discworld gods - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.pdf

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14/02/14 23:26 Discworld gods - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 52 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld_gods Discworld gods Some of the Discworld gods at Dunmanifestin. L-R: Sessifet (oleft),Oer, Flatulus (behind Oer), Fate, Urika, Blind Io, Libertina, The Lady, Bibulous, Patina (behind Bibulous), Topaxi (in front of Bibulous), Bast (back), and Nuggan. As an interesting background detail, the little sun over the gaming table has an attendant dung beetle on it. The Discworld gods are the fictional deities from Terry Pratchett 's Discworld series of fantasy novels. The Discworld , being a flat disc supported on the backs of four elephants on top of a giant flying turtle , exists in a region of the universe where reality is somewhat less consistent than it appears in our own, more mundane corner of existence. Because reality on the Disc is so fragile and malleable, belief has a tendency to take on a life of its own, and Gods are far more obvious to the people of the Disc than they appear to us.

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Page 1: Discworld gods - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.pdf

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Discworld gods

Some of the Discworld gods atDunmanifestin. L-R: Sessifet (offleft),Offler, Flatulus (behind Offler),Fate, Urika, Blind Io, Libertina, TheLady, Bibulous, Patina (behindBibulous), Topaxi (in front ofBibulous), Bast (back), and Nuggan.As an interesting background detail,the little sun over the gaming tablehas an attendant dung beetle on it.

The Discworld gods are the fictional deities from Terry Pratchett'sDiscworld series of fantasy novels. The Discworld, being a flat discsupported on the backs of four elephants on top of a giant flying turtle,exists in a region of the universe where reality is somewhat lessconsistent than it appears in our own, more mundane corner of existence.Because reality on the Disc is so fragile and malleable, belief has atendency to take on a life of its own, and Gods are far more obvious to thepeople of the Disc than they appear to us.

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Gods are everywhere on the Discworld, a crucial element of the world'speculiar ecology that gives power to belief and demands resolution to anyand all narratives. Gods exist in potentia in numbers uncountable, butthe moment an event of any note occurs — say, two snails happening tocross at a single point — a god becomes tied to it and begins to manifestin the physical world. Most gods remain small and unknown, but a veryfew come to the notice of humanity, whose belief then shapes andstrengthens them until they gather enough power to join the Disc's vast,unwieldy pantheon.

Gods on the Discworld exist as long as people believe in them and theirpower grows as their followers increase. This is a philosophy echoing thereal-world politics of the power of religion and is most detailed in thenovel Small Gods. If people should cease believing in a particular god(say, if the religion becomes more important than faith) the god begins tofade and, eventually, will "die", becoming little more than a faded wispyecho.

A third category of godlike being on the disc is the "anthropomorphicpersonification"; a sentient manifestation of a worldly process, such asDeath, Time or Chaos whose aspects, though not necessarily powers, areshaped by belief. Beings such as The Old High Ones, the creatures fromthe Dungeon Dimensions and the Auditors of Reality appear to existwithout, and in some cases, despite, the power of human belief.

On the Disc, the power of belief blurs the line between godhood andmortality. Many very human characters, such as Mort, Susan Sto Helit,Lobsang Ludd, Jeremy Clockson, Tiffany Aching, and Pteppic havepermanently or momentarily assumed the roles of gods, or at least ofanthropomorphic personifications. Tooth Fairies and the History Monks

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are groups of humans who play godlike roles.

The total number of gods on the Disc is effectively infinite. Of those, thenumber powerful enough to fully manifest is about 3000, according toThe Folklore of Discworld. Here is a list of most of the gods mentioned inthe series to date, describing their roles in the stories.

Gods of DunmanifestinThe major gods live in an Olympus-like mountain-top kingdom in thecentre of the Discworld called Dunmanifestin ("Done Manifesting",which is also as a pun on the traditional British house name Dunroamin).Most of the major gods tend to stay at home, usually limiting theirpresence in the rest of Discworld to the occasional lightning bolt. CoriCelesti, the mountain upon which Dunmanifestin stands, can be seenfrom anywhere on the Disc on a clear day, and has likely made lastingimpressions on most of the original myth-creators. Those gods known (orlikely) to reside in Dunmanifestin are:

Alohura

The lightning goddess of the beTrobi people. Mentioned in The Colour ofMagic.

Aniger

Aniger is a minor goddess of squashed animals. She is a relatively recentaddition to the Discworld pantheon, appearing only after somedevelopments relating to the speed of carts and quality of roads. Sinceshe is witnessed by thinking "Oh God, what was that I hit?", she may bean Oh God(dess), much like Bilious is. She is mentioned in Hogfather

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and The Last Hero.

Anoia

The minor goddess of Things That Stick in Drawers, Anoia is praised byrattling a drawer and crying "How can it close on the damned thing butnot open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?" As she says,sooner or later every curse is a prayer. She also eats corkscrews and isresponsible for Things Down The Backs of Sofas, and is consideringmoving into stuck zips. The Maccalariat family of Ankh-Morpork havebeen Anoians for five generations. She is not part of the number of godspraised at the Temple of Small Gods, but instead has a freelance priestesswho also serves for various other minor deities. Thud! refers to a paintingof Anoia Rising From The Cutlery.

She was previously a volcano goddess, possibly under the name Lela.Anoia (and Lela) are first mentioned in Going Postal. She appears inWintersmith as a tired, skinny woman wearing a bedsheet and smoking acigarette that sparks like a volcano (she began smoking when the StormGod kept raining on her lava). On a whim, Moist von Lipwig named heras one of the gods responsible for his "miraculous" recovery of a largesum of buried money that he had in fact himself buried: since belief iswhat empowers Discworld gods, she benefited tremendously from theresulting surge of believers. As of Making Money her religion has seensomething of a revival, and now she is making a move into becoming theGoddess of Hopeless Causes.

Astoria

The Ephebian Goddess of Love, held in extremely low regard by the god

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Om and sister to the goddess Patina. She bribed Rhome of Ephebe tosteal and hide the Golden Falchion, in return she gave Elenor of Tsort toRhome. Mentioned in Small Gods and Discworld Noir.

Bibulous

The God of Wine and Things on Sticks. He appears as a large, overly-merry man in a toga. In Tsort he is also known as Smimto, and Tuvelpitin Ephebe. He never gets a hangover (those are part of Bilious' portfolio),but he does get the unpleasant side-effects when Bilious takes a hangovercure. The effects of this link, should either ever drink time-reversedalcohol such as vul-nut wine, is undiscovered. His name literally means"one who drinks".

He appears in Hogfather, The Last Hero, and is mentioned (under hisother identities) in Small Gods.

Bilious

The "Oh God of Hangovers" was created as a result of the surplus belief inexistence after the 'death' of the Hogfather. He gets all of the bad effectsof drinking even though he has never touched a drop. He has a supremedislike of people who drink heavily, especially if they don't appear tosuffer from a hangover the next day; understandably so, since the reasonthat they have not, in fact, suffered a hangover, is because he has sufferedit instead.

He appears in "Hogfather", where, having been created mere hours ago,he decides to drop his duties as the Oh God of Hangovers- aided by ahangover cure created by Unseen University- and become holiday relieffor other gods. He also begins dating one of the many Tooth Fairies and

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still exists because of her belief in him.

Blind Io

Blind Io is the current king of the gods. He is completely blind in thetraditional sense but instead has countless eyes, which seem to have amind of their own, orbiting his head. He was eventually compelled to getrid of his raven messengers because of their species' instinctual desire fordevouring eyeballs. He lives in Dunmanifestin where he and the othergods play games with the lives of mortals.

Besides the hammers he also, apparently, uses a "double-handled axe", orat least has one as a symbol. Io is the only thunder god on the Disc. Hegoes by many names and appearances to make sure he keeps the optimalamount of followers. This is not really unfair because all the other godsuse the same trick.

He also has an apparent monopoly on the natural phenomenon ofthunder, as detailed by Om in Small Gods, who stated that lightning wasallowed for common use by all deities but thunder was strictly regulated.Later on in the same book, Om stormed into Cori Celesti, and when Io gotup to see who was at the door, Om broke his nose, and told him to 'takehis face away, while he still had some left'.

The high priest of Blind Io in Ankh-Morpork is, as stated in the bookReaper Man, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully's brother HughnonRidcully. Much like his brother, Hughnon is the leader of all of the Ankh-Morpork religious denominations by dint of constant vigilance.

The Discworld Companion claims that he is not native to the Disc, butwas forced to leave another reality in undisclosed circumstances.

