Ptorne. A Djelibeybian farmer who was a plaintiff before TEPPIC in the Supreme Court. [P]

Ptraci. Favourite handmaiden (and daughter) of King TEPPICYMON XXVII. Long, dark hair; small, pretty jaw; painted toenails. She uses scent like a battering ram. Not a great singer, despite the traditional requirement of handmaidens to be skilled in music; in fact she sounds like a flock of vultures who've just found a dead donkey. Ptraci became Queen of DJELIBEYBI when TEPPIC renounced the throne, whereupon the priests and courtiers found that sweet young handmaidens can be far tougher to deal with than amiable old pharaohs. [P]

Pump, Mr. An eight-foot-tall golem, whom we first encounter as Moist von Lipwig's Parole Officer. He was originally Pump No.19, and stood at the bottom of a hundred foot deep hole and pumped water. He was at the bottom of that hole for 240 years, but is now a government official with perfect recall (he can replicate anyone's voice). Lord Vetinari selected him as Moist's parole officer because Mr Pump does not sleep, Mr Pump does not eat, Mr Pump does not stop. [GP]

Purdeigh, General Sir Roderick. Son of Major-General Sir Ruthven Purdeigh, and Margaret, nee Burberry. He had a distinguished military record before taking up a rather chequered career as an explorer, hampered by his creative lack of direction and by his overbearing att.i.tude to any natives he discovered a major disadvantage to anyone whose only known method of navigation was to stop and ask people the way. He met his end, it is believed, at the hands of the natives of Bhangbhangduc. [DM]

Pushpram, Verity. 'Queen of the Sea'. A trader in fish in Ankh-Morpork's fish market. She is a self-made woman although she could have used some help when it came to her eyes, which are set so far apart that she resembles a turbot. She initially made enough from her stall to buy a boat, then another boat, and then a whole aisle in the fish market. [UA]

Puzuma, ambiguous. The fastest animal on the Disc, the puzuma is extremely neurotic and moves so fast that it can actually achieve near light-speed in the Disc's magical field. This means that, if you can see one, it isn't there. Most male puzumas die young of acute ankle failure caused by running very fast after females which aren't there and, of course, achieving suicidal ma.s.s in accordance with relativistic theory. The rest of them die of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, since it is impossible for them to know who they are and where they are at the same time, and the see-sawing loss of concentration this engenders means that the puzuma achieves a sense of ident.i.ty only when it is at rest usually about fifty feet into the rubble of what remains of the mountain it just ran into at near light-speed. The puzuma is rumoured to be about the size of a leopard with a rather unique black and white chequered coat, although those specimens discovered by the Disc's sages and philosophers have inclined them to declare that in its natural state the puzuma is flat, very thin, and dead. [P]

Pyjama, Hrolf. A dwarf enlisted into the Ankh-Morpork city militia by Carrot. [MAA]

Pyramids. Dams in the stream of time. Correctly shaped and oriented, with proper paracosmic measurements correctly plumbed in, the temporal potential of the great ma.s.s of stone can be diverted to accelerate or reverse time over a very small area, in the same way that a hydraulic ram can be induced to pump water against the flow.

The whole point of a correctly built pyramid is to achieve absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there, will indeed live for ever or at least never actually die. The time that should have pa.s.sed in the chamber is stored in the bulk of the pyramid and allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours.

Many of the Klatchian countries have built pyramids at some stage in their history, but in Djelibeybi they became a national obsession. [P]

Qu. Master of Devices for the History MONKS. He is tall and rather heavily built, with white hair and a straw hat. He has the look of a good-natured bank manager. Qu invented the Portable PROCRASTINATOR, a device for adjusting time in the immediate vicinity of the wearer. In fact, most of his devices, in theory created to aid agents in the field, are achieved by taking the ancient technology of the Procrastinators and harnessing it to practical, everyday purposes such as blowing people's heads off. [TOT, NW]

Quarney. The only shopkeeper in LANCRE. Mrs Quarney also helps him to run the store. [LL]

Quantum. In a nutsh.e.l.l, a word used on Discworld to summarise any complex scientific explanation in pretty much the same way as 'magic', here, is used to summarise any complex occult one. A kind of cosmic 'get out of half-understood explanation free' card, in other words.

