia|Ankh Morporkia]]), although Vimes himself attributes it to his irreverent habit of speaking his mind to authority figures.

It is at this time that the Watch began to grow again, and Vimes was made Commander, with which came the unwanted rank of Knight, then, even more unwanted, the Duke of Ankh, by [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]], the [[Patrician]] of Ankh-Morpork. He also married [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, and has a son, called [[Young Sam Vimes|Samuel "Young Sam" Vimes II]]. He is a descendant of [["Stoneface" Vimes|'Old Stoneface' Vimes]], who committed regicide to end the [[Monarchy|monarchy]] in Ankh-Morpork; this relation causes frequent comparisons of Sam to his ancestor, in both his personality and his appearance.

==Characteristics==

Sam Vimes is by nature an extremely cynical person. He has few good opinions on people in general, and even fewer on the nobility, the guilds, [[Vetinari]], [[vampires]], the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], monarchy, democracy, [[Ankh-Morpork Times|newspapers]]...and the list goes on. In short, nearly everyone and everything is subject to his distrust. His first impression upon meeting someone is that they're guilty of some crime - 'the possibility that they were not guilty of anything he didn't think worthy of consideration' ([[Jingo]]) - though in a city such as Ankh-Morpork, this is more or less true.

Equally, he is known to be an angry person. His sheer, incandescent rage is barely suppressed by his desire to be lawful and administer justice properly (and also in a way, to not follow in Stoneface's steps). Due to his authority in {{MAA}}, when he finds himself in possession of the [[Gonne]], he struggles between his sense of justice and the Gonne's twisted desire to use him to kill in the name of justice. He can barely restrain himself from the Gonne's temptations. In {{T!}}, he nearly gives in entirely to those of the [[Summoning Dark]]. In the latter case, you have to consider that a [[Helmclever|dwarf]] stirs deliberately his anger, and the [[Dark Guards]] attempt later to assassinate not only Vimes, but also his wife and his fourteen-months-old son, using flamethrowers. On one side, there is Vimes, however rough and pessimistic he may seem, defender of law and order, and the other side is a Vimes who would kill for revenge and make his own law.

In {{T!}}, after years of nighttime patrols, Vimes's mindscape is described as the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], streets and all, in the dead of night, with the rains bucketing down over your head. When Vimes is angry, doors of some of the houses (the more angry he is, the more doors) will open. When the [[Summoning Dark]] trespasses into his mind, needing a host in order to track down the [[Deep-Downers]], it tries to enter through one of the doors that opens when Vimes becomes angry, only to be pulled away at every time. It is later revealed that the force preventing the [[Summoning Dark]] from making any progress in possessing Vimes is Vimes's own 'inner guardsman'.

His chronic alcoholism may be partially due to his natural state of extreme sobriety, known as being [[knurd]]. According to Vimes's long-time close friend and fellow officer [[Fred Colon]], it is because that every other normal person is naturally slightly drunk to some extent to conceal the true horrors of reality from them. However Vimes lacks the ability to produce his 'own alcohol', as it were. Vimes used to attempt to cure this by drinking heavily; unfortunately he often over-dosed himself, and became an alcoholic. After marrying Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]], he quit drinking and smoked cigars instead. In {{FOC}}, he still has the habit to reach in stress situations for the bottom desk drawer, where his bottle used to be. But he'd never bought a bottle since he got married, and Carrot and Fred Colon keep an eye on him, as well. As of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', even his smoking has been barred from the house (likely for Young Sam's sake), and he sates his cravings with non-alcoholic mixers whipped up by [[Willikins]].

Another reason for Vimes's past alcoholism may be his history; Vimes has been on the Watch since his late teens. He has lived through the successive regimes of Homicidal Lord [[Winder]] and [[Mad Lord Snapcase]], two patricians whose sobriquets more than adequately describe their tenures, as well as several wars, and the legalization of the Guilds under Vetinari, which more or less broke his spirit. His participation as a young copper in handing people to the [[Cable Street Particulars|Unmentionables]] has surely left him also with a deep feeling of guilt and shame, after witnessing the results in their headquarters.

Vimes is a firm believer in the institution of law. He has a soft spot for the poor and those otherwise unable to fend for themselves, as although he views them as equally able to commit crimes as any other demographic; he sees law as a great equalizer, regardless of race (however despite his acceptance of just about any species into the Watch, until he was forced to in [[Thud!]] he refused to have a [[vampire]].)

As Vimes's long-time close friend [[Fred Colon|Sgt. Colon]] puts it, Vimes could get drunk in better style, Vimes could be baffled about a case with better vocabulary, and Vimes could deal with the paperwork. To himself, Samuel Vimes is a not very intelligent man with a sordid personal history that he'd rather forget. To many others he is, somehow, the person to look up to. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] quotes Vimes's ideas about social justice, and tries to make them a reality. [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], Vimes's wife, thinks that he can sort out anything. The new policemen trained in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]] and then hired elsewhere, though they haven't seen Vimes in person much, are called ''[[Sammies]]'' (perhaps a nod to the "bobbies," so-called because of Sir Robert Peel).

Vimes is far from being perfect, and he knows the fact better than anyone. In addition to former alcoholism, Vimes has many prejudices. He hates many kinds of people and many things, and he has quite good reasons to. He hates the upper class because they look down on the rest of the society while exploiting it (e.g. charging high rent from the poor people living in slum properties).

He hates [[dwarfs]] and [[trolls]], but he has stated that he doesn't care that much for humans either so he can't be blamed. He hates [[zombies]], [[werewolves]] and [[vampires]]; for unashamedly discriminative reasons, among them being that they cannot be killed if police duty necessitates that Vimes should fight them, and he believes that vampires naturally or reflexively prey upon people, as well as often being rich and snobby.

He hates dishonest policemen. He accepts that a publican may offer a free pint or a meal to an officer just because having an officer on the premises at rush hour makes things go more smoothly is just a way of doing business, but draws the line at an officer taking money to look the other way. He also sacks, and may even prosecute, officers who abuse prisoners or participate in crimes. In his view, the law must apply to everyone, or it applies to noone. That was why, in Jingo, he reluctantly agreed to arrest Lord Vetinari.

He hates [[Assassins' Guild|Assassins]] and [[Thieves' Guild|Thieves]] because their crimes are legalized and he cannot arrest them, and their leaders are even city dignitaries now. He hates [[Alchemists' Guild|Alchemists]] because they blow things up.

Just about the only kind of people that he doesn't hate are gargoyles, who never commit crimes that anybody finds out about, and the [[wizard's magic|wizards]]; they may mess up the space-time continuum and destroy the universe, but such offenses seldom fall within Vimes's jurisdiction. Vimes hates the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], too. It has been said that he protects the city just as he protects the dwarfs and trolls, so that he can go on hating them. In truth, Vimes has seen too many bad things in his line of work, and now finds it difficult to have a good opinion of anything in general; he is far too cynical (and yet depressingly sometimes not cynical enough). He doesn't have too much animosity for the Seamstresses Guild, since the Agony Aunts handle any excesses by customers, and the Houses themselves make sure that a customer will not end up beaten, naked, and penniless in the streets, "unless his tastes run that way."

In {{J}}, Vimes finds himself in a difficult and tense situation where he is holding the [[Klatch|Klatchian]] Prince [[Cadram]] at bowpoint, and is prepared to kill him because (tenuous) evidence links him to a conspiracy to kill Prince [[Khufurah]], but there is no court which would try the case. He is saved by the arrival of [[Vetinari]], who defuses the situation.

According to [[Detritus]], when Vimes found a child-killer who has kept a "''memento''" of his deed, it was all the troll could do to prevent him from killing the perpetrator. This all comes to light during the events of {{T!}} where Vimes' internal Watchman - which describes itself as existing to keep the darkness in rather than keeping it out- battles with the [[Mine sign|Summoning Dark]] for supremacy of his soul and is ultimately victorious in dispelling the evil entity from its attempts to use Vimes to kill for it. This can be illustrated by the fact that when asked 'quis custodies ipsos custodes' ('Who watches the watchmen?') Vimes's immediate reaction is 'Me'. When asked who guards him, he replies, 'I do that too.'

He is capable of accepting specific individuals. He has married Lady Sybil and certainly loves her. He accepts members of ethnic minorities in his Watch, has personally trained some of them, and is quite proud of them. He promotes Watch officers according to merit and ability, regardless of gender, species, or seniority. He also has a soft spot for the poor, the working class, or the young. When he finds younger Assassins failing their attempts on him, for example, he lets them go with only minor wounds; older Assassins, on the other hand, have been known to be [[Richard Liddleley|painted and tied up left in public]], or even [[Eustace Bassingly-Gore|chained up and sent on a sea voyage]] all the way to the other end of [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]]. To put it very simply, he tries to look after those who have nobody else looking after them.

In attempting to carry out justice, Vimes has arrested sons of Ankh-Morpork nobles as well as city dignitaries, all the way up to [[Lord Vetinari]]. This has put Vimes high on the hit list of the Assassins at a price of $AM20,000 in {{FOC}} rising to $AM600,000 after 9 failed attempts at the time of {{T5E}}; recently, however, he has been taken off the register, and the Guild of Assassins no longer accepts contracts on his life. This may be because he is somehow vital to the running of the city, as [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]] is, or it may be because no sensible Assassin will volunteer for the task anyway. Vimes has personally designed and installed many traps and deadfalls all around the Ramkin family home and the Watch headquarters at [[Pseudopolis Yard]]. So far, Vimes hasn't been even injured by any Assassin. The Assassins Guild now has some of its trainees conduct "''dry run''" assassination attempts on Vimes as a matter of testing the trainee's skills - particularly if they feel the need to [[Jocasta Wiggs|bring the trainee's ego back down to the Disc]] (see {{NW}}).

He is also fiercely anti-authority, possibly a facet of his character which he inherited from Old Stoneface. That he manages this whilst actually being authority is, as [[Lord Vetinari]] put it, "''practically zen''." He regards being the Duke of Ankh as a job title and always prefers "Commander" or "sir" to any of his other titles, which include "''His Grace''," "''His Excellency''" and "''his blackboard-monitorship''" ({{T5E}} and {{T!}}). Continuing to call him by any of these titles after he's explained his preferences is an excellent way to get in His Grace His Excellency's bad graces.

Sam Vimes's full title of record is "''His Grace, His Excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes''." His "Blackboard Monitor" epithet is used like a title in ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', implying it may actually have been accorded some official weight by the Low King of the dwarfs. Ironically, the one title Vimes holds with genuine pride (as of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]''), aside from Commander, is "King" .. as in, "King of the River", an honorarium awarded in recognition of his role in saving the riverboat ''Wonderful Fanny'' from piracy and flood.

Members of the Watch earn the privilege, and it is a privilege, of calling him "''Mister Vimes''" only after very long association (i.e. [[Nobby Nobbs]] or [[Fred Colon]]), or after watching his back in a street fight to the extent that they have demonstrably saved his life ([[A.E. Pessimal]]). He does not tolerate the "''Mister''" from outsiders. [[Fred Colon]] sometimes calls him by his first name when he's worried. He has inherited his ancestor's nickname "''Old Stoneface''," but this is never said to his face.

==Activities and Duties==
As other noblemen might ride horses, wear laces, ruffles, and plumes, Sam Vimes walks the city on endless patrols and wears his old battered Watch armor and leather shirt and jerkin, with the standard sword and truncheon.

Since becoming the Commander of the Watch and as such a popular target with the clients of the [[Assassins' Guild]], Vimes also started the exercise of personally engineering pitfalls and death traps around his house and outside of his office at the police headquarters.

As Commander and top officer of the Watch, Vimes' job is to oversee its operations and has to deal with a lot of paperwork, a job which he hates but accomplishes adequately. He still tries to go on patrol whenever he has a chance; to him, walking the quiet streets in the dark is a calming, almost relaxing activity. When there is an important occasion on which crime is anticipated, for example, that a foreign dignitary may be attacked during a public appearance (in {{J}}), Vimes likes to personally check suspicious places such as an abandoned building that an assassin might use.

Deduction is not Vimes' favorite activity; he distrusts clues and loathes mysteries (''"mysteries get you killed"''), and he now has the [[Cable Street Particulars]] to deal with peculiar crimes, but sometimes Vimes still personally investigates a case. When he witnesses a crime occurring, he abandons everything and chases the miscreant. It is possible that he uses police work to escape the social life of "Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh".

As both urged by Lady Sybil and ordered by Lord Vetinari, Vimes now often has to appear at dinners and parties. Most of the nobles and government officials that he sees at such social occasions, he considers stupid or obnoxious. Should he be accosted by one of these people, he does not hesitate to make clear how and why he loathes them. Vetinari likes to use Vimes as a diplomat, and while more often than not Vimes is the cause of diplomatic incidents, these seem often the intention of Vetinari.

The former Lord Ramkin, Lady Sybil's late father, had always had servants to shave him, to lay out his bath, to scrub his back, to lay out his clothes, to clean his shiny boots, and so on. Vimes now allows the butler to lay out his clothes, but that is about all. He insists on shaving himself as he dislikes other people putting a [[razor blade]], (or indeed any sort of sharp edge) to his throat, and attempts to wear cheap boots with cardboard soles. He has been walking the city in such boots for decades, and he likes being able to feel the different types of cobblestones so that he can tell which street he is on. Besides watch armour, Vimes has some gentleman's suits, a dress uniform of the Watch Commander, and a dress uniform of the Duke. He is often required to wear the ducal dress uniform, which has ruby tights (''"you wouldn't wear tights to battle if you thought you would be taken prisoner"''), a spiky coronet, a gilt armour (''"toy armour"''), and no place to hang his sword (''"you got made a duke for fighting and then they gave you no sword to fight with"''). Vimes compromises by wearing the Watch Commander dress uniform.

Nowadays, Vimes has to eat fancy food as cooked in the Ramkins' house. Personally, he prefers simple, greasy food with burnt crunchy bits, and so he is happier when he eats things that Lady Sybil has personally cooked by a dragon's fire.

Upon becoming a father, Vimes swore to faithfully get home by 6 p.m. every evening to read a certain picture book called ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]]'' to his son, Young Sam. This has become such a point of pride that he now has nightmares about not being home by 6 p.m. There is absolutely nothing that takes precedence over this; Vimes believes that if he misses it even once for a good reason, the next time he might miss it for a bad one, and eventually this attitude might spill over into the rest of his life. By the time of ''Snuff'', Young Sam has become the reader and Vimes Senior, the listener, but their 6 p.m. reading sessions continue like clockwork.

His son's welfare is one of the few things Vimes is willing to cross even his wife about, such that he insisted that they hire a nursemaid, Purity, to attend to Young Sam over Sybil's objections. Presumably this is also why the protective flame-baffles between the Vimes residence and Sybil's dragon stables are much, much sturdier in ''Thud!'' than in previous books.

==Annotation==
Philip Jackson from the British ''Robin of Sherwood'' TV series provides the voice for Vimes in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of {{NW}}.

==Also See==
* [[wikipedia:Sam Vimes|Samuel Vimes's Entry]] on [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]]

:
[[Category:Discworld characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Leading characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Serial characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Human characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Watchmen|Vimes, Samuel]]

[[de:Samuel Mumm]]

Samuel Vimes

2016-07-17T01:46:13Z

Richvanf: /* Characteristics */

Vimes Family Motto: ''PROTEGO ET SERVIO''

''I protect and serve''

His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]; Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]].

{{Character Data
|title= Vimes
|photo= Vimes_Duck_Blanket.jpg | Sam Vimes by [http://tealin.dreamwidth.org/194944.html Tealin]
|name= Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|age= b. 1941? UC
|race= [[Humans|Human]]
|occupation= Commander of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] (Badge No.177)
|appearance= Skinny, balding and unshaven
|residence= Ramkin Residence, [[Scoone Avenue]], [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|death=
|parents= [[Thomas Vimes]] (father) [[Mrs. Vimes]] (mother)
|relatives= [[Gwilliam Vimes]] (paternal grandfather) [[Grandma Clamp]] (maternal grandmother).
|children= [[Young Sam Vimes]]
|marital status= Married to Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]]. A previous girlfriend, alluded to in passing in {{T!}}, is [[Mavis Trouncer]].
|books= {{G!G!}} {{MAA}} {{FOC}} {{J}} {{T5E}} {{NW}} {{MR}} {{T!}} ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]] [[Book:Snuff|Snuff]] {{RS}} [[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{TT}} {{GP}} {{MM}} {{UA}} {{ISWM}}
}}

== Biography ==
Sam Vimes was born in [[Cockbill Street]], [[the Shades]], [[Ankh-Morpork]], and went to the local school, where he was taught by Dame [[Slightly]] for 9 months and became blackboard monitor. After that, he spent some time in street gangs, including the [[Cockbill Street Roaring Lads]]. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Night Watch]], because his mate, Iffy Scurrick, had joined the year before and told him that there was "free food and a uniform and you could pick up the extra dollar here and there". This was shortly before the birth of the Glorious [[People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road]] during the [[Glorious Revolution|Glorious Revolution]].

What happens between then and {{G!G!}} is unsure, but prior to the events of ''Guards! Guards!'', Vimes had made it to Captain when the Night Watch consisted of four people: him, Sergeant [[Fred Colon|Colon]], Corporal [[Nobby Nobbs|Nobbs]], and newly appointed [[Lance-Constable]] [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]]. At this point, the legalization of the Thieves and Assassins Guilds had led to the Watch deteriorating into an obsolete entity. The watchmen are all there because they have nowhere else to go. In Guards! Guards!, Sgt. Colon claims that Vimes is there because he was Brung Low by a Woman, (if so than her name is [[Morporkia|Ankh Morporkia]]), although Vimes himself attributes it to his irreverent habit of speaking his mind to authority figures.

It is at this time that the Watch began to grow again, and Vimes was made Commander, with which came the unwanted rank of Knight, then, even more unwanted, the Duke of Ankh, by [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]], the [[Patrician]] of Ankh-Morpork. He also married [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, and has a son, called [[Young Sam Vimes|Samuel "Young Sam" Vimes II]]. He is a descendant of [["Stoneface" Vimes|'Old Stoneface' Vimes]], who committed regicide to end the [[Monarchy|monarchy]] in Ankh-Morpork; this relation causes frequent comparisons of Sam to his ancestor, in both his personality and his appearance.

==Characteristics==

Sam Vimes is by nature an extremely cynical person. He has few good opinions on people in general, and even fewer on the nobility, the guilds, [[Vetinari]], [[vampires]], the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], monarchy, democracy, [[Ankh-Morpork Times|newspapers]]...and the list goes on. In short, nearly everyone and everything is subject to his distrust. His first impression upon meeting someone is that they're guilty of some crime - 'the possibility that they were not guilty of anything he didn't think worthy of consideration' ([[Jingo]]) - though in a city such as Ankh-Morpork, this is more or less true.

Equally, he is known to be an angry person. His sheer, incandescent rage is barely suppressed by his desire to be lawful and administer justice properly (and also in a way, to not follow in Stoneface's steps). Due to his authority in {{MAA}}, when he finds himself in possession of the [[Gonne]], he struggles between his sense of justice and the Gonne's twisted desire to use him to kill in the name of justice. He can barely restrain himself from the Gonne's temptations. In {{T!}}, he nearly gives in entirely to those of the [[Summoning Dark]]. In the latter case, you have to consider that a [[Helmclever|dwarf]] stirs deliberately his anger, and the [[Dark Guards]] attempt later to assassinate not only Vimes, but also his wife and his fourteen-months-old son, using flamethrowers. On one side, there is Vimes, however rough and pessimistic he may seem, defender of law and order, and the other side is a Vimes who would kill for revenge and make his own law.

In {{T!}}, after years of nighttime patrols, Vimes's mindscape is described as the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], streets and all, in the dead of night, with the rains bucketing down over your head. When Vimes is angry, doors of some of the houses (the more angry he is, the more doors) will open. When the [[Summoning Dark]] trespasses into his mind, needing a host in order to track down the [[Deep-Downers]], it tries to enter through one of the doors that opens when Vimes becomes angry, only to be pulled away at every time. It is later revealed that the force preventing the [[Summoning Dark]] from making any progress in possessing Vimes is Vimes's own 'inner guardsman'.

His chronic alcoholism may be partially due to his natural state of extreme sobriety, known as being [[knurd]]. According to Vimes's long-time close friend and fellow officer [[Fred Colon]], it is because that every other normal person is naturally slightly drunk to some extent to conceal the true horrors of reality from them. However Vimes lacks the ability to produce his 'own alcohol', as it were. Vimes used to attempt to cure this by drinking heavily; unfortunately he often over-dosed himself, and became an alcoholic. After marrying Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]], he quit drinking and smoked cigars instead. In {{FOC}}, he still has the habit to reach in stress situations for the bottom desk drawer, where his bottle used to be. But he'd never bought a bottle since he got married, and Carrot and Fred Colon keep an eye on him, as well. As of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', even his smoking has been barred from the house (likely for Young Sam's sake), and he sates his cravings with non-alcoholic mixers whipped up by [[Willikins]].

Another reason for Vimes's past alcoholism may be his history; Vimes has been on the Watch since his late teens. He has lived through the successive regimes of Homicidal Lord [[Winder]] and [[Mad Lord Snapcase]], two patricians whose sobriquets more than adequately describe their tenures, as well as several wars, and the legalization of the Guilds under Vetinari, which more or less broke his spirit. His participation as a young copper in handing people to the [[Cable Street Particulars|Unmentionables]] has surely left him also with a deep feeling of guilt and shame, after witnessing the results in their headquarters.

Vimes is a firm believer in the institution of law. He has a soft spot for the poor and those otherwise unable to fend for themselves, as although he views them as equally able to commit crimes as any other demographic; he sees law as a great equalizer, regardless of race (however despite his acceptance of just about any species into the Watch, until he was forced to in [[Thud!]] he refused to have a [[vampire]].)

As Vimes's long-time close friend [[Fred Colon|Sgt. Colon]] puts it, Vimes could get drunk in better style, Vimes could be baffled about a case with better vocabulary, and Vimes could deal with the paperwork. To himself, Samuel Vimes is a not very intelligent man with a sordid personal history that he'd rather forget. To many others he is, somehow, the person to look up to. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] quotes Vimes's ideas about social justice, and tries to make them a reality. [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], Vimes's wife, thinks that he can sort out anything. The new policemen trained in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]] and then hired elsewhere, though they haven't seen Vimes in person much, are called ''[[Sammies]]'' (perhaps a nod to the "bobbies," so-called because of Sir Robert Peel).

Vimes is far from being perfect, and he knows the fact better than anyone. In addition to former alcoholism, Vimes has many prejudices. He hates many kinds of people and many things, and he has quite good reasons to. He hates the upper class because they look down on the rest of the society while exploiting it (e.g. charging high rent from the poor people living in slum properties).

He hates [[dwarfs]] and [[trolls]], but he has stated that he doesn't care that much for humans either so he can't be blamed. He hates [[zombies]], [[werewolves]] and [[vampires]]; for unashamedly discriminative reasons, among them being that they cannot be killed if police duty necessitates that Vimes should fight them, and he believes that vampires naturally or reflexively prey upon people, as well as often being rich and snobby.