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Errata

The Goddess of Misunderstandings. This little known goddess was thecause of the Tsortean Wars; not, as most people believe, Elenor.Understandably not the most liked goddess, Errata wasn't invited tomany weddings, one of which was Peloria and Theta's. She was notpleased, and so devised a plan for revenge. She had Neoldian forge agolden falchion with "For the Strongest" engraved on it. This caused afight between almost 80 different war gods. Luckily Neoldian had alsoengraved "Batteries Not Included" on the falchion, which fortunately forErrata, caused an argument between Patina, who thought the sword wasa subtly observed metaphor for the hopelessness of existence, andCephut, who thought it was a big knife. In the end it became so heatedthat Astoria bribed Rhome of Tsort to steal and hide the falchion just toshut her sister up. In return, Astoria gave Elenor to Rhome and theresulting extramarital confusion blew up into the Tsortean Wars. (Thisalludes to the Greek myth of the Judgement of Paris and the golden appleinscribed "For the Fairest", created by Eris, the goddess of discord, thatstarted the Trojan War.) Mentioned in Discworld Noir.

Fate

One of the Discworld's most implacable gods, and very difficult tounderstand. He looks like a pleasant, middle-aged man, but his eyes arestarry voids. It is possible (although difficult) to bargain with him, butproverbially impossible to cheat him, although this has been done at leastonce. (Cohen the Barbarian rolled a 7 on a six-sided die by cleaving it inhalf in midair.) He is known to play games against The Lady usingmortals as pawns, and always plays to win. He also plays against othergods; but The Lady is said to be his only serious rival, as Fate always wins

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when the players stick to the rules. (It is also noted that gods never playby the rules). His Temple is situated in the Gods' Quarter of Ankh-Morpork. It's a small, heavy, leaden temple, where hollow-eyed andgaunt worshippers meet on dark nights for predestined and fairlypointless rites. He is said to come from a world other than the Disc.

He appears in The Colour of Magic, Mort, Interesting Times and TheLast Hero.

Fedecks

Fedecks is the Messenger of the Gods, the Ephebian version of Hermes.There was previously a golden statue in the Ankh-Morpork Post Officewhich may have portrayed him. If so, he appears as a radiant figure in awinged hat, winged sandals and a winged fig leaf. He is mentioned inSmall Gods and Discworld Noir, and the statue appears in Going Postal.His name is a reference to the shipping company FedEx.

Flatulus

The Ephebian God of the Winds. He is mentioned in Small Gods andDiscworld Noir, and appears in The Last Hero. His name is a referenceto the word flatulence.

Foorgol

The Ephebian God of Avalanches. Mentioned in Small Gods. Slightlysarcastic, and according to Xeno (a philosopher from Ephebe), 'enjoys ajoke as much as the next-man'.

Ikebana

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The Goddess of Topiary, worshipped by the Militant Servitors of Ikebana.Mentioned in Discworld Noir. She is named after the Japanese art offormal flower arranging.

Jimi

The god of beggars. The Ankh-Morpork Beggars' Guild has a statue ofhim. Mentioned in Men at Arms.

The Lady

The Goddess Who Must Not Be Named (also known as the million to onechance). She is constantly opposed to Fate, and she is just as difficult tounderstand, although where he is implacable, she is capricious. Sinceeveryone believes in her, she does not need to be worshipped, and wouldregard such a thing as taking her for granted. Her favour instantlydisappears if she believes someone is relying on her, or calls her by name(though it is stated in The Colour of Magic that she is attracted to thesound of dice). Attempts to worship her by some members of the Guild ofGamblers led to their deaths within a week - after all, being lucky doesn'tnecessarily mean having good luck.

As such it should be noted that she is behind all good AND ill fortune so,as Cohen noted when he met her, whilst she is the motivating forcebehind the proverbial "million to one shot", she is also the motivatingforce behind the other nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, ninehundred and ninety-nine unsuccessful shots as well, which did notendear her to him.

Her appearance is hard to determine. After witnessing her in person,Rincewind and Twoflower were not able to agree upon what she had

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looked like, other than that she "appeared to be beautiful" and had greeneyes. Her eyes are her defining feature: no Discworld God can change thenature of their own eyes, and hers are green from edge to edge, withoutiris or pupil.

When playing games with mortals, The Lady never sacrifices a pawn, anddoesn't play to win, but rather plays not to lose. Rincewind, who refusesto believe his continued survival against the odds is anything other thancoincidence, is one of her favourites.

The Lady appears in The Colour of Magic, Interesting Times and TheLast Hero.

Rincewind began to say her name in The Colour of Magic but was cutshort; since it began with "L", and in the Audio book version hepronounces "Lu" with a short u, along with all the other aforementionedclues and traits, it is commonly assumed she is Lady Luck. (This wouldseem to jibe with a commonly-held superstition among gamblers that ifthey talk about their luck it will desert them.) Given Pratchett's fondnessfor setting things in opposition it might also be appropriate to refer to heras "Fortune," the opposite of Fate - he cannot be cheated, but she cannotbe beaten. The one time Fate loses a contest with a mortal, it is withCohen the Barbarian, another of the Lady's special favorites (she useshim as a pawn in an earlier novel) and he almost certainly has her aid indoing it (incidentally, Cohen wins in the same way as The Lady did in TheColour of Magic, rolling a seven on a six-sided die, although Cohen'smeans were rather less magical).

Libertina

The Goddess of the Sea, Apple Pie, Certain Types of Ice Cream and Short

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Lengths of String. She appears in The Last Hero and she may or may notbe the same goddess as the Sea Queen, who appears in Small Gods.

Neoldian

The Blacksmith of the Gods. He forged the Golden Falchion and engravedit with the words "For the Strongest - Lagunculae Leydianae NonAccedunt" (Batteries Not Included). He also repaired Leonard of Quirm's'Kite', enabling it to return safely back to Ankh-Morpork. He ismentioned in Discworld Noir and Hogfather and appears (but is notnamed) in The Last Hero.

Offler

Offler is a crocodile god originating from Klatch and is worshipped inmost hot lands with great rivers, and even other parts of the Discworldwhere the people have never even seen any crocodiles. He is described ashaving developed a greater degree of common sense than the other godsin his long existence, leading him to take a more pragmatic approach tomost problems than others do, such as limiting his list of Abominationsto a few undesirable foods so as to attract more worshippers.

Offler is given as an example to the series premise that belief, whichcreates gods, is a reflection of people. Thus Offler rather uncreativelyresembles a human with a crocodile's head, which forces him to speakwith a lisp. He is attended by sacred birds, who give him news fromacross the Disc, and also clean his teeth.

His followers are called Offlians, and the second month of the Discworldcalendar, Offle, is also named after him. The traditional sacrifice to Offlerwhen praying is composed mainly of sausages (per Punch and Judy). The

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sausages are fried, allowing the "true sausagidity" to ascend to Offler bymeans of smell, while the clergy eat the "earthly shell" of the sausages,which the clergy claim taste like ash, as Offler has eaten their essence(Moist von Lipwig commented that this could be the reason that fryingsausages always smell more appetising than they actually taste). Atheistsand non-Offlians are suspicious of this claim.

Despite his traditional moderate behavior, Offler was described as'trigger-happy' by a priest when he struck the golem, Dorfl, with lightningafter the golem doubted the gods (a lightning bolt almost struck thepriest as well, but as he was the head priest of Blind Io the lightning wasaverted and hit the ground harmlessly a few feet away).

Patina

The Ephebian Goddess of Wisdom. She is shown holding a penguin (thisis due to an incompetent sculptor getting a statue wrong). She ismentioned in Small Gods, appears in The Last Hero and is the sister ofAstoria.

Pedestriana

The Goddess of Football, first mentioned in Unseen Academicals, inwhich a statue of her suddenly appears in the basement of the AnkhMorpork Museum, along with an ancient urn painted with a picturecalled "The Tackle". It is implied she may have been influencing theevents of the book to make modern Ankh-Morpork street football closerto the game played by her worshippers. Her name is a play on"pedestrian", someone who uses their feet.

P'tang-P'tang

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The god of a country near Omnia where the people believe there are only51 people in the world, therefore (at least he believes) he has 51worshippers. Appears to be very stupid, probably because of his country'svery simple inhabitants. Resembles a newt. Mentioned in Small Gods.

Reg

The God of Club Musicians. Mentioned in Soul Music.

Seven-Handed Sek

Possibly a parody of Set. There is a charity school run by the SpitefulSisters of Seven Handed Sek in Ankh-Morpork. The eleventh month ofthe Discworld calendar, Sektober, was probably named after him.

Sweevo

The God of Cut Timber who prohibited the practice of panipunitiplastyamong his followers, even though in actuality very few of his followersknew what panupanitoplasty was (he didn't have a clue, either, but did itbecause it worried his worshippers). A minor deity mentioned in severalnovels, including The Last Hero.