Quezovercoatl. The Feathered Boa. G.o.d of Human Sacrifices. Half-man, half-chicken, half-jaguar, half-serpent, half-scorpion and half-mad. Quezovercoatl was both a G.o.d of the Tezuman Empire and a demon. He was also six inches high. Or was. He got trampled to death. The Tezumen now worship a metal-bound chest with hundreds of little legs. [E]

Quimby II, Olaf. A PATRICIAN of Ankh-Morpork. He pa.s.sed some legislation to put a stop to excessive exaggeration in descriptive writing, and to introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a hero that 'all men spoke of his prowess', any bard who valued his life would add hastily 'except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.' Poetic simile was strictly limited and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne. Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb 'The pen is mightier than the sword.' In his memory it was amended to include the phrase 'only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp'.

Quirke, 'Mayonnaise'. He started out in the Night Watch, where he rose to the rank of corporal and where he was thought to have a private income from bribes. He was a bully, a brown-noser and a delighter in small evils. After being booted out by Sergeant Keel he found a niche in the Day Watch, where he eventually rose to the rank of captain. Called 'Mayonnaise' because he's thick, oily, and smells faintly of eggs. Quirke is not actually a bad man in the cla.s.sic sense, but only because he doesn't have the necessary imagination. He deals more in that sort of generalised low-grade unpleasantness which slightly tarnishes the soul of all who come into contact with it.

Quirm. A pleasant little city in a winegrowing area overlooking the Rim Ocean. Wild geraniums fill its sloping, cobbled streets. It has a famous floral clock. And that really says it all about Quirm. It is a dull place. Most of its inhabitants have lived elsewhere during times of considerable excitement and have sworn mighty oaths that it won't happen here.

Quirm College for Young Ladies. School attended by DEATH'S granddaughter, Susan STO HELIT, and also by Miss Perspicacia TICK. It is surrounded by high, spike-topped walls whose aim is to protect its young inmates from the wicked world and whose effect is to cause them to have a keen curiosity about it.

The school uniform is a loose, navy-blue woollen smock that stretches from neck to just above the ankle, with a waistline somewhere around knee level (practical, healthy, and as attractive as a plank). The girls also have to wear their hair in two plaits; if they are dwarfs they may keep their iron helmets on but they have to plait their beards instead.

Riddled with a kind of genteel wrongheadedness though it is, the College is one of the very few establishments in the STO PLAINS where a girl can get other than the most simple vocational education. Its alumni are women who know their own minds, even if no one else does. [SM, TWFM]

Quisition. The sharp end of the religious system in OMNIA. It comprised the inquisitors torturers who extracted confessions and bodily parts from heretics and the exquisitors, who just . . . arranged matters. By and large the inquisitors were simple, burly men who just had a job to do. It was they who would busy themselves about your person with knives and needles and hammers; it was the exquisitor who will talk to you afterwards. Some people who have survived both have said that half an hour with an inquisitor and his complete kit was preferable to a pleasant chat over a cup of tea with an exquisitor.

The Quisition felt they could act without possibility of error. Suspicion was proof. How could it be anything else, it was argued? The Great G.o.d OM would not have seen fit to put the suspicion in the minds of his exquisitors unless it was right that it should be there. Some people pointed out the essential flaw in this argument, but not very loudly and they were often running while they said it.