He hates dishonest policemen. He accepts that a publican may offer a free pint or a meal to an officer just because having an officer on the premises at rush hour makes things go more smoothly is just a way of doing business, but draws the line at an officer taking money to look the other way. He also sacks, and may even prosecute, officers who abuse prisoners or participate in crimes. In his view, the law must apply to everyone, or it applies to noone. That was why, in Jingo, he reluctantly agreed to arrest Lord Vetinari.

He hates [[Assassins' Guild|Assassins]] and [[Thieves' Guild|Thieves]] because their crimes are legalized and he cannot arrest them, and their leaders are even city dignitaries now. He hates [[Alchemists' Guild|Alchemists]] because they blow things up.

Just about the only kind of people that he doesn't hate are gargoyles, who never commit crimes that anybody finds out about, and the [[wizard's magic|wizards]]; they may mess up the space-time continuum and destroy the universe, but such offenses seldom fall within Vimes's jurisdiction. Vimes hates the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], too. It has been said that he protects the city just as he protects the dwarfs and trolls, so that he can go on hating them. In truth, Vimes has seen too many bad things in his line of work, and now finds it difficult to have a good opinion of anything in general; he is far too cynical (and yet depressingly sometimes not cynical enough). He doesn't have too much animosity for the Seamstresses Guild, since the Agony Aunts handle any excesses by customers, and the Houses themselves make sure that a customer will not end up beaten, naked, and penniless in the streets, "unless his tastes run that way."

In {{J}}, Vimes finds himself in a difficult and tense situation where he is holding the [[Klatch|Klatchian]] Prince [[Cadram]] at bowpoint, and is prepared to kill him because (tenuous) evidence links him to a conspiracy to kill Prince [[Khufurah]], but there is no court which would try the case. He is saved by the arrival of [[Vetinari]], who defuses the situation.

According to [[Detritus]], when Vimes found a child-killer who has kept a "''memento''" of his deed, it was all the troll could do to prevent him from killing the perpetrator. This all comes to light during the events of {{T!}} where Vimes' internal Watchman - which describes itself as existing to keep the darkness in rather than keeping it out- battles with the [[Mine sign|Summoning Dark]] for supremacy of his soul and is ultimately victorious in dispelling the evil entity from its attempts to use Vimes to kill for it. This can be illustrated by the fact that when asked 'quis custodies ipsos custodes' ('Who watches the watchmen?') Vimes's immediate reaction is 'Me'. When asked who guards him, he replies, 'I do that too.'

He is capable of accepting specific individuals. He has married Lady Sybil and certainly loves her. He accepts members of ethnic minorities in his Watch, has personally trained some of them, and is quite proud of them. He promotes Watch officers according to merit and ability, regardless of gender, species, or seniority. He also has a soft spot for the poor, the working class, or the young. When he finds younger Assassins failing their attempts on him, for example, he lets them go with only minor wounds; older Assassins, on the other hand, have been known to be [[Richard Liddleley|painted and tied up left in public]], or even [[Eustace Bassingly-Gore|chained up and sent on a sea voyage]] all the way to the other end of [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]]. To put it very simply, he tries to look after those who have nobody else looking after them.

In attempting to carry out justice, Vimes has arrested sons of Ankh-Morpork nobles as well as city dignitaries, all the way up to [[Lord Vetinari]]. This has put Vimes high on the hit list of the Assassins at a price of $AM20,000 in {{FOC}} rising to $AM600,000 after 9 failed attempts at the time of {{T5E}}; recently, however, he has been taken off the register, and the Guild of Assassins no longer accepts contracts on his life. This may be because he is somehow vital to the running of the city, as [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]] is, or it may be because no sensible Assassin will volunteer for the task anyway. Vimes has personally designed and installed many traps and deadfalls all around the Ramkin family home and the Watch headquarters at [[Pseudopolis Yard]]. So far, Vimes hasn't been even injured by any Assassin. The Assassins Guild now has some of its trainees conduct "''dry run''" assassination attempts on Vimes as a matter of testing the trainee's skills - particularly if they feel the need to [[Jocasta Wiggs|bring the trainee's ego back down to the Disc]] (see {{NW}}).

He is also fiercely anti-authority, possibly a facet of his character which he inherited from Old Stoneface. That he manages this whilst actually being authority is, as [[Lord Vetinari]] put it, "''practically zen''." He regards being the Duke of Ankh as a job title and always prefers "Commander" or "sir" to any of his other titles, which include "''His Grace''," "''His Excellency''" and "''his blackboard-monitorship''" ({{T5E}} and {{T!}}). Continuing to call him by any of these titles after he's explained his preferences is an excellent way to get in His Grace His Excellency's bad graces.

Sam Vimes's full title of record is "''His Grace, His Excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes''." His "Blackboard Monitor" epithet is used like a title in ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', implying it may actually have been accorded some official weight by the Low King of the dwarfs. Ironically, the one title Vimes holds with genuine pride (as of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]''), aside from Commander, is "King" .. as in, "King of the River", an honorarium awarded in recognition of his role in saving the riverboat ''Wonderful Fanny'' from piracy and flood.

Members of the Watch earn the privilege, and it is a privilege, of calling him "''Mister Vimes''" only after very long association (i.e. [[Nobby Nobbs]] or [[Fred Colon]]), or after watching his back in a street fight to the extent that they have demonstrably saved his life ([[A.E. Pessimal]]). He does not tolerate the "''Mister''" from outsiders. [[Fred Colon]] sometimes calls him by his first name when he's worried. He has inherited his ancestor's nickname "''Old Stoneface''," but this is never said to his face.

==Activities and Duties==
As other noblemen might ride horses, wear laces, ruffles, and plumes, Sam Vimes walks the city on endless patrols and wears his old battered Watch armor and leather shirt and jerkin, with the standard sword and truncheon.

Since becoming the Commander of the Watch and as such a popular target with the clients of the [[Assassins' Guild]], Vimes also started the exercise of personally engineering pitfalls and death traps around his house and outside of his office at the police headquarters.

As Commander and top officer of the Watch, Vimes' job is to oversee its operations and has to deal with a lot of paperwork, a job which he hates but accomplishes adequately. He still tries to go on patrol whenever he has a chance; to him, walking the quiet streets in the dark is a calming, almost relaxing activity. When there is an important occasion on which crime is anticipated, for example, that a foreign dignitary may be attacked during a public appearance (in {{J}}), Vimes likes to personally check suspicious places such as an abandoned building that an assassin might use.

Deduction is not Vimes' favorite activity; he distrusts clues and loathes mysteries (''"mysteries get you killed"''), and he now has the [[Cable Street Particulars]] to deal with peculiar crimes, but sometimes Vimes still personally investigates a case. When he witnesses a crime occurring, he abandons everything and chases the miscreant. It is possible that he uses police work to escape the social life of "Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh".

As both urged by Lady Sybil and ordered by Lord Vetinari, Vimes now often has to appear at dinners and parties. Most of the nobles and government officials that he sees at such social occasions, he considers stupid or obnoxious. Should he be accosted by one of these people, he does not hesitate to make clear how and why he loathes them. Vetinari likes to use Vimes as a diplomat, and while more often than not Vimes is the cause of diplomatic incidents, these seem often the intention of Vetinari.

The former Lord Ramkin, Lady Sybil's late father, had always had servants to shave him, to lay out his bath, to scrub his back, to lay out his clothes, to clean his shiny boots, and so on. Vimes now allows the butler to lay out his clothes, but that is about all. He insists on shaving himself as he dislikes other people putting a [[razor blade]], (or indeed any sort of sharp edge) to his throat, and attempts to wear cheap boots with cardboard soles. He has been walking the city in such boots for decades, and he likes being able to feel the different types of cobblestones so that he can tell which street he is on. Besides watch armour, Vimes has some gentleman's suits, a dress uniform of the Watch Commander, and a dress uniform of the Duke. He is often required to wear the ducal dress uniform, which has ruby tights (''"you wouldn't wear tights to battle if you thought you would be taken prisoner"''), a spiky coronet, a gilt armour (''"toy armour"''), and no place to hang his sword (''"you got made a duke for fighting and then they gave you no sword to fight with"''). Vimes compromises by wearing the Watch Commander dress uniform.

Nowadays, Vimes has to eat fancy food as cooked in the Ramkins' house. Personally, he prefers simple, greasy food with burnt crunchy bits, and so he is happier when he eats things that Lady Sybil has personally cooked by a dragon's fire.

Upon becoming a father, Vimes swore to faithfully get home by 6 p.m. every evening to read a certain picture book called ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]]'' to his son, Young Sam. This has become such a point of pride that he now has nightmares about not being home by 6 p.m. There is absolutely nothing that takes precedence over this; Vimes believes that if he misses it even once for a good reason, the next time he might miss it for a bad one, and eventually this attitude might spill over into the rest of his life. By the time of ''Snuff'', Young Sam has become the reader and Vimes Senior, the listener, but their 6 p.m. reading sessions continue like clockwork.

His son's welfare is one of the few things Vimes is willing to cross even his wife about, such that he insisted that they hire a nursemaid, Purity, to attend to Young Sam over Sybil's objections. Presumably this is also why the protective flame-baffles between the Vimes residence and Sybil's dragon stables are much, much sturdier in ''Thud!'' than in previous books.

==Annotation==
Philip Jackson from the British ''Robin of Sherwood'' TV series provides the voice for Vimes in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of {{NW}}.

==Also See==
* [[wikipedia:Sam Vimes|Samuel Vimes's Entry]] on [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]]

:
[[Category:Discworld characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Leading characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Serial characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Human characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Watchmen|Vimes, Samuel]]

[[de:Samuel Mumm]]

Samuel Vimes

2016-07-17T01:35:37Z

Richvanf: /* Characteristics */

Vimes Family Motto: ''PROTEGO ET SERVIO''

''I protect and serve''

His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]; Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]].

{{Character Data
|title= Vimes
|photo= Vimes_Duck_Blanket.jpg | Sam Vimes by [http://tealin.dreamwidth.org/194944.html Tealin]
|name= Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|age= b. 1941? UC
|race= [[Humans|Human]]
|occupation= Commander of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] (Badge No.177)
|appearance= Skinny, balding and unshaven
|residence= Ramkin Residence, [[Scoone Avenue]], [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|death=
|parents= [[Thomas Vimes]] (father) [[Mrs. Vimes]] (mother)
|relatives= [[Gwilliam Vimes]] (paternal grandfather) [[Grandma Clamp]] (maternal grandmother).
|children= [[Young Sam Vimes]]
|marital status= Married to Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]]. A previous girlfriend, alluded to in passing in {{T!}}, is [[Mavis Trouncer]].
|books= {{G!G!}} {{MAA}} {{FOC}} {{J}} {{T5E}} {{NW}} {{MR}} {{T!}} ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]] [[Book:Snuff|Snuff]] {{RS}} [[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{TT}} {{GP}} {{MM}} {{UA}} {{ISWM}}
}}

== Biography ==
Sam Vimes was born in [[Cockbill Street]], [[the Shades]], [[Ankh-Morpork]], and went to the local school, where he was taught by Dame [[Slightly]] for 9 months and became blackboard monitor. After that, he spent some time in street gangs, including the [[Cockbill Street Roaring Lads]]. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Night Watch]], because his mate, Iffy Scurrick, had joined the year before and told him that there was "free food and a uniform and you could pick up the extra dollar here and there". This was shortly before the birth of the Glorious [[People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road]] during the [[Glorious Revolution|Glorious Revolution]].

What happens between then and {{G!G!}} is unsure, but prior to the events of ''Guards! Guards!'', Vimes had made it to Captain when the Night Watch consisted of four people: him, Sergeant [[Fred Colon|Colon]], Corporal [[Nobby Nobbs|Nobbs]], and newly appointed [[Lance-Constable]] [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]]. At this point, the legalization of the Thieves and Assassins Guilds had led to the Watch deteriorating into an obsolete entity. The watchmen are all there because they have nowhere else to go. In Guards! Guards!, Sgt. Colon claims that Vimes is there because he was Brung Low by a Woman, (if so than her name is [[Morporkia|Ankh Morporkia]]), although Vimes himself attributes it to his irreverent habit of speaking his mind to authority figures.

It is at this time that the Watch began to grow again, and Vimes was made Commander, with which came the unwanted rank of Knight, then, even more unwanted, the Duke of Ankh, by [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]], the [[Patrician]] of Ankh-Morpork. He also married [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, and has a son, called [[Young Sam Vimes|Samuel "Young Sam" Vimes II]]. He is a descendant of [["Stoneface" Vimes|'Old Stoneface' Vimes]], who committed regicide to end the [[Monarchy|monarchy]] in Ankh-Morpork; this relation causes frequent comparisons of Sam to his ancestor, in both his personality and his appearance.

==Characteristics==

Sam Vimes is by nature an extremely cynical person. He has few good opinions on people in general, and even fewer on the nobility, the guilds, [[Vetinari]], [[vampires]], the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], monarchy, democracy, [[Ankh-Morpork Times|newspapers]]...and the list goes on. In short, nearly everyone and everything is subject to his distrust. His first impression upon meeting someone is that they're guilty of some crime - 'the possibility that they were not guilty of anything he didn't think worthy of consideration' ([[Jingo]]) - though in a city such as Ankh-Morpork, this is more or less true.

Equally, he is known to be an angry person. His sheer, incandescent rage is barely suppressed by his desire to be lawful and administer justice properly (and also in a way, to not follow in Stoneface's steps). Due to his authority in {{MAA}}, when he finds himself in possession of the [[Gonne]], he struggles between his sense of justice and the Gonne's twisted desire to use him to kill in the name of justice. He can barely restrain himself from the Gonne's temptations. In {{T!}}, he nearly gives in entirely to those of the [[Summoning Dark]]. In the latter case, you have to consider that a [[Helmclever|dwarf]] stirs deliberately his anger, and the [[Dark Guards]] attempt later to assassinate not only Vimes, but also his wife and his fourteen-months-old son, using flamethrowers. On one side, there is Vimes, however rough and pessimistic he may seem, defender of law and order, and the other side is a Vimes who would kill for revenge and make his own law.

In {{T!}}, after years of nighttime patrols, Vimes's mindscape is described as the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], streets and all, in the dead of night, with the rains bucketing down over your head. When Vimes is angry, doors of some of the houses (the more angry he is, the more doors) will open. When the [[Summoning Dark]] trespasses into his mind, needing a host in order to track down the [[Deep-Downers]], it tries to enter through one of the doors that opens when Vimes becomes angry, only to be pulled away at every time. It is later revealed that the force preventing the [[Summoning Dark]] from making any progress in possessing Vimes is Vimes's own 'inner guardsman'.

His chronic alcoholism may be partially due to his natural state of extreme sobriety, known as being [[knurd]]. According to Vimes's long-time close friend and fellow officer [[Fred Colon]], it is because that every other normal person is naturally slightly drunk to some extent to conceal the true horrors of reality from them. However Vimes lacks the ability to produce his 'own alcohol', as it were. Vimes used to attempt to cure this by drinking heavily; unfortunately he often over-dosed himself, and became an alcoholic. After marrying Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]], he quit drinking and smoked cigars instead. In {{FOC}}, he still has the habit to reach in stress situations for the bottom desk drawer, where his bottle used to be. But he'd never bought a bottle since he got married, and Carrot and Fred Colon keep an eye on him, as well. As of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', even his smoking has been barred from the house (likely for Young Sam's sake), and he sates his cravings with non-alcoholic mixers whipped up by [[Willikins]].

Another reason for Vimes's past alcoholism may be his history; Vimes has been on the Watch since his late teens. He has lived through the successive regimes of Homicidal Lord [[Winder]] and [[Mad Lord Snapcase]], two patricians whose sobriquets more than adequately describe their tenures, as well as several wars, and the legalization of the Guilds under Vetinari, which more or less broke his spirit. His participation as a young copper in handing people to the [[Cable Street Particulars|Unmentionables]] has surely left him also with a deep feeling of guilt and shame, after witnessing the results in their headquarters.

Vimes is a firm believer in the institution of law. He has a soft spot for the poor and those otherwise unable to fend for themselves, as although he views them as equally able to commit crimes as any other demographic; he sees law as a great equalizer, regardless of race (however despite his acceptance of just about any species into the Watch, until he was forced to in [[Thud!]] he refused to have a [[vampire]].)

As Vimes's long-time close friend [[Fred Colon|Sgt. Colon]] puts it, Vimes could get drunk in better style, Vimes could be baffled about a case with better vocabulary, and Vimes could deal with the paperwork. To himself, Samuel Vimes is a not very intelligent man with a sordid personal history that he'd rather forget. To many others he is, somehow, the person to look up to. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] quotes Vimes's ideas about social justice, and tries to make them a reality. [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], Vimes's wife, thinks that he can sort out anything. The new policemen trained in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]] and then hired elsewhere, though they haven't seen Vimes in person much, are called ''[[Sammies]]'' (perhaps a nod to the "bobbies," so-called because of Sir Robert Peel).

Vimes is far from being perfect, and he knows the fact better than anyone. In addition to former alcoholism, Vimes has many prejudices. He hates many kinds of people and many things, and he has quite good reasons to. He hates the upper class because they look down on the rest of the society while exploiting it (e.g. charging high rent from the poor people living in slum properties).

He hates [[dwarfs]] and [[trolls]], but he has stated that he doesn't care that much for humans either so he can't be blamed. He hates [[zombies]], [[werewolves]] and [[vampires]]; for unashamedly discriminative reasons, among them being that they cannot be killed if police duty necessitates that Vimes should fight them, and he believes that vampires naturally or reflexively prey upon people, as well as often being rich and snobby.

He hates dishonest policemen. He accepts that a publican may offer a free pint or a meal to an officer just because having an officer on the premises at rush hour makes things go more smoothly is just a way of doing business, but draws the line at an officer taking money to look the other way. He also sacks, and may even prosecute, officers who abuse prisoners or participate in crimes. In his view, the law must apply to everyone, or it applies to noone. That was why, in Jingo, he reluctantly agreed to arrest Lord Vetinari.

He hates [[Assassins' Guild|Assassins]] and [[Thieves' Guild|Thieves]] because their crimes are legalized and he cannot arrest them, and their leaders are even city dignitaries now. He hates [[Alchemists' Guild|Alchemists]] because they blow things up.

Just about the only kind of people that he doesn't hate are gargoyles, who never commit crimes that anybody finds out about, and the [[wizard's magic|wizards]]; they may mess up the space-time continuum and destroy the universe, but such offenses seldom fall within Vimes's jurisdiction. Vimes hates the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], too. It has been said that he protects the city just as he protects the dwarfs and trolls, so that he can go on hating them. In truth, Vimes has seen too many bad things in his line of work, and now finds it difficult to have a good opinion of anything in general; he is far too cynical (and yet depressingly sometimes not cynical enough).

In {{J}}, Vimes finds himself in a difficult and tense situation where he is holding the [[Klatch|Klatchian]] Prince [[Cadram]] at bowpoint, and is prepared to kill him because (tenuous) evidence links him to a conspiracy to kill Prince [[Khufurah]], but there is no court which would try the case. He is saved by the arrival of [[Vetinari]], who defuses the situation.

According to [[Detritus]], when Vimes found a child-killer who has kept a "''memento''" of his deed, it was all the troll could do to prevent him from killing the perpetrator. This all comes to light during the events of {{T!}} where Vimes' internal Watchman - which describes itself as existing to keep the darkness in rather than keeping it out- battles with the [[Mine sign|Summoning Dark]] for supremacy of his soul and is ultimately victorious in dispelling the evil entity from its attempts to use Vimes to kill for it. This can be illustrated by the fact that when asked 'quis custodies ipsos custodes' ('Who watches the watchmen?') Vimes's immediate reaction is 'Me'. When asked who guards him, he replies, 'I do that too.'

He is capable of accepting specific individuals. He has married Lady Sybil and certainly loves her. He accepts members of ethnic minorities in his Watch, has personally trained some of them, and is quite proud of them. He promotes Watch officers according to merit and ability, regardless of gender, species, or seniority. He also has a soft spot for the poor, the working class, or the young. When he finds younger Assassins failing their attempts on him, for example, he lets them go with only minor wounds; older Assassins, on the other hand, have been known to be [[Richard Liddleley|painted and tied up left in public]], or even [[Eustace Bassingly-Gore|chained up and sent on a sea voyage]] all the way to the other end of [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]]. To put it very simply, he tries to look after those who have nobody else looking after them.

In attempting to carry out justice, Vimes has arrested sons of Ankh-Morpork nobles as well as city dignitaries, all the way up to [[Lord Vetinari]]. This has put Vimes high on the hit list of the Assassins at a price of $AM20,000 in {{FOC}} rising to $AM600,000 after 9 failed attempts at the time of {{T5E}}; recently, however, he has been taken off the register, and the Guild of Assassins no longer accepts contracts on his life. This may be because he is somehow vital to the running of the city, as [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]] is, or it may be because no sensible Assassin will volunteer for the task anyway. Vimes has personally designed and installed many traps and deadfalls all around the Ramkin family home and the Watch headquarters at [[Pseudopolis Yard]]. So far, Vimes hasn't been even injured by any Assassin. The Assassins Guild now has some of its trainees conduct "''dry run''" assassination attempts on Vimes as a matter of testing the trainee's skills - particularly if they feel the need to [[Jocasta Wiggs|bring the trainee's ego back down to the Disc]] (see {{NW}}).

He is also fiercely anti-authority, possibly a facet of his character which he inherited from Old Stoneface. That he manages this whilst actually being authority is, as [[Lord Vetinari]] put it, "''practically zen''." He regards being the Duke of Ankh as a job title and always prefers "Commander" or "sir" to any of his other titles, which include "''His Grace''," "''His Excellency''" and "''his blackboard-monitorship''" ({{T5E}} and {{T!}}). Continuing to call him by any of these titles after he's explained his preferences is an excellent way to get in His Grace His Excellency's bad graces.

Sam Vimes's full title of record is "''His Grace, His Excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes''." His "Blackboard Monitor" epithet is used like a title in ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', implying it may actually have been accorded some official weight by the Low King of the dwarfs. Ironically, the one title Vimes holds with genuine pride (as of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]''), aside from Commander, is "King" .. as in, "King of the River", an honorarium awarded in recognition of his role in saving the riverboat ''Wonderful Fanny'' from piracy and flood.

Members of the Watch earn the privilege, and it is a privilege, of calling him "''Mister Vimes''" only after very long association (i.e. [[Nobby Nobbs]] or [[Fred Colon]]), or after watching his back in a street fight to the extent that they have demonstrably saved his life ([[A.E. Pessimal]]). He does not tolerate the "''Mister''" from outsiders. [[Fred Colon]] sometimes calls him by his first name when he's worried. He has inherited his ancestor's nickname "''Old Stoneface''," but this is never said to his face.

==Activities and Duties==
As other noblemen might ride horses, wear laces, ruffles, and plumes, Sam Vimes walks the city on endless patrols and wears his old battered Watch armor and leather shirt and jerkin, with the standard sword and truncheon.