Tayloria

The Ephebian Goddess of "negotiable affection," worshipped by ladies ofthe night. Mentioned in Small Gods. This could also be a reference to theword "tailor" seeing as all Discworld ladies of negotiable affection refer tothemselves as "Seamstresses". Also wears a dress that by presentcircumstances is too low and 'skimpy' (translucent).

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Urika

The Goddess of Snow, Saunas and Theatrical Performances for Fewerthan 120 People. She appears in The Last Hero.

Vometia

The ancient Ankh-Morporkian goddess of being sick. "To make anoffering to Vometia..." means vomiting. Mentioned in The Last Hero ashaving faded away from lack of worshipers.

Wilf

Featured in The Discworld Almanak, Wilf is the god of astrology. Fewpeople believe in him or worship him any more, so, in an attempt to keepbelief in astrology going, he personally writes the horoscopes for theAlmanak every year.

Zephyrus

The God of Slight Breezes. Mentioned in The Colour of Magic, DiscworldNoir, and Small Gods.

Gods of the RamtopsThe Ramtops are a series of high mountains that, due to their positionnear the Cori Celesti, lie like a live circuit directly over the point of originfor the Disc's magical field. Reality in the Ramtops is an even morenegotiable proposition than for the rest of the Disc. It is not surprisingtherefore, that gods can also be found there.

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Herne the Hunted

The God of Hunted Animals. Herne appears as a small figure with floppyrabbit ears, small horns and a good turn of speed. He has the unfortunatejob of being the constantly terrified and apprehensive god of all smallfurry creatures whose destiny it is to end their lives as a brief, crunchysqueak; it has been said that he arose from the feelings of prey animalsduring the hunt, whereas other gods of the hunt arose from the passionsof the hunters. He is a parody of Herne the Hunter and is mentioned inWyrd Sisters and appears in Lords and Ladies, where he shows that hemay sometimes serve as champion and protector of hunted animals,when he defended a nest of newborn rabbits by distracting the elvestorturing them.

Hoki the Jokester

A nature god usually found haunting the deep woods of the Ramtops, inwhich he manifests himself as an oak tree or a flute playing half-man,half-goat figure. Thought of by many gods and people alike as a bloodynuisance and a bad practical joker, he was eventually banished fromDunmanifestin for pulling the old exploding mistletoe joke on Blind Io.Hoki parodies various characteristics of Loki and other trickster gods,and is mentioned in Mort, Equal Rites and The Last Hero.

Gods of Skund ForestThe barely inhabited Forest of Skund is also home to a surprisingly largenumber of gods, probably due to its high level of residual magic. Why thisshould be is unclear, though since (at least according to CountCasanunda) it is also home to a certain Queen Agantia, there might be

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more to it than initially apparent.

Moon Goddess

This Druidic Goddess fancies drinking mead from a silver bowl in thecompany of young virgins, among other things. The Druids of SkundForest celebrate the Rebirth of the Moon (a ceremony dating backthousands of years) by sacrificing a young virgin to the Moon Goddess.The virgin, dressed in a ceremonial white robe and golden torc, is led by aprecession of trumpets and percussion instruments to a large and flatstone altar, situated in the centre of a circle of standing stones, where sheis summarily sacrificed, using a knife. Mentioned in The Light Fantastic,when Rincewind, Twoflower, and Genghiz Cohen the Barbarian save thesacrificial virgin, who then complains of "eight years of staying homeSaturday nights down the drain".

She may be the same as the Mother Goddess who, according toPyramids, is worshipped by some believers in her aspect as the Moon(and by others in her aspect as a big fat woman.)

Skelde

In the depth of Skund Forest he is referred to as the Spirit of the Smoke.Local tribesmen believe you must first see Skelde before you can becomea shaman. Mentioned in The Light Fantastic.

Topaxi

A spirit known to the shamans of Skund Forest as Topaxci; the God of theRed Mushroom. Elsewhere he is known as Topaxi; the God of CertainMushrooms, Great Ideas that you Forgot to Write Down and Will Never

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Remember Again, and of People who Tell Other People that 'Dog' is 'God'Spelt Backwards and Think that this is in Some Way Revelatory.

He is mentioned in The Light Fantastic and appears in The Last Hero.

Umcherrel

In the depth of Skund Forest he is referred to as the Soul of the Forest.Local tribesmen believe you must first see Umcherrel before you canbecome a Spirit Master. Mentioned in The Light Fantastic.

Absent godsThese gods are still widely believed in, but no longer openly manifest orplay an obvious role in mortal affairs.

Om

The Great God Om is an omnipotent, omnipresent (only within theboundaries of the Omnian church) god in the country of Omnia. Histemple is situated in Kom, presumably the capital, and his followers areknown as Omnians. Unlike the major gods, who exist within a pantheon,Om is a monotheistic deity whose followers insist that he is the one andonly true God. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Omnians alsoinsisted, up until a hundred years ago, that the world is a sphere.Omnianism is the most oft-mentioned religion in the Discworld series.

The desert country of Omnia is a theocracy on the Klatchian continent,ruled by the Cenobiarch. At the time of Small Gods (a hundred yearsprevious to the time explored by other Discworld novels according toThief of Time), the Cenobiarch was a very old man, and the country was

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actually ruled by his advisors, chiefly Vorbis. A major factor in Omnianaffairs at this time was that very few people actually believed in Omhimself, only in the clerical hierarchy and in the superficial trappings ofreligion.

Because of this lack of belief — the "food" of the Discworld gods — Omhad virtually no power for most of Small Gods and was trapped in theform of a tortoise. He only vaguely remembered the seven prophets whoclaimed to have delivered his commandments and precepts, and Brutha,his last believer, had to come to grips with the fact that the Great God Omwas, in fact, insulting, arrogant, frivolous by self-admission (when hemanifested to one of the prophets, his words had been 'Hey, look what Ican do!' and nothing more), and not nearly as knowing, powerful, orpresent as Brutha had been raised to whole-heartedly believe. Om wasalso selfish and in some regards, amoral. Difficulties also arose becauseOm would immediately recognize other gods, even tell Brutha somegossip about them, but the Omnian religion put to death anyone whosuggested other gods existed. The god at first cared for Brutha onlybecause Om's own survival depended on Brutha's belief, but eventuallygrew to the realization that individual people are worth fighting for andagreed with Brutha that there would be no commandments unless Omadhered to them as well.

Although no one in Omnia at the time of Small Gods actually believed inOm himself, they all believed in his clergy; in particular the Quisition,and in particular what the Quisition did to unbelievers. What theQuisition (consisting of the Inquisition and the Exquisition, or peoplewho can say "exquisite" with a straight face) largely did was torturepeople, as evidenced by their unofficial motto, "Cuius testiculos habes,habeas cardia et cerebellum," which Pratchett loosely translates as

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"When you have their full attention in your grasp, their hearts and mindswill follow." (The line is a reference to a quote attributed by Hunter S.Thompson to Richard Nixon counsel, Charles Colson: "Once you havethem by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."). It is also attestedby their use of the Torquus Simiae Maleficarum ("The Monkey Wrenchof Witches"; a reference to the real-world Malleus Maleficarum or "TheWitches Hammer"). The Book of Om says that witches shall not beallowed to live, although this may be a mistranslation since it also saysthat they may be caught in traps of treacle. This has led some to believethe word may in fact be cockroaches. A theory has also been advancedsuggesting that, in a later passage stating they bring lascivious dreams,the word might actually be translated as "boiled lobsters".

The reason for Omnianism's previous intolerance was not that Om wasan intolerant god, but because he was largely an indifferent one. Afterspending some time trapped in the shape of a tortoise in Small Gods, hisperspective was changed, and he allowed Brutha to turn Omnianism intoone of the Discworld's more moderate religions, although they still insistOm is the only real god, or at least the only god worth worshipping. Omnow refuses to manifest directly and demands that his followers developtheir own theology and ethics based on faith in his existence and his lastfew commandments, redacting the former Omnian creeds into a simplecode of nonviolence and moral uprightness. Omnianism now demandsthat Om triumph over competing gods not through military force but inthe "marketplace of ideas". The church has thus become more evangelicalin its methods, and its followers can be seen going from door to door toconvert unbelievers. Omnianism is consequently proving popular,because a god that doesn't actually do anything is somewhat comforting.Owing to Brutha's allowance of opposing viewpoints, the church also

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schisms every couple of weeks.

Many modern Omnians are given names like "Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments", "Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets" and "Mightily-Praiseworthy-Are-Ye-Who-Exalteth-Om". Thisin contrast to older Omnians, who were given bloodier names. The namesparody Puritan "hortatory names" like "O-Be-Joyful", "Fear-the-Lord","Job-Raked-Out-of-the-Ashes", and "If-Jesus-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned" Barbon.