The Quisition's unwritten motto was: 'CVIVS TESTICVLOS HABES, HABEAS CARDIA ET CEREBELLVM', which, loosely translated, means that when you have people's full attention, you have their hearts and minds. The organisation has now been abolished. [SG]

Quizzing device. A three-ton, water-driven monstrosity based on a recently discovered design by LEONARD OF QUIRM. It is a games machine once used in the Mended DRUM but removed when Captain CARROT of the WATCH found it a useful way of picking up criminal intelligence. [SM]

Quoom, Ishmale. Inquisitor First Cla.s.s Ishmale 'Pop' Quoom. A retired inquisitor in OMNIA. Handed in his knives and corkscrew-shaped things after fifty years, shortly before the Quisition itself was forcibly retired. Remembered as an amiable, good-hearted sort, with plenty of time for everyone, and a man always ready to show apprentice torturers how to break every bone in the human body (including the little ones in the fingers, which are quite hard to do). Breeds canaries in his spare time. [SG]

Quoth. A talking raven owned by C.V. CHEESEWALLER. Originally from the un-kindness of ravens in the forever crumbling, ivy-clad TOWER OF ART overlooking Unseen University, whose innate intelligence has been amplified by the magical radiation from the buildings below. Quoth is not his actual name; ravens have never felt the need for such things. Despite his intelligence, however, he has yet to understand that not every small round glittery thing is an eyeball, or why human beings will cheerfully put out crumbs for robins but stop short of entrails for corvids, no matter how intelligent they are. He has now attached himself to Death's household as the DEATH OF RATS' personal transport and crony. He is only in it for the eyeb.a.l.l.s, he says.

Ramkin, 'Black Jack'. 'Black Jack' Ramkin was regrettably mistaken when he made an enormous drunken wager with one of his equally drunk drinking pals that he could see the smoke of the city from his estate. He was told by a surveyor, who had tested the hypothesis, that Hangman's Hill was thirty feet too short. Pausing only to attempt to bribe the surveyor, and when unsuccessful to subsequently horsewhip the same, he rallied all the menfolk from this estate and all the others round about and set them to raise the hill by the aforesaid thirty feet, a most ambitious project. It cost a fortune, of course, but every family in the district probably got warm winter clothes and new boots out of it. It made him very popular, and of course he won his bet. Two gallons of brandy. Which he drank in one go, at the top of the Hill, to the cheers of the a.s.sembled workforce, and then, according to legend, rolled all the way down to the bottom, to more cheers. [SN]

Ramkin, Lady Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna. (See VIMES, LADY SYBIL DEIRDRE OLGIVANNA) Ramkin, Woolsthorpe. Brother to Mad Jack, the 3rd Earl. He was something of a scholar and would have been sent to the University to become a wizard were it not for the fact that his brother let it be known that any male sibling of his who took up a profession that involved wearing a dress would be disinherited with a cleaver.

Nevertheless, young Woolsthorpe persevered in his studies of natural philosophy in the way a gentleman should, by digging into any suspicious-looking burial mounds he could find in the neighbourhood, filling up his lizard press with as many rare species as he could collect, and drying samples of any flowers he could find before they became extinct.

The story runs that, on one warm summer day, he dozed off under an apple tree and was awakened when an apple fell on his head. A lesser man, as his biographer put it, would have seen nothing untoward about this, but Woolsthorpe surmised that, since apples and practically everything else always fell down, then the world would eventually become dangerously unbalanced unless there was another agency involved that natural philosophy had yet to discover. He lost no time in dragging one of the footmen to the orchard and ordering him, on pain of dismissal, to lie under the tree until an apple hit him on the head! The possibility of this happening was increased by another footman who had been told by Woolsthorpe to shake the tree vigorously until the required apple fell. Woolsthorpe was ready to observe this from a distance.

Who can imagine his joy when the inevitable apple fell and a second apple was seen rising from the tree and disappearing at speed into the vaults of heaven, proving the hypothesis that what goes up must come down, provided that what goes down must come up, thus safeguarding the equilibrium of the Universe. Regrettably, this only works with apples and, amazingly, only the apples on this one tree, Malus equilibria! Someone has now worked out that the apples at the top of the tree fill with gas and fly up when the tree is disturbed so that it can set its seeds some way off. Wonderful thing, nature, shame the fruit tastes like dog's business. [SN]

Ramtops. A range of jagged peaks, upland lakes, dense forests and little river valleys so deep that the day light has no sooner reached the bottom than it is time to leave again. The Ramtop Mountains stretch from the frozen lands near the Hub all the way, via a lengthy archipelago, to the warm seas which flow into s.p.a.ce over the Rim.