Since becoming the Commander of the Watch and as such a popular target with the clients of the [[Assassins' Guild]], Vimes also started the exercise of personally engineering pitfalls and death traps around his house and outside of his office at the police headquarters.

As Commander and top officer of the Watch, Vimes' job is to oversee its operations and has to deal with a lot of paperwork, a job which he hates but accomplishes adequately. He still tries to go on patrol whenever he has a chance; to him, walking the quiet streets in the dark is a calming, almost relaxing activity. When there is an important occasion on which crime is anticipated, for example, that a foreign dignitary may be attacked during a public appearance (in {{J}}), Vimes likes to personally check suspicious places such as an abandoned building that an assassin might use.

Deduction is not Vimes' favorite activity; he distrusts clues and loathes mysteries (''"mysteries get you killed"''), and he now has the [[Cable Street Particulars]] to deal with peculiar crimes, but sometimes Vimes still personally investigates a case. When he witnesses a crime occurring, he abandons everything and chases the miscreant. It is possible that he uses police work to escape the social life of "Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh".

As both urged by Lady Sybil and ordered by Lord Vetinari, Vimes now often has to appear at dinners and parties. Most of the nobles and government officials that he sees at such social occasions, he considers stupid or obnoxious. Should he be accosted by one of these people, he does not hesitate to make clear how and why he loathes them. Vetinari likes to use Vimes as a diplomat, and while more often than not Vimes is the cause of diplomatic incidents, these seem often the intention of Vetinari.

The former Lord Ramkin, Lady Sybil's late father, had always had servants to shave him, to lay out his bath, to scrub his back, to lay out his clothes, to clean his shiny boots, and so on. Vimes now allows the butler to lay out his clothes, but that is about all. He insists on shaving himself as he dislikes other people putting a [[razor blade]], (or indeed any sort of sharp edge) to his throat, and attempts to wear cheap boots with cardboard soles. He has been walking the city in such boots for decades, and he likes being able to feel the different types of cobblestones so that he can tell which street he is on. Besides watch armour, Vimes has some gentleman's suits, a dress uniform of the Watch Commander, and a dress uniform of the Duke. He is often required to wear the ducal dress uniform, which has ruby tights (''"you wouldn't wear tights to battle if you thought you would be taken prisoner"''), a spiky coronet, a gilt armour (''"toy armour"''), and no place to hang his sword (''"you got made a duke for fighting and then they gave you no sword to fight with"''). Vimes compromises by wearing the Watch Commander dress uniform.

Nowadays, Vimes has to eat fancy food as cooked in the Ramkins' house. Personally, he prefers simple, greasy food with burnt crunchy bits, and so he is happier when he eats things that Lady Sybil has personally cooked by a dragon's fire.

Upon becoming a father, Vimes swore to faithfully get home by 6 p.m. every evening to read a certain picture book called ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]]'' to his son, Young Sam. This has become such a point of pride that he now has nightmares about not being home by 6 p.m. There is absolutely nothing that takes precedence over this; Vimes believes that if he misses it even once for a good reason, the next time he might miss it for a bad one, and eventually this attitude might spill over into the rest of his life. By the time of ''Snuff'', Young Sam has become the reader and Vimes Senior, the listener, but their 6 p.m. reading sessions continue like clockwork.

His son's welfare is one of the few things Vimes is willing to cross even his wife about, such that he insisted that they hire a nursemaid, Purity, to attend to Young Sam over Sybil's objections. Presumably this is also why the protective flame-baffles between the Vimes residence and Sybil's dragon stables are much, much sturdier in ''Thud!'' than in previous books.

==Annotation==
Philip Jackson from the British ''Robin of Sherwood'' TV series provides the voice for Vimes in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of {{NW}}.

==Also See==
* [[wikipedia:Sam Vimes|Samuel Vimes's Entry]] on [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]]

:
[[Category:Discworld characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Leading characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Serial characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Human characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Watchmen|Vimes, Samuel]]

[[de:Samuel Mumm]]

Samuel Vimes

2016-07-17T01:12:45Z

Richvanf: /* Characteristics */

Vimes Family Motto: ''PROTEGO ET SERVIO''

''I protect and serve''

His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]; Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]].

{{Character Data
|title= Vimes
|photo= Vimes_Duck_Blanket.jpg | Sam Vimes by [http://tealin.dreamwidth.org/194944.html Tealin]
|name= Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|age= b. 1941? UC
|race= [[Humans|Human]]
|occupation= Commander of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]] (Badge No.177)
|appearance= Skinny, balding and unshaven
|residence= Ramkin Residence, [[Scoone Avenue]], [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]]
|death=
|parents= [[Thomas Vimes]] (father) [[Mrs. Vimes]] (mother)
|relatives= [[Gwilliam Vimes]] (paternal grandfather) [[Grandma Clamp]] (maternal grandmother).
|children= [[Young Sam Vimes]]
|marital status= Married to Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]]. A previous girlfriend, alluded to in passing in {{T!}}, is [[Mavis Trouncer]].
|books= {{G!G!}} {{MAA}} {{FOC}} {{J}} {{T5E}} {{NW}} {{MR}} {{T!}} ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]] [[Book:Snuff|Snuff]] {{RS}} [[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{TT}} {{GP}} {{MM}} {{UA}} {{ISWM}}
}}

== Biography ==
Sam Vimes was born in [[Cockbill Street]], [[the Shades]], [[Ankh-Morpork]], and went to the local school, where he was taught by Dame [[Slightly]] for 9 months and became blackboard monitor. After that, he spent some time in street gangs, including the [[Cockbill Street Roaring Lads]]. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Night Watch]], because his mate, Iffy Scurrick, had joined the year before and told him that there was "free food and a uniform and you could pick up the extra dollar here and there". This was shortly before the birth of the Glorious [[People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road]] during the [[Glorious Revolution|Glorious Revolution]].

What happens between then and {{G!G!}} is unsure, but prior to the events of ''Guards! Guards!'', Vimes had made it to Captain when the Night Watch consisted of four people: him, Sergeant [[Fred Colon|Colon]], Corporal [[Nobby Nobbs|Nobbs]], and newly appointed [[Lance-Constable]] [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]]. At this point, the legalization of the Thieves and Assassins Guilds had led to the Watch deteriorating into an obsolete entity. The watchmen are all there because they have nowhere else to go. In Guards! Guards!, Sgt. Colon claims that Vimes is there because he was Brung Low by a Woman, (if so than her name is [[Morporkia|Ankh Morporkia]]), although Vimes himself attributes it to his irreverent habit of speaking his mind to authority figures.

It is at this time that the Watch began to grow again, and Vimes was made Commander, with which came the unwanted rank of Knight, then, even more unwanted, the Duke of Ankh, by [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]], the [[Patrician]] of Ankh-Morpork. He also married [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, and has a son, called [[Young Sam Vimes|Samuel "Young Sam" Vimes II]]. He is a descendant of [["Stoneface" Vimes|'Old Stoneface' Vimes]], who committed regicide to end the [[Monarchy|monarchy]] in Ankh-Morpork; this relation causes frequent comparisons of Sam to his ancestor, in both his personality and his appearance.

==Characteristics==

Sam Vimes is by nature an extremely cynical person. He has few good opinions on people in general, and even fewer on the nobility, the guilds, [[Vetinari]], [[vampires]], the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], monarchy, democracy, [[Ankh-Morpork Times|newspapers]]...and the list goes on. In short, nearly everyone and everything is subject to his distrust. His first impression upon meeting someone is that they're guilty of some crime - 'the possibility that they were not guilty of anything he didn't think worthy of consideration' ([[Jingo]]) - though in a city such as Ankh-Morpork, this is more or less true.

Equally, he is known to be an angry person. His sheer, incandescent rage is barely suppressed by his desire to be lawful and administer justice properly (and also in a way, to not follow in Stoneface's steps). Due to his authority in {{MAA}}, when he finds himself in possession of the [[Gonne]], he struggles between his sense of justice and the Gonne's twisted desire to use him to kill in the name of justice. He can barely restrain himself from the Gonne's temptations. In {{T!}}, he nearly gives in entirely to those of the [[Summoning Dark]]. In the latter case, you have to consider that a [[Helmclever|dwarf]] stirs deliberately his anger, and the [[Dark Guards]] attempt later to assassinate not only Vimes, but also his wife and his fourteen-months-old son, using flamethrowers. On one side, there is Vimes, however rough and pessimistic he may seem, defender of law and order, and the other side is a Vimes who would kill for revenge and make his own law.

In {{T!}}, after years of nighttime patrols, Vimes's mindscape is described as the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], streets and all, in the dead of night, with the rains bucketing down over your head. When Vimes is angry, doors of some of the houses (the more angry he is, the more doors) will open. When the [[Summoning Dark]] trespasses into his mind, needing a host in order to track down the [[Deep-Downers]], it tries to enter through one of the doors that opens when Vimes becomes angry, only to be pulled away at every time. It is later revealed that the force preventing the [[Summoning Dark]] from making any progress in possessing Vimes is Vimes's own 'inner guardsman'.

His chronic alcoholism may be partially due to his natural state of extreme sobriety, known as being [[knurd]]. According to Vimes's long-time close friend and fellow officer [[Fred Colon]], it is because that every other normal person is naturally slightly drunk to some extent to conceal the true horrors of reality from them. However Vimes lacks the ability to produce his 'own alcohol', as it were. Vimes used to attempt to cure this by drinking heavily; unfortunately he often over-dosed himself, and became an alcoholic. After marrying Lady [[Sybil Ramkin]], he quit drinking and smoked cigars instead. In {{FOC}}, he still has the habit to reach in stress situations for the bottom desk drawer, where his bottle used to be. But he'd never bought a bottle since he got married, and Carrot and Fred Colon keep an eye on him, as well. As of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', even his smoking has been barred from the house (likely for Young Sam's sake), and he sates his cravings with non-alcoholic mixers whipped up by [[Willikins]].

Another reason for Vimes's past alcoholism may be his history; Vimes has been on the Watch since his late teens. He has lived through the successive regimes of Homicidal Lord [[Winder]] and [[Mad Lord Snapcase]], two patricians whose sobriquets more than adequately describe their tenures, as well as several wars, and the legalization of the Guilds under Vetinari, which more or less broke his spirit. His participation as a young copper in handing people to the [[Cable Street Particulars|Unmentionables]] has surely left him also with a deep feeling of guilt and shame, after witnessing the results in their headquarters.

Vimes is a firm believer in the institution of law. He has a soft spot for the poor and those otherwise unable to fend for themselves, as although he views them as equally able to commit crimes as any other demographic; he sees law as a great equalizer, regardless of race (however despite his acceptance of just about any species into the Watch, until he was forced to in [[Thud!]] he refused to have a [[vampire]].)

As Vimes's long-time close friend [[Fred Colon|Sgt. Colon]] puts it, Vimes could get drunk in better style, Vimes could be baffled about a case with better vocabulary, and Vimes could deal with the paperwork. To himself, Samuel Vimes is a not very intelligent man with a sordid personal history that he'd rather forget. To many others he is, somehow, the person to look up to. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] quotes Vimes's ideas about social justice, and tries to make them a reality. [[Lady Sybil Ramkin]], Vimes's wife, thinks that he can sort out anything. The new policemen trained in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]] and then hired elsewhere, though they haven't seen Vimes in person much, are called ''[[Sammies]]'' (perhaps a nod to the "bobbies," so-called because of Sir Robert Peel).

Vimes is far from being perfect, and he knows the fact better than anyone. In addition to former alcoholism, Vimes has many prejudices. He hates many kinds of people and many things, and he has quite good reasons to. He hates the upper class because they look down on the rest of the society while exploiting it (e.g. charging high rent from the poor people living in slum properties).

He hates [[dwarfs]] and [[trolls]], but he has stated that he doesn't care that much for humans either so he can't be blamed. He hates [[zombies]], [[werewolves]] and [[vampires]]; for unashamedly discriminative reasons, among them being that they cannot be killed if police duty necessitates that Vimes should fight them, and he believes that vampires naturally or reflexively prey upon people, as well as often being rich and snobby.

He hates [[Assassins' Guild|Assassins]] and [[Thieves' Guild|Thieves]] because their crimes are legalized and he cannot arrest them, and their leaders are even city dignitaries now. He hates [[Alchemists' Guild|Alchemists]] because they blow things up.

Just about the only kind of people that he doesn't hate are gargoyles, who never commit crimes that anybody finds out about, and the [[wizard's magic|wizards]]; they may mess up the space-time continuum and destroy the universe, but such offenses seldom fall within Vimes's jurisdiction. Vimes hates the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]], too. It has been said that he protects the city just as he protects the dwarfs and trolls, so that he can go on hating them. In truth, Vimes has seen too many bad things in his line of work, and now finds it difficult to have a good opinion of anything in general; he is far too cynical (and yet depressingly sometimes not cynical enough).

In {{J}}, Vimes finds himself in a difficult and tense situation where he is holding the [[Klatch|Klatchian]] Prince [[Cadram]] at bowpoint, and is prepared to kill him because (tenuous) evidence links him to a conspiracy to kill Prince [[Khufurah]], but there is no court which would try the case. He is saved by the arrival of [[Vetinari]], who defuses the situation.

According to [[Detritus]], when Vimes found a child-killer who has kept a "''memento''" of his deed, it was all the troll could do to prevent him from killing the perpetrator. This all comes to light during the events of {{T!}} where Vimes' internal Watchman - which describes itself as existing to keep the darkness in rather than keeping it out- battles with the [[Mine sign|Summoning Dark]] for supremacy of his soul and is ultimately victorious in dispelling the evil entity from its attempts to use Vimes to kill for it. This can be illustrated by the fact that when asked 'quis custodies ipsos custodes' ('Who watches the watchmen?') Vimes's immediate reaction is 'Me'. When asked who guards him, he replies, 'I do that too.'

He is capable of accepting specific individuals. He has married Lady Sybil and certainly loves her. He accepts members of ethnic minorities in his Watch, has personally trained some of them, and is quite proud of them. He promotes Watch officers according to merit and ability, regardless of gender, species, or seniority. He also has a soft spot for the poor, the working class, or the young. When he finds younger Assassins failing their attempts on him, for example, he lets them go with only minor wounds; older Assassins, on the other hand, have been known to be [[Richard Liddleley|painted and tied up left in public]], or even [[Eustace Bassingly-Gore|chained up and sent on a sea voyage]] all the way to the other end of [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]]. To put it very simply, he tries to look after those who have nobody else looking after them.

In attempting to carry out justice, Vimes has arrested sons of Ankh-Morpork nobles as well as city dignitaries, all the way up to [[Lord Vetinari]]. This has put Vimes high on the hit list of the Assassins at a price of $AM20,000 in {{FOC}} rising to $AM600,000 after 9 failed attempts at the time of {{T5E}}; recently, however, he has been taken off the register, and the Guild of Assassins no longer accepts contracts on his life. This may be because he is somehow vital to the running of the city, as [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]] is, or it may be because no sensible Assassin will volunteer for the task anyway. Vimes has personally designed and installed many traps and deadfalls all around the Ramkin family home and the Watch headquarters at [[Pseudopolis Yard]]. So far, Vimes hasn't been even injured by any Assassin. The Assassins Guild now has some of its trainees conduct "''dry run''" assassination attempts on Vimes as a matter of testing the trainee's skills - particularly if they feel the need to [[Jocasta Wiggs|bring the trainee's ego back down to the Disc]] (see {{NW}}).

He is also fiercely anti-authority, possibly a facet of his character which he inherited from Old Stoneface. That he manages this whilst actually being authority is, as [[Lord Vetinari]] put it, "''practically zen''." He regards being the Duke of Ankh as a job title and always prefers "Commander" or "sir" to any of his other titles, which include "''His Grace''," "''His Excellency''" and "''his blackboard-monitorship''" ({{T5E}} and {{T!}}). Continuing to call him by any of these titles after he's explained his preferences is an excellent way to get in His Grace His Excellency's bad graces.

Sam Vimes's full title of record is "''His Grace, His Excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes''." His "Blackboard Monitor" epithet is used like a title in ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]'', implying it may actually have been accorded some official weight by the Low King of the dwarfs. Ironically, the one title Vimes holds with genuine pride (as of ''[[Book:Snuff|Snuff]]''), aside from Commander, is "King" .. as in, "King of the River", an honorarium awarded in recognition of his role in saving the riverboat ''Wonderful Fanny'' from piracy and flood.

Members of the Watch earn the privilege, and it is a privilege, of calling him "''Mister Vimes''" only after very long association (i.e. [[Nobby Nobbs]] or [[Fred Colon]]), or after watching his back in a street fight to the extent that they have demonstrably saved his life ([[A.E. Pessimal]]). He does not tolerate the "''Mister''" from outsiders. [[Fred Colon]] sometimes calls him by his first name when he's worried. He has inherited his ancestor's nickname "''Old Stoneface''," but this is never said to his face.

==Activities and Duties==
As other noblemen might ride horses, wear laces, ruffles, and plumes, Sam Vimes walks the city on endless patrols and wears his old battered Watch armor and leather shirt and jerkin, with the standard sword and truncheon.

Since becoming the Commander of the Watch and as such a popular target with the clients of the [[Assassins' Guild]], Vimes also started the exercise of personally engineering pitfalls and death traps around his house and outside of his office at the police headquarters.

As Commander and top officer of the Watch, Vimes' job is to oversee its operations and has to deal with a lot of paperwork, a job which he hates but accomplishes adequately. He still tries to go on patrol whenever he has a chance; to him, walking the quiet streets in the dark is a calming, almost relaxing activity. When there is an important occasion on which crime is anticipated, for example, that a foreign dignitary may be attacked during a public appearance (in {{J}}), Vimes likes to personally check suspicious places such as an abandoned building that an assassin might use.

Deduction is not Vimes' favorite activity; he distrusts clues and loathes mysteries (''"mysteries get you killed"''), and he now has the [[Cable Street Particulars]] to deal with peculiar crimes, but sometimes Vimes still personally investigates a case. When he witnesses a crime occurring, he abandons everything and chases the miscreant. It is possible that he uses police work to escape the social life of "Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh".

As both urged by Lady Sybil and ordered by Lord Vetinari, Vimes now often has to appear at dinners and parties. Most of the nobles and government officials that he sees at such social occasions, he considers stupid or obnoxious. Should he be accosted by one of these people, he does not hesitate to make clear how and why he loathes them. Vetinari likes to use Vimes as a diplomat, and while more often than not Vimes is the cause of diplomatic incidents, these seem often the intention of Vetinari.

The former Lord Ramkin, Lady Sybil's late father, had always had servants to shave him, to lay out his bath, to scrub his back, to lay out his clothes, to clean his shiny boots, and so on. Vimes now allows the butler to lay out his clothes, but that is about all. He insists on shaving himself as he dislikes other people putting a [[razor blade]], (or indeed any sort of sharp edge) to his throat, and attempts to wear cheap boots with cardboard soles. He has been walking the city in such boots for decades, and he likes being able to feel the different types of cobblestones so that he can tell which street he is on. Besides watch armour, Vimes has some gentleman's suits, a dress uniform of the Watch Commander, and a dress uniform of the Duke. He is often required to wear the ducal dress uniform, which has ruby tights (''"you wouldn't wear tights to battle if you thought you would be taken prisoner"''), a spiky coronet, a gilt armour (''"toy armour"''), and no place to hang his sword (''"you got made a duke for fighting and then they gave you no sword to fight with"''). Vimes compromises by wearing the Watch Commander dress uniform.

Nowadays, Vimes has to eat fancy food as cooked in the Ramkins' house. Personally, he prefers simple, greasy food with burnt crunchy bits, and so he is happier when he eats things that Lady Sybil has personally cooked by a dragon's fire.

Upon becoming a father, Vimes swore to faithfully get home by 6 p.m. every evening to read a certain picture book called ''[[Book:Where's My Cow?|Where's My Cow?]]'' to his son, Young Sam. This has become such a point of pride that he now has nightmares about not being home by 6 p.m. There is absolutely nothing that takes precedence over this; Vimes believes that if he misses it even once for a good reason, the next time he might miss it for a bad one, and eventually this attitude might spill over into the rest of his life. By the time of ''Snuff'', Young Sam has become the reader and Vimes Senior, the listener, but their 6 p.m. reading sessions continue like clockwork.

His son's welfare is one of the few things Vimes is willing to cross even his wife about, such that he insisted that they hire a nursemaid, Purity, to attend to Young Sam over Sybil's objections. Presumably this is also why the protective flame-baffles between the Vimes residence and Sybil's dragon stables are much, much sturdier in ''Thud!'' than in previous books.

==Annotation==
Philip Jackson from the British ''Robin of Sherwood'' TV series provides the voice for Vimes in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of {{NW}}.

==Also See==
* [[wikipedia:Sam Vimes|Samuel Vimes's Entry]] on [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]]

:
[[Category:Discworld characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Leading characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Serial characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Human characters|Vimes, Samuel]]
[[Category:Watchmen|Vimes, Samuel]]

[[de:Samuel Mumm]]

Rite of AshkEnte

2016-06-07T21:55:27Z

Richvanf:

A ceremony to summon [[Death]], for various reasons. The most common cause for [[wizard's magic|wizards]] to reluctantly summon Death is to ask him questions about inexplicable phenomena, because he seems to know everything. The Rite needs to be performed by eight powerful wizards, either with loads of magical paraphernalia for the look of the thing, or with only a few small bits of essential equipment. Death doesn't like the Rite of AshkEnte, because it so happens that he's always busy when the wizards summon him. Powerful (read: old) wizards dislike the ritual as it makes Death more aware of them, period. Anyone filling the office of Death is called by the Rite, resulting in [[Susan Sto Helit]] and [[Mort]] having been called once each (in ''[[Book:Soul Music|Soul Music]]'' and ''[[Book:Mort|Mort]]''.)

It is noteworthy that Capt. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]] has found an easier way to talk to Death that doesn't even need two cc of mouse blood. Maybe it's best for the peace of mind of wizards that they haven't worked this out yet, but Carrot realised that all you need to do is to keep vigil at the bed of a very old person with a terminal illness while psychologically ready to meet Death (the very unpleasant part for most). When the inevitable happens, you simply detain Death by asking Him to assist the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Watch]] with their inquiries. (As Death is the witness to every murder and suspicious passing, he had a lot to say to Carrot on the subject, for eg, of a sidestall proprietor discovered to have choked to death on his own swizzle) After all, IT'S A FAIR COP.
(Refer to [[Short Story:Theatre of Cruelty|Theatre of Cruelty]]).

Being able to see and converse with Death may, perhaps, be one of those royal prerogatives, that only the true king may enjoy. Or, as seen in {{SM}}, where [[Nobby Nobbs]] and [[Fred Colon]], who very clearly are ''not'' of the blood royal, yet still witness and speak to [[Susan Sto Helit|Death]] in the small hours of the morning, this is down to the heightened sensitivities of long-time Watchmen and those who frequently see the process of death happening in the small and late hours of the night. Or it may just be a matter of being willing to see Death. Wizards and Witches can see Death; "you get these special exercises." It has been repeatedly stated that most people cannot see Death because they do not wish to.

