Moist von Lipwig

Moist von Lipwig
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Name	Moist von Lipwig
Race	Human
Age	born 1965
Occupation	Postmaster General, Chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, Master of the Royal Mint
Physical appearance	Six foot two, brown-blond hair, average and nondescript.
Residence	Post Office, Ankh-Morpork
Death	Hung under the name of Albert Spangler, still not dead
Parents	both dead
Relatives	grandfather who raised him.
Children	none
Marital Status	Not yet married. Adora Belle Dearheart has, however, consented to make him her husband at some point next year.
Appearances
Books	Going Postal, Making Money and possibly in the upcoming book Raising Taxes
Cameos	Thud!

Swindler, con artist and fraud wanted dead in several cities, and currently Postmaster General and Master of the Royal Mint of Ankh-Morpork. Smitten with Adora Belle Dearheart, whom he calls "Spike". He is, at present, her fiancé (note that it is not the other way around). He revived the postal service in Ankh-Morpork, inadvertently challenging the clacks company, which was stolen from Adora Belle Dearheart's family by a still much bigger fraudster, Reacher Gilt. Reacher Gilt is also rumoured to have had her brother, John Dearheart, killed.

Usually dressed all in gold in his capacity as Postmaster General (with corresponding wingèd golden hat; gold paint, of course), Moist was entrusted with the running of the clacks company after it was ascertained that Reacher Gilt and his gang of financial cronies had obtained the company by illegal means.

He is of a nondescript appearance, leading people who see him to look through him without noticing anything prominent or memorable about him. This proved a valuable asset in his previous profession (for avoiding angry mobs) however this advantage is now negated by his big shiny golden suit that makes him instantly recognizable, at least while wearing it. He consoles himself with the fact that it's the suit that people recognize, rather than him. Moist turns this to his advantage: if he really wants to go incognito, he can just change into the shabby old grey suit that Albert Spangler was executed in. The effect is rather like that of Clark Kent emerging unremarked from a nondescript telephone box - as Superman also knew, people never really look, or make connections from what they see.

As of Making Money and his confessions of his criminal past in open court, it may be that going incognito is far more difficult, and that he may very well become one of Ankh-Morpork's most recognizable citizens, much to his chagrin.

In Going Postal Moist was temporarily linked to the consciousness of the collective letters of the Post office after he delivered one of them and was officially made the Postmaster by the post guild. The consciousness was aware of Moist's shady past but were by that point willing to take anyone as Postmaster so they could be delivered. The link was painfully severed when the Post Office was burnt down: it nearly killed Moist in the process, as Adora noted. He went deathly pale when the consciousness started screaming in his mind.

A definite crowd pleaser, he uses their favour to further his aims. Lord Vetinari seems to hold him in high regard; he appears to be one of his lordship's favourite pawns.

Moist's exploits, recounted in Going Postal, include resumption of the post, in Ankh-Morpork as well as surrounding areas such as Sto Lat and Pseudopolis, the invention of "stamps", facilitating its use, and the liberation of the Grand Trunk from Reacher Gilt and his henchmen. In Thud! Vimes mentions (angrily, of course) that 'that idiot at the Post Office' has brought out a Koom Valley stamp, or rather two : you can choose between the dwarves ambushing the trolls or the trolls ambushing the dwarves.

The invention of stamps eventually leads to their use by the populace of Ankh-Morpork as a sort of paper currency, prompting Vetinari's need to transfer Moist to overhaul the Royal Mint and by extension, the banking system. As Master of the Royal Mint, his new hat of office is a threadbare, worn-out, top hat in worn-through black felt. However, Moist makes a visit to the Boffo emporium on Tenth Egg Street and buys glue and golden glitter for a necessary improvement in keeping with his public image, and so that the hat does not clash with the golden suit. His experiment with the creation of stamps leads him to a wider usage of paper with the creation and use of the revolutionary Paper Money.

It is tempting to note here that as Master of the Mint, Moist is effectively playing Exclusive Possession with two of the standard six game tokens: the Hat and the Dog. If you stretch a point, he also has the services of the Golem Gladys, who irons his trousers just by smoothing them against a wall, instead of using the iron in the postmen's locker room; and the coach motif recurs throughout the book (taking the place of the car/train token - although the coach invariably belongs to another player with an agenda of their own, except for when Moist briefly rides the mail coach at the start of the race). Moist also receives, along with the Dog, the promise of $AM20,000 for passing "Go!" right at the start of the game, due to the bequest in Topsy Lavish's will. And the "Go To Jail" penalty certainly applies to Moist's visits to the Tanty... (To follow this metaphor more closely, see here.)

Although he has recently taken a (rather spectacular) turn toward public service, Moist is still very much in possession of the mind of a criminal, as Vetinari notes happily. He is addicted to the rush, and is never happier than when he is making things up on the fly; almost all of his solutions to the many problems he faces are the result of winging it. When oppressed by the legitimate (and boring) responsibilities of his position(s), Moist has been known to go to increasingly desperate resorts to feed his need for danger, such as taking up Edificeering and Extreme Sneezing as leisure pursuits. Breaking into his own office, when the penalty for getting it wrong is rough justice from vigilante-minded citizens, is just a part of this syndrome, as is his continued pilfering of Drumknott's pencils. Notably, he is much less prone to this behaviour when Adora Belle Dearheart is around, leading to the inevitable conclusion that he finds her dangerous enough that he doesn't need to engage in other crazy stunts. She finds this rather romantic.

Aliases

• Ethel Snake
• Mr Robinson
• Albert Spangler
• Mundo Smith
• Edwin Streep
• Mr Trespass Hatchcock
• Jeff the Drover

Annotation

Moist von Lipwig. Lip wig = "Moist of the false moustache": the master of disguise!

Moist also does self-designed ear wigs. These are designed to draw attention to themselves - say if the mark is trying to explain things to the Watch afterwards about the gentleman with the steady gaze and the firm handshake and the hair growing out of his ears, the one who convinced me that Vetinari had entrusted him with the right to sell the Brass Bridge... all he will be able to describe with any certainty is the eye-catching undergrowth in both ear-holes. Oh, and he might have had a moustache, too...

It is possible that the Patrician is secretly grooming Moist to be his successor.