Raw magic crackles invisibly from peak to peak and earths itself in the mountains, because the range lies across the Disc's vast magical standing wave like an iron bar on a pair of subway rails. It is so saturated with magic that it is constantly discharging itself into the environment. In the Ramtops the leaves on the trees move even when there is no breeze; rocks go for a stroll of an evening. Even the land, at times, seems alive. It is not surprising that the Ramtops have given the world so many of its famous witches and wizards.

There is plenty of flat land in the Ramtops: the trouble is, it's nearly all flat in the vertical plane. There are little kingdoms all over the place. Every narrow valley, every ledge that something other than a goat could stand on, is a kingdom; LANCRE is one of the biggest.

On the Turnwise slopes, leading towards the STO PLAINS, are the rolling uplands known as the OCTARINE gra.s.s country from the distinctive colour imparted to its vegetation by the ambient local magic. From the highest points in the Lancre area the High Tops you can see all the way to the Rim Ocean. In the other direction, wrapped in eternal winter, they march all the way to the Hub.

The Ramtops have very definite weather. Winter in the Ramtops doesn't mess about; it's a gateway straight through to the primeval coldness that lived before the creation of the world. Winter in the Ramtops is several yards of snow, the forests a mere collection of shadowy green tunnels under the drifts. Winter means the coming of the lazy wind, which can't be bothered to blow around people and blows right through them instead. Ramtoppers have eighteen different words for snow (all of them, unfortunately, unprintable). No dweller in the Ramtops would dream of starting a winter without a log pile on three sides of the house no one in the Ramtops lets their fire go out, as a matter of pride and, in the winter, survival.

And after the snow melts, there's the rain. Ramtop rain has a curiously penetrative quality that makes ordinary rain seem almost dry. It rains a lot in the spring. The weather is full of shrapnel rain and whiplash winds and permanent thunder storms.

The summer and autumn are hot, dry and pleasant. They are also quite brief. The Ramtops breed a phlegmatic, insular type of person.

Rascal, Methodia. Born, painted famous picture, thought he was a chicken, died. He's believed to have painted around Discworld year 1802. Mad as a spoon. He used to write notes he wanted to keep secret from 'the chicken'. His last note is believed to be 'Awk! Awk! It comes! IT COMES!' He is best known as the creator of 'The Battle of Koom Valley' a ten-foot high, fifty-foot long masterpiece which took him years to complete and which was, for a while, owned by the Ramkin family. [T!]

Rat Catchers, the. The two rat catchers encountered during the events of The Amazing Maurice were called Ron Blunkett and Bill Spears. Both wore long dusty overcoats and battered black top hats, with large, shiny, black boots. They had a small terrier. One was big and fat, one was thin in fact they made some effort to comply with all the narrative stereotypes for comic thugs. [TAMAHER]

Re-annual plants. Plants on the Disc, while including the categories known commonly as annuals (which are sown this year to come up later this year), biennials (sown this year to grow next year) and perennials (sown this year to grow until further notice), also include a few rare re-annuals which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, can be planted this year to come up last year. They can be grown only in excessively high magical fields, such as are found in the RAMTOPS.

Re-annual grapes produce wine much sought after by fortune tellers since it enables them to see the future. Although re-annual wine causes inebriation in the normal way, the action of the digestive system on its molecules causes an unusual reaction whose net effect is to thrust the ensuing hangover backwards in time, to a point some hours before the wine is drunk. A hangunder, in fact. These tend to be very bad, because people feel so dreadful with the effect of the alcohol they have not yet consumed that they drink a lot to get over it. Hence the saying: 'Have a hair of the dog that's going to bite you.'