Death really hates it when the Rite is invoked, as the wizards always seem to summon him at the most inconvenient moments. (ie, just before that moment at the masked dance when everyone is due to un-mask at midnight and they ''think'' he's going to take his mask off like everyone else). Susan could echo this, as during a moment of intimate conversation with [[Imp y Celyn]] when she is just about to tell him what he really, ''really'' needs to know, [[Ridcully]] decides to give the High Energy Magic wizards a practical lesson in ''real'' magic, and performs the Rite...

Even though the Rite summons and binds Death, it apparently cannot be used to thwart Him. If it was possible, somebody would have tried to use it to hold Death indefinitely. Or maybe nobody is insane enough to risk annoying The Ultimate Reality.

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]
[[Category: Spells]]
[[de:Ritus von AshkEnte]]

Rite of AshkEnte

2016-06-07T21:49:25Z

Richvanf:

A ceremony to summon [[Death]], for various reasons. The most common cause for [[wizard's magic|wizards]] to reluctantly summon Death is to ask him questions about inexplicable phenomena, because he seems to know everything. The Rite needs to be performed by eight powerful wizards, either with loads of magical paraphernalia for the look of the thing, or with only a few small bits of essential equipment. Death doesn't like the Rite of AshkEnte, because it so happens that he's always busy when the wizards summon him. Powerful (read: old) wizards dislike the ritual as it makes Death more aware of them, period. Anyone filling the office of Death is called by the Rite, resulting in [[Susan Sto Helit]] and [[Mort]] having been called once each (in ''[[Book:Soul Music|Soul Music]]'' and ''[[Book:Mort|Mort]]''.)

It is noteworthy that Capt. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]] has found an easier way to talk to Death that doesn't even need two cc of mouse blood. Maybe it's best for the peace of mind of wizards that they haven't worked this out yet, but Carrot realised that all you need to do is to keep vigil at the bed of a very old person with a terminal illness while psychologically ready to meet Death (the very unpleasant part for most). When the inevitable happens, you simply detain Death by asking Him to assist the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Watch]] with their inquiries. (As Death is the witness to every murder and suspicious passing, he had a lot to say to Carrot on the subject, for eg, of a sidestall proprietor discovered to have choked to death on his own swizzle) After all, IT'S A FAIR COP.
(Refer to [[Short Story:Theatre of Cruelty|Theatre of Cruelty]]).

Being able to see and converse with Death may, perhaps, be one of those royal prerogatives, that only the true king may enjoy. Or, as seen in {{SM}}, where [[Nobby Nobbs]] and [[Fred Colon]], who very clearly are ''not'' of the blood royal, yet still witness and speak to [[Susan Sto Helit|Death]] in the small hours of the morning, this is down to the heightened sensitivities of long-time Watchmen and those who frequently see the process of death happening in the small and late hours of the night.

Death really hates it when the Rite is invoked, as the wizards always seem to summon him at the most inconvenient moments. (ie, just before that moment at the masked dance when everyone is due to un-mask at midnight and they ''think'' he's going to take his mask off like everyone else). Susan could echo this, as during a moment of intimate conversation with [[Imp y Celyn]] when she is just about to tell him what he really, ''really'' needs to know, [[Ridcully]] decides to give the High Energy Magic wizards a practical lesson in ''real'' magic, and performs the Rite...

Even though the Rite summons and binds Death, it apparently cannot be used to thwart Him. If it was possible, somebody would have tried to use it to hold Death indefinitely. Or maybe nobody is insane enough to risk annoying The Ultimate Reality.

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]
[[Category: Spells]]
[[de:Ritus von AshkEnte]]

Rite of AshkEnte

2016-06-07T21:06:33Z

Richvanf:

A ceremony to summon [[Death]], for various reasons. The most common cause for [[wizard's magic|wizards]] to reluctantly summon Death is to ask him questions about inexplicable phenomena, because he seems to know everything. The Rite needs to be performed by eight powerful wizards, either with loads of magical paraphernalia for the look of the thing, or with only a few small bits of essential equipment. Death doesn't like the Rite of AshkEnte, because it so happens that he's always busy when the wizards summon him. Powerful (read: old) wizards dislike the ritual as it makes Death more aware of them, period. Anyone filling the office of Death is called by the Rite, resulting in [[Susan Sto Helit]] and [[Mort]] having been called once (in ''[[Book:Soul Music|Soul Music]]'' and ''[[Book:Mort|Mort]]''.)

It is noteworthy that Capt. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]] has found an easier way to talk to Death that doesn't even need two cc of mouse blood. Maybe it's best for the peace of mind of wizards that they haven't worked this out yet, but Carrot realised that all you need to do is to keep vigil at the bed of a very old person with a terminal illness while psychologically ready to meet Death (the very unpleasant part for most). When the inevitable happens, you simply detain Death by asking Him to assist the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Watch]] with their inquiries. (As Death is the witness to every murder and suspicious passing, he had a lot to say to Carrot on the subject, for eg, of a sidestall proprietor discovered to have choked to death on his own swizzle) After all, IT'S A FAIR COP.
(Refer to [[Short Story:Theatre of Cruelty|Theatre of Cruelty]]).

Being able to see and converse with Death may, perhaps, be one of those royal prerogatives, that only the true king may enjoy. Or, as seen in {{SM}}, where [[Nobby Nobbs]] and [[Fred Colon]], who very clearly are ''not'' of the blood royal, yet still witness and speak to [[Susan Sto Helit|Death]] in the small hours of the morning, this is down to the heightened sensitivities of long-time Watchmen and those who frequently see the process of death happening in the small and late hours of the night.

Death really hates it when the Rite is invoked, as the wizards always seem to summon him at the most inconvenient moments. (ie, just before that moment at the masked dance when everyone is due to un-mask at midnight and they ''think'' he's going to take his mask off like everyone else). Susan could echo this, as during a moment of intimate conversation with [[Imp y Celyn]] when she is just about to tell him what he really, ''really'' needs to know, [[Ridcully]] decides to give the High Energy Magic wizards a practical lesson in ''real'' magic, and performs the Rite...

Even though the Rite summons and binds Death, it apparently cannot be used to thwart Him. If it was possible, somebody would have tried to use it to hold Death indefinitely. Or maybe nobody is insane enough to risk annoying The Ultimate Reality.

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]
[[Category: Spells]]
[[de:Ritus von AshkEnte]]

Eskarina Smith

2016-06-07T20:51:13Z

Richvanf: /* Return */

{{Character Data
|title= Eskarina Smith
|photo=eskmine.jpg| Young Eskarina Smith, by [[User:Darkplush|Kit Cox]]
|name= Eskarina Smith
|age= Adult
|race= Human
|occupation= Student witch, then student wizard
|appearance= White hair, ponytail
|residence=
|death=
|parents= [[Gordo Smith]] (Father)
|relatives=
|children= She has mentioned having a son, who she is concerned for.
|marital status= Never married. Apparently.
|books= {{ER}} {{ISWM}}
|cameos= {{TSC}}
}}

'''''Eskarina Smith''''' ('''Esk''' for short) is the Disc's first and only female wizard, and [[Granny Weatherwax]]'s first pupil.

==Biography==
===Childhood===
Eskarina was born in the smithy of the village of [[Bad Ass]], the eighth <s>son</s> child of an eighth son. She inherited the magical powers and staff of [[Drum Billet]], a [[Wizard's magic|wizard]] from [[Unseen University]]. While still a small child, Esk became a pupil of [[Granny Weatherwax]], until it became clear that she had [[Wizard's magic|Wizards' magic]], not [[Witches magic|Witches' magic]]. Eskarina was the first and - as far as is known - only female student ever accepted or at least allowed to enter [[Unseen University]] (after a major battle to do so).

She was present when [[Simon]] the self-taught wizard was brought to UU. He gave lectures on the nature of magic to the senior faculty staff in his first year! Such power inevitably caused ripples in the space-time continuum; the Things from the [[Dungeon Dimensions]] clustered in his shadows, their characteristic chitering noises unnoticed by all... except Esk, with her own burgeoning magical talent.

Eventually they burst through and took Simon into the Dungeon Dimensions, whence Esk followed to try to rescue him. She managed this by ''not'' using magic, which puzzled and infuriated the Things (being Thaumivores, they feed on magic).

When she and Simon eventually returned to UU they set up a research group and came up with an entire system of the non-use of magic.

===Absence===
Eskarina was missing from the ''Discworld'' series for a long time. Despite the [[Sourcerer]]'s pledge to the Librarian to restore everything "''as good as old''", she was presumed dead. An assumed scenario was that Esk was another casualty killed in the collapse of the [[Tower of Art]], during the battle with the Sourcerer.

As Granny Weatherwax's first-ever pupil, her legend attained myth-like proportions among Lancre's student witches, aided by older witches' attitudes such as Nanny Ogg's "''least-said, soonest-mended''", Miss Tick changing the subject, or a general "''Don't ask''" attitude on the part of the older witches.

===Return===
Esk returned in the fourth [[Tiffany Aching]] book, {{ISWM}}. She makes a final cameo appearance in {{TSC}}.

[[Mrs Proust]] told Tiffany that a hard-to-find lady (who'd find her with ease) would be keen to talk to her, and that this woman would be well worth listening too. When the [[Cunning Man]] was bearing down on Tiffany in [[Ankh-Morpork]], the mysterious "Miss Smith" came to her rescue, leading her to a safehouse within the [[Unreal Estate]]. Tiffany realised who Miss Smith was upon seeing Esk's staff; it was currently being used in a [[Shamble]], and Esk had taken the knob off the end.

She looked old, with white hair and wrinkles, but also young, with a ponytail and a childish laugh. She had learnt to manipulate time and space via the [[Travelling Now]]. Chatting over tea, Esk dispensed advice, and told the girl how she had walked through time to see the creation of the [[Cunning Man]], over 1000 years previously. Esk said she had bad memories of her wizarding past - the scary recollections were never a problem, but the "good ones can be difficult to deal with".

Miss Smith used the [[Travelling Now]] to contact Tiffany a couple more times in the novel. Most interestingly, Esk passed on the secret of time-travel to the young Tiffany who, at a climactic scene in the book, was aided by her older self...

In a single throwaway remark in {{ISWM}}, never returned to, Esk expresses concern for her son. Is this an idea a future book may explore, or are we being invited to speculate? Her son is also mentioned in {{TSC}}, but nothing is elaborated upon. It is possible her son is also the son of [[Simon]], and the child of two Wizards might well be remarkable enough for her to be concerned for his safety. In "Sourcerer," it is mentioned that Ipslor's seven sons before Coin are all very powerful wizards, so, presumably, the child of any wizard would also be a powerful wizard. Eskarina and Simon are both very powerful wizards, so their son might be considered a threat by many; thus, they may have been banished as Ipslor the Red was if they pursued a relationship. In {{TSC}}, Eskarina opines that he might become an engineer, which may be even more frightening.

==Annotations==
*There was no mention of Esk since her first appearance until {{ISWM}}, a gap of ''35'' novels. One fan theory associated this with the problem of reconciling themes changed in later books (e.g., traits of [[Granny Weatherwax]]'s personality, the mention that [[Krull]] has a magical university and trained women professionals, etc.) that could not be explained by the continuity error-excusing time slip implied by the activity of the [[History Monks]] or in [[Wyrd Sisters]].
*It was rumoured that Esk would return for the final (or next-to-final) Tiffany Aching book, and this turned out to be true. Simon's fate remains unknown, Eskarina has shown up alive and well - perhaps she side-stepped the War of the Sourceror altogether, having found something more interesting and productive to do?
*Esk refers to elasticated string theory, which was one of Simon's specialties.

[[category:Discworld characters|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[category:Leading characters|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[category:Human characters|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[category:Witches|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[category:Wizards|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[Category:Tiffany Series characters|Smith,Eskarina]]
[[de:Eskarina Schmied]]

Eskarina Smith

2016-06-07T20:48:23Z

Richvanf: /* Return */

{{Character Data
|title= Eskarina Smith
|photo=eskmine.jpg| Young Eskarina Smith, by [[User:Darkplush|Kit Cox]]
|name= Eskarina Smith
|age= Adult
|race= Human
|occupation= Student witch, then student wizard
|appearance= White hair, ponytail
|residence=
|death=
|parents= [[Gordo Smith]] (Father)
|relatives=
|children= She has mentioned having a son, who she is concerned for.
|marital status= Never married. Apparently.
|books= {{ER}} {{ISWM}}
|cameos= {{TSC}}
}}

'''''Eskarina Smith''''' ('''Esk''' for short) is the Disc's first and only female wizard, and [[Granny Weatherwax]]'s first pupil.

==Biography==
===Childhood===
Eskarina was born in the smithy of the village of [[Bad Ass]], the eighth <s>son</s> child of an eighth son. She inherited the magical powers and staff of [[Drum Billet]], a [[Wizard's magic|wizard]] from [[Unseen University]]. While still a small child, Esk became a pupil of [[Granny Weatherwax]], until it became clear that she had [[Wizard's magic|Wizards' magic]], not [[Witches magic|Witches' magic]]. Eskarina was the first and - as far as is known - only female student ever accepted or at least allowed to enter [[Unseen University]] (after a major battle to do so).

She was present when [[Simon]] the self-taught wizard was brought to UU. He gave lectures on the nature of magic to the senior faculty staff in his first year! Such power inevitably caused ripples in the space-time continuum; the Things from the [[Dungeon Dimensions]] clustered in his shadows, their characteristic chitering noises unnoticed by all... except Esk, with her own burgeoning magical talent.

Eventually they burst through and took Simon into the Dungeon Dimensions, whence Esk followed to try to rescue him. She managed this by ''not'' using magic, which puzzled and infuriated the Things (being Thaumivores, they feed on magic).

When she and Simon eventually returned to UU they set up a research group and came up with an entire system of the non-use of magic.

===Absence===
Eskarina was missing from the ''Discworld'' series for a long time. Despite the [[Sourcerer]]'s pledge to the Librarian to restore everything "''as good as old''", she was presumed dead. An assumed scenario was that Esk was another casualty killed in the collapse of the [[Tower of Art]], during the battle with the Sourcerer.

As Granny Weatherwax's first-ever pupil, her legend attained myth-like proportions among Lancre's student witches, aided by older witches' attitudes such as Nanny Ogg's "''least-said, soonest-mended''", Miss Tick changing the subject, or a general "''Don't ask''" attitude on the part of the older witches.

===Return===
Esk returned in the fourth [[Tiffany Aching]] book, {{ISWM}}. She makes a final cameo appearance in {{TSC}}.

[[Mrs Proust]] told Tiffany that a hard-to-find lady (who'd find her with ease) would be keen to talk to her, and that this woman would be well worth listening too. When the [[Cunning Man]] was bearing down on Tiffany in [[Ankh-Morpork]], the mysterious "Miss Smith" came to her rescue, leading her to a safehouse within the [[Unreal Estate]]. Tiffany realised who Miss Smith was upon seeing Esk's staff; it was currently being used in a [[Shamble]], and Esk had taken the knob off the end.

She looked old, with white hair and wrinkles, but also young, with a ponytail and a childish laugh. She had learnt to manipulate time and space via the [[Travelling Now]]. Chatting over tea, Esk dispensed advice, and told the girl how she had walked through time to see the creation of the [[Cunning Man]], over 1000 years previously. Esk said she had bad memories of her wizarding past - the scary recollections were never a problem, but the "good ones can be difficult to deal with".

Miss Smith used the [[Travelling Now]] to contact Tiffany a couple more times in the novel. Most interestingly, Esk passed on the secret of time-travel to the young Tiffany who, at a climactic scene in the book, was aided by her older self...

In a single throwaway remark in {{ISWM}}, never returned to, Esk expresses concern for her son. Is this an idea a future book may explore, or are we being invited to speculate? Her son is also mentioned in {{TSC}}, but nothing is elaborated upon. It is possible her son is also the son of [[Simon]], and the child of two Wizards might well be remarkable enough for her to be concerned for his safety. In "Sourcerer," it is mentioned that Ipslor's seven sons before Coin are all very powerful wizards, so, presumably, the child of any wizard would also be a powerful wizard. Eskarina and Simon are both very powerful wizards, so their son might be considered a threat by many. In {{TSC}}, Eskarina opines that he might become an engineer, which may be even more frightening.

==Annotations==
*There was no mention of Esk since her first appearance until {{ISWM}}, a gap of ''35'' novels. One fan theory associated this with the problem of reconciling themes changed in later books (e.g., traits of [[Granny Weatherwax]]'s personality, the mention that [[Krull]] has a magical university and trained women professionals, etc.) that could not be explained by the continuity error-excusing time slip implied by the activity of the [[History Monks]] or in [[Wyrd Sisters]].
*It was rumoured that Esk would return for the final (or next-to-final) Tiffany Aching book, and this turned out to be true. Simon's fate remains unknown, Eskarina has shown up alive and well - perhaps she side-stepped the War of the Sourceror altogether, having found something more interesting and productive to do?
*Esk refers to elasticated string theory, which was one of Simon's specialties.

[[category:Discworld characters|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[category:Leading characters|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[category:Human characters|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[category:Witches|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[category:Wizards|Smith, Eskarina]]
[[Category:Tiffany Series characters|Smith,Eskarina]]
[[de:Eskarina Schmied]]

Piecemaker

2016-02-01T01:44:31Z

Richvanf: /* Annotations */

There is a tradition, right across the Multiverse, of macho law-enforcers toting ridiculously heavy sidearms, which surely represent overkill for normal policing duties. Dirty Harry had his .44 Magnum; [[Detritus]] carries a siege weapon with a two thousand pound draw.

As Detritus considers this a waste of energy if all the energy devoted to drawing back and cocking the string is only expended on a single arrow (which from a human point of view is a six-foot lance), he has adapted it still further, so that it fires a bundle of twenty or so arrows wired together around a central core. Due to the violent force acting on them, the arrows tend to disintegrate into a cloud of supersonic (a significant fraction of local lightspeed) shrapnel which bursts into flame from air friction. The resulting fireball scythes everything in its path totally clean. Hence the name. It not only opens front doors, but frequently creates a back door as well.

Especially as Detritus' first reaction on picking the Piecemaker up from the city armoury was to ask "Which bit am der safety catch?", [[Samuel Vimes]] has effectively forbidden him from firing it anywhere within [[Ankh-Morpork|the City]]. But anyone he points it at, in the normal course of policing, doesn't need to know that. Especially with Detritus' haziness about the nature of safety catches and the tortured noise as of metal under great stress that the loaded weapon emits... well, accidents can happen.

Detritus had his chance to see what it could do when fired in anger during the showdown with the [[Überwald]]ean [[Werewolves]] in {{T5E}}. The first shot not only shatters the doors into pieces, but it takes a substantial part of the castle frontage along with them. The ''second'' shot, fired in more haste, creates even more structural damage and leaves [[Serafine von Überwald]] with not only the werewolves' plot in ruins, but their castle requiring extensive rebuilding.

===Piecemaker Mark IX===

The '''Burleigh & Stronginthearm Piecemaker Mark IX''' appears in {{SN}}, as used by [[Willikins]]. It appears to be a small, foldable crossbow that makes no noise when shot, and can be easily concealed within a pocket. Only three of these were ever produced, due to being deemed so dangerous, two of which are kept under wizard-assisted lock and key in the [[Burleigh & Stronginthearm]] vaults. The third one was kept in a secure vault in the cellar of the [[Ramkin Residence|Ramkin residence]] on [[Scoone Avenue]], and it is this one that Willikins seemed to have obtained.

The penalty for being caught carrying one of these in [[Ankh-Morpork]] is to be hanged, unless said person is caught by a member of the [[Assassins' Guild]], in which case (the Guild have implied) hanging would seem like a walk in the park. The reason Wilikins has escaped this fate? Well, for one thing, even his already deemed unkillable master, Samuel Vimes, is afraid of him.

==Annotations==

The [[Roundworld]] reference is to the Colt [[wikipedia:Colt_Single_Action_Army_handgun|'''Peacemaker''']] .45 revolver, a staple weapon of law enforcers and criminals alike in the American Wild West and - similarly to Detritus' weapon - made and kept the peace by making it impossible for the other side to continue being aggressive, which is difficult to do when you're dead.

'''Other policemen in fiction with unfeasibly large weapons:'''
* "Dirty" Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) in ''Dirty Harry'' wields the Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver, a weapon somewhat overpowered for police work and better suited for hunting large animals, like five hundred pound grizzly bears.

* Legendary US Marshal Wyatt Earp supposedly (in fictional accounts) carried a "Buntline Special," a Colt .45 Peacemaker with a 12- or 16-inch barrel.

* Macho cop Lieutenant "Sledge" Hammer, toting his trusty "amigo" in a TV series that was effectively ''Dirty Harry'' played for laughs.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sledge_Hammer] Hammer, when faced with a random rooftop sniper, once decided the Amigo was not nearly enough, and got an anti-tank missile from the boot of his car, succeeding in demolishing the entire seven-storey building. Watch it here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSr_3E7VWmo|I_Think_I_Got_Him]

* In the TV series ''Wanted: Dead or Alive'', bounty-hunter Josh Randall (Steve McQueen) carries the "Mare's Leg," a Winchester rifle cut down into an oversized pistol.

* In Tom Sharpe's stories about the amoral, corrupt, criminally inefficient and cretinously led South African police force of apartheid days ("'''Indecent Exposure'''" and "'''Riotous Assembly'''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Sharpe][http://jim-on-the-web.com/en/timeoff/books/sharpe-riotousassembly.html]"), the worst constable in Sed Effrrika, Constable Els, who is a sort of Afrikaaner Nobby Nobbs stripped of all redeeming virtue, totes a mighty four-barreled hunting rifle used originally to down a charging rhino, with truly spectacular effect.

* In Bernard Cornwell's ''Sharpe'' tales, about a proto-commando in the Napoleonic Wars, the huge and hulking Sergeant Harper totes a fearsome seven-barreled musket, originally designed for close-quarter naval use with the express intention of bringing down a battleship's mainmast and rigging. This failed as a naval weapon because sailors tend to be smaller and wirier men whose talents lie elsewhere. Besides, to fire a weapon like this from the deck of a rolling and pitching ship could be... something of an own goal. But the huge Harper, who has a suspiciously Detritus-to-Vimes relationship with Captain Sharpe, takes to it like a troll to a siege weapon. (Memo: Cornwell may be a Discworld fan?)

* [http://destroyermen.wikia.com/wiki/Dennis_Silva Dennis Sylva] of Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series carries a rifle made from a 25mm (1 inch) anti-aircraft gun; he has affectionately dubbed this the "Doom Whopper."

[[Category:Devices]]
[[de:Friedensstifter]]

Piecemaker

2016-02-01T01:27:29Z

Richvanf:

Clockmakers' Guild

2016-02-01T00:53:51Z

Richvanf: Corrected typos & grammar errors.

One of the many [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|guilds]] in [[Ankh-Morpork]], this group's concerns are clockmaking and clockwork machinery. There is no mention of their making toys and items like locks, which may fall under the purview of the Artificers' Guild instead.

