Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion ... So Far, Page 3

  The older – and, strangely enough, the more popular – is Quanti Canicula Ille In Fenestra (lit.: ‘How much is that small dog in the window?’). Its origin is the subject of urban legend but can be traced, as can so many of the city’s oddities, to the reign of King Ludwig the Tree.

  Kings cannot become mad; this is self-evident. Peasants become insane, small traders and craftsmen go mad, nobles become eccentric, and King Ludwig was a little confused and so detached from reality that he couldn’t make contact with it even by shouting and prodding at it with a long stick.

  King Ludwig’s four-year reign was one of the happiest of the entire monarchical period, and people looked forward to his proclamations on subjects such as the need to develop a new kind of frog and the way invisible creatures spied on him when he went to the lavatory. It was less popular among the nobles. Since it would destroy the entire edifice of the monarchical system to admit that the man from whom all power derived actually did go around all day wearing his underpants on his head, an informal system was devised to suggest that, far from being confused, the King was airing an intellect both rarefied and subtle. Monographs were published, agreeing that the modern frog was indeed hopelessly outdated. There was even a brief vogue for wearing head lingerie.

  Anything the King said was treated as an oracular utterance. On the day he was asked to choose from three suggested mottoes for the city, his comment, ‘How much is that doggie in the window?’, was agreed, by a small committee of courtiers, to be the most acceptable of the King’s suggestions, the other two being ‘Bduh bduh bduh bduh’ and ‘I think I want my potty now’.

  It has subsequently been suggested that the motto is in fact marvellously devised for Ankh-Morpork, since it neatly encapsulates a) the city’s intelligent questioning spirit, b) its concern for mercantile matters, and c) its love of animals. Readers who consider this strange should reflect that the motto on the Great Seal of the United States of America comes from a Latin poem about making salad dressing.6

  Ankh-Morpork is the oldest existing city on the Discworld (and known to its citizens/denizens as the Big WAHOONIE). Bisected by the river Ankh, the city is really two cities: proud Ankh, Turnwise of the river, and pestilent Morpork on the Widdershins side, although the pestilence is quite democratic and in fact covers most of the city. Nestling (or, more accurately, squatting) in the Sto Plains, close to the CIRCLE SEA, the city is theoretically built on loam, although in fact it is built on past incarnations of the city, rather like Troy but without the style.7

  Ankh-Morpork has been burned down many times in its long history – out of revenge, carelessness, spite or even just for the insurance. Most of the stone buildings that actually make it a city have survived intact. Many people – that is, many people who live in stone houses – think that a good fire every hundred years or so is essential to the health of the city since it helps to keep down rats, roaches, fleas and, of course, people not rich enough to live in stone houses. Each time, it is rebuilt using the traditional local materials of tinder-dry wood and thatch waterproofed with tar.

  It is generally accepted that the original building in the city was the Tower of Art, around which Unseen University grew up as a sort of keep, and some small parts of the first city wall are still visible. Over the centuries, however, the city’s centre moved downstream as docks were built on the more navigable parts of the river; and fragments of city walls and the general layout of the roads give Ankh-Morpork the appearance, from the air, of a cut onion, although a cut onion smells rather different (i.e. better).

  Over the millennia the city has tried various forms of government; an ancient system of sewers – known only to the ASSASSINS’ GUILD (until Men At Arms) – and a few other details testify to a glorious past (glorious being defined as a time when Thousands of People Could Be Persuaded by Men with Swords to Build Big Things out of Stone). There has been monarchy, oligarchy, anarchy and dictatorship. The current system appears to be a sort of highly specialised democracy; as they say in Ankh-Morpork, it’s a case of One Man, One Vote – Lord VETINARI is the Man, he has the Vote.