In Monstrous Regiment, Vimes refers to Om as a "very popular" god, inpart due to the fact he "imposed very few abominations and no specialclothing, and was rather loose on prayers".

Tak

The creator god of the dwarfs, first mentioned in Thud!. The dwarvishcreation myth states that Tak first "wrote himself", then "wrote theLaws," then "wrote the World", then wrote a cave and a geode. The geodehatched and from it emerged two brothers. One left the cave and saw thesky; he was the first Man and he was enlightened. The other went deeperinto the cave; he was the first Dwarf, and he was endarkened. Hereearlier forms of the myth differ from later forms; in the earlier version,Tak notices that the geode is striving to become alive, and as reward forthe service it had given, makes it into the first troll; in a later, reeditedversion (written by dwarfs as propaganda), the geode comes alive of itsown accord and was left to wander the world without purpose.

Though the dwarfs believe in Tak as a creator, dwarves are not religious;Tak left as soon as he created the world and doesn't demand eternalloyalty or followers. One dwarf - Grag Bashfull Bashfullson - gives a

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Deistic summation that "Tak does not require us to think of him, onlythat we think."

Other pantheonsSome cultures, particularly the non-human races, have their ownpantheons of gods completely separate from the main stream ofDiscworld mythology.

Djelibeybian gods

Most of Djelibeybi's gods were likely to have been invented by the HighPriest Dios. Paradoxically, many of them exclusively perform the samegodly duties, with a large number claiming functions such as supremacyover the other gods and the right to push the sun. When they temporarilymanifested in Pyramids (while Djelibeybi was temporarily in its own setof dimensions), they spent most of their time fighting each other ortormenting humans for fun. They include:

Bast - The cat-headed God of Things Left on the Doorstep or Half-digested Under the Bed. The name is shared with the historicalEgyptian cat-goddess more typically known as Bast, but Discworld'sBast is a male while real-world Egyptian Bast is a female. TerryPratchett has also mentioned Bast with regard to his theory of cat-naming in The Unadulterated Cat; that a cat's name is for shouting,and should be short, sharp and sound somewhat like invective. He ismentioned in Pyramids and appears in The Last Hero, making himthe only god seen to continue to exist after Dios disappeared.Bin - The Supreme God.Bunu - The goat-headed God of Goats.

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Cephnet- The god of CutleryChefet - The dog-headed God of Metalwork. He carries a hammerand is known as the maker of rings and the weaver of metal.Cephut - The God of Cutlery. At the wedding of Peloria and Theta,Cephut started an argument with Patina over the Golden Falchion.Mentioned in Pyramids and Discworld Noir.Dhek - The Supreme God.Fon - The Supreme God.Fhez - The crocodile-headed God of the Lower Djel. An animosity isshared between him and Tzut.Gil - The Sun God.Hast - The Supreme God.Hat - The vulture-headed God of Unexpected Guests.Herpetine Triskeles - The sole ruler of the world of the dead,possibly based on Hermes Trismegistus.Jeht - The Boatman of the Solar Orb.Juf - The cobra-headed God of Papyrus.Ket - The ibis-headed God of Justice, probably based on Thoth.Khefin - The Two-Faced God of Gateways, perhaps inspired byJanus. The last known High Priest of Khefin was the bald-headedHoot Koomi, who served during the Year of the Cobra.Nept - The Night Sky Goddess whose blue naked body stretches overthe heavens, possibly based on Nut.Nesh - The Goddess of the Sun and blower of the spinning blue soapbubble which is the sky. The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirrorhold that the sun was in fact merely a round hole in the soap bubblewhich opened into the fiery real world beyond, and that the starswere the holes that the rain came through.Net - The Supreme God.

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Orexis-Nupt - The sole ruler of the world of the dead.Ptooie - The Supreme God.Put - The lion-headed God of Justice. He is often depicted holding apair of scales.Sarduk - The Goddess of Caves. One of the older goddesses, whosefemale worshippers are known to "get up to no good" in sacredgroves.Sessifet - The naked blue Goddess of the Afternoon, also appears inThe Last Hero and Discworld Noir.Set - The Supreme God.Silar - The catfish-headed God who alone rules the world of thedead.Sot - The Supreme God.Syncope - The sole ruler of the world of the dead.Scrab - A giant dung beetle known as the Pusher of the Ball of theSun.Teg - The easily amused horse-headed God of Agriculture.Thrrp - The Charioteer of the Sun.Tzut - The snake-headed God of the Upper Djel. An animosity isshared between him and Fhez.What - This Sky Goddess was believed to eat the sun every evening,but save and plant one pip in time to grow a fresh sun for the nextday.Vut - The bad smelling, 70-foot (21 m) tall, dog-headed God of theEvening.Yay - Whose eye is the sun, toiling across the sky in his endlesssearch for his toenails.

The Djelibeybians also recognize Blind Io as the Supreme God.

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Genuan gods

The Voodoo religion of Genua has a wide range of minor gods, or loas;the voodoo practitioners understand where gods come from and can feedsmall gods intentionally. Amongst those mentioned in Witches Abroadare:

Hotaloga AndrewsLady Bon AnnaMaster Safe Way - The Discworld version of Mait' Carrefour, godof the crossroads, and a play on the Carrefour and Safewaysupermarket chains.Stride Wide ManBy the end of the book Baron Saturday (named after BaronSamedi) may also have gained local divinity.

Troll gods

Chondrodite - Troll god of love. Causes trolls to fall in love byhitting them on the head with a rock. Mentioned in Moving Pictures.Gigalith - Bestows wisdom on trolls by hitting them on the headwith a rock. Mentioned in Moving Pictures.Silicarous - Bestows good fortune on trolls by hitting them on thehead with a rock. Mentioned in Moving Pictures.Monolith - A mythic troll hero figure of dubious position. He firstwrested the secret of rocks from the gods (the secret being that youcan hit someone with one). Even though the famous human Fingers-Mazda (Thief of Fire) is usually credited with being the Disc's firstthief, Monolith probably predates him considerably ("Troll gods werehitting one another with clubs ten thousand years before we'd even

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stopped trying to eat rocks" ~Samuel Vimes, Men at Arms). In Feetof Clay, however, statues of Monolith are referred to as "trollreligious statues", indicating that he is also some kind of demigod orsimilar. (Kaos makes a remark in Thief of Time about how "someonesteals fire from the gods, and he becomes a god," so the same thingmay have happened with Monolith.) He is also mentioned in MovingPictures.

Ice Giants

Similar to the Jotuns of Norse mythology, the Ice Giants are apparentlynecessary for the Apocralypse. When this came close to occurring duringthe events of Sourcery, the Ice Giants, described as huge beings made ofice with tiny, coal-like eyes and riding tame glaciers, hurtled downtowards the civilised world. They spoke with a pronounced Nordic accent.Nowadays seemingly redundant, they engage in small conflicts with theGods on the smallest pretext, currently their refusal to return thelawnmower and not turning their loud music down. While they may beopposed to the Gods of Dunmanifestin, by the Discworld definition, theIce Giants are nonetheless gods, and are worshipped whenever one oftheir rather inaccurate effigies (snowmen) are made. Pratchett suggestedin The Discworld Companion that they might be a kind of troll.

Small godsThis article is about the concept of small gods. For the Discworld novelalso called Small Gods, see Small Gods (novel).

Small gods are a special classification of deity unique to the fictionalDiscworld. They are the gods of slightly significant places, say the point at

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which two ant trails cross. On the Disc, the power and presence of a godwaxes and wanes according to the number of believers. A small godtherefore is a god without enough believers to manifest in any significantform. There are two very different kinds: those who have yet toaccumulate enough believers and those who were once powerful but havebeen forgotten. Of the former there is an almost infinite number on theDisc; Pratchett compares their hidden ubiquity to that of bacteria in ourworld. The other may still have memory of its former days, but itsidentity will be almost completely lost, even to itself.

A god may become small even if it has a large following. It is wellestablished in the novel Small Gods that while many people callthemselves Omnians, this has more to do with the participation in thereligious institution rather actual direct belief. Therefore, while thefollowing is large, the god Om himself is very small, both in size andpower.

A household god on the Discworld is a small god that has a limitednumber of committed believers, perhaps only one, but nonethelessenough to manifest in a specific visible form. The Unseen University wasplagued by a plethora of household gods in Hogfather when a surfeit ofbelief caused by the Hogfather's absence led to their uncontrolledrandom generation. It could be argued that the great god Om, havingbeen reduced to just one true believer, was a household god for most ofSmall Gods.

The city of Ankh-Morpork has a Temple of Small Gods, which providesspiritual solace to those who, while they may accept the idea of a deisticpresence in the universe, don't really have a clue what it might be. Itscemetery is the favoured burial ground of the City Watch.