As its members are typically self-employed craftsmen, the Clockmakers' Guild is not concerned with setting wages or fees but functions primarily in an educational capacity, both providing a basic education to members' children & foundlings and providing "Continuing Education" to its practicing members.

The Guild, like any other, is a caring institution that will also obtain the appropriate medical intervention for a member in distress and ensure that a member takes his medicine regularly. It will be ''especially'' punctilious in this, if the alternative is a distressing incident and a sudden dramatic decrease in the number of Guild members.

An anonymous Guild member - or members - are responsible for devising the clock in [[Vetinari]]'s waiting room - the one with the very slightly irregular "tick-tock" which you barely notice at first but which, while waiting for your always slightly un-nerving interview, will ''grow'' on you, like the Chinese water torture... Vetinari is believed to have paid most handsomely for such an example of craftsmanship.

The most famous member to date was [[Jeremy Clockson]], a foundling educated by the Guild who turned out to be a son of [[Time]]. Another member of repute was former civic hangman [[Hepzibah Whitlow]], whose observations revolutionised the accuracy of the long-case ("Grandfather") clock. Least well-known of the famous clockmakers is [[Wilframe Balderton]], who invented the Fish Tail Escapement device after having a nightmare about fish.

The current Guild Secretary is Dr [[Hopkins]].

Possibly also known as the Watchmakers' Guild, unless the building passed by [[William de Worde]] in a brief scene from {{TT}} was a, sister, subsidiary or rival enterprise.

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

Great Wall

2016-01-31T20:44:55Z

Richvanf: /* Annotation */

The '''Great Wall''' ''completely'' surrounds the [[Agatean Empire]]. In {{M}} we are told that patrolling it is the responsibility of the [[Heavenly Guard]]. And {{IT}} tells us that it even extends (metaphorically) to subject islands like [[Bhangbhangduc]] and [[Tingling]].

Its main function is not, as claimed, to protect against [[Barbarian heroes|barbarian invaders]]. Any barbarian attacker, as [[Cohen the Barbarian|Cohen]] notes, would just make a ladder out of the nearby trees on the beach. No, the Great Wall is to keep people ''in''. It helps the Agatean Empire to keep people under control, for they also claim that all those outside the wall are blood-sucking vampire ghosts...

==Annotation==

The wall parodies [[Roundworld]]'s {{wp|Great Wall of China|Great Wall of China}}, however the Great Wall of China was not designed to keep the Chinese in- it was designed to keep northern attackers out. The Western parallel are the Limes of the Western Roman Empire - a line, but not a continuous one, of forts and fortifications delineating where Rome ended and the barbarian world began. Hadrian's Wall and the lesser-known Antonine Wall in Scotland are a part of this system. It had always been known, or suspected, that any thoughtful Scottish tribesmen would not seek a frontal assault - they'd simply build boats and bypass it, sailing round the ends. (As indeed they did on the collapse of Empire). No, the Roman Limes (think ''Limits'', as in City Limits) served several purposes. They were a visual deterrent to invasion and a strategic system for deploying troops. To people who could think out the implications, they announced to the world that the Empire was done conquering and was now on the defensive, guarding what it had. And crucially, the Limes served to monitor the flow of people and goods seeking to legitimately enter and leave the Empire - it was a system designed for effective control and taxation. Hadrian's Wall might be a better model than the Great Wall?

[[Category:Discworld geography]]
[[de:Große Mauer]]

Rite of AshkEnte

2016-01-31T19:58:05Z

Richvanf:

A ceremony to summon [[Death]], for various reasons. The most common cause for [[wizard's magic|wizards]] to reluctantly summon Death is to ask him questions about inexplicable phenomena, because he seems to know everything. The Rite needs to be performed by eight powerful wizards, either with loads of magical paraphernalia for the look of the thing, or with only a few small bits of essential equipment. Death doesn't like the Rite of AshkEnte, because it so happens that he's always busy when the wizards summon him. Powerful (read: old) wizards dislike the ritual as it makes Death more aware of them, period. Anyone filling the office of Death is called by the Rite, resulting in [[Susan Sto Helit]] and [[Mort]] having been called once (in ''[[Book:Soul Music|Soul Music]]'' and ''[[Book:Mort|Mort]]''.)

It is noteworthy that Capt. [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]] has found an easier way to talk to Death that doesn't even need two cc of mouse blood. Maybe it's best for the peace of mind of wizards that they haven't worked this out yet, but Carrot realised that all you need to do is to keep vigil at the bed of a very old man with a terminal illness. When the inevitable happens, you simply detain Death by asking Him to assist the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|Watch]] with their inquiries. (As Death is the witness to every murder and suspicious passing, he had a lot to say to Carrot on the subject, for eg, of a sidestall proprietor discovered to have choked to death on his own swizzle) After all, IT'S A FAIR COP.
(Refer to [[Short Story:Theatre of Cruelty|Theatre of Cruelty]]).

Being able to see and converse with Death may, perhaps, be one of those royal prerogatives, that only the true king may enjoy. Or, as seen in {{SM}}, where [[Nobby Nobbs]] and [[Fred Colon]], who very clearly are ''not'' of the blood royal, yet still witness and speak to [[Susan Sto Helit|Death]] in the small hours of the morning, this is down to the heightened sensitivities of long-time Watchmen and those who frequently see the process of death happening in the small and late hours of the night.

Death really hates it when the Rite is invoked, as the wizards always seem to summon him at the most inconvenient moments. (ie, just before that moment at the masked dance when everyone is due to un-mask at midnight and they ''think'' he's going to take his mask off like everyone else). Susan could echo this, as during a moment of intimate conversation with [[Imp y Celyn]] when she is just about to tell him what he really, ''really'' needs to know, [[Ridcully]] decides to give the High Energy Magic wizards a practical lesson in ''real'' magic, and performs the Rite...

Even though the Rite summons and binds Death, it apparently cannot be used to thwart Him. If it was possible, somebody would have tried to use it to hold Death indefinitely. Or maybe nobody is insane enough to risk annoying The Ultimate Reality.

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]
[[Category: Spells]]
[[de:Ritus von AshkEnte]]

Azrael

2016-01-31T19:30:57Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title=The Being of whom all lesser Deaths are mere reflections, the Ultimate Reality
|photo=Azrael.jpg|THE BEGINNING AND THE END
|name=Azrael
|race=the [[Olden Ones|Great Old Ones]]
|age=immortal

|occupation=Death of the Universe Keeper of The [[Universal Clock]]
|appearance=known only to [[Death]] and the [[Auditors]]

|residence=effectively everywhere

|death=happens to other people
|parents=none
|relatives=other Olden Ones?
|children=no
|marital status=none

|books={{RM}}
|cameos={{SM}}
}}

'''Azrael''', one of the Eight [[Old High Ones]], is none other than the 'Death of Universes': an entity of unthinkably enormous scope and size — so vast that entire nebulae of galaxies are merely the glint in his eye and who speaks like <div style="font: bold 300%/1.25em serif; text-transform: uppercase">this.</div>

While not a [[God]], Azrael is an 'Old High One', existing nonetheless despite not being worshiped. Azrael is ''the Ultimate Reality''. Just as the [[Death of Rats]] is an offshoot of [[Death]] (i.e.the [[anthropomorphic personification]] of [[wikipedia:Death|Death]]) who has been permitted an existence independent of Death, both Death and the Death of Rats are themselves in reality just offshoots of Azrael himself. Azrael is the Being from whom all lesser Deaths are mere reflections or aspects.

His sheer size suggests that Azrael may, in fact, ''be'' the universe itself.

Like his 'servant', Death, Azrael does have a personality, evident by his act of mercy at the end of the events of {{RM}}, after Death's argument of "{{death|what can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man}}?"

Essentially trapped within his prison of a 'billion years', Azrael is bored. Just like Death he can even remember the future, ("''premembering''", as [[Lobsang Ludd|the current incarnation of Time]] calls it,) so there is nothing new for him. "''I remember''," he says at the end of {{RM}}, "''when all this will be again''" (which seems to support the Golems' belief that time is toroidal). He is also the keeper of The [[Universal Clock]], the logical opposite of a clock, in that it tells Time what it is and not the other way around, and whose big hand only goes round once, ticking off the moments until the end of everything.

== Annotation ==
* Azrael is named after [[wikipedia:Azrael|Azrael]], the [[wikipedia:Angel of Death|Angel of Death]] of [[wikipedia:Islamic|Islamic]] [[wiktionary:extra-Biblical|extrabiblical]] [[wikipedia:Tradition|traditions]] and [[wikipedia:Folklore|folklore]].
* Azreal's position as the 'Keeper of The [[Universal Clock]]' could be a reference to [[wikipedia:Father Time|Father Time]] and [[wikipedia:Cronus|Cronus, (Kronos or Cronos,)]] who was the inspiration for both Father Time and the Grim Reaper.

== Also See ==
* [[wikipedia:Discworld gods#Azrael|Wikipedia on Azrael]].
* [[wikipedia:Great Attractor|Great Attractor]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Azrael]]

Azrael

2016-01-31T19:29:38Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title=The Being of whom all lesser Deaths are mere reflections, the Ultimate Reality
|photo=Azrael.jpg|THE BEGINNING AND THE END
|name=Azrael
|race=the [[Olden Ones|Great Old Ones]]
|age=immortal

|occupation=Death of the Universe Keeper of The [[Universal Clock]]
|appearance=known only to [[Death]] and the [[Auditors]]

|residence=effectively everywhere

|death=happens to other people
|parents=none
|relatives=other Olden Ones?
|children=no
|marital status=none

|books={{RM}}
|cameos={{SM}}
}}

'''Azrael''', one of the Eight [[Old High Ones]], is none other than the 'Death of Universes': an entity of unthinkably enormous scope and size — so vast that entire nebulae of galaxies are merely the glint in his eye and who speaks like <div style="font: bold 300%/1.25em serif; text-transform: uppercase">this.</div>

While not a [[God]], Azrael is an 'Old High One', existing nonetheless despite not being worshiped. Azrael is ''the Ultimate Reality''. Just as the [[Death of Rats]] is an offshoot of [[Death]] (i.e.the [[anthropomorphic personification]] of [[wikipedia:Death|Death]]) who has been permitted an existence independent of Death, both Death and the Death of Rats are themselves in reality just offshoots of Azrael himself. Azrael is the Being from whom all lesser Deaths are mere reflections or aspects.

His sheer size suggests that Azrael may, in fact, ''be'' the universe itself.

Like his 'servant', Death, Azrael does have a personality, evident by his act of mercy at the end of the events of {{RM}}, after Death's argument of "{{death|what can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man}}?"

Essentially trapped within his prison of a 'billion years', Azrael is bored. Just like Death he can even remember the future, ("''premembering''", as [[Lobsang Ludd|the current incarnation of Time]] calls it,) so there is nothing new for him. "''I remember''," he says at the end of {{RM}}, "''when all this will be again'' (which seems to support the Golems' belief that time is toroidal)." He is also the keeper of The [[Universal Clock]], the logical opposite of a clock, in that it tells Time what it is and not the other way around, and whose big hand only goes round once, ticking off the moments until the end of everything.

== Annotation ==
* Azrael is named after [[wikipedia:Azrael|Azrael]], the [[wikipedia:Angel of Death|Angel of Death]] of [[wikipedia:Islamic|Islamic]] [[wiktionary:extra-Biblical|extrabiblical]] [[wikipedia:Tradition|traditions]] and [[wikipedia:Folklore|folklore]].
* Azreal's position as the 'Keeper of The [[Universal Clock]]' could be a reference to [[wikipedia:Father Time|Father Time]] and [[wikipedia:Cronus|Cronus, (Kronos or Cronos,)]] who was the inspiration for both Father Time and the Grim Reaper.

== Also See ==
* [[wikipedia:Discworld gods#Azrael|Wikipedia on Azrael]].
* [[wikipedia:Great Attractor|Great Attractor]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Azrael]]

Auditors of Reality

2016-01-31T19:12:41Z

Richvanf: /* Ancient non-life form */

{{Character Data
|title= The Auditors of Reality
|photo=
|name=
|age= as old as Time
|race=
|occupation= Auditors, of course
|appearance= like empty gray cloaks
|residence=
|death=
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{RM}}, {{H}}, {{TOT}}, {{SOD3}}
|cameos=
}}
The '''Auditors of Reality''' are the eternal watchers of time and space. Appearing as empty gray cloaks, they have no sense of humanity and all that it entails, whether it be humor or even a sense of singularity, which they particularly despise. Auditors think that to live is to die, and to be a specific person is to live, so an Auditor finds itself imploding if it so much as talks about itself in the first person. Auditors always speak of the "we". Auditors always work in groups of at least three, so that each one can be watched by at least two others. Supposedly all Auditors are of the same opinions about everything, but they still need to watch each other because, frankly, the temptation to live is too great.

They have also had their fair share of run-ins with the [[Death]] of the [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]]. Auditors tend to be very unpopular with all [[anthropomorphic personification]]s and other supernatural entities for breaking the world to make things ''the way they ought to be''. Auditors think that everything should obey basic physics (i.e. it should not be affected by imagination, perceptions, or thoughts, which sentient beings possess in amounts that seem to the Auditors to be unacceptable). Auditors also think that things should be regular (i.e. all cobblestones should be exactly same size and shape), and all spoken words ought to be literal and there ought not be metaphors. Auditors have tried at various times to get Death replaced by someone with less heart, get people to stop believing in a [[Hogfather|winter]] [[the gods|god]], and make time stop so that the Auditors can finally catch up with all the paperwork. They also, once they became aware of its existence, objected to certain aspects of [[Roundworld]] history, and sought to destroy it.

=== Ancient non-life form ===

The Auditors are both repelled by life (and humans in particular) and drawn to it. This leads them to interfere in Discworld, and to do this they are willing to break the Rules.

In {{RM}} it says they cannot be described in ordinary language. “Some people would call them cherubs.” Death calls them servants, watchers. Like him, they are able to appear before [[Azrael]]. In {{H}}, Death says of them, “They run the universe. They see to it that gravity works and that atoms spin (or whatever it is atoms do).”

In {{TOT}} it says things need to be observed in order to exist. In that case, as the most fundamental of observers, nothing would exist without them. Clearly they are part of the cosmic order, and if it were imaginable that any power could diminish them in their own realm, it would be up to the combined forces of Discworld to rally round. This does not stop them from making a nuisance of themselves.

The Auditors hate life, because it is untidy. By their nature, the Auditors take the view that for a thing to exist it has to have a position in time and space. But all the things that distinguish human beings, such as imagination, pity, hope, history and belief, don’t do time and space. Humanity, by belief, allows things to become that don’t exist. Death said that matter has a fear and hatred of life, and the Auditors are the bearers of that hatred. Periodically they try to tidy things up.

Gravity and atoms are basically important, but the Auditors are rubbish in the human dimension. An intelligence a billion years old, which has seen galaxies die, and sees atoms dance, which has hundreds of senses and thinks in 18 dimensions, which makes decisions by the concensus of millions, quickly falls to bits if clamped into the five senses of a human being, with demanding organs wired into its thinking system, looking out at the world from the darkness behind the eyes through the letterbox of “me”. Life is intoxicating, and if the auditors stray into organic territory, they come to grief.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Supporting characters]]
[[de:Revisoren der Realität]]

Death of Rats

2016-01-31T18:58:02Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Death of Rats
|photo=dormine.jpg|Death of rats by [[user:darkplush|Kit Cox]]
|name= Death of Rats
|age= Ageless, but in existence since {{RM}}
|race= [[Supernatural Entities]]

|occupation= Guiding deceased rodents towards their final destiny
|appearance= A rat skeleton wearing a black robe, wielding a very small scythe

|residence= [[Death's Domain]]

|death=
|parents=
|relatives= [[Death]]
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{SM}} {{H}} {{TOT}} {{RM}} ''[[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{SG}} {{FOC}} {{TLC}} {{CJ}} }}
The '''Death of Rats''' (AKA "The Grim Squeaker") appears throughout the series from ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'' onwards, whenever a newly deceased [[Rats|rat]] (and other rodents--he handles a lot of hamsters after Hogswatch) needs guidance to the next world. The Death of Rats was once merely a part of [[Death]] himself, but after the events of ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', Death decided to keep him on as an independent entity - possibly for sentimental reasons.

Like the [[Librarian]], the Death of Rats can communicate everything in a one-syllable sound: {{death|squeak}}, with the occasional emphasis of an {{death|eek-eek}}, when he is excited. This can only be understood by certain people, [[Susan Sto Helit]] in particular; for those occasions when he needs to communicate with others, he employs the help of [[Quoth]], a raven who used to belong to a wizard and has therefore absorbed enough magic to be able to speak. The Death of Rats (occasionally using Quoth as transport) is often responsible for dragging Susan from her 'normal' life into the realm of her grandfather, Death, to assist him in saving the world and other such irritating family duties.

Like [[Albert]], the Death of Rats and his raven can be assumed to be somewhere in the background when the story focuses on Death's house. In ''[[Book:The Last Hero|The Last Hero]]'', the Death of Rats has no squeaking parts and gets not even a passing mention in the narrative, but the artwork by Paul Kidby clearly indicate that the Death of Rats is there when Death and Albert discuss the uncertainty theory.

He is known not only to come to rats and small rodents but also to some [[Ratcatchers'_Guild|rat catchers]] and others of a rat-like disposition.

He is known to the intelligent [[Rats|rats]] of [[The Clan]] as "the Bone Rat".

===Origin===
In ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', the Death of Discworld was accused by more abstract cosmic servants of order called the [[Auditors]] of having lost objectivity. He stopped performing his Duty of taking away life when it was finished with, when anything died. One consequence was the build-up of life-force like water behind a dam, which began to leak out in “phenomena”. Another was the sprouting of innumerable private, species-specific deaths, such as the Death of Mayflies, the Death of Trees, and the Death of Tortoises.

The Death of Rats first appeared on [[Renata Flitworth|Miss Flitworth]]’s farm, when before the harvest she laid down poison outside the ratholes. The Death of Rats had no definite image to begin with, but having appeared as a piece of cheese, a terrier, and a rat trap, found the form that fitted and stayed there – a six inch rat skeleton with a scythe, in a black robe (and grey whiskers).

When the Death of Discworld overcame the New Death and resumed his role, he recalled to himself all the lesser Deaths that had arisen in his absence. There was some small thing missing which he could not put his finger on, a tiny fragment of emptiness, some fragment of his soul, but he could not stop to sort it out. “Far off, in his den under the barn, the Death of Rats relaxed his grip on the beam.”

With the loose ends seen to, Death returned to his own house, and found that it lacked something. He brought into being fields of golden corn, billowing in the wind. As he reflected on it, he became aware of the Death of Rats, who held in his paw the Death of Fleas. Death, remembering the loneliness of the cosmically Alone, let them remain independent of himself. They began to haggle about what sort of creature the rat could ride on. Not a cat. Perhaps some sort of dog.

==Annotations==
The Name "Death of Rats" or "GrimSqueaker" is often used as a call sign by the Irish Artist Brian Donnelly

Quoth's name is a joke on the [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Raven_(Poe) Edgar Allen Poe poem "The Raven"], in which most verses end with the line "Quoth the raven: [i.e.: the raven said:] Nevermore." Quoth aggressively refuses to say "the 'N' word'.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Rattentod]]

Death of Rats

2016-01-31T18:35:02Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Death of Rats
|photo=dormine.jpg|Death of rats by [[user:darkplush|Kit Cox]]
|name= Death of Rats
|age= Ageless, but in existence since {{RM}}
|race= [[Supernatural Entities]]

|occupation= Guiding deceased rodents towards their final destiny
|appearance= A rat skeleton wearing a black robe, wielding a very small scythe

|residence= [[Death's Domain]]

|death=
|parents=
|relatives= [[Death]]
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{SM}} {{H}} {{TOT}} {{RM}} ''[[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{SG}} {{FOC}} {{TLC}} {{CJ}} }}
The '''Death of Rats''' (AKA "The Grim Squeaker") appears throughout the series from ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'' onwards, whenever a newly deceased [[Rats|rat]] (and other rodents) needs guidance to the next world. The Death of Rats was once merely a part of [[Death]] himself, but after the events of ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', Death decided to keep him on as an independent entity - possibly for sentimental reasons.

Like the [[Librarian]], the Death of Rats can communicate everything in a one-syllable sound: {{death|squeak}}, with the occasional emphasis of an {{death|eek-eek}}, when he is excited. This can only be understood by certain people, [[Susan Sto Helit]] in particular; for those occasions when he needs to communicate with others, he employs the help of [[Quoth]], a raven who used to belong to a wizard and has therefore absorbed enough magic to be able to speak. The Death of Rats (occasionally using Quoth as transport) is often responsible for dragging Susan from her 'normal' life into the realm of her grandfather, Death, to assist him in saving the world and other such irritating family duties.

Like [[Albert]], the Death of Rats and his raven can be assumed to be somewhere in the background when the story focuses on Death's house. In ''[[Book:The Last Hero|The Last Hero]]'', the Death of Rats has no squeaking parts and gets not even a passing mention in the narrative, but the artwork by Paul Kidby clearly indicate that the Death of Rats is there when Death and Albert discuss the uncertainty theory.

He is known not only to come to rats and small rodents but also to some [[Ratcatchers'_Guild|rat catchers]] and others of a rat-like disposition.

He is known to the intelligent [[Rats|rats]] of [[The Clan]] as "the Bone Rat".

===Origin===
In ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', the Death of Discworld was accused by more abstract cosmic servants of order called the [[Auditors]] of having lost objectivity. He stopped performing his Duty of taking away life when it was finished with, when anything died. One consequence was the build-up of life-force like water behind a dam, which began to leak out in “phenomena”. Another was the sprouting of innumerable private, species-specific deaths, such as the Death of Mayflies, the Death of Trees, and the Death of Tortoises.

The Death of Rats first appeared on [[Renata Flitworth|Miss Flitworth]]’s farm, when before the harvest she laid down poison outside the ratholes. The Death of Rats had no definite image to begin with, but having appeared as a piece of cheese, a terrier, and a rat trap, found the form that fitted and stayed there – a six inch rat skeleton with a scythe, in a black robe (and grey whiskers).

When the Death of Discworld overcame the New Death and resumed his role, he recalled to himself all the lesser Deaths that had arisen in his absence. There was some small thing missing which he could not put his finger on, a tiny fragment of emptiness, some fragment of his soul, but he could not stop to sort it out. “Far off, in his den under the barn, the Death of Rats relaxed his grip on the beam.”

With the loose ends seen to, Death returned to his own house, and found that it lacked something. He brought into being fields of golden corn, billowing in the wind. As he reflected on it, he became aware of the Death of Rats, who held in his paw the Death of Fleas. Death, remembering the loneliness of the cosmically Alone, let them remain independent of himself. They began to haggle about what sort of creature the rat could ride on. Not a cat. Perhaps some sort of dog.