Re-annual crop-growing is an art in itself. It does have some advantages, in that the grower can raise enough on the crop to afford to buy the seed and rent the field, but there are concomitant drawbacks. A farmer who neglects to sow his seed loses his crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that was harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarra.s.sment.

Reet. A lady of the streets rescued from some robbers by CARROT. She was apparently a girlfriend of his for a while, but the relationship foundered quite quickly because Carrot's idea of an exciting time was to walk to some distant part of the city to view an interesting example of iron bollard. [GG]

Reforgule (of Krull). A scientist who theorised that the Disc revolves once in every 800 days in order to distribute the weight fairly upon its supportive pachyderms. [COM]

Remitt. An armourer in Ankh-Morpork. Generally used by the Night Watch when their armour needs repairing. [MAA]

Rerpf. Ran the Groaning Platter, down by the Bra.s.s Bridge, Ankh-Morpork. A short, fat man, very richly dressed. With beringed hands. He was a founder member of the Merchants' Guild. [COM]

Research witchcraft (or whichcraft). A small but very valuable side of the Craft. Eye of what kind of toad? Maw of which sea-ravin'd shark? The Granny Weatherwax view of whichcraft is that it simply doesn't matter, but many witches of an enquiring mind have, down the centuries, experimented with thousands of different ingredients. One of the results is the presumably penicillin-encrusted mouldy bread poultice used by Magrat in Lords and Ladies. The patient was quite lucky. Stretching down the ages must have been considerable experimentation with the antibiotic effects of mouldy cheese, mouldy apples, mouldy sheep, and so on.

Retrophrenology. Phrenology, as everyone knows, is a way of reading someone's character, apt.i.tude and abilities by examining the b.u.mps and hollows on their head. Therefore according to the kind of logical thinking that characterises the Ankh-Morporkian mind it should be possible to mould someone's character by giving them carefully graded b.u.mps in all the right places. You can go into a shop and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection and a side order of hysteria. What you actually get is. .h.i.t on the head with a selection of different sized mallets, but it creates employment and keeps the money in circulation, and that's the main thing. [MAA]

Rham-ap-efan. Admiral of the Djelibeybian navy. [SG]

Rhoxie, The. Palace of the Seriph of AL KHALI. Famed in myth and legend for its splendour. Said to have been built in one night by a genie, and therefore known colloquially as the Djinn Palace. [P]

Rhysson, Rhys. The new Low King of the uberwald dwarfs. He is a dwarf with vision, an astute politician, a new thinker, although he doesn't like Ankh-Morpork very much (he visited the city when he was much younger), and he is considered to be pretty clever. People have described him (though not to his face) as a 'fairytale dwarf with a Hogfather beard'. He is short, even by dwarf standards and he wears leather and home-forged chain mail. He looks quite old, as dwarfs do, and he speaks with the musical cadences of those from Llamedos he comes from a little coal-mining clan near there. [TFE]

Ribobe, Deccan. The last Keeper of the Door in Holy Wood. He took over from old Tento, who himself had taken over from Meggelin people known only from their entries in the logbook kept by the keepers. He wore a frayed ceremonial robe of dark red plush with gold frogging. [MP]

Ridcully, Hughnon. Chief Priest of Blind Io and brother of Mustrum. He is married, but otherwise sensible and solid. Solid as a rock and, sometimes, as sensible. [TT, TLH]

Ridcully, Mustrum. Ridcully the Brown. ARCHCHANCELLOR of Unseen University.

He became a seventh-level mage at the incredibly young age of twenty-seven. He then quit the University in order to look after his family's estates deep in the country.

He had not set foot in Unseen University for forty years when he was made Archchancellor, and his surprising elevation came only because the faculty wanted a bit of a breather after several rather hectic years in which Archchancellors (never a job with long-term prospects) were dying off so fast that they were getting buried with their inaugural dinner only half-eaten. What was needed was someone quiet and easy to manipulate. It was known that Ridcully was an inveterate countryman and it was a.s.sumed that a wizard so close to nature would fit the bill and, if he became a nuisance, could easily be disposed of.