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The following is a list of those gods named so far which could beconsidered small gods or household gods:

Big Rat Underground

The creator god somewhat hazily conjectured by the Clan in The AmazingMaurice and his Educated Rodents. Some of the Clan believe that if a rathas been a good rat, then when the Bone Rat comes, he will take them tothe Big Rat, who has a tunnel full of food. Most of the rats who thinkabout this are continually questioning it, so it's not clear if there isenough belief for a god to form. Still, one rat's near-death experienceseems to suggest there may be something similar to the Big RatUnderground waiting for the Clan beyond death.

Bilious

The "Oh God of hangovers". His reason for being is to feel the after-effects of drinking, instead of the god Bibulous (the Discworld's Bacchus).He is one of the characters who appears during the events of Hogfather,due to there being a lot of unused belief floating around.

Thanks to the wizards of the Unseen University Bilious' symptoms arereversed for a time and he is able to help Susan on her quest (and makeBibulous feel thoroughly miserable. After all, everyone knows a goodhangover cure has got to involve a lot of humorous shouting, et cetera,and this one was made by wizards; however, since Bilious always receivesBibulous' hangovers, the negative effects of the cure are transferred in theopposite direction). While most of the beings created in Hogfatherdisappeared at the end, it is possible he remained because of the beliefthat Violet (a tooth fairy) had in him, in which case he may have begun a

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relationship with her, and started a career as a temp-worker for gods thatwant a holiday. Or, alternatively, since it is impossible to die in the ToothFairy's Castle, he could still be there as he is unable to vanish from lack ofbelief.

Bilious appears in the TV version of Hogfather played by Rhodri Meilir.

Ceno

A "rather liberal" god in the opinion of Constable Visit, "not big oncommandments". His followers died out fighting some of the mostgruesome wars in the history of the Unnamed Continent. An excerpt fromthe Cenotine "Book of Truth" was the Chem of the golem Dorfl, untilCarrot Ironfoundersson purchased him and set him free by replacing itwith the receipt of the purchase.

Czol

The goddess Czol was an ancient goddess of Thut before that land sankunder the sea some 9,000 years ago. One does not ask about her.Mentioned in Going Postal on a list of things that a messenger can't dealwith. She is an ancient form of Mrs. Cake.

Glipzo

The Howondalandish tribe of this Goddess believed that their ancestorsresided in the Moon. After a signal from their ancestors (an unusuallylarge flare from the Moon) they were urged to kill anyone who didn'tbelieve in Glipzo. Three years later the tribe was destroyed by a rockfalling out of the sky, as a result of a star exploding a billion years before.Mentioned in The Last Hero.

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God of Evolution

The paradoxical God of Evolution appears briefly in The Last Continent,where he is found 'sculpting' animals. Since he hasn't figured outreproduction yet, he makes every animal unique.

Although no-one believes in the God of Evolution, he survives thanks tohis own strong belief. He does not believe in himself, because he is anatheist, but he believes in what he does. During events detailed in TheLast Continent, he briefly takes on Ponder Stibbons as an apprentice, butscares him off when he reveals his most perfect creation to be thecockroach. He subsequently appears in The Science of Discworld III:Darwin's Watch, where he is inadvertently responsible for a lot ofconfusion.

Hyperopia

The Goddess of Shoes. She has a small following that gathers in theTemple of Small Gods and worships the Sacred Lace of Hyperopia.Mentioned in Reaper Man and Discworld Noir.

Lamentatio

The Goddess of Interminable Opera. She is one of the many gods andgoddesses recognised in the Temple of Small Gods. Mentioned inDiscworld Noir.

Nuggan

Nuggan is the locally worshipped monotheistic and omnipotent God ofBorogravia, but elsewhere he is known as the God of Paperclips, Correct

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Things in the Right Place in Small Desk Stationery Sets, and UnnecessaryPaperwork. He usually sports a fussy little moustache.

His holy writ (the Book of Nuggan) is a Living Testament, into whichmore material is added on a regular basis. All believers regularly addpages to the ring binder Appendices, which then eventually fill with morecommandments, usually Abominations unto Nuggan. By the time ofMonstrous Regiment, his commandments were becoming rathernonsensical — among his ever-growing list of Abominations (Which eventhe other gods of the Discworld thought are a little over the top) werecats, the colour blue, Dwarfs, oysters, mushrooms, chocolate, garlic,babies, cheese, the smell of beets, ears, jigsaw puzzles, crop rotation,shirts with six buttons, and rocks. He is also very opposed to the clackssystem, as it interferes with the prayers of the faithful. This is the localbelief; however, the climax of the novel reveals that Nuggan's actualinvolvement in the Abominations has been next to nil for years if notdecades, and the true source was simply fearful echoes in the minds ofthe populace.

His existence is the basis for Monstrous Regiment and he appears in TheLast Hero. In The Last Hero, the bard Cohen the Barbarian kidnaps turnsout to have been raised a Nugganite, and, having not been privy to therevelation at the end of Monstrous Regiment, holds a massive grudge forthe Abominations, nearly throttling the god in his rage.

He is now probably dead because belief has switched to hisabominations, similar to the events leading to Om's weakening in SmallGods; although he may carry on outside of Borogravia thanks to his otherspecializations.

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Ukli

The God of a Howondalandish tribe which wiped out the nearby N'tuitiftribe at his signal (an unusually large flare from the Moon). Shortly after,this tribe was also wiped out by another tribe who worshipped thegoddess Glipzo. Mentioned in The Last Hero.

Ur-Gilash

Thousands of years ago this god was a major competitor against Om. Thegod now being completely forgotten by humans, only Om recalls theexistence of Ur-Gilash. As a small god, he may have been encountered byOm while the tortoise-god was crossing the desert with Brutha. Om andBrutha came across a small god who knew genuine god-speech, whichwas such a rarity that given the location, Om reasoned that it was onceUr-Gilash himself. Mentioned in Small Gods.

DemonsThe term "demon" is essentially interchangeable with "god" on theDiscworld. It is even possible for some to be both at the same time.Pratchett explains the difference between them as being essentially thesame as that between "terrorists" and "freedom fighters".

Astfgl

Astfgl is a Demon Lord, appearing in Eric. At the start of the book he hasbeen made King of Hell, and his modern, go-ahead attitude is driving theother demons to distraction. In particular, Astfgl believes demons shouldoperate Hell and extend themselves to the Discworld by creating suchinstances of extreme and inescapable boredom that the human brain

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turns to mush and the condemned soul realizes there are worse thingsthan eternal pain (Particularly since they don't even have bodies anymore and hence can't actually feel pain unless they want to). By the end,thanks to the machinations of his more old-fashioned rival Vassenego, heis "promoted" to Life President of Hell, a job that consists of writing"policy statements" while Vassenego rules in his stead.

Imps

Imps are tiny demons that perform minor tasks rapidly. A number ofDiscworld labour-saving devices exist which function by trapping smallimps (it is implied that they are made using magic, and in Making Moneythey are described as a "living spell", but small 'wild' demons have alsobeen used). The most notable is the iconograph, but others includewatches (The Colour of Magic, Reaper Man, Thief of Time), foodprocessors (Nanny Ogg's Cookbook), razors (Thud!) and personal "dis-organisers" (Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Truth, Thud!).

The imps in these devices seem not to mind their jobs, although they getsarcastic if overworked or asked to do things outside their purview. Theyalso seem to lack imagination making them (theoretically) more reliableto do things correctly.

Neuralger

A neuralger is a female demon which comes to men in their dreams andhas a headache at them. They are usually summoned by mistake, bydemonologists who were expecting a succubus. The Neuralger ismentioned in Eric, although a similar concept appears in Pratchett's(non-Discworld) drabble Incubust.

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Quezovercoatl

While being basically a demon of relatively low rank, Quezovercoatl (alsoknown as The Feathered Boa), was the god of Human Sacrifices in theTezuman Empire's state religion. He appears in Eric and is described ashalf-man, half-chicken, half-jaguar, half-serpent, half-scorpion and half-mad (a total of three homicidal maniacs). Because his physical form wassome six inches tall in real life, he had relied on appearing in visions toguide his followers. Conversion was probably sped by the bloodthirstynature of his religion and the fact that the Tezumen were at the timeworshipping a stick. Eventually he was forced into appearing physicallyby Astfgl, whereupon he was trampled by The Luggage. After some timespent worshipping the Luggage, to no avail, the Tezumen finally killed offtheir priests and settled for atheism. His name is a portmanteau of theAztec god Quetzalcoatl and the word "overcoat".

