Minor Discworld concepts: Encyclopedia - Minor Discworld concepts

Minor Discworld concepts

This article details minor Discworld concepts: concepts and ideas from the Discworld of novels by Terry Pratchett which only appear in the background, or are not well fleshed out.

Minor Discworld concepts - Anorankh

An anorankh is a pseudo-mystical symbol, consisting of an ankh wearing an anorak. It stems from a discussion on alt.fan.pratchett, a newsgroup for fans of British author Terry Pratchett, creator of the highly popular Discworld series of humorous fantasy novels. One user mistakenly used the word "anorak" to refer to the ancient Egyptian symbol of life, the "ankh". A series of puns ensued which was eventually joined by Pratchett himself, who commissioned the first Holy Anorankh from Clarecraft, the company responsible for creating the series of official Discworld figurines. Clarecraft eventually made two designs commercially available, one silver and one pewter. Both designs are generally worn as necklaces or earrings, and they have since become an unofficial symbol of Pratchett-fandom.

In Maskerade, Granny Weatherwax remarks that a girl named Colette is wearing "interesting earrings". This is a reference to a fan that Terry met at a convention; being impressed with her Anorankh earrings, he offered her a cameo in his next novel.

Images of both Holy Anorankh designs are available on the Clarecraft website [1]; if you're having a hard time finding it there, you can see one here

Minor Discworld concepts - Source

The L-Space Web's A.F.P (alt.fan.pratchett) Timeline

Martin Walser's anorak post

Minor Discworld concepts - Anti-crime

A rare type of crime, or rather, the opposite of crime. An anti-crime, as defined in Reaper Man, must:

... be done in such a way that it causes outrage and/or humiliation to the victim. Merely giving someone something is not enough. Examples of this type include breaking-and-decorating, proffering-with-intent, and whitemailing (for example threatening to reveal a mobster's donations to charity).

Even on the Discworld, or more likely, especially on the Discworld, anti-crime has never really caught on.

Minor Discworld concepts - Background magic

On the Discworld, where magic has more in common with particle physics than Houdini, high-level background magic is what happens where a very powerful spell hits, creating a myriad of sub-astral particles that severely distort local reality. Building a house, or even walking into a region where this has happened is extremely dangerous.

If you prefer to remain the same species, shape or level of sanity, stay out of these places.

Low-level background magic simply refers to the standing magical field that allows the Discworld to exist at all.

This realistic new concept of the ramifications of magic may have had influence on other sources of fiction. In Final Fantasy VII, drawing on Materia and Life Force from the planet begins to harm the planet. In the roleplaying game Rifts, the large release of potential psychic energy into the ley lines opens Rifts in reality. In Nightbane, areas where magic is commonly used may have residual energies creating a being out of magic, or attract ghosts or spirits.

Minor Discworld concepts - Battle of Koom Valley

The inhospitable Koom Valley was home to an ancient battle between dwarfs and trolls that both species came to use as an excuse for their mutual enmity. It was said to be the only known battle in which both sides ambushed the other, and acted as inspiration for the development of the game of Thud.

Later engagements have led to a total of sixteen battles of Koom Valley (seventeen counting a "fracas" in Vilinus Pass), only three of which took place in the valley itself. This is in part due to the battle being a convenient patch for rips in time often used by the History Monks, although the History of Thud suggests that something about the valley itself encourages violence (this might be related to the Summoning Dark).

Koom Valley's story is eventually revealed in the novel Thud!: The intention was to sign a treaty, but some took the sudden sighting of their mortal enemies for an ambush and tried to attack. Both sides fell on their own to keep this from happening, and fought until a flash flood destroyed them. The only word to come from the valley was exactly the wrong one.

This led to the continuation of the enmity until the efforts of Commander Vimes of the Ankh Morpork City Watch revealed the truth thousands of years later, in the process uncovering the last resting place of B'hrian Bloodaxe, the first Low King. He was playing an early form of Thud with Diamond, king of Trolls.

The name "Koom" is a reference to the Welsh word cwm, which is pronounced "koom" and means "valley". It appears occasionally in trivia books as an example of an "English" word with no traditional vowels. It also appears in the sentence "Quartz glyph job vex'd cwm finks", a famous pangram (a sentence using every letter in the alphabet).

Minor Discworld concepts - Cable Street Particulars

According to The Discworld Companion, they started out as an intelligence-gathering organisation, connected to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. When Lord Winder was Patrician of Ankh-Morpork they became a secret police organisation, noted for torture and holding without charge. This was destroyed during the events of Night Watch.

Recently Commander Sir Samuel Vimes has given the name to the plain clothes division of the restructured Watch, presumably as a dark reminder of why it shouldn't be given too much power.