  In essence the city is governed as a result of the interplay of various pressure groups. Lord Vetinari positively encouraged the growth of the Guilds, of which there are now some 300 in the city. His reason for doing this may be discerned in his unpublished book The Servant, a compendium of advice and precepts to a young man setting out to govern a fictional city (in the book identified only as AM) in a passage which runs: ‘Where there are clearly two sides to a question, make haste to see that these rapidly become two hundred.’ In practice, the city’s political structure consists entirely of a huge number of pressure groups plotting, fighting, conniving, forming alliances, shouting, scheming, intriguing and making plans, in the middle of which one man is quietly doing things his way.

  Economically, the city is the profitable bottleneck between the Sto Plains and the rest of the Discworld. It is a service centre for the hinterland in several senses of the phrase, and carries out all the functions that citizens usually perform for their country cousins, such as selling them the Brass Bridge at a knockdown price. It is the big city you go to to seek your fortune. And other people also seek your current fortune, small though it may be, as soon as you arrive.

  While it has many of the attributes of the classical fantasy city – Guilds, walls, wizards and so on – Ankh-Morpork is also a working city, with a very large number of small factories and workshops (generally in the Phedre Road and Cable Street areas, and more traditionally along the Street of Cunning Artificers). There is a flourishing cattle market and slaughterhouse district.

  Fresh water used to be brought straight into the city centre by a viaduct now barely visible in Water Street, but it fell down centuries ago and, what with one thing and another, no one ever got around to rebuilding it. Water is now drawn from wells, which are very shallow indeed with Ankh-Morpork’s high water table. This, along with the slaughterhouses and the cabbage fields and the spice houses and the breweries, is a major component of Ankh-Morpork’s most famous civic attribute: its aforementioned Smell. The citizens are proud of the smell; on a really good day, they carry chairs outside to enjoy it. They even put up a statue to it, to commemorate the time when troops of a rival state tried to invade by stealth one dark night; they managed to get only as far as the top of the walls when, to their horror, their nose plugs gave out.8

  No enemies have ever entered Ankh-Morpork.

  This is not entirely true. Technically they have, quite often; the city welcomes free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders always find, after a few days, that they don’t own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they’re just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.

  The city’s inhabitants have brought the profession of interested bystander to a peak of perfection. These highly skilled gawpers will watch anything, especially if there’s any possibility of anyone getting hurt in an amusing way.

  The city’s ‘picturesque’ SHADES, with its crowded docks, many bridges, its souks, its casbahs, its streets lined with nothing but temples, all point to its cosmopolitan style. It welcomes anyone – regardless of race, colour, class or creed – who has spending money in incredible amounts.

  It has been said that the largest dwarfish colony anywhere in the world is in Ankh-Morpork. This may be the case. Certainly the city is home to a large number of dwarfs, a growing number of trolls, and many undead and other special-interest groups. This has caused a number of problems but also some benefits – in jobs, for example. The silicon-based trolls gravitate towards messy jobs because, to them, nasty organic substances are of no more account than sand and gravel would be to a human; vampires tend to end up in the meat business, and often run shops catering for those of a kosher persuasion; undead often undertake dangerous tasks, such as working on high buildings, because nothing can happen to them that hasn’t happened already.

  View across the Ankh

&nb
sp; The associated problems are more traditional. Trolls hate dwarfs, dwarfs hate trolls. It’s a symmetrical arrangement that dates back thousands of years and has accumulated enough ill-feeling that the actual cause is now quite irrelevant. This mutual antagonism has been imported into the city.

  Troll skin, which is as flexible as leather but much, much tougher and longer-lasting, is still occasionally used for clothing by the less socially sensitive, and there is a particularly disreputable tavern (and this is Ankh-Morpork we’re talking about) which is not only called the Troll’s Head but has a very old one on a pole over the door. On the other hand, trolls have been known to eat people (for their mineral content) and the troll game of aargrooha, in which a human head is kicked around by two teams wearing boots of obsidian until it either ends up in goal or bursts, is almost certainly still played in its classical form in remote mountain regions.

  So, mingling in the streets of the city are people whose recent ancestors variously ate, skinned, beheaded or in some cases jumped up and down in heavy boots on one another. That there is not a permanent state of all-out war is a tribute to the unifying force of the Ankh-Morpork dollar.