Orm

The Great God of the Strict Authorized Ormits. He can usually be foundresiding in one of the Nether Hells. As of the Year of the Cobra there areonly two known worshippers left; a student assassin (Arthur Ludorum)and his mother.

The correct worshipping of Orm seems to consist of sacrificing a goatwithin a double circle with occult runes, a sprig of herbs and a rope ofskulls. It is said that, as a punishment for not worshipping him, Ormcomes in the night, winds out your entrails on a stick and sucks out youreyeballs. By the completion of his assassin training, Arthur appears tohave become a "lapsed Ormite", having noticed the aforementionedpunishment never happened. Mentioned in Pyramids.

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Anthropomorphic personificationsAn anthropomorphic personification is a natural process endowedwith human form and personality. On the Disc, personifications are fullyfledged characters whose personalities have evolved beyond their "jobs".The difference between "god" and "anthropomorphic personification" inthe Disc's pantheon is unclear; essentially it appears to be that a "god" isa being assigned a wide range of roles and powers by human belief, whilepersonifications embody concepts and things that would exist whetherpeople believed in them or not. However, AnthropomorphicPersonifications of the disc would cease to exist if total belief in themstopped. (see The Hogfather.) Belief shapes how a personificationmanifests, not what it does. There are a number of ambiguities. Forexample, Death is certainly a personification (since living things diewhether or not people believe they do), as are his fellow Apocralyptic(Apocryphally apocalyptic) riders Kaos, War, Pestilence and Famine.However, Fate and The Lady (i.e. Lady Luck), despite personifyingconcepts, are better thought of as gods, since one has to believe in fate orluck for them to exist.

The Auditors of Reality

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The Auditors of Reality are fictional godlike beings and one of themajor recurring villains in the series, although they lack the necessaryimagination to be truly evil.

The Auditors of Reality are supernatural celestial bureaucrats. They makesure that gravity works, file the appropriate paperwork for each chemicalreaction, and so forth. The Auditors hate life, because it is messy andunpredictable, which makes them fall behind on their paperwork; theymuch prefer barren balls of rock orbiting stars in neat, easily predictableelliptical paths. They really hate humans and other sentient beings, whoare much more messy and unpredictable than other living things, andthey have attempted more than once to deal with this 'problem'.Fortunately for humanity and every other living thing, the Auditors can'tsimply wipe out life, because that's against the Rules; the Auditors can'tbreak the Rules because, in a certain sense, they are the Rules.Unfortunately, a loophole exists in the Rules which allows the Auditors toinfluence humans into doing what they cannot do directly; in several ofthe Discworld novels, the Auditors hire humans to perform tasks thatwill make the world less "messy", paying them with the gold they createdout of thin air using their abilities to manipulate reality.

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Being personifications of a concept, the Auditors have no fixed shape.When they manifest in the world, however, they almost always appear asempty grey cowled robes, an appearance which conveys drabness anddullness rather than danger. They do not speak, but rather alter reality sothat they have already spoken. Pratchett represents this idiosyncraticform of communication in simple plain text, without quotations, anditalicized in some books. They are, in a sense, similar to the Things fromthe Dungeon Dimensions in that they represent a higher abstractprinciple hostile to ordinary mortal life, but from the opposite directionof Law rather than Chaos (see Michael Moorcock's Eternal Championseries). The History Monks categorise the Auditors and the Things fromthe Dungeon Dimensions as the same class of being, dhlangs or evilspirits, but see the Auditors as the most dangerous, at least according toLu-Tze, who names them the "Enemies of Mind".

The Auditors have no discerning characteristics among themselves andfunction as a collective; when one speaks, it speaks for all of them, andeach Auditor works uniformly with countless numbers of other Auditors.When discussing matters and making choices they work in groups ofthree: one to agree, one to disagree and one to mediate the two, thuscovering all angles of possible debate to find the best solution. In the rarecases when an Auditor appears to develop an individual personality (suchas using a personal pronoun to refer to itself or experiencing an emotion)it instantly ceases to exist, because 'to be an individual is to live, and tolive is to die'. This happens because, as far as the Auditors are concerned,to have a personality is to be a living being with a beginning and an end;the intervening time between them seems infinitely small to entities whohave experienced eternity. This does not seem to have any impact on therest of the Auditors except perhaps as an example to be avoided, because

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another Auditor immediately takes the place of its vanished colleague. Inthe Discworld novel, Thief of Time, they temporarily inhabited humanbodies they had made from the constituent elements and tried to discoverhow and why humans act as they do. But as they soon discovered, merelytaking on the forms (as Myria LeJean did before them) causes them tonaturally start assuming the same 'messy' traits they had been trying toavoid—particularly emotions, a trait of particular shock to ones unused tothe experience.

Appearances in the Discworld novels

The Auditors of Reality have appeared in the Discworld novels ReaperMan, Hogfather, Thief of Time and The Science of Discworld III:Darwin's Watch.

In Reaper Man, they decide that Death has become too sympathetictoward humans, and therefore force him to retire. However, following theintervention of Azrael, Death of the Universe and ruler of all Deaths, thisdecision is overturned, allowing Death to return to his job.

In Hogfather, the Auditors attempt to destroy the Hogfather, whom theysee as a symbol of humanity's 'messy' creativity, and hire Mr Teatime, anAssassin, for the job.

In Thief of Time, the Auditors decide to stop time, so as to stamp outhumanity's 'messy' nature. One of their own, who refers to herself asMyria LeJean, assumes human form and hires Jeremy Clockson to builda clock which will halt the passage of time. With the help of Susan,Lobsang Ludd, the Horsemen of the Apocralypse and the disillusionedMyria, this plan is foiled.

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In The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch, the Auditors influenceCharles Darwin to write a book entitled The Theology of Species, insteadof his original book The Origin of Species. This is intended to cause adelay in the technological development of the humans on Earth, and soprevent them from being advanced enough to leave this planet when itbecomes uninhabitable.

Bogeymen

See: Undead (Discworld)

The Creator

The Discworld Creator appears in Eric. He is a little rat-faced man with aput-upon voice made for complaining, who created the Discworld whilethe main universe was being built, and it was obviously on a budget.

He was not responsible for creating the entire universe, and is somewhatdisparaging of it, describing the Big Bang as "showy". After creating theDiscworld, he left behind his personal grimoire, the Octavo. This was,apparently, typical absent-mindedness; he says he once created a worldand completely forgot the fingles. No-one noticed, because they evolvedthere and didn't know there should be fingles, but they could tell therewas something missing somewhere, and it caused them deeppsychological problems.

Rincewind is believed to have had a hand in creating humans on theDiscworld, as described in Eric, when he met the Creator and dropped anegg and cress sandwich (with no mayo) that the Creator had brought intobeing for him, into a rockpool. He believes that this may have kick startedevolution, and isn't happy about it (possibly because this was the first

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good thing to happen to Rincewind, and he wasn't there to see it).

The various aspects of the Creator's act of Creation are rememberedvaguely by the spirits of the Octavo, who spend a great deal of timearguing over which event was the true act of Creation. They are describedin mythological terms but seem more mundane than they might appear –the Cosmic Egg is described as "rubbery" – and it is only later that welearn how mundane these events appeared when the Creator actuallyperformed them.

It is strongly implied that the Creator's physical appearance is a referenceto Terry Pratchett himself, and he is a self-parody of Pratchett's own actof creation in writing the novels.

The Creator of XXXX

The Creator of XXXX is not the same Creator who made the rest of theDisc. As described by "Scrappy" the kangaroo (a manifestation of aTrickster), after the world was made, there was a big space in an oceanwith nothing in it, so another Creator added on another continent.Kangaroos are apparently a kind of signature – he includes them in everyplace he creates (implying that Australia itself was created by him, butalso possibly in reference to Australian cartoonist Rolf Harris, whofrequently includes "Rolf-aroo" self-caricatures in his work). The Creatoris described as being an old aborigine man, with skin as black as spaceand deep set eyes. He wears just a loin cloth, and carries a spear, a leathersack that contains the universe (according to legend), and a boomerang –described as being a large, heavy, gently curving object that does notreturn on account of being stuck in the ribcage of what it was thrown at.He doesn't speak unless he has to, and only speaks in a whisper when he

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does – and the ground rumbles slightly at even that. As described in TheLast Continent, he doesn't dare raise his voice in "the shadow world" lesthe raise mountains as well.

Death

Main article: Death (Discworld)

The Hogfather

The Discworld's version of Father Christmas or Santa Claus. He wears ared, fur-lined cloak, and rides a sleigh pulled by four wild boars (or, inmodern portrayals, cute pink piggies), Gouger, Rooter, Tusker andSnouter. In earlier times he gave households pork products, and naughtychildren a bag of bloody bones. Earlier than that, he was a winter god ofthe death-and-renewal kind. The modern version is a jolly toymaker, withvestiges of the earlier myths (such as his Castle of Bones, a vast palace ofice which has nothing notably bony about it, except for the suggestion ofa protruding femur or scapula here and there) still clinging to him.