The name 'Cable Street Particulars' seems to have been inspired by the Baker Street Irregulars from the stories of Sherlock Holmes.

Minor Discworld concepts - Deja fu

An almost unknown form of martial art, Deja fu is best described as "the feeling that you have been kicked in the head this way before."

In Deja fu, the practitioner travels in time as well as space. He can go back in time and hit his opponent with a series of punches. From the opponent's point of view, the practitioner is standing motionless in front of him, but he feels the effects from the past attacks. Also, the practitioner can put parts of his opponent's body out of time with respect to the rest of the opponent, making attacks ineffective, preventing the opponent from moving or causing the opponent to trip.

Currently, the only practitioner of Deja fu is Lu-Tze, a sweeper at the Monastery of Oi-Dong.

It bears a strong resemblance to the temporal fugue technique from Roger Zelazny's novel Creatures of Light and Darkness.

Minor Discworld concepts - Devices

Devices have so far only appeared in Thud!. Spelt with a capital D, and with enough reverence that it can be heard in speech, 'Device' is the collective term for a variety of artifacts of unknown origin, but with many purposes, all of them of great power and value -"worth mining through a mountain of granite for". Most cubes so far discovered are owned by dwarves, but all were created long before dwarf civilisation.

Devices are apparently indestructible, but apparently it is possible to cause them to deactivate permanently. The types described are Cubes and Axles, though an 'Average bar' is mentioned in passing.

Minor Discworld concepts - Cubes

Cubes are just that in appearance, six inches across, like ancient bronze, and glow green and blue when active. Cubes store approximately 10 years of constant sound, and when first activated by dwarves are filled with natural sounds (such as running water and birdsong).

Cubes are activated and deactivated by set sensual stimuli, which is most commonly a spoken word, but can be "a breath, a sound, a temperature, a point in the world, the smell of rain." Many cubes have never been prompted to work.

It was a Cube, perpetually replaying sounds from the Battle of Koom Valley, that drove the painter Methodia Rascal insane during the painting of his life's work: The Battle of Koom Valley.

Minor Discworld concepts - Axles

Axles are two six-inch-edge cubes joined perfectly on one face. They are presumably in activation and physical nature otherwise similar to Cubes, but this is not explained. When activated, Axles rotate extremely slowly, at a 6.9 second revolution, but have apparently infinite torque. This, combined with their complete autonomy without fuel and the use of a series of gear speed/torque gears allows them to power the mechanics and industries of entire dwarven cities, including tow-powered traffic.

The Patrician Lord Vetinari was gifted an Axle by the dwarven Low King under Überwald Rhys Rhysson for Ankh-Morpork's part in the resolution of the Koom Valley dispute. Its uses in the city are still being researched by the Artificers' Guildmaster Mr. Pony, but in theory it could revolutionize the heavy industrial and municipal workings of Ankh-Morpork. According to Captain Carrot, only three other Axles are known to exist.

Minor Discworld concepts - Average Bar

Average Bars are mentioned, but not described in Thud! Currently nothing is known but one can assume they are indestructible and rare like all other Devices. The fate of the Average Bar in Thud! is unknown but since the Axle from the same mine is now owned by Ankh-Morpork its reasonable to assume the same of the Average Bar.

Minor Discworld concepts - Imp Technology

A number of Discworld labour-saving devices exist which function by trapping small imps. The most notable is the iconograph, but others include watches (The Colour of Magic,Reaper Man, Thief of Time), food processors (Nanny Ogg's Cookbook), razors (Thud!) and personal organisers (Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Truth, Thud!).

The imps in these devices seem not to mind their jobs, although they get sarcastic if overworked or asked to do things outside their purview.

Minor Discworld concepts - Dis-Organisers

There are several different "generations" of Dis-Organiser, which were probably based on the imp-powered watches; the watches themselves fell out of fashion once people decided clockwork was more reliable. All of them have a relentless enthusiasm that distinguishes them from "single function" imps; they want to show off all their abilities, all the time.

The basic Mark I is an imp, in a box, that (theoretically) remembers your diary and memos. It can also recognise handwriting (but can't understand it) and tell you what the time is in Klatch. It can use precognition to find out what your appointments are before you do, but this may lead to it following a different timeline, which can be disturbing.

The Mark II is similar, but also has the ability to change colour, knows several different alarm calls, and can memorise an entire conversation (running its memory backwards to recall it).

The Mark IV (also known as "The Gooseberry" [a play on the BlackBerry]) can deliver messages (Bluenose™ - c.f. Bluetooth), play games, and whistle songs (iHUM™ - c.f. iTunes). It can also, unlike the Mark I, read, and its most useful function is an ability to sort through large amounts of paperwork quickly.