  There are two legends about the founding of Ankh-Morpork.

  One relates that the two orphaned brothers who built the city were in fact found and suckled by a hippopotamus (lit. orijeple, although some historians hold that this is a mistranslation of orejaple, a type of glass-fronted drinks cabinet). Eight heraldic hippos line the city’s Brass Bridge, facing out to sea. It is said that if danger ever threatens the city, they will run away. Nobody knows why the hippopotamus is the royal animal of Ankh-Morpork. The reasons are lost in the smogs of time. Rome had a she-wolf; on this basis, it is possible that the founders of Ankh-Morpork were suckled, or possibly trodden on, by a hippo. But a hippo seems at least as legitimate as a slug, the city animal of Seattle, Washington. It has been speculated that hippos once inhabited the Ankh. If so, they have long since dissolved.

  The other legend, recounted less frequently by citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water, so – the story runs – they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork. (See also CIVIL WAR, LAWS, MONARCHY, PATRICIAN.)

  Ankhstones. Glittery jewels. Like Rhinestones, but a different river. [S]

  Annagovia, Grand-Duchess. Ruler of Borogravia. A childless, plain, middle-aged woman, whose saggy chin and slightly bulging eyes made her look like someone had put a large fish in a dress. She was worshipped by her people, who called her ‘The Little Mother’. They pray to a portrait of her painted when she was aged forty. At the time of the events of Monstrous Regiment, she had not been seen for thirty years and was believed to still be in mourning for a young Duke who died a week after they got married. He was gored by a wild pig during a hunt. [MR]

  Annaple, Nanny. A witch who lives over the mountain from Bad Ass (no further geographical location has ever been given, which is unfortunate since from Bad Ass everywhere is behind some mountain or other). She owns a billy goat, which is absolutely traditional for a witch. She lost all her teeth by the age of twenty, and has a face so warty it looks like a sockful of marbles; this has led to some coolness between her and Granny Weatherwax, who has never succeeded in looking properly crone-like. [ER]

  Anoia. A (minor) Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers9. Appears as a skinny, tired-looking woman, wearing a sheet draped around her and smoking a dramatically sparking cigarette. She hasn’t been doing drawers long. She used to be a volcano goddess. Now, she also finds lost corkscrews and things that roll under furniture. The other gods also want her to do stuck zips (which she is thinking about). Mostly, though, she manifests when people rattle a stuck drawer and call upon the gods. [W, MR, GP, etc.]

  Anti-crimes. As you might expect on the Disc, even crime has its opposite. Merely giving someone something is not the opposite of robbery. To be an anti-crime, it has to be done in such a way as to cause outrage and/or humiliation to the victim. So there is breaking-and-decorating, proffering-with-embarrassment (as in most retirement presentations) and whitemailing (as in, for example, threatening to reveal to his enemies a mobster’s secret donations to charity). Anti-crimes have never really caught on. [RM]

  Antiphon. Ephebian writer. The greatest writer of comic plays in the world, at least according to Antiphon (in the plays, the actors hit one another with big sticks every time they make a joke and refuse to proceed until someone laughs). Looks as though he is built of pork. [P]

  Anybody, Rob. Big man of the Nac Mac Feegle clan near the village of Tiffany Aching, over on the Chalk. Technically, their Head Man. Smells, as they all do, like slightly drunk potatoes. Married to Jeannie of the Long Lake, he has seven sons and one daughter. Not a natural learner, but strong-willed and determined, he can soon write his own name, [Я]OB NybO D. [TWFM, AHFOS, W, ISWM]

  Apocralypse, The. The Half-Hearted End of the World. The Triumph of the ICE GIANTS. The Teatime of the Gods. Believed to be the time when the Ice Giants, imprisoned by the gods, will break free and ride out on their dreadful glaciers to regain their ancient dominion, crushing out the flames of civilisation until the world lies naked and frozen under the terrible cold stars and Time itself freezes over. Or so it is said. Discworld legend is as unreliable on this as it is on so many other things, hence the name.