In the book Hogfather, the Hogfather first appears in the manifestationof a wild boar. Death and his granddaughter Susan manage to save him,in order that the sun might rise in the morning. Without the Hogfather,according to Death, the Discworld would merely be 'ILLUMINATED BY ABALL OF GLOWING GAS.'

The Hogfather is one of a number of beings that hover on the boundarybetween "god" and "personification", yet probably is best thought of asthe latter, since people still receive presents at Hogswatchnight, even ifthey no longer believe in him. The Hogfather was first mentioned inReaper Man and dealt with extensively in Hogfather.

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The Horsemen of the Apocralypse

Besides Death, the Horsemen of the Apocralypse are War, Famine andPestilence (and, originally, Kaos). Like Death (and many otheranthropomorphic personifications) they have developed beyond theirroles. They make a brief appearance in The Light Fantastic andsubsequently have more significant roles in Sourcery and Thief of Time.War and his children also make an appearance in Interesting Times.

War is an overly jolly and enthusiastic man, something like the lesssadistic kind of gym teacher, in red armour. He is married to aformer Valkyrie, who does his thinking for him, and has lost someinterest in war by Thief of Time, although he likes watching ants fightin his garden. They have two sons (Terror and Panic) and one

daughter (Clancy).[1] Clancy appears to be about seven years old, andwears a hard hat and a Pony Club badge.

Famine is, as his name suggests, permanently hungry (or at least,permanently eating, although this may be merely to ensure others gohungry). While he enjoys good food, he also enjoys salad creamsandwiches. Amongst the personality traits he has picked up fromhumans is arrogance.

Pestilence's sense of self has led to a sense of self-preservation.Beyond that, his most notable personality trait is an annoyance withsoap, although he likes hospitals, which gather sick people together.In early appearances he spoke in italics (representing a voice thatsounds contagious), but this was dropped by Thief of Time.

Jack Frost

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Leaves frosty tracings on icy windows. Can draw anything, but happensto really like fern patterns. Mentioned in Hogfather, when the newlycreated Verruca Gnome (a household god that went around dispensingfoot warts) convinced him to branch out from ferns, feathers, and paisley,and there are references throughout the rest of the book to a windowforming a picture such as three puppies looking out of a boot.

Kaos, aka Ronnie Soak

An anthropomorphic personification of Chaos, originally spelled with a"K". The fifth horseman of the Apocralypse who left before they becamefamous (a play on the fifth Beatle), known for his disruptive behaviorwhenever the horsemen attempted to interact with mortals, a parody ofvarious stories of temperamental rock stars. Rides a chariot rather than ahorse and wields a sword so cold that it has negative heat – it radiatescold, symbolizing in general Kaos' power to reverse entropy and violatelaws of probability.

His abandonment of the Four Horsemen coincided with a decreasingsense among humans of the nature of the unpredictable Kaos from whichthe universe sprang as their world became increasingly civilized. He waspersuaded to return to power in a new form by Lu-Tze, one of "hiscreatures" (an individual naturally defiant of odds and of the way thingsought to go), after learning how to exist in a symbiotic rather than hostilerelationship with order, and also that the vastly increasing complexity ofcivilization and laws only made their effects more widespread andunpredictable. In Thief of Time, he changes from the ancient Kaos of oldto a slicker, altogether more modern and mathematically complex Chaos(Pratchett uses the butterfly effect and fractals as recurring themesleading up to this). His intervention is decisive in giving the other four

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horsemen the power to defeat the "overwhelming odds" of the Auditors,for whom he holds a special hatred and whom he refers to as "The Law".

When not heralding the destruction of all that is (or saving it from theAuditors), he runs a very fine dairy, using his super-cold sword (which isso cold that he is considering expanding to ice cream to keep things fromgetting too cold) and his ability to move outside of time to be able to sellany dairy product in existence (derived from any species' milk, includingalligator), perfectly fresh, perfectly cold, and always arriving at precisely7:00 a.m. simultaneously at every household in the city to sell his wares.Known for being the only person punctual enough to please JeremyClockson's preternatural awareness of time.

Old Man Trouble

Comes round your door if you ain't got rhythm and you ain't got music.It's best if you don't mind him. Mentioned in Soul Music, Thief of Timeand Hogfather as one of the gods who, having lost his purpose, has trulygone insane. Also mentioned as being in an Anhk-Morpork bar in Feet ofClay. A reference to the George and Ira Gershwin tune "I Got Rhythm".

The Sandman

Presumably the personification of slumber, The Sandman uses bags ofsand to put people to sleep, though in Soul Music it is mentioned that hedoesn't take the sand out of them, implying that he uses the bags to knockhis clients out.

Soul Cake Duck

An analogue of the Easter Bunny, it comes on Soul Cake Tuesday (the

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Disc's equivalent of Halloween). Soul Cake Tuesday is also the start of theduck-hunting season, which complicates the story somewhat. The firstduck to appear on Soul Cake Tuesday is considered very lucky, althoughthis luck clearly doesn't apply to that duck itself. Mentioned in SoulMusic and Hogfather, with further details from The DiscworldCompanion. Soul cakes are a real-world feature of Halloween in someparts of England.

It can also be seen as a reference to Pancake Tuesday in the UK, as it alsoalways falls on a Tuesday, and shredded duck is commonly served inpancakes.

The Summer Lady

The spirit of Summer, she is asleep when the Wintersmith is awake andvice versa; they meet only at the Spring and Autumn Morris dances. Sheappears towards the end of Wintersmith resembling Tiffany Aching, butsays her real form is "the shape of heat on a road, the shape of the smellof apples". She is, at her core, the element of Fire. Her natural home, her"heart", lies in the blasted deserts where all life dies. She speaks in a hissand has golden, snakelike eyes. She carries a cornucopia, and plants growwhere she walks. Like all elementals she does not understand humans,which makes her somewhat petulant when forced to deal with them.

Time

Originally a dark-haired woman who resided in a palace of glass, she hadan affair with the founder of the History Monks, Wen the EternallySurprised, which led to the birth of two sons, or, more accurately, twodifferent versions of the same son. One, Lobsang Ludd, eventually

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became a History Monk himself under the tutelage of Lu-Tze; the other,Jeremy Clockson, became a brilliant if socially maladjusted clockmaker.The Auditors eventually fooled Jeremy into constructing a truly accurateclock, which halted the passage of time. Able to move outside of time,both "brothers" eventually met and fused, becoming the newpersonification of Time, allowing history to recommence from where ithad left off, and their mother to go on a long honeymoon with Wen. Thisnew personification has been romantically linked with Susan Sto Helit,Death's granddaughter. Appeared in Thief of Time.

Tooth Fairy

Unlike our concept of the Tooth Fairy, the Discworld Tooth Fairy isoperated as a franchise. Tooth collection is subcontracted to ordinaryyoung women who walk the streets at night with money, ladders andpliers (the pliers are necessary in case the tooth collector finds herselfwithout the correct change – a second tooth can be taken to balance thebooks). The Tooth Fairy lives in an unreal place shaped by the idea of achild's painting. The entity that became the Tooth Fairy personificationwas originally the first bogeyman. The bogeyman's stated purpose inestablishing this was to prevent the teeth from falling into the wronghands, as they could be used to control the children. It seems thatcenturies of watching children had given it an affection for them, muchlike Death has for humans. The role is eventually delegated to BanjoLilywhite by Susan Sto Helit. Appears in Hogfather.

The Wintersmith

The personification of Winter, he appears in Wintersmith, where hebelieves he's fallen in love with Tiffany Aching. At his core he is the

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elemental personification of ice. Originally just a shape in the snow, withtwo violet eyes, he later formed a "snowman" out of all the elements thatmake a human body. He creates snowflakes and icebergs, and also thepatterns of ice on windows (which may make him the same as Jack Frost,although this does not appear to be the case. Possibly Jack Frost is asubordinate, or an avatar of some kind, or merely formed from theextraneous belief like the Verruca Gnome).