==Annotations==
The Name "Death of Rats" or "GrimSqueaker" is often used as a call sign by the Irish Artist Brian Donnelly

Quoth's name is a joke on the [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Raven_(Poe) Edgar Allen Poe poem "The Raven"], in which most verses end with the line "Quoth the raven: [i.e.: the raven said:] Nevermore." Quoth aggressively refuses to say "the 'N' word'.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Rattentod]]

Death of Rats

2016-01-31T18:32:54Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Death of Rats
|photo=dormine.jpg|Death of rats by [[user:darkplush|Kit Cox]]
|name= Death of Rats
|age= Ageless, but in existence since {{RM}}
|race= [[Supernatural Entities]]

|occupation= Guiding deceased rodents towards their final destiny
|appearance= A rat skeleton wearing a black robe, wielding a very small scythe

|residence= [[Death's Domain]]

|death=
|parents=
|relatives= [[Death]]
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{SM}} {{H}} {{TOT}} {{RM}} ''[[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{SG}} {{FOC}} {{TLC}} {{CJ}} }}
The '''Death of Rats''' (AKA "The Grim Squeaker") appears throughout the series from ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'' onwards, whenever a newly deceased [[Rats|rat]] needs guidance to the next world. The Death of Rats was once merely a part of [[Death]] himself, but after the events of ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', Death decided to keep him on as an independent entity - possibly for sentimental reasons.

Like the [[Librarian]], the Death of Rats can communicate everything in a one-syllable sound: {{death|squeak}}, with the occasional emphasis of an {{death|eek-eek}}, when he is excited. This can only be understood by certain people, [[Susan Sto Helit]] in particular; for those occasions when he needs to communicate with others, he employs the help of [[Quoth]], a raven who used to belong to a wizard and has therefore absorbed enough magic to be able to speak. The Death of Rats (occasionally using Quoth as transport) is often responsible for dragging Susan from her 'normal' life into the realm of her grandfather, Death, to assist him in saving the world and other such irritating family duties.

Like [[Albert]], the Death of Rats and his raven can be assumed to be somewhere in the background when the story focuses on Death's house. In ''[[Book:The Last Hero|The Last Hero]]'', the Death of Rats has no squeaking parts and gets not even a passing mention in the narrative, but the artwork by Paul Kidby clearly indicate that the Death of Rats is there when Death and Albert discuss the uncertainty theory.

He is known not only to come to rats and small rodents but also to some [[Ratcatchers'_Guild|rat catchers]] and others of a rat-like disposition.

He is known to the intelligent [[Rats|rats]] of [[The Clan]] as "the Bone Rat".

===Origin===
In ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', the Death of Discworld was accused by more abstract cosmic servants of order called the [[Auditors]] of having lost objectivity. He stopped performing his Duty of taking away life when it was finished with, when anything died. One consequence was the build-up of life-force like water behind a dam, which began to leak out in “phenomena”. Another was the sprouting of innumerable private, species-specific deaths, such as the Death of Mayflies, the Death of Trees, and the Death of Tortoises.

The Death of Rats first appeared on [[Renata Flitworth|Miss Flitworth]]’s farm, when before the harvest she laid down poison outside the ratholes. The Death of Rats had no definite image to begin with, but having appeared as a piece of cheese, a terrier, and a rat trap, found the form that fitted and stayed there – a six inch rat skeleton with a scythe, in a black robe (and grey whiskers).

When the Death of Discworld overcame the New Death and resumed his role, he recalled to himself all the lesser Deaths that had arisen in his absence. There was some small thing missing which he could not put his finger on, a tiny fragment of emptiness, some fragment of his soul, but he could not stop to sort it out. “Far off, in his den under the barn, the Death of Rats relaxed his grip on the beam.”

With the loose ends seen to, Death returned to his own house, and found that it lacked something. He brought into being fields of golden corn, billowing in the wind. As he reflected on it, he became aware of the Death of Rats, who held in his paw the Death of Fleas. Death, remembering the loneliness of the cosmically Alone, let them remain independent of himself. They began to haggle about what sort of creature the rat could ride on. Not a cat. Perhaps some sort of dog.

==Annotations==
The Name "Death of Rats" or "GrimSqueaker" is often used as a call sign by the Irish Artist Brian Donnelly

Quoth's name is a joke on the [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Raven_(Poe) Edgar Allen Poe poem "The Raven"], in which most verses end with the line "Quoth the raven: [i.e.: the raven said:] Nevermore." Quoth aggressively refuses to say "the 'N' word'.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Rattentod]]

Death of Rats

2016-01-31T18:30:28Z

Richvanf: /* Origin */

{{Character Data
|title= Death of Rats
|photo=dormine.jpg|Death of rats by [[user:darkplush|Kit Cox]]
|name= Death of Rats
|age= Ageless, but in existence since {{RM}}
|race= [[Supernatural Entities]]

|occupation= Guiding deceased rodents towards their final destiny
|appearance= A rat skeleton wearing a black robe, wielding a very small scythe

|residence= [[Death's Domain]]

|death=
|parents=
|relatives= [[Death]]
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{SM}} {{H}} {{TOT}} {{RM}} ''[[Discworld Noir]]''
|cameos= {{SG}} {{FOC}} {{TLC}} {{CJ}} }}
The '''Death of Rats''' appears throughout the series from ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'' onwards, whenever a newly deceased [[Rats|rat]] needs guidance to the next world. The Death of Rats was once merely a part of [[Death]] himself, but after the events of ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', Death decided to keep him on as an independent entity - possibly for sentimental reasons.

Like the [[Librarian]], the Death of Rats can communicate everything in a one-syllable sound: {{death|squeak}}, with the occasional emphasis of an {{death|eek-eek}}, when he is excited. This can only be understood by certain people, [[Susan Sto Helit]] in particular; for those occasions when he needs to communicate with others, he employs the help of [[Quoth]], a raven who used to belong to a wizard and has therefore absorbed enough magic to be able to speak. The Death of Rats (occasionally using Quoth as transport) is often responsible for dragging Susan from her 'normal' life into the realm of her grandfather, Death, to assist him in saving the world and other such irritating family duties.

Like [[Albert]], the Death of Rats and his raven can be assumed to be somewhere in the background when the story focuses on Death's house. In ''[[Book:The Last Hero|The Last Hero]]'', the Death of Rats has no squeaking parts and gets not even a passing mention in the narrative, but the artwork by Paul Kidby clearly indicate that the Death of Rats is there when Death and Albert discuss the uncertainty theory.

He is known not only to come to rats and small rodents but also to some [[Ratcatchers'_Guild|rat catchers]] and others of a rat-like disposition.

He is known to the intelligent [[Rats|rats]] of [[The Clan]] as "the Bone Rat".

===Origin===
In ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', the Death of Discworld was accused by more abstract cosmic servants of order called the [[Auditors]] of having lost objectivity. He stopped performing his Duty of taking away life when it was finished with, when anything died. One consequence was the build-up of life-force like water behind a dam, which began to leak out in “phenomena”. Another was the sprouting of innumerable private, species-specific deaths, such as the Death of Mayflies, the Death of Trees, and the Death of Tortoises.

The Death of Rats first appeared on [[Renata Flitworth|Miss Flitworth]]’s farm, when before the harvest she laid down poison outside the ratholes. The Death of Rats had no definite image to begin with, but having appeared as a piece of cheese, a terrier, and a rat trap, found the form that fitted and stayed there – a six inch rat skeleton with a scythe, in a black robe (and grey whiskers).

When the Death of Discworld overcame the New Death and resumed his role, he recalled to himself all the lesser Deaths that had arisen in his absence. There was some small thing missing which he could not put his finger on, a tiny fragment of emptiness, some fragment of his soul, but he could not stop to sort it out. “Far off, in his den under the barn, the Death of Rats relaxed his grip on the beam.”

With the loose ends seen to, Death returned to his own house, and found that it lacked something. He brought into being fields of golden corn, billowing in the wind. As he reflected on it, he became aware of the Death of Rats, who held in his paw the Death of Fleas. Death, remembering the loneliness of the cosmically Alone, let them remain independent of himself. They began to haggle about what sort of creature the rat could ride on. Not a cat. Perhaps some sort of dog.

==Annotations==
The Name "Death of Rats" or "GrimSqueaker" is often used as a call sign by the Irish Artist Brian Donnelly

Quoth's name is a joke on the [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Raven_(Poe) Edgar Allen Poe poem "The Raven"], in which most verses end with the line "Quoth the raven: [i.e.: the raven said:] Nevermore." Quoth aggressively refuses to say "the 'N' word'.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Rattentod]]

Alberto Malich

2016-01-31T17:41:44Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Albert
|photo=albertmine.jpg|Albert By [[user:darkplush|Kit Cox]]
|name= Alberto Malich
|age=
|race= [[:Category:Human characters|Human]]
|occupation= [[Death]]'s servant
|appearance=
|residence= [[Death's Domain]]
|death=
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status=
|books= {{M}} {{RM}} {{SM}} {{H}} {{TLC}}
|cameos={{TLH}}
}}

'''Albert''' (full name: Alberto Malich the Wise) is [[Death]]'s servant. He has been living in [[Death's Domain]] for the last two thousand years, but because time does not progress there, he has not aged. Alberto Malich was once a seriously powerful [[wizard]] and founded [[Unseen University]] in [[Ankh-Morpork]]. It is not stated whether he used the title [[Archchancellor]]. When he realised that Death was on his tail, and not having got go to where he was without making extremely powerful enemies ''on the other side'', he decided that he was better off as an undying servant than a dead anything. His first idea was to perform a magic spell which would grant him an endless life. His idea, so [[Mort]] learned from [[Igneous Cutwell]], was to perform the [[Rite of AshkEnte]] backwards, to keep Death away. Instead the spell propelled Albert directly to Death's front door. Albert decided to stay there when he found out that his life-timer was almost empty with only a few days left (91 days, 3 hours, 5 minutes according to {{M}}, though more recent developments have reduced his remaining life to something less than a minute). "Life is a habit which is hard to break."

Despite this his life is still filling up a book of life, or rather a whole shelf in [[The Stack]].

Surprisingly, even Death needs a servant, not for himself, of course, but for his estate and granddaughter [[Susan Sto Helit]]. Without Albert, the stables would be full of horse droppings and Susan would never have had the opportunity to try Albert's famous fried eggs (not to mention his unique fried porridge).

When [[Death]] was covering for the [[Hogfather]], Albert joined in the festivities too, dressing as a vile sort of elf. This brings to him recollections of his childhood, where you got sausages and black puddings in your sock, if you were lucky. But there was always a pink sugar piglet in the toe. Alas, the naughty ones got a sack of bones.

Albert was originally a powerful mage, who authored the book, "The Book of Magic of Alberto Malich the Mage," which was thereafter purchased (and bookmarked with bacon, or, for the more disturbing pages, clamped shut) by [[Igneous Cutwell]]. As the founder of [[UU]], Albert uses up some of his precious remaining life to return there in {{M}}, scaring the wits out of most of the [[faculty]]. The faculty had perhaps good reason to find themselves in fear of Albert, given the hijinks that had taken place regarding his statue, which stood in the main hall and was the subject of many an undergraduate prank.

As a character, Albert is a filthy grinning old man who likes nothing more than making artery-clanging breakfasts and smoking his noisome rollups.

Albert is pretty damn' crusty, and is not easily impressed by anything - especially Mort. And he despairs of Death ever interfering in the affairs of humans and ''something good coming of it''. Witness his attempts to suppress the urges of his master in {{H}}, for example.

== Annotations ==

Albert's full name, "Alberto Malich", puns on Albertus Magnus ("the Magician", Saint Thomas Aquinas' teacher) and "lich" (or a wizard with a necromantically extended lifespan). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus Albertus Magnus] makes a particularly apt referent for Albert, as he was a widely celebrated and notable alchemist, philosopher, and chemist, whose experiments provided the foundation for later scientific advances. After his death, his great learning and mastery of a diverse field of subjects led to Magnus' postmortem title "Doctor Universalis" and a wide variety of legends sprang up in regards to his magical exploits.

Terry is also [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/reaper-man.html#p10695 on record] as having selected Albert's name due in part to its somewhat antiquated ring.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Malich, Alberto]]
[[category:Serial characters|Malich, Alberto]]
[[category:Human characters|Malich, Alberto]]
[[Category:Supporting characters|Malich, Alberto]]
[[Category:Wizards|Malich, Alberto]]
[[de:Alberto Malich]]

Gonne

2016-01-10T18:44:32Z

Richvanf:

The '''Gonne''', like so many other recent technological devices in [[Discworld]], was invented by [[Leonard of Quirm]]. As usual, he had the best of intentions when he devised it, but it turned out to be one of the most dangerous weapons ever conceived in the history of the Disc.

The weapon is powered by a kind of firework mechanism. It consists of a long tube with a feed mechanism for 6 small cartridges that can be fired quickly and with dangerous accuracy over a long distance. This fact makes the Gonne much more dangerous than the common crossbows.

It was so dangerous, in fact, that [[Havelock Vetinari]], who normally keeps anything useful around, ordered it destroyed. But the [[Assassins' Guild]] disobeyed the order, and instead secretly kept it under lock and key in their Guild Museum. Disaster strikes in the book ''[[Book:Men at Arms|Men at Arms]]'' when the Gonne is stolen.

With almost supernatural power, the Gonne can possess the mind of the man who uses it. It shows him the power he has in his hands, and erases all scruples by telling him what could be achieved with this power. Even [[Samuel Vimes]] struggled against this temptation and the only man who seemed to be entirely immune to the Gonne's promises was [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]], who finally managed to destroy the weapon once and for all. Carrot is immune because he has a [[Dwarfs|dwarf]]'s pragmatic attitude: a made thing is just a tool crafted for a purpose. why should I listen when it talks to me, as there's nothing there to do the talking? (This is probably why [[Hammerhock]] was killed after his purpose, of performing a minor repair on the gonne, was over. He also viewed it as a device, a clever device but nothing more, and was loudly speculating on building more—a prospect which the Gonne did not like.)

The Gonne has never been seen again. It has been suggested that Carrot buried it in the coffin of Lance-Constable [[Cuddy]]. His reasoning was that as the Gonne "died" when he smashed it against a stone pillar, its spirit could accompany Cuddy on his journey into the Afterlife, so as to provide a suitable weapon to fend off the evil spirits that Dwarfs don't believe in, but which ''may'' inconveniently believe in Dwarfs. The fact that it was well hidden and no man could re-create such a dangerous device ever again (unless they find Leonard's original sketch and get interesting ideas) was of course purely a secondary consideration. Carrot agreed with Vimes that Cuddy "got a real Dwarf burial," which usually includes a superb weapon, so perhaps Carrot restored the Gonne so Cuddy would have something beyond an awkward club.

==Contribution to industrialization==

The Gonne might represent a quantum leap in crime and warfare, but in the process of manufacturing the Gonne Leonard comes up with an invention which while unnoticed is a cornerstone of industrialization. When Vetinari asked Leonard if someone else could build a Gonne, his response includes:

'''...the grooves in the barrel required some finesse, I had to build a quite complex tool for that'''

The tool that Leonard had built for this purpose was a screw-cutting lathe, one of the cornerstones in the progression from craftsmanship to serial production.

==Roundworld Comparison==

In Roundworld terminology, Leonard's Gonne is probably a self-loading wheel-lock rifle. Though it fires six shots before reloading, it is definitely not a revolver; the six welded tubes of the magazine are arranged in a line, and advanced by a rack and pinion, making it either a repeater or a self-loader. The rack and pinion suggest some form of automatic recocking mechanism, making a self-loader more likely. The grooves in the barrel imply rifling, as opposed to a smooth bore like a musket. The firing mechanism is described as a "tinderbox," which means flint and steel; this could be either a wheel-lock, snaphance or flintlock, but the wheel lock is the only one that would be contemporary with Leonardo da Vinci, whom Leonard clearly resembles.

In Roundworld history, some efforts were made to build repeating firearms during the wheel-lock and flintlock era, such as the Kalthoff repeating wheel-lock of the early 1600s. Repeating firearms would not become widely used, however, until the invention of the metal cartridge in the 19th century, and self-loaders later still. Nothing precisely like Leonard's weapon ever existed, though its various components all did at one time or another.

The museum at Château du Clos Lucé, in Amboise, France, where Da Vinci spent the last 3 years of his life, along with the models (made from his drawings) of a tank (of sorts) and a <strike>spinning-up-into-air-machine</strike> screw-drive helicopter also contains a model of a kind of multi-shot machine gun, though it is different in scale (each barrel is a couple of meters long).

In WW2, the standard issue machine-guns used by the Japanese and the Italians worked on a similar principle to the loading system for the Gonne, adjusted to allow for automatic fire. Rather than a loose flexible belt in which the individual rounds were loaded into a cloth strip (as per Russian practice), or linked by re-usable metal clips (as per German), these MG's employed a fixed and rigid "tray" in which the rounds were fixed to an inflexible metal strip capable of carrying no more than ten rounds at a time. At least the British Bren Gun loaded its rounds into a fully enclosed magazine. The Italians fought their war in a desert—they soon discovered their system was an invitation to load sand and grit into the mechanism as well as the round. The Japanese discovered similar drawbacks in the jungle. But this indicates how, with a little refinement to the design, the gonne in the Discworld could so easily have become an ''Auto-Kinetic Machined Gonne That Carries On Firing Without Human Intervention''.

The Gonne seems to be something like the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxNcjRf0O0o J.M. Browning Harmonica Rifle].

One of the earliest proto-machine-guns, the Mittraileuse of the late 1700's, involved six to twelve independently loaded musket mechanisms. The barrels and chambers attached to a rotating wheel, which as it fired swung the next barrel into place to meet the flintlock. While it took forever to load each barrel, once deployed it could lay down a quick and devastating burst of fire along a tactically vital arc. The French used it as a static weapon in fortresses.

And if you scale up a gonne, or scale down a [[Barking Dog]] (a legal weapon on the Discworld), where is the point at which a Gonne becomes an efficient artillery piece, or a Barking Dog a crudely effective but strictly illegal hand-held weapon?

[[Category:Devices]]
[[de:G'fähr]]

Gonne

2016-01-10T18:41:56Z

Richvanf: /* Contribution to industrialization */

The '''Gonne''', like so many other recent technological devices in [[Discworld]], was invented by [[Leonard of Quirm]]. As usual, he had the best of intentions when he devised it, but it turned out to be one of the most dangerous weapons ever conceived in the history of the Disc.

The weapon is powered by a kind of firework mechanism. It consists of a long tube with a feed mechanism for 6 small cartridges that can be fired quickly and with dangerous accuracy over a long distance. This fact makes the Gonne much more dangerous than the common crossbows.

It was so dangerous, in fact, that [[Havelock Vetinari]], who normally keeps anything useful around, ordered it destroyed. But the [[Assassins' Guild]] disobeyed the order, and instead secretly kept it under lock and key in their Guild Museum. Disaster strikes in the book ''[[Book:Men at Arms|Men at Arms]]'' when the Gonne is stolen.

With almost supernatural power, the Gonne can possess the mind of the man who uses it. It shows him the power he has in his hands, and erases all scruples by telling him what could be achieved with this power. Even [[Samuel Vimes]] struggled against this temptation and the only man who seemed to be entirely immune to the Gonne's promises was [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]], who finally managed to destroy the weapon once and for all. Carrot is immune because he has a [[Dwarfs|dwarf]]'s pragmatic attitude: a made thing is just a tool crafted for a purpose. why should I listen when it talks to me, as there's nothing there to do the talking? (This is probably why [[Hammerhock]] was killed after his purpose, of performing a minor repair on the gonne, was over. He also viewed it as a device, a clever device but nothing more, and was loudly speculating on building more—a prospect which the Gonne did not like.)

The Gonne has never been seen again. It has been suggested that Carrot buried it in the coffin of Lance-Constable [[Cuddy]]. His reasoning was that as the Gonne "died" when he smashed it against a stone pillar, its spirit could accompany Cuddy on his journey into the Afterlife, so as to provide a suitable weapon to fend off the evil spirits that Dwarfs don't believe in, but which ''may'' inconveniently believe in Dwarfs. The fact that it was well hidden and no man could re-create such a dangerous device ever again (unless they find Leonard's original sketch and get interesting ideas) was of course purely a secondary consideration.

==Contribution to industrialization==

The Gonne might represent a quantum leap in crime and warfare, but in the process of manufacturing the Gonne Leonard comes up with an invention which while unnoticed is a cornerstone of industrialization. When Vetinari asked Leonard if someone else could build a Gonne, his response includes:

'''...the grooves in the barrel required some finesse, I had to build a quite complex tool for that'''

The tool that Leonard had built for this purpose was a screw-cutting lathe, one of the cornerstones in the progression from craftsmanship to serial production.

==Roundworld Comparison==

In Roundworld terminology, Leonard's Gonne is probably a self-loading wheel-lock rifle. Though it fires six shots before reloading, it is definitely not a revolver; the six welded tubes of the magazine are arranged in a line, and advanced by a rack and pinion, making it either a repeater or a self-loader. The rack and pinion suggest some form of automatic recocking mechanism, making a self-loader more likely. The grooves in the barrel imply rifling, as opposed to a smooth bore like a musket. The firing mechanism is described as a "tinderbox," which means flint and steel; this could be either a wheel-lock, snaphance or flintlock, but the wheel lock is the only one that would be contemporary with Leonardo da Vinci, whom Leonard clearly resembles.

In Roundworld history, some efforts were made to build repeating firearms during the wheel-lock and flintlock era, such as the Kalthoff repeating wheel-lock of the early 1600s. Repeating firearms would not become widely used, however, until the invention of the metal cartridge in the 19th century, and self-loaders later still. Nothing precisely like Leonard's weapon ever existed, though its various components all did at one time or another.

The museum at Château du Clos Lucé, in Amboise, France, where Da Vinci spent the last 3 years of his life, along with the models (made from his drawings) of a tank (of sorts) and a <strike>spinning-up-into-air-machine</strike> screw-drive helicopter also contains a model of a kind of multi-shot machine gun, though it is different in scale (each barrel is a couple of meters long).

In WW2, the standard issue machine-guns used by the Japanese and the Italians worked on a similar principle to the loading system for the Gonne, adjusted to allow for automatic fire. Rather than a loose flexible belt in which the individual rounds were loaded into a cloth strip (as per Russian practice), or linked by re-usable metal clips (as per German), these MG's employed a fixed and rigid "tray" in which the rounds were fixed to an inflexible metal strip capable of carrying no more than ten rounds at a time. At least the British Bren Gun loaded its rounds into a fully enclosed magazine. The Italians fought their war in a desert—they soon discovered their system was an invitation to load sand and grit into the mechanism as well as the round. The Japanese discovered similar drawbacks in the jungle. But this indicates how, with a little refinement to the design, the gonne in the Discworld could so easily have become an ''Auto-Kinetic Machined Gonne That Carries On Firing Without Human Intervention''.

The Gonne seems to be something like the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxNcjRf0O0o J.M. Browning Harmonica Rifle].

One of the earliest proto-machine-guns, the Mittraileuse of the late 1700's, involved six to twelve independently loaded musket mechanisms. The barrels and chambers attached to a rotating wheel, which as it fired swung the next barrel into place to meet the flintlock. While it took forever to load each barrel, once deployed it could lay down a quick and devastating burst of fire along a tactically vital arc. The French used it as a static weapon in fortresses.