  Heralding the event – should it ever happen and not just be an interesting tale someone wrote down after too many mushrooms – a dreadful ruler has to arise, there must be a terrible war and the four dread Horsemen (DEATH, WAR, FAMINE and PESTILENCE) have to ride. Then the creatures from the DUNGEON DIMENSIONS will break into the world . . . Again.

  This has all nearly happened once, but it was delayed and then postponed, partly because three of the four Horsemen had their horses stolen while they were enjoying a pub lunch.

  Something like a full blown Apocralypse threatened the world during the events chronicled in Thief of Time, during which the Four Horsemen actually sided with humanity (why kill off the only creatures who believe in you?) and were aided in this endeavour by the long-lost Fifth Horseman, KAOS, who’d left because of creative differences long before they became famous.

  Arcanum, Mrs. Owner and proprietor of Mrs Eucrasia Arcanum’s Lodging House for Respectable Working Men in Ankh-Morpork. Mrs Arcanum likes Respectable people who are Clean and Decent. She keeps Respectable beds and cooks cheap but Respectable meals for her Respectable lodgers who were mostly middle-aged, unmarried and extremely sober (and respectable). She is not averse to trolls and dwarfs as guests provided they are Respectable. She provides big helpings of food that tastes, well, respectable. One of her lodgers was William DE WORDE. [TT]

  Arch-astronomer. Ruler of KRULL. Responsible for the building of the POTENT VOYAGER and for the death of Goldeneyes Silverhand DACTYLOS, its designer. [COM]

  Archchancellor. Master of Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork and the official leader of all the wizards on the Disc (a polite fiction on a par with the Queen of England also being Queen of Australia). Once upon a time this would have meant that he was the most powerful in the handling of magic, but in more quiet times senior wizards tend to look upon actual magic as a bit beneath them. They prefer administration, which is safer and nearly as much fun, and also big dinners.

  The Archchancellor is elected on the Eve of Small Gods. Well, not exactly elected, because wizards don’t have any truck with the undignified business of voting, and it is well known that Archchancellors are selected by the gods (which wizards don’t believe in). The double doors to the Great Hall are locked and triple-barred. An incoming Archchancellor has to request entry three times before they will be unlocked, signifying that he is appointed with the consent of wizardry in general.

  In more recent times, the lifespan of Archchancellors has be
en seen to be a bit on the short side, as wizardry’s natural ambition took its toll. Unseen University has been in existence for thousands of years, and over the last fifty the average Archchancellor remained in office for about eleven months.

  Unseen University has had many different kinds of Archchancellor over the years: big ones, small ones, cunning ones, slightly insane ones, extremely insane ones – they’ve come, they’ve served (in some cases not long enough for anyone to be able to complete the official painting to be hung in the Great Hall) and they’ve died. The senior wizard in a world of magic has the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo-stick tester in a minefield.

  It should be noted that Mustrum RIDCULLY, at the time of writing, seems to have had a very successful and, above all, injury-free career as AC, and appears to be ushering UU into one of its quieter periods.

  Other Archchancellors thus far encountered include:

  Badger, William

  Bewdley

  Bowell

  Buckleby

  CHURN, Ezrolith

  CUTANGLE

  Hopkins, ‘Trouter’

  Scrawn

  SPOLD, Greyhald ‘Tudgy’

  TRYMON, Ymper (305th)

  Wayzygoose, Virrid (didn’t actually make it) [S]

  WEATHERWAX, Galder (304th)

  Archchancellor’s Hat. The old hat, now replaced (see RIDCULLY, Mustrum), was worn by the head of all wizards, on the head of all wizards. (This is to say, metaphorically it was worn by all wizards – it is similar to the idea that ‘every soldier has a field marshal’s baton in his knapsack’.10

  It was what every wizard aspired to, the symbol of organised magic, the pointy tip of the profession. Through the old hat spoke all the Archchancellors who had ever lived. So it was always believed.