Ridcully in the flesh therefore came as a breath of fresh air in a wind-chime factory.

He has a huge personality. He is quite capable of getting drunk and playing darts all night, but then he'll leave at five in the morning to swim, or at least clamber, in the frozen Ankh or to go duck hunting; at one time he had a pack of hunting dogs installed in the butler's pantry at UU.

He likes beer with his breakfast of kidneys and black pudding and especially likes those sausages, you know the ones, with a transparent skin through which can be seen the occasional green fleck which you can only hope is sage; he is a shameless AUTOCONDIMENTOR and makes his own version of the infamous WOW-WOW SAUCE.

Intellectually, Ridcully maintains his position for two reasons. One is that he never, ever, changes his mind about anything. The other is that it takes him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him this is an invaluable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place. By the same token, he never reads any paperwork put on his desk, reasoning that he'll find out about anything really important when the shouting starts.

Nevertheless, Ridcully isn't stupid; he has quite a powerful intellect but it is powerful like a locomotive, and runs on rails and is therefore almost impossible to steer. He shouts at people and tries to jolly them along. He is brusque and rude to absolutely everyone and he never wastes time on small talk. It's always large talk or nothing. Economy of emotion is one of his strong points.

A key to understanding him is that, like Granny Weatherwax, he sees himself as quite outside the rules which he nevertheless imposes on everyone else. He is quite incapable of understanding any reasonably intelligent joke and therefore frowns upon them; nevertheless he prides himself on his sense of humour, which is rudimentary, and he himself often tells jokes long, dull ones, often with the punch line incorrectly remembered. And, while he is a stickler for his staff to be dressed in proper wizarding robes, he himself avoids wearing them on all but the most formal occasions, although he does of course retain the wizarding hat.

Mrs WHITLOW has made him up a sort of baggy trouser suit in garish blue and red, which he wears for his early morning jog with his pointy hat tied on to his head with string.

The hat is quite a work of art, and he made it himself. It has fishing flies stuck in it. A very small pistol crossbow is shoved in the hatband and a small bottle of Bentinck's Very Peculiar Old Brandy is stored in the pointy bit. The very tip unscrews to become a cup. It also has small cupboards in it. Four telescopic legs and a roll of oiled silk in the brim extend downwards to make a small but serviceable tent, with a patent spirit stove just above it and inner pockets containing three days' iron rations.

His study is dominated by a full-sized snooker table, piled high with papers. Stuffed heads of a number of surprised animals hang on the walls. From one of the antlers hang a pair of corroded boots worn by Ridcully as a Rowing Brown. In one corner of the room is a large model of the Discworld on four wooden elephants.

He is now about seventy. About fifty or more years ago he had a romantic fling with young Esmerelda Weatherwax.

His brother, Hughnon, is the Chief Priest of BLIND IO in Ankh-Morpork, and his uncle lives near LANCRE.

Depending on your point of view, Ridcully is either the best or the worst Archchancellor that UU has had for a hundred years. He is certainly the most long-lived, having survived dragons, monsters, rogue shopping trolleys and, most importantly, his fellow wizards. The unkillability of Mustrum Ridcully has had an amazing knock-on effect through University wizardry, because it has effectively slowed to a halt the practice of rising through the magical ranks by killing wizards of a superior grade.

Some of the fun goes out of this when the man at the top is not only very good at the game, but tends to creep up behind ambitious would-be murderers, shout at them very loudly, and then slam their heads repeatedly in the door.