The name Dis-Organiser is both an obvious pun, and a play on "Dis", a name given to one of the circles of Hell.

In The Art of Discworld the Mark I and Mark II are drawn to resemble the Series 1 and Series 3 Psion organisers.

Minor Discworld concepts - Klatchian Coffee

A strong, nearly magical coffee, brewed in Klatch and drunk only by the initiated in very small cups. Not only does it sober you up, it sends you to the other side of sobriety. This state is referred to as knurd, which dispels the soft pink cushions of sobriety and lets you see the world for what it is. In Klatch it is drunk with Orakh (a very violent alcohol made by mixing scorpion venom and cactus sap and leaving it to ferment in the sun for several weeks) to counteract its effects. After a few screams, a lie down and a stiff drink, the occasional drinker will try never to be knurd again.

Klatchian coffee is (presumably) intended as an exaggerated version of Turkish coffee.

Klatch's Coffee was a name of a store in King of the Hill. (To be fair, the reference is more likely to the term "Coffee Klatsch" than the Discworld books.)

Minor Discworld concepts - Latatian

A variation of Dog Latin. Based on the name, it presumably originates from the Sto Plains town of Sto Lat, although it is often referred to as the "Old Language of Ankh-Morpork".

Pratchett describes it as "very bad doggy Latin." It is most often seen in the mottoes of the noble families, civic organisations and Guilds of Ankh-Morpork.

The classic example is the motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch; "Fabricati Diem, Pvnc". This is complete nonsense in Latin, but looks like it means "Make my Day, Punk" (see Dirty Harry), although Sergeant Colon insists it means "To Protect and Serve".

Latatian is also sometimes used by wizards when casting spells. It is also used by wizards and (as in the real world) doctors and lawyers to prevent laymen from knowing what they're saying, as in Albert's response to mysterious writing, "Sodomy non sapiens" ("I'm buggered if I know") and the Morporkian legal principle "Acquiris Quodcumque Rapis" ("You Get What You Grab").

Minor Discworld concepts - Necrotelecomnicon

A book (which also features in Good Omens by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman). Its name comes from a mixture of "Necronomicon" and "telecom".

Since the "Necronomicon" is sometimes referred to as "The Book of Dead Names" or "The Book of The Dead", "Necrotelecomnicon" could be translated as as "The Book of Dead Telephone Numbers" or simply "Phonebook of the Dead". The book is also known as the Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, Latin for "The Book of Yellow Pages".

Written by Achmed the Mad (who apparently preferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches), this book lists all the old, dark gods of the Discworld (i.e. the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions). The First Edition, kept in the basement of the Library of Unseen University, has been known to eat readers. It is said that any man who reads more than a few pages will die insane, which works out fine for the Librarian, who is, in fact, an orangutan.

Minor Discworld concepts - Neuralger

A neuralger is a female demon which comes to men in their dreams and has a headache. They are usually summoned by mistake, by demonologists who were expecting a succubus.

Minor Discworld concepts - Octarine

The eighth color of the spectrum. Most people have cones and rods in their eyes to help them see, but according to the books wizards also have octagons, which allow them to see the color of magic.

To non-wizards, octarine either appears as black or is invisible. It is described as being like a fluorescent greenish-yellow purple (Note that in conventional human colour vision, green is not discernible as green when added to purple; it serves only to desaturate the purple).

Minor Discworld concepts - Quantum

Both quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle have appeared in the Discworld in some form or another; however, neither concept even remotely resembles their counterparts from Earth.

The Uncertainty Principle seems to be simply a "scientific" or "professional" way of saying "I don't know"; Death uses it in The Fifth Elephant as an excuse to appear when people are possibly going to die, apparently in addition to their actual deaths, even though he himself isn't clear what it is. All attempts to explain it outright, such as in The Last Hero, appear to be misunderstood versions of Schrödinger's cat. A slightly more accurate version has been used to explain the peculiar habits of the puzuma, and the unreliability of teleportation magic without assistance from Hex. A related concept is the Theory of Thaumic Imponderability, which says it is impossible to tell exactly what a given spell will do, until it's too late.

Quantum, on the other hand, isn't explained at all; in fact, it serves much the same function as "magic" does on Earth, as described in The Discworld Companion, "a sort of get-out-of-half-understood-explanation-free card" (see "A wizard did it") — essentially, an explanation that does not, in fact, explain anything. It should be noted that just "magic" by itself would not be appropriate as such a non-explanation on the Discworld, since magic is a more or less fully-understood phenomenon. Another explaination of Quantum is given in Pyramids as "add another zero".

It is implied in the books that Ponder Stibbons may have a better understanding of both concepts, but has given up trying to explain them to anyone.