Other personifications

In the novel Hogfather the "demise" of that personification led to theuncontrolled random generation of a number of anthropomorphicpersonifications as the excess belief that would have normally gone intosustaining the Hogfather sought other outlets. Some, such as Bilious,the Oh God of Hangovers – whose entire role in life was to have theheadache while the God of Wine had the party – appear to have survivedthe Hogfather's return to power. The fate of the rest is unknown, thoughthey are likely to simply have vanished. These personifications includedthe Cheerful Fairy, a kind of motivational speaker with a whistle and atracksuit, the Blue Hen of Happiness, a pun on the "bluebird ofhappiness" that accompanies the Cheerful Fairy, the Scissor Man (aplay on the "great, long, red-legged scissor man" from Shock-HeadedPeter), the Hair Loss Fairy, the Eater of Socks, which lives nearwashing machines and has an elephant's trunk, and The Stealer ofPencils, a birdlike creature with a long beak like a pencil sharpener, thatuses up pencils. The Verruca Gnome was created by Mustrum Ridcullywhen remarking about his own opinion that a gnome to hand outverrucas has just as much probability of existing as a tooth fairy. The firstof these personifications to be created was the GlingleglingleglingleFairy, which makes the jingling sound that occurred whenever one of the

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new personifications manifested, and thus, as Pratchett notes, could beconsidered a kind of "meta-personification".

The Old High OnesThese are beings far more powerful than gods (who are, from their pointof view, only slightly more troublesome versions of human beings) whocontrol the workings of the multiverse. There are eight of them,according to The Discworld Companion, and they are not worshipped onthe Discworld, the general populace being unaware of their existence.They are only very ambiguously referred to in some of the Discworldreligions and the most that Discworld scholars have learned is that eight'entities' exist.

There is no single word that can effectively explain their role, whichseems to be to observe in a dynamic way, in order for the observed eventsto actually be able to happen (think of the old Berkeleian question "If atree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, does it make asound?"). It might be simpler to say the multiverse exists because theybelieve in it.

Virtually nothing is known about their role in Discworld affairs, exceptthat, in prehistory, they substantially reduced the amount of magic on theDiscworld and made humans smaller, owing to the strain the Sourcererswere putting on the fabric of reality in their war on the gods and eachother.

Death is their servant, and it is likely that The Creator and Time are aswell. They are also the apparent employers of The Auditors of Reality,although they seem to ignore the Auditors' recent tendency to break their

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own rules. Presumably they have their reasons.

They may be derived from the Great Old Ones in the fiction of H. P.Lovecraft.

Only one has been mentioned in the books so far, Azrael. The other seven– if they have names – have not been revealed.

Azrael

Azrael, also known as the Great Attractor and the Death of Universes, isapparently not a worshipped god on the Discworld, but he existsnonetheless, and is an entity of enormously unthinkable scope and size.While there are many 'Deaths' for different worlds (who are themselvesdivided into Deaths for different creatures) in the Discworld novelsAzrael is their ruler. All other Deaths are aspects of him (a similarrelationship as the Discworld Death has to the Death of Rats).

When he appears, it is as a figure so immense as to make a supernova amere gleam in his eyes and he takes a whole page to say YES. His sizesuggests that he may, in fact, be the universe itself. He also appears to bethe keeper of what is logically the opposite of a clock, in that it tells Timewhat it is, and not the other way around. Azrael's connection with thepersonification of Time (currently the combination of Lobsang Ludd andhis temporal double Jeremy Clockson) is unknown. Statements of theclock seem to indicate that it is a measure of the life of the entire universe(the Universe hand only goes around once). The clock also bears a minutehand, a millennium hand, and an eon hand.

In the revised version of The Discworld Companion, Azrael is describedas one of the Old High Ones.

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Azrael clearly has a personality and a concept of mercy like his servant,the Death of the Discworld. He appears in an integral role (although notparticularly often) in Reaper Man and overrules the Auditors' wishes,allowing the Discworld Death to carry out his own merciful bending ofthe rules for a personal case when he agrees to Death's demand Lord,what can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?

Dark Gods[original research?]

Although Pratchett never makes the connection explicit, the dark gods ofthe Necrotelicomnicon are probably creatures from the DungeonDimensions that have found a way to survive in the main discworlduniverse. If that's the case, then they cannot be seen as gods per se, oreven as demons, since their existence is not dependent on human belief;nor can they be placed on the same moral spectrum as gods or demons,since, as they are completely lacking in vitality, they are neither good norevil, but the opposite of both. Rather than being generated by humanbelief, they instead represent the aspects of reality that are trulyunknowable and hostile to the attempts of human belief to shape it intorecognizable forms. The names of the Dark Gods are often references tocreatures from the Cthulhu Mythos.

The Necrotelicomnicon itself is a powerful grimoire. Its name is aportmanteau of H. P. Lovecraft's "Necronomicon" and "telecom".

Since the "Necronomicon" is sometimes referred to as "The Book of DeadNames" or "The Book of The Dead", "Necrotelicomnicon" could betranslated as "The Book of Dead Telephone Numbers" or simply

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"Phonebook of the Dead". The book is also known as the LiberPaginarum Fulvarum, Latin for "The Book of Yellow Pages". It lists allthe old, dark gods of the Discworld (i.e. the Things from the DungeonDimensions). The First Edition, kept in the basement of the Library ofUnseen University, has been known to eat readers. This is not unusual forlibrary items. It is said that any man who reads more than a few pageswill die insane, which works out fine for the Librarian; he is an orangutanand thus, not a "man".

It was written by the Klatchian mystic Achmed the Mad, who apparentlypreferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches, (a parodyof H. P. Lovecraft's mad Arab Abdul Alhazred) after drinking too muchKlatchian coffee. Achmed is also the author of Achmed The I Just GetThese Headache's Book of Humorous Cat Stories, the writing of whichwas said to have driven him mad in the first place.

Grimoires called Paginarum Fulvarum (Yellow Pages) also appear inGood Omens (co-written by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) and Gaiman'sSandman comic book. Pratchett calls it a "shared joke", and in thededication to Equal Rites thanks Gaiman for lending him the lastsurviving copy of the book.

Bel-Shamharoth

Bel-Shamharoth is also known as the "Soul-Eater," the "Soul-Render," orthe "Sender of Eight." The inner dimensions of his eight-sided templedisobey a fairly basic rule of architecture by being bigger on the insidethan on the outside, like many other Discworld buildings. It is quitedisgusting, full of tunnels covered with unpleasant carvings anddisjointed skeletons, and lit by a violet light almost black. The eight-sided

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crystals set at intervals shed a rather unpleasant glow that does not lightthe room, rather emphasizing the darkness. The floor is covered witheight-sided tiles (impossible with regular octagons, which do nottessellate, but possible for some irregular eight-sided figures, andhyperbolic octagons) and the walls slope to create eight-sided corridors.Even the stones can sometimes be seen to have eight sides. All routes leadto the centre, where an intense violet light illuminates a wide room witheight walls and eight passages. In the room, there is a low, eight-sidedaltar and a huge stone slab, also eight-sided, and slightly tilted. Underthat is a black tentacled creature with an enormous eye and thousands ofsuckers and tentacles and mandibles: Bel-Shamharoth.

The temple is long since abandoned, worship of the Sender of Eight beinga decidedly short term prospect. These days he is mostly remembered inthe name of the Young Men's Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God Bel-Shamharoth Association. His likeness is etched on the cover of theOctavo.

Terry Pratchett is well known for his references to, and parodies of theworks of other authors, and indeed Bel-Shamharoth is one such- he bearsmany similarities to Cthulhu of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Yog-Sothoth is another of Lovecraft's entities, who is referred to as "the eaterof souls" in Shea and Wilson's Illuminatus!. Also in that work Yog-Sothoth is imprisoned in a castle of five sides, not eight. With these, alongwith the hyphenated name, one could suggest that Yog-Sothoth is also apartial inspiration for Bel-Shamharoth.

Another, possibly better, source might be the name Shemhamphorasch,one of the alternate Hebrew names of God, which has over the centuriesacquired occult significance and was adopted by Anton LaVey for rituals

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of his Church of Satan.

Moving Pictures, however, also lists a more direct parody of Yog-Sothoth— the "outerdimensional" entity Yob Sodoth, recognisable by hisdistinctive cry of "Yerwhatyerwhatyerwhat!" The latter is a famousfootball (soccer) chant, indicating that the opposing fans are barelyaudible; in this context Yob Sod Off is a more likely derivation. (InEngland the word 'Yob' is a term for a person of rude and disrespectfulbehaviour.)

Other

Other Dark Gods mentioned in the series include The Insider — aparody of the Lovecraft short story "The Outsider", and C'hulagen(likely a portmanteau of Cthulhu and hooligan, or just a bastardisation ofcollagen), both of which are mentioned in Equal Rites. The computergame Discworld Noir features a parody of Nyarlathotep, the CrawlingChaos, named Nylonathetep, the Laddering Horror. Tshup Aklathep,Infernal Star Toad with a Million Young, who according to VictorTugelbend tortures his victims to death by showing them pictures of itsgrandchildren until their brains implode, is an amalgam reference toShub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young,and Tsathoggua, often described as "toad-like".

References