And if you scale up a gonne, or scale down a [[Barking Dog]] (a legal weapon on the Discworld), where is the point at which a Gonne becomes an efficient artillery piece, or a Barking Dog a crudely effective but strictly illegal hand-held weapon?

[[Category:Devices]]
[[de:G'fähr]]

Letice Earwig

2016-01-07T03:48:12Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Mrs. Earwig
|photo=
|name= Letice Earwig
|age=
|race= [[Humans|Human]]

|occupation= [[Witches|Witch]]
|appearance= Wears lots of jewelry, very tall pointed hat and silver glasses on a chain.

|residence=

|death=
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status= married, [[Dr Earwig]]

|books= {{HFOS}} {{W}} {{SALF}} {{TSC}}
|cameos=
}}

'''Mrs. Earwig''' (pronounced "Ah-widge") is an arrogant, snobbish witch. She is married to a retired [[wizards|wizard]] [[Dr Earwig]], and is of the kind of witches who read books, and has even written several books on [[magic|"magik"]]. Her last, and only, trainee was [[Annagramma Hawkin]].

Although she does use practical folk wisdom as a witch, she also tends to use crystals, jewelry and other items considered useless by witches of [[Esmeralda Weatherwax]]'s tradition. (Not that Granny doesn't recognise the uses of [[Boffo (Concept)|Boffo]], but you don't have to go believing it yourself.) Needless to say these two are intense rivals, and treat each other with hostile politeness.

She does however help promote the craft among younger girls by selling her various books including ''First Flights in Witchcraft'', ''My Fairy Friends'', and ''To Ride a Golden Broomstick'', in addition to an unnamed book on "Flower Magick". These are widely denounced by other witches as being ridiculous nonsense that only appeals to those who don't know what witchcraft is really about.

Her husband Dr. Earwig is mentioned in {{UA}} as one of the few wizards who have retired (although he technically just left to get married, which, according to [[Mustrum Ridcully]], is the same as dying).

Her complete self-absorption does come in handy. In Shepard's Crown, she is shown to be completely immune to Elven Glamour, which leverages human self-doubt. With Letice, there's nowhere for such a lever to gain a purchase.

==Annotation==
Letice Earwig's character is most likely inspired by a number of real-world Wiccans, witches and neopagans. In particular, parallels are drawn between Earwig and Wiccan author {{wp|Silver RavenWolf|Silver RavenWolf}}, author of ''To Ride a Silver Broomstick''. RavenWolf is generally strongly disapproved of as "fluffy" by the vast majority of Wiccans and witches in the real world, much as Mrs Earwig is strongly disapproved of and considered woolly by Discworld witches and wizards. Both Earwig and RavenWolf are seen to be pandering to teenagers who want to play at being dark and mysterious by becoming witches, but without any real content behind them.

[[Category:Witches|Earwig,Letice]]
[[Category:Discworld characters|Earwig,Letice]]
[[Category:Tiffany Series characters|Earwig,Letice]]
[[de:Letizia Ohrwurm]]

Elves

2016-01-07T03:40:58Z

Richvanf:

Discworld's version of the '''Elves''' are nothing like the elves you might imagine if you are steeped in the Tolkienian traditions. They are wonderful, in that they inspire wonder; fantastic, in that they fabricate fantasies; marvellous, in that they generate marvels; and even terrific (they inspire terror). That glamorous image and reputation comes at a very high price indeed.

Elves live in [[Fairyland]], a [[parasite dimension]], a world that isn't quite complete by itself and has to ride along on a better world, [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]] being a prime example. There are [[The Dancers|barriers]] at locations where the elves' world is close to the Discworld. Some of these barriers weaken about once every fifty years. It is just as well that it is difficult for anyone, elves or Discworld people, to cross the barriers between Discworld and the elves' lands, because... well, a good adjective for the elves, you see, starts with an ''n'', tip of my tongue, not ''nice''. No, no one ever said elves are nice. Elves are ''nasty''.

They have no artistic talents, but they want to have some fun, so they kidnap human musicians and bards, even children who are expected to sing, dance and play for their amusement. Elves have no sense of pain, heavily contributing to their lack of empathy, sympathy, or conscience. Elves are not evil in the same sense that Evil Dark Lords are evil (consult {{TLH}}). Evil Dark Lords play by the rules and break their promises because they are evil dark lords, it is a sort of professional behavior. Elves lie and make empty promises (often promises of safety, on the lines of "I won't hurt you if you come out, the way I have just hurt your friend here") because they want to get at people and hurt them some more. To elves, music is fun, but torture is even more fun. There is not a single elf reported as being nice or good. They are terrific - they beget terror. They are skilled at leaving their prey (everything) alive for weeks whilst they enjoy slowly torturing it.

Elves are ''glamorous''. When an elf is conscious, he or she is capable of making humans perceive him/her as beautiful and grand, and the humans will feel, by comparison, worthless and unimportant. Elves can also read minds. Consider the scenario: a human in the company of elves is in danger of being robbed, and then probably tortured, but a such a human also thinking bad thoughts about the elves is ''certainly'' going to be tortured. Another interesting thing is that the barriers between the [[Fairyland|elves' world]] and the Discworld weaken if people think about elves. Talking about elves is enormously dangerous as it brings them forth, so through the ages people have coined terms that are slightly protective, respectful-sounding, such as "Lords and Ladies", "the Gentry", "the Fair Folk" and "the Shining Ones". People are afraid even to think that elves will do bad things to them, because the elves will know. As elves ceased visiting when the barrier between worlds was strong, people were afraid to think about elves and talk about how bad they were, and as time went on, most people only remember that elves were beautiful. Folklore, on the other hand, remembers that you should not go out alone, lest the elves kidnap you, that you should leave a saucer of milk out for the Lords and Ladies, otherwise they'll come into your house and take it from you, that you hang up a horseshoe, a handy piece of cheap iron that can deter elves.

Elves have a sixth sense that is probably related to magnetism. With this sense, an elf can know absolutely, exactly, where he is. The presence of iron disrupts this sense for an elf. One elf once described being locked up in iron chains and so on as being buried alive. Elves cannot stand iron, so iron is a good thing to have handy during an elf invasion.

Elves ride on large, fiery horses tamed only by iron. As [[witches magic|witches]] can ride on broomsticks, elves can ride on yarrow stalks. One of the elves' favorite weapons is bow and arrow; the copper arrow is tipped with what is called "elfstone", which renders the prey unconscious, dreaming of playing with the fairies.

Locations known to lead to the elves' world:
*[[The Dancers]], [[Lancre]]
*[[The Long Man]], [[Lancre]]
*a stone portal on [[the Chalk]]

The elves also have a method of gaining entrance to [[Roundworld]], as a band of elves come to that universe accompanied by the Queen to try and interfere in human history. Initial attempts by the [[Wizards' Magic|wizards]] to stop them (by beating up elves with iron bars) leave humanity looking much like the [[N'Tuitif]], but eventually the elves are driven from Roundworld with the assistance of {{wp|William Shakespeare|William Shakespeare}}, whose play about the elves, after it is seen, makes people disbelieve in the elves (contrary to elf expectations). The inability to learn may be an Elven trait - [[Granny Weatherwax]] belittled them in the same way (referring to one as "Peasbody") to show that they are less than they are. And the power of belief on the Disc is extremely powerful indeed.

The elves are the antagonists in {{LL}} and {{SOD2}}. The [[Queen of the Elves]] (but not the elves themselves) is the antagonist in {{WFM}}, when [[Tiffany Aching]] wittingly enters Fairyland to rescue her brother. And [[Rincewind]] mentions that he has run away from elves a few times before (but then again, he's run away from nearly everything on the Disc).

They launch another attack into the Discworld in {{TSC}}, emboldened by a significant change in the magical heirarchy that occurs and a belief that the power to resist them has been fatally weakened. But this time they come up against [[Tiffany Aching]] again. An ''adult'' Tiffany coming into her mature powers and in possession of the Shepherd's Crown. The heirarchy of the elves changes too, after a coup d'etat in Fairyland. But one Elf, now an outcast, disproves the contention of Granny Weatherwax that "what cannot live, cannot learn or change" and sees a new future for her people.

Presumably though there are some elves who at least mind their own business such as the ones mentioned in [[Nodar Borgle|Borgle's]] during {{MP}}, as there was no mention of mayhem, torture, killing and all the other things elves enjoy doing. Either that, or the "elves" in Holy Wood were humans in costume. Also Nanny Ogg states in Lords and Ladies that elves living on the disc are not true elves but more like normal people with pointy ears. At some point in their ancestry a true elf had bred with a human, probably just for fun; as they do, and produced something like a half-elf (but they still called themselves elves) who inherited many of the beautiful traits but none, or little, or the malice. These may have been the elves in Holy Wood. [[Mankin]], mine host at the [[Octarine Parrot]] in Ankh-Morpork, is half-elvish. He merely hosts Troll singers by means of aural torture to his drinking clientele.

==Annotation==

The elves' glamour is similar to that of B- and C-list celebrities. As TP has said himself, the very idea of celebrity is almost elvish: to be famous just for being more beautiful than those around you. It is incredible just how prevalent the idea is that beauty = goodness or worthiness. And, just like the elves, many of these so-called "beautiful people" are spiteful, malicious, unhappy and vindictive or otherwise shallow.

[[de:Elfen]]
[[Category:Discworld humanoid species]]

Ice Giants

2016-01-05T07:20:32Z

Richvanf:

The Ice Giants are giant snowmen who speak with a Scandinavian accent, and have been imprisoned under the Disc's hub by the [[God|gods]]. They ride out in [[Sourcery]]. They also may owe the gods the return of a borrowed lawnmower. It is possible that they are a form of troll, since water trolls are known.

==Annotation==

The reference is to Jotunheim*, the cold and frozen homeland of the Giants in Nordic myth. On the Ragnarok, the Giants will seek to extend their domain of ice and gloom over lands previously held by the Gods.
(*Dubbed ''Sniffleheim'' by the [[Dean]] after he'd been at the sherry)

There is also an element of Hörbinger's "World-Ice" cosmology here. Hörbinger was a German theorist whose ideas were considered sound and Aryan by the Nazis. The concept that the world was an eternal struggle between ice and fire, as evidenced by on the one hand volcanoes and on the other glaciers, was considered to be a fine dramatic metaphor for the Master Race. (Hörbinger also thought we lived on the ''inside'' of a bubble in an infinity of solid rock. Because of this, some Nazis thought it was worthwhile to point their telescopes ''up'' and to the left a bit to see if they could pick up British ships in their home ports...)

"Whole vorld of ice. According to inevitability of history and triumph of thermo-dynamics" is straight out of Hörbinger's wacky theory...

[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Eisriesen]]
{{stub}}

Geoffrey Swivel

2016-01-05T05:57:12Z

Richvanf: /* Career */

{{Character Data
|title= Geoffrey
|photo=
|name= Geoffrey Swivel
|age= not given; about 16
|race= Human
|occupation= Witch, sort of...and Lancrastian Ambassador
|appearance=
|residence= originally [[The Shires]], then [[Lancre]]
|death=
|parents= Lord Harold and Lady Swivel
|relatives= b. Harry, b. Hugh
|children=
|marital status= single
|books= {{TSC}}
|cameos=
}}

Given a little more time, there might have been more connection established between [[Eskarina Smith]], the [[Wizard]] born into the wrong sex, and '''Geoffrey Swivel''', a [[Witch]] born in the wrong sex and place.

Geoffrey becomes not-quite-a-Witch, capable of most of the same functions but relying on a sort of [[headology]] based on persuasion rather than [[Boffo]] and fear. He has a rather eldritch [[Mephistopheles|goat]] as a companion and protector rather than Esk's staff. (The concept of a {{wp|Familiar spirit|familiar}} hasn't been featured previously in the Discworld chronicles, unless you count [[Greebo]]'s occasional assistance.)

==Origin==
Geoffrey's father, Lord [[Harold Swivel]], has managed to revive a family fortune almost dissipated by his father and establish himself in a large country estate in [[The Shires]]. He has no respect for education but employs a [[Wiggall|tutor]] for his three sons at his wife's behest. Geoffrey, the youngest, is the only one to take an interest and reads prodigiously. When his father dismisses the tutor, he turns to [[McTavish]], an old family retainer in the stables, for education in practical and natural areas.

==Career==
Geoffrey's fondness for animals, starting with Mephistopheles and nurtured by McTavish, finally clashes with his father's values in a fox-hunting episode and he decides to leave home. He has read about Witches and seen them on broomsticks in the sky and decides that this is his calling. [[Narrative Causality]] draws him to [[Lancre]] and [[Granny Weatherwax]]'s cottage. Tiffany passes on Granny Weatherwax's broom to him, after the Dwarfs completely replace everything. He shows quite a facility for broomstick riding, even being able to break the sound barrier, which, on the Discworld, crowds lightspeed as well.

He arrives just in time to face a massive attack by the [[Elves]] on two fronts and he and Mephistopheles acquit themselves well. He has shown himself capable in the practical elements of Witchcraft and is able to relieve [[Tiffany Aching]] of the second steading in [[Bad Ass]] which has been imposed on her. He impresses King [[Verence II|Verence]] and Queen Magrat enough that they appoint him Royal Ambassador to the [[Sto Plains]] and he is empowered to return home and kick a little sand in his father's face. (Mephistopheles takes the opportunity to plant a kick in the other end.)

==Character==
Geoffrey's talent for "getting along" and cajoling people into sociability or out of violent behavior recalls [[Tomjon]]'s gift from Magrat and [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]]'s uncanny ability in peacekeeping.

== ==
There is no mention of a relationship to [[Tuppence Swivel]]. If the very literary Tuppence were part of the family he would be considered a black sheep by Harold.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Witches]]
[[Category:Tiffany Series characters]]

Kelda

2016-01-05T04:28:37Z

Richvanf:

A '''Kelda''' is the leader of a [[Nac Mac Feegle|Feegle]] clan. She is the one with "the knowing of the reading". She keeps her Clan in order, makes decisions, and is effectively their head of state.

Feegles are much like bees, in that they have extremely few females, and the Clan will seem to consist of all males. This is because a Kelda "might be blessed wi' only one daughter in her life, but she'll have hundreds and hundreds o' sons". Each Clan is made up of the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of sons of the Kelda.

A daughter cannot run her mother's Clan, so those females born in one Clan must leave and find another one in need of a Kelda. She cannot marry a brother, and a new "Big Man" cannot be brought in because the men of the clan would not know him, and, therefore, would not respect him. Usually she takes a small retinue of her brothers with her to the new Clan. Once there, she chooses one of the warriors for a husband.

A Kelda is guarded fervently by all the Clan, even temporary Keldas such as [[Tiffany Aching]]. In her case, this means reading her diary, following her everywhere and the kind of constant surveillance that some governments have naughty dreams about. Tiffany is less than thrilled about this.

Upon her death, a Kelda is buried in the mound with all the previous Keldas. Those of her brothers who still remain will then usually ask permission from the new Kelda to return to their original home.

==Notable Keldas==

*[[Big Aggie]]
*[[Fion]]

*[[Jeannie|Jeannie Anybody]]

[[de:Keldas]]
[[Category:Discworld concepts]]
[[Category:Discworld culture]]

Whiteface

2016-01-03T21:38:15Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Dr. Whiteface
|photo=
|name= Dr. Whiteface
|age= middle-aged
|race= [[human]]

|occupation= Clown, Head of the Guild
|appearance= Classical (white-faced) Clown

|residence= [[Fools' Guild|The Guild of Fools and Joculators]]

|death=
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status= unmarried

|books= {{MAA}}
|cameos= {{MM}}
}}
The stony-faced first among equals at the [[Fools' Guild|Guild of Fools and Joculators]].

There was some confusion as to how long Whiteface has been in office, as in {{RM}} there is a meeting attended by known civic leaders, where the Fools' Guild's representative is a Fool called Geoffrey, described as the "Chief Butt" of the Guild. (He is kindly treated by the other Guild leaders and civic dignitaries, and finally led away by gentle hands). This suggested that the Guild was at this time led by a Fool rather than a clown, and in keeping with its grey joylessness, a rather neurotic ineffectual one. However, in {{MAA}}, the Guild leader is very clearly a a grim-faced clown called Dr. Whiteface, the stern-looking one who does not get involved in all the side-splitting comedy pratfalls nor any business with buckets of water. In some indefinable way, all the action in the ring revolves around him while leaving him untouched. He is the one the other clowns appear to be afraid of. Dr. Whiteface is evidently made of sterner stuff than Geoffrey, as he faces down [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] in a battle of wills.

In the relevant entry in the {{NDC}}, it is in fact made clear that the chief of the Guild, for over three hundred years, has been Dr Whiteface. Faces may be passed down through [[The Great Bazonko|families]]; clearly, the Guild allows for the visage of Dr. Whiteface to be inherited by each new chief clown.

Although the word is not used, it is clear that Dr Whiteface derives directly from the whitefac, or dominant clown of European circus tradition, this figure is sometimes termed a ''Pierrot'' owing to the resemblance of his costume and face to those of the French clown of that name. The costume is suggested (in the ''Discworld Sketchbook'') to be hereditary among leaders of the guild, suggesting that there is always a Whiteface while the Chief Butt is a mere sidekick (and quite often kicked at that) to the guild president. (In fact, a Butt is a rather lowly level in the Heirarchy, which has nine steps for an aspirant Clown or Fool to climb. So if each level of the profession has its own Chief - Chief Muggins, Chief Dupe, Chief Gull, Chief Butt, Chief Tomfool, et c - this explains much, and might well explain Geoffrey's presence at a civic meeting, if Whiteface wanted to show it didn't merit his own presence nor that of anyone higher in the hierarchy).

[[Category:Discworld characters|Whiteface,Dr.]]
[[de:Weissgesicht]]
{{stub}}

Whiteface

2016-01-03T21:36:01Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Dr. Whiteface
|photo=
|name= Dr. Whiteface
|age= middle-aged
|race= [[human]]

|occupation= Clown, Head of the Guild
|appearance= Classical (white-faced) Clown

|residence= [[Fools' Guild|The Guild of Fools and Joculators]]

|death=
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status= unmarried

|books= {{MAA}}
|cameos= {{MM}}
}}
The stony-faced first among equals at the [[Fools' Guild|Guild of Fools and Joculators]].

There was some confusion as to how long Whiteface has been in office, as in {{RM}} there is a meeting attended by known civic leaders, where the Fools' Guild's representative is a Fool called Geoffrey, described as the "Chief Butt" of the Guild. (He is kindly treated by the other Guild leaders and civic dignitaries, and finally led away by gentle hands). This suggested that the Guild was at this time led by a Fool rather than a clown, and in keeping with its grey joylessness, a rather neurotic ineffectual one. However, in{{MAA}}, the Guild leader is very clearly a a grim-faced clown called Dr. Whiteface, the stern-looking one who does not get involved in all the side-splitting comedy pratfalls nor any business with buckets of water. In some indefinable way, all the action in the ring revolves around him while leaving him untouched. He is the one the other clowns appear to be afraid of. Dr. Whiteface is evidently made of sterner stuff than Geoffrey, as he faces down [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] in a battle of wills.

In the relevant entry in the {{NDC}}, it is in fact made clear that the chief of the Guild, for over three hundred years, has been Dr Whiteface. Faces may be passed down through [[The Great Bazonko|families]]; clearly, the Guild allows for the visage of Dr. Whiteface to be inherited by each new chief clown.

Although the word is not used, it is clear that Dr Whiteface derives directly from the whitefac, or dominant clown of European circus tradition, this figure is sometimes termed a ''Pierrot'' owing to the resemblance of his costume and face to those of the French clown of that name. The costume is suggested (in the ''Discworld Sketchbook'') to be hereditary among leaders of the guild, suggesting that there is always a Whiteface while the Chief Butt is a mere sidekick (and quite often kicked at that) to the guild president. (In fact, a Butt is a rather lowly level in the Heirarchy, which has nine steps for an aspirant Clown or Fool to climb. So if each level of the profession has its own Chief - Chief Muggins, Chief Dupe, Chief Gull, Chief Butt, Chief Tomfool, et c - this explains much, and might well explain Geoffrey's presence at a civic meeting, if Whiteface decided it didn't merit his own presence nor that of anyone higher in the hierarchy).

[[Category:Discworld characters|Whiteface,Dr.]]
[[de:Weissgesicht]]
{{stub}}

Foul Ole Ron's Smell

2016-01-03T19:20:08Z

Richvanf:

The '''Smell''' is the name of the odour that usually accompanies the beggar [[Foul Ole Ron]] wherever he goes. It is so horrible that most noses simply shut down in the presence of the Smell, though one could tell Ron is nearby simply by how their ear wax starts melting out of their ears.

Even a small quantity of [[oil of Scallatine]], which is so pungent that getting a drop of it on your hands will never wash off, is no match for the Smell, which could effectively wear it as a deodorant. As unfortunate as professional connoisseur of smells [[Angua von Uberwald]] was to encounter a concoction dropped by [[William de Worde]] to throw her off his trail, it could have been far worse.

In fact, the Smell is such a defining characteristic of Foul Ole Ron that it has acquired sentience. It regularly pays visits to the art gallery and opera, and tends to arrive at a destination before Ron does. Ron is actually ''outclassed'' by his Smell. The Smell is not stupid; when Lord Vetinari advised it "Do not let me detain you," it found it had business elsewhere.

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]

Foul Ole Ron

2016-01-03T19:15:13Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Foul Ole Ron
|photo=
|name= Foul Ole Ron
|age=
|race= [[Humans|Human]]

|occupation= Beggar (unlicensed)
|appearance= Dirty and smelly, speaking incoherently.

|residence= Mostly under [[Misbegot Bridge]], [[Ankh-Morpork]]

|death=
|parents=
|relatives= His [[Foul Ole Ron's Smell|Smell]]
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{MAA}}, {{FOC}}, {{H}}, {{J}}, {{TT}}
|cameos= Not really a cameo, but his catchphrase "Millennium Hand and Shrimp" is also used in {{JatB}} by Mrs. [[Tachyon]]
}}
'''Foul Ole Ron''' is a beggar in [[Ankh-Morpork]] and a member of the [[Canting Crew]], a group of beggars which other beggars refuse to have anything to do with (even beggars need somebody to look down on). Ron is known for his [[Foul Ole Ron's Smell|Smell]], so strong the capital letter is fully justified. In fact, Ron's Smell has evolved a personality of its own, and can be found without Ron, attending opera performance or visiting art galleries.

Ron is also known for the phrases "Bugrit!" and "Millennium Hand and Shrimp", whatever that means. He is often accompanied by his thinking-brain dog, [[Gaspode]]. Interestingly enough, when under the extra pressure of [[Elves]] on top of his usual burdens, the [[Bursar]] once started to talk ''exactly'' like Ron; Ponder Stibbons suspected that they'd overdone the [[Dried Frog Pills]].... ({{LL}})

Another Pratchett character who talks as if she could have an animated and mutually coherent conversation with Ron is Mrs. [[Tachyon]], the mysterious time-travelling bag lady in the [[Johnny Maxwell]] series of books. In [[Book:Johnny and the Bomb|Johnny and the Bomb]], Mrs Tachyon displays a personal familiarity with the phrase "Millennium, Hand And Shrimp!" that will be instantly recognisable to connoisseurs of Ron-speak. It raises the question of where, and from whom, she may have acquired the phrase, on her travels in space-time.