Minor Discworld concepts - Re-annual plant

In addition to the more common annual plants, biennial plants and perennial plants, Discworld harbors a small number of re-annual plants. These are plants which, due to a rare 4-dimensional twist in their genetic structure, flower and grow before their seed germinates. This is usually only possible in areas with considerable amounts of background magic. Farmers who grow re-annual plants are usually very careful about dates of sowing, lest they cause devastating temporal paradoxes (such as dying of starvation because the food one lived off months ago was never grown). The Discworld Almanak also mentions how a garden implement carelessly strewn among reannuals months later can cause serious damage today, indicating that they can move items they are in contact with through time, as well.

When re-annual plant products undergo fermentation, the product is time-reversed alcohol, a rare substance much sought by fortune-tellers and the like, as ingesting it allows some ability to foretell the future, which from the point of view of the plant is the past. Time-reversed alcohol produces inebriation in the normal way, but the hangover is thrust backwards in time to several hours before the actual ingestion of the alcohol. This is known as a hangunder, and is usually very strong since one feels so dreadful one imbibes large amounts of alcohol to get over it.

The only revealed re-annual plant is the vul nut vine, which is remarkable in that it can begin to flower as much as eight years before being sown.

Minor Discworld concepts - Roundworld

Roundworld is the Discworld term for both planet Earth and the "real" universe itself. From a Discworld point of view it exists in a glass sphere at Unseen University, where it is taken care of by Rincewind. It was created by Hex to use up a huge excess of magic, created after the wizards split the thaum. The key point of Roundworld, however, is that it doesn't contain any magic. The wizards are fascinated, however, by the fact it does seem to have rules of its own.

Roundworld is the focus of all three Science of Discworld novels.

Minor Discworld concepts - Scumble

An alcoholic beverage drunk in very small cups some months apart (or served to strangers in pint mugs, as a sort of initiation test).

It was first introduced in Mort which tells us:

"A lot of stories are told about scumble, and how it is made out on the damp marshes, according to ancient recipes passed down rather unsteadily from father to son. It's not true about the rats, or the snakes' heads, or the lead shot. The one about the dead sheep is a complete fabrication. We can lay to rest all the variants of the one about the trouser button. But the one about not letting it come into contact with metal is absolutely true..."

It is a parody of scrumpy and is made with apples. Well, mostly apples. Good scumble apples include the Lancre Blackheart, the Golden Disagreeable and the Green Billet. In Mort it was drunk on the Sto Plains, but in later books it is associated with Lancre, where it is distilled by Nanny Ogg (whose particular variant is known as "Suicider").

When scumble is mixed with dwarven beer, it creates a highly intoxicating cocktail known as "Fluff".

Minor Discworld concepts - Wandering Shops

Also known as Tabernae Vagrantes. One of these was encountered by some members of the Band With Rocks In during the events described in Soul Music, while they were trying to replace a ruined musical instrument. They were there able to buy the guitar which brought the Band fame (or which caused all the trouble, depending on your point of view). When two members of the Band came back to try to get more information about the guitar they were wholly unsuccessful, but after leaving, the presence of a faded '1' on the guitar caused one Band member to wonder who could have pawned the guitar:

"... but, I mean, number one. Even the conch shell was number fifty-two. Who used to own the guitar?"

to which his companion responds:

"Don't know, but I hope they never come back for it."

An equally interesting conundrum is - who did they pawn it to?

Minor Discworld concepts - Wow-Wow sauce

A parody of the real world sauce of the same name. The Discworld version was invented by an uncle of Mustrum Ridcully, and its ingredients include asafoetida, scumble, sulphur and saltpetre. It is a highly unstable substance and believed to be responsible (when combined with a charcoal biscuit) for the elder Ridcully's explosive death. (See Black powder for why the combination might be problematic.) A presumably different uncle of Ridcully's used to swear by (or rather, swear at) Wow-Wow Sauce as a hangover cure; according to Ridcully, "He seemed very peaceful when we came to lay him out".

Albert - Angua - Carrot Ironfoundersson - Cohen the Barbarian - Fred Colon - Death - Detritus - Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - Gaspode - Greebo - Igor - Bloody Stupid Johnson - Leonard of Quirm - The Librarian - Lu-Tze - The Luggage - Mort - C.W.St J. Nobbs - Susan Sto Helit - Rincewind - Twoflower - Havelock Vetinari - Samuel Vimes - The Witches - Ysabell - Discworld gods - more...

Ankh-Morpork - Agatean Empire - Borogravia - Death's Domain - Dungeon Dimensions - Ephebe - Genua - Klatch - Lancre - Muntab - Quirm - Sto Lat - Überwald - Unseen University - XXXX - more...

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