The [[Assassins' Guild]] has an as yet unfulfilled contract for the inhumation of Ron. The value on his head is one groat. Ron is probably safe: a rule of Assassination is that the deed must be done up close and personally if at all possible, and preferably at the home of the inhumee. Getting up close and personal to a man who has no fixed abode would present operational difficulties, not the least of which is that Assassin finery would corrode and rot on first contact with the Smell. Even an arrow or crossbow bolt might corrode in the very air before reaching him. Besides, which self-respecting Assassin would get out of bed for two pennies? (after Guild Tax).

===External Links===
The secret behind the phrase "Millennium Hand and Shrimp" is revealed in the [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/lords-and-ladies.html annotated pratchett files].
Of course, like stage magic, it's no fun when you know how it's done.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Ron, Foul Ole]]
[[Category:Supporting characters|Ron, Foul Ole]]
[[Category:Human characters|Ron, Foul Ole]]
[[de:Stinkender Alter Ron]]

Granny Weatherwax

2016-01-03T09:26:49Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= Granny Weatherwax
|photo=grannymine.jpg|Granny Weatherwax by [[user:darkplush|Kit Cox]]
|name= Esmerelda Weatherwax
|age= Dare you ask?
|race= Human
|occupation= Greatest [[witches magic|Witch]] on the [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]] (Just ask her)
|appearance= Tall, thin with a wart-free complexion and good teeth, (despite her best efforts,) and perpetual scowl
|residence= Granny's Cottage, [[Bad Ass]], [[Lancre]], The [[Ramtops]]
|death=
|parents= [[Violet Weatherwax|Violet]]
|relatives= [[Lily Weatherwax|Lily]], [[Alison Weatherwax|Alison]], [[Galder Weatherwax|Galder]]
|children=
|marital status=
|books= {{ER}}, {{WS}}, {{WA}}, {{LL}}, {{M!!!}}, {{CJ}}, {{NOC}}, {{W}}, {{ISWM}}, {{TSC}}
|cameos= {{M}}, {{WFM}}, {{HFOS}}, {{SOD2}}, possibly {{GP}} }}

'''Granny Weatherwax''', (full name ''Esmerelda ("''Esme''") Weatherwax'', [[Troll]] name ''Aaoograha hoa'' ("''She Who Must Be Avoided'',") [[Dwarf]] name ''K'ez'rek d'b'duz'' ("''Go Around the Other Side of the Mountain'',") [[Pictsies|Nac Mac Feegle]] name ''The Hag O' Hags'' ("''The High Hag'',")) is a [[witch]], who lives in a small cottage outside the village of [[Bad Ass]], in the kingdom of [[Lancre]], on the Sto Plains face of the [[Ramtops]].

==Backhistory==
According to ''[[Witches Abroad]]'', Esme "Granny" Weatherwax was born the younger of two daughters. While it hasn't been mentioned if her mother was a Witch or not, Granny mentions that her father was a hunter, who once taught Granny that "''a bad hunter chases, a good hunter waits''" (''[[Book:Lords and Ladies|Lords and Ladies]]''). While Granny was practically still just a [[wiktionary:bairn|bairn]], her teenaged, older sister, Lily, was getting into increasingly frequent rows with her parents over Lily's behavior, as Granny reveals to Nanny Ogg in ''Witches Abroad'', Lily was wanton, using magic for it and not just ordinary magic, "''she was wilful''", as Granny describes it, able to remember her sister's and mother's rows even at that young age, that Lily was vain and prideful, ("''always looking in mirrors... Prideful as a cat, she was. Prefer to look in a mirror than out of a window, she would''"), and that "''young men's fathers used to come round to complain''", culminating in Lily being kicked out of the household at the age of 13 years.

After Granny had grown-up, she was adamant on becoming a Witch; as she reveals in ''Lords and Ladies'', magic didn't choose her, she chose it, ("''I never stood in front of no-one... I camped on old Nanny Gripes' garden until she promised to tell me everything she knew. Hah. That took her a week ''and'' I had the afternoons free. ... No ''I'' chose...''"). Granny would go on to become a fully-fledged Witch, and at some point took responsibility for her own steading, the village of Bad Ass and the Kingdom of Lancre as a whole. Granny Weatherwax, as she would later come to be known as, also nursed her ailing mother until the time of her death, (what became of her father has never been mentioned). Whilest still a young woman, Granny was involved in a summer-long romance with then-aspiring Wizard, Mustrum Ridcully, but ultimately they were both committed to their respective paths of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Granny is estimated to be in her seventies during the events of {{WS}}, {{WA}}, ''Lords and Ladies'', {{M}} & {{CJ}}, the same age as Nanny Ogg, (having grown up with her). Yet, by the standards of [[Eumenides Treason|Mistress Eumenides Treason]], she is still considered a girl ({{W}}).

Granny Weatherwax passes away early in the events of {{TSC}}, now in her 80's; where, after experiencing The Call, she tidies up her cottage, prepares her own wicker casket, and sets her last will and testament down in writing (confirming instructions she had already confided to Nanny Ogg), before laying herself to rest in her own bed one last time. When [[Death]] comes for her, he asks her if she was content with her life, with Granny confirming that she was satisfied to have lived the way she did and kept her part of the world safe, Death in turn assuring her that her candle will continue to flicker long after her passing and that she has left the world in a better condition than it was when she entered it. Her death is felt across the Disc; Nanny Ogg and Tiffany Aching arrive first to lay her to rest in the forest at a site pre-chosen by Granny herself, and Archchancellor [[Mustrum Ridcully]] visits briefly to pay his last respects. Over the course of the events of ''The Shepherd's Crown'', Tiffany Aching, who Granny has named her successor, overstretches herself trying to oversee two steadings and live-up to Granny's reputation as the new 'Witch of Witches', but eventually comes to accept the need to do things her way rather than simply make herself do everything Granny did.

==Characterization==
She is considered, (not least of all by herself,) to be the best [[witches magic|witch]] on the [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]] and is refered to by the [[Pictsies]] as the 'Hag O' Hags'. She is the resident witch of [[Bad Ass]], but she tends to regard the whole kingdom, and indeed absolutely anywhere else she happens to be, as her rightful domain, (not unlike [[Adora Belle Dearheart]] in that respect.) Her cottage is probably the most traditional of all the witches' cottages in Lancre, complete with archaic thatch, goats, and huge thickets of '[[herbs]]' which move even when there's no breeze. She has a special fondness for bees and keeps several hives in her garden.

She prefers to use "''[[headology]]''" instead of magic as the [[wizard's magic|wizards]] practise it, believing that magic is not so much flashy lights as knowing things that other people don't know. As a witch she is, on the one hand, feared by the people of the [[Ramtops]] and, on the other hand, respected as a midwife, herbalist, and the spiritual version of a coal-mine canary. Granny likes to [[borrowing|borrow]], a special kind of magic where the user enters the mind of an animal and can see through the eyes of that animal. As this technique renders her own body totally dormant, she now wears a small cardboard sign with the words "I Aten't Dead" on it to avoid unnecessary embarrassment.[[Image:Granny_Weatherwax.jpg|200px|left|thumb|Illustrated by [[user:Puggdogg|Mick Collins]]]]

''"Granny had been introduced to [[Broomstick]] flying quite late in life, and after some initial suspicion had taken to it like a bluebottle to an ancient fish-head. A problem, however, was that Granny saw every flight simply as a straight line from A to B and was unable to get alongside the idea that other users of the air might have any rights whatsoever; the flight migration patterns of an entire continent had been changed because of that simple fact. High-speed evolution among local birds had developed a generation that flew on their backs, so that they could keep a watchful eye on the skies...Granny's implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and , on occasion, mountains,"'' ([[Book:Wyrd Sisters|Wyrd Sisters]]).

Granny's opinions about other things being in the way of her broomstick has since moved with modern technology, as in {{GP}} we hear of an anonymous witch from Lancre who succeeded in bringing the [[Clacks|clacks]] line down by riding her broomstick into one of the towers, damaging its sensitive mechanisms and terrifying the luckless crew.

While this witch is not identified and remains anonymous, a fairly accurate guess could be hazarded as to her name... it is noteworthy that [[Reacher Gilt]] himself must have thought twice about pursuing any claim for damages or inconvenience! {{SOD2}} confirms that she has had several such accidents, and believes the towers move into her way. Her broomstick was originally borrowed from a witch called [[Hilta Goatfounder]], and despite the best and continued efforts of the dwarfs servicing her broomstick, it won't take off without a considerable run.

Her [[Lily Weatherwax|elder sister]] left home in her youth, eventually to become a [[fairy godmother]]. Granny seems to harbour a bitter resentment of this fact, because after that she felt compelled to be the "good one" in the family; she also believes that she could have been a lot more evil than her sister. Despite this, she did stay at home and nurse her mother until she died.

Granny's personality would, to many, lend itself nicely to the "bad witch" stereotype: she's competitive, selfish and ambitious, with a quick temper and a sharp tongue. She also wields a gaze stern enough to make bears cower in humiliated shame. Her practical history, however, clearly puts her in the "good witch" camp (a sort of personification of "tough love"), if only because she's too proud to be any other kind.

Granny Weatherwax has faced [[Death]] many times, and has not backed down yet. She has also faced and defeated [[Elves]], [[vampires]] (or [[vampyres]]), and [[wizard's magic|wizards]]. (See [[Book:Lords and Ladies|Lords and Ladies]], [[Book:Carpe Jugulum|Carpe Jugulum]] and [[Book:Equal Rites|Equal Rites]])

Her companions, as far as a witch can have these, are [[Nanny Ogg]], [[Magrat Garlick]] and [[Agnes Nitt]]. She was [[Eskarina Smith]]'s first teacher in the arts of magic, until she realised that Esk's magic was of a different sort altogether. She gave [[Tiffany Aching]] her hat. She was once romantically involved with [[Mustrum Ridcully]]. Recently, via [[Tiffany Aching]], she has been acquired by a white kitten called [[You]]. This is surprising, as Granny is, by her own admission, not a cat person; [[Greebo]], who knows bad news when it blesses the house, always hides when she visits [[Nanny Ogg]].

==Character annotations==
"''Weatherwax''" was also the name of the author of an old lawbook. [http://groups.google.nl/group/alt.books.pratchett/msg/1dad94515c79f71c?hl=nl& Source]

==Trivia==
* According to ''[[Equal Rites]]'', Granny Weatherwax, amongst other things, makes her own liqour for medicinal purposes, (she has her own [[wikipedia:Still|Still]]), her "triple-distilled white mountain [[wikipedia:Peach brandy|Peach brandy]]" is well known even in the town of Ohulan Cutash, (a town fifteen miles away from Bad Ass), and its regaurded as "much better than [[wikipedia:Beer|beer]]". Granny's triple-distilled peach brandy isn't mentioned again until the events of ''The Shepherd's Crown''.

==Also See==
* [[wikipedia:Granny Weatherwax|Granny Weatherwax's Entry]] on [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]]

[[Category:Discworld characters|Weatherwax, Granny]]
[[Category:Leading characters|Weatherwax, Granny]]
[[Category:Serial characters|Weatherwax, Granny]]
[[Category:Human characters|Weatherwax, Granny]]
[[Category:Witches|Weatherwax, Granny]]
[[de:Esmeralda Wetterwachs]]

A.E. Pessimal

2016-01-03T06:47:16Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= A.E. Pessimal
|photo=
|name= A.E. Pessimal
|age= indeterminate, possibly late-middle
|race= [[Humans|Human]]
|occupation= Government inspector, Special Constable, later Inspector
|appearance= Very neat small man, immaculate centre parting and clean shoes.
|residence= [[Ankh-Morpork]]
|death=
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status=
|books= {{T!}}, {{SN}}
|cameos= [[Short Story:A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices|A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices]]
}}

'''A.E. Pessimal''' is one of the [[Havelock Vetinari|Patrician's]] inspectors sent to investigate the economics and management of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]] to judge how the Watch uses their funds (see {{T!}}). Pessimal does not seem to have a first name or at least does not understand the question when [[Samuel Vimes|Vimes]] asks him. This isn't his first such assignment: previously the Patrician has asked him to investigate, and report on, [[Unseen University]]'s admission procedures and examination system. (So evidently [[Mustrum Ridcully]] must also have done something to irritate the Patrician.) This is discussed at length in [[Short Story:A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices|A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices]], a short story whose events are alluded to in the opening chapters of {{T!}}.

Later in ''Thud!'' he is sworn in as a [[Specials|Special Constable]] and attacks [[Brick]] bare-handed, to the surprise of everyone. After that he is offered a position as Adjutant with a rank of Lance-Constable which he accepts (with the promise of accelerated promotion to Sergeant) and probably will assume after he has finished his assignment to investigate the Watch. He later becomes the Watch's forensic accountant.

Vimes' motivation in employing Pessimal is partly practical: he recognises that a man who will attack a boozed-up troll with his teeth is "born to the badge", and he will always find a job for a born copper. More than that, he needs an adjutant, a man who can "hold a pencil without breaking it", who can make sense of paperwork and interpret the mysteries of statistics that he, Vimes, will always overlook; for while Truth is likely to be hidden in the mountain of paperwork that sits on his desk, quietly reproaching him for his deliberate non-awareness of it, Vimes has neither the time nor the inclination to go mining for it.

It is also possible that he is making some sort of obscure point to Vetinari by poaching one of his civilian clerks, quite possibly turning the poacher into a gamekeeper. (Or quite possibly vice-versa).

It is a tragedy that having earned the right to call Vimes "Mr Vimes" by having saved his life, a privilege open only to few, Pessimal is temperamentally unable to do so. However, it looks as if a new Watch department is in formation, perhaps loosely associated to the reformed [[Cable Street Particulars]], composed of Pessimal and the finally-useful [[Dis-organiser|Gooseberry]] device. Along with Vimes' Dis-Organizer Mark Five, it would seem that A E is the start to a new department in the City Watch.

By the events of {{SN}}, A E has risen to the newly-minted rank of Inspector, (notionally one rank below Captain), in the City Watch, and his forensic accounting has become legendary and feared throughout Ankh-Morpork, as people fear what he may uncover in their financial records.

==Annotations==
'Pessimal' is to 'pessimism' what 'optimal' is to 'optimism'- it refers to things being maximally bad.

==Also See==
* [[wikipedia:Ankh-Morpork City Watch#Inspector A E Pessimal|A.E. Pessimal's Entry]] on [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]]

[[Category:Discworld characters|Pessimal, A.E.]]
[[de:A. E. Pessimal]]

Specials

2016-01-03T06:44:44Z

Richvanf:

The auxiliary police, who provide a back-up to the regular Watch at times of great need. A typical time of great need, is described in ''[[Book:Men at Arms|Men at Arms]]'', where a young Watchman named Carrot calls up the citizenry to save Ankh-Morpork from itself.

Specials include [[Andy Hancock]], a very enthusiastic [[Clacks|clacksman]], and government inspector [[A.E. Pessimal]], a man born to bureaucracy and not so much named as initialed. He discovered the Watchman's life was for him when the pent-up aggression of years suddenly released itself in a berserk attack on an astonished troll. The president of the [[Thieves' Guild]], [[Mr Boggis]], is also a very unlikely Special, as are his bodyguards Vinny "No Ears" Ludd (Ludd is a common surname given to foundlings taken in by the [[Thieves' Guild|Guild]]) and Harry "Can't remember his own nickname" Jones. As this adds extra professional muscle to the muster, Vimes is prepared to be accepting. The ranks of Specials still include the [[Librarian]] (of [[Unseen University]]), whom Nobby called "Special Ape Services" ({{wp|Special_Air_Service|SAS?}}) in {{G!G!}}. Vimes's butler [[Willikins]], a man of hidden depths as well as of fish-hooks sewn into his lapels and sharpened coins hidden in the brim of his cap, is also a Special.

Not everyone is taken on as a Special: the [[Dean]] of Unseen University was thanked very much for his interest and sent home. Carrot was undoubtedly aware of Vimes' suspicion of magic as a police tool, as well as understanding that the Dean's default position of zapping everything with a blast from the good ol' staff might prove counter-productive.

{{NDC}} also hints that there is a different, unadvertised, invitation-only, category of Special: the new, reformed [[Cable Street Particulars]] would appear to be brought together on an ad-hoc, as-needed, basis, composed of people with other full-time jobs in the City, but whose particular professional skills and aptitudes are ideal for solving a different sort of crime, the sort whose prosecution requires intellect and the slow, patient, acquisition and sifting of available information, so as to build up a picture of those crimes which aren't easily seen and which take care not to advertise themselves. It is possible that the [[André|Director of Music]] at the [[Opera House]] is such a special, combining police work with his full-time passion for popular music. (Oddly enough, [[Roundworld]] has such a fictional detective, the cerebral and musicologically inclined {{wp|Inspector_Morse_%28TV_series%29|Inspector Morse}}, who plies his trade, happily for a TV company looking for overseas sales, in and around the photogenic old English city of Oxford.)

As the [[Librarian]], who has many resources at his fingertips, may well be involved here, it could be said that this is a "special branch" for him to swing from...

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]
[[Category:Groups]]

Auditors of Reality

2016-01-03T06:29:17Z

Richvanf:

{{Character Data
|title= The Auditors of Reality
|photo=
|name=
|age= as old as Time
|race=
|occupation= Auditors, of course
|appearance= like empty gray cloaks
|residence=
|death=
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{RM}}, {{H}}, {{TOT}}, {{SOD3}}
|cameos=
}}
The '''Auditors of Reality''' are the eternal watchers of time and space. Appearing as empty gray cloaks, they have no sense of humanity and all that it entails, whether it be humor or even a sense of singularity, which they particularly despise. Auditors think that to live is to die, and to be a specific person is to live, so an Auditor finds itself imploding if it so much as talks about itself in the first person. Auditors always speak of the "we". Auditors always work in groups of at least three, so that each one can be watched by at least two others. Supposedly all Auditors are of the same opinions about everything, but they still need to watch each other because, frankly, the temptation to live is too great.

They have also had their fair share of run-ins with the [[Death]] of the [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]]. Auditors tend to be very unpopular with all [[anthropomorphic personification]]s and other supernatural entities for breaking the world to make things ''the way they ought to be''. Auditors think that everything should obey basic physics (i.e. it should not be affected by imagination, perceptions, or thoughts, which sentient beings possess in amounts that seem to the Auditors to be unacceptable). Auditors also think that things should be regular (i.e. all cobblestones should be exactly same size and shape), and all spoken words ought to be literal and there ought not be metaphors. Auditors have tried at various times to get Death replaced by someone with less heart, get people to stop believing in a [[Hogfather|winter]] [[the gods|god]], and make time stop so that the Auditors can finally catch up with all the paperwork. They also, once they became aware of its existence, objected to certain aspects of [[Roundworld]] history, and sought to destroy it.

=== Ancient non-life form ===

The Auditors are both repelled by life (and humans in particular) and drawn to it. This leads them to interfere in Discworld, and to do this they are willing to break the Rules.

In {{RM}} it says they cannot be described in ordinary language. “Some people would call them cherubs.” Death calls them servants, watchers. Like him, they are able to appear before [[Azrael]]. In {{H}}, Death says of them, “They run the universe. They see to it that gravity works and that atoms spin.”

In {{TOT}} it says things need to be observed in order to exist. In that case, as the most fundamental of observers, nothing would exist without them. Clearly they are part of the cosmic order, and if it were imaginable that any power could diminish them in their own realm, it would be up to the combined forces of Discworld to rally round. This does not stop them from making a nuisance of themselves.

The Auditors hate life, because it is untidy. By their nature, the Auditors take the view that for a thing to exist it has to have a position in time and space. But all the things that distinguish human beings, such as imagination, pity, hope, history and belief, don’t do time and space. Humanity, by belief, allows things to become that don’t exist. Death said that matter has a fear and hatred of life, and the Auditors are the bearers of that hatred. Periodically they try to tidy things up.

Gravity and atoms are basically important, but the Auditors are rubbish in the human dimension. An intelligence a billion years old, which has seen galaxies die, and sees atoms dance, which has hundreds of senses and thinks in 18 dimensions, which makes decisions by the concensus of millions, quickly falls to bits if clamped into the five senses of a human being, with demanding organs wired into its thinking system, looking out at the world from the darkness behind the eyes through the letterbox of “me”. Life is intoxicating, and if the auditors stray into organic territory, they come to grief.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Supporting characters]]
[[de:Revisoren der Realität]]

Renata Flitworth

2016-01-03T06:27:12Z

Richvanf:

Miss Renata Flitworth was the archetypal farmer's wife - stoic, weather-beaten, used to life's little disasters - but she was an old spinster due to the death of her fiance [[Rufus]] the night before their wedding, due to his insistence that he needed to do one more trip across the mountains (smuggling) to pay for her. Her house is reputed by the locals to be full of treasure.

Her main claim to fame is that she took [[Bill Door]] in as a farmhand when he was a-wanderin' round the world. Bill Door was [[Death]], who had been told he was surplus to requirements by the [[Auditors]]. As humans cannot see what they don't want to (a survival trait mentioned in almost all the Discworld novels), nobody (except for [[Sal Lifton|one child]]) in the isolated farming community recognised that the seven-foot skeleton stalking amongst them, speaking in a voice like coffin lids slamming, was actually that. To them, he was a slightly suspicious figure (bumpkins generally regard any foreigner [ie. anyone from further away than they can see] as suspicious), who - through familiarity becomes 'Good old Bill'. Said bumpkins are [[Gabby Wheels]], [[Duke Bottomley]] and [[William Spigot]].

Miss Flitworth watches Death-as-Bill save the life of [[Sal Lifton]], daughter of the owner of the village inn during a fire, and is amazed to find that Bill is in fact Death - a fact he inadvertently lets out when he gives Sal some of his own lifetime. When Bill is threatened by the [[New Death]] he is helpless as his mortality weighs against him, but then Miss Flitworth appears and gives him some of ''hers''. This is all he needs and Bill leaps up to destroy the New Death.

As a reward, he reappears with presents "for a lady" - a box of ''Dark Enchantments'' chocolates (missing the rum truffles), the [[Tear of Offler]] - the world's biggest diamond, and an enormous bouquet of every flower in the shop (dying). However she spurns his offer to take her anywhere because it's the village dance, and she's never missed one. So they go, and they dance all night (Death doesn't need maracas!) - until she is surprised that she's not gasping for breath. In fact she's not breathing. Bill didn't give her a start when he turned up - he gave her a stop. Her life had ended, due to her lending it to him, but Death travelled the length of the space-time continuum to speak with [[Azrael]], the ultimate being, who granted him some extra time with her as a reward.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Flitworth,Mrs]]
[[Category:Human characters|Flitworth,Mrs]]
[[de:Renata Flinkwert]]