Riktor. 'Numbers' Riktor. Riktor the Tinkerer. A wizard at Unseen University. A man with a one-track mind; he was convinced that the universe could be entirely understood in terms of numbers and, indeed, was numbers. He invented the reso-graph (a 'thingness-writer'), a device for detecting and measuring disturbances in the fabric of reality. Also the Star Enumerator, Mouse Counter, Swamp Meter and Rev Counter for Use in Ecclesiastical Areas. [MP]

Rimbow. The eight-coloured, world-girdling rainbow that hovers in the mist-laden air over the RIMFALL. A double rainbow. Close to the lip of the Rimfall are the seven lesser colours, sparkling and dancing in the spray of the dying seas. But they are pale in comparison to the wider band that floats beyond them, not deigning to share the same spectrum.

The Rimbow hangs in the mists just beyond the edge of the world, appearing only at morning and evening when the light of the Disc's little orbiting sun shines past the ma.s.sive bulk of the Great A'TUIN and strikes the Disc's magical field at exactly the right angle.

Rimfall. The long waterfall at the vast circ.u.mference of the Discworld, where the seas of the Disc boil ceaselessly over the Edge into s.p.a.ce.

People ask how the water gets back on to the Disc.

Arrangements are made.

Rimfisher. A small bird with a tuft of blue and green feathers, iridescent as jewels. It lives on the Rim, feeding off whatever raw fish plummet past its perch. [COM]

Rincewind. A wizard. At least, generally referred to as a wizard. Strange to tell, it is also the name of the Archchancellor of BUGARUP UNIVERSITY (Bill Rincewind).

Our Rincewind is tall, thin and scrawny, with a raggedy beard that looks like the kind of beard worn by people who aren't cut out by Nature to be beard-wearers. He is a non-smoker (unusual in a wizard). He is a survivor. There are scars all over him. Mostly on his back.

He traditionally wears a dark red, hooded, frayed plush robe on which a few mystic sigils are embroidered in tarnished sequins. The robe has been made darker by constant wear and irregular washings. Under his robe he wears britches and sandals. Around his neck is a chain bearing the bronze octagon which marks him as an alumnus of Unseen University (quite wrongly, it must be pointed out, since he has never pa.s.sed any kind of magical exam). Indeed, he never scored more than 2 per cent in his exams (and that was for spelling his name almost right). On his head is a battered pointy hat with a floppy brim, which has the word 'WIZZARD' embroidered on it in big, silver letters by someone whose needlework is even worse than their spelling. There's a star on top. It has lost most of its sequins.

Unseen University alumnus medallion He was born under the sign of the Small Boring Group of Faint Stars a sign a.s.sociated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plaster images of small religious significance and people allergic to pewter. His mother ran away before he was born, and the young Rincewind grew up in Morpork.

He does have an innate gift for languages, which enables him to shout 'Don't kill me!' and be understood in a hundred different countries. He is also good at practical geography, which means that he always knows exactly where it is he is running away from. He has a razor-sharp instinct for survival equalled only by an uncanny ability to end up in situations where every bit of it is required.

Rincewind's room number as a student at UU was 7a (wizards avoid the number eight). Later, during his spell as Deputy Librarian (an ape's Number Two, as the Dean nastily remarked), he lived in a room close to the LIBRARY used mainly to store old furniture. It contained a large wardrobe (on top of which the LUGGAGE hibernated) and a banana crate which he used as a dressing table. It also housed a wicker chair with no bottom and three legs and a mattress so full of life that it occasionally moved sluggishly around the floor, b.u.mping into things. The rest of the room was a litter of objects dragged from the street old crates, bits of planking, sacks, etc.

There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after all these years, Rincewind has failed to even achieve level one. It was in fact the opinion of some of his tutors that he was incapable of even achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at. It has been contended that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up a fraction.

'To call his understanding of magical theory "abysmal" is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice,' said one of his tutors. He is also not very good at precognition: he can scarcely see into the present.

Some of this is unfair. For a bet, the young Rincewind dared to open the pages of the last remaining copy of the CREATOR'S own grimoire, the OCTAVO. A spell leapt out of the page and instantly burrowed deeply into his mind, whence even the combined talents of the Faculty of Medicine were unable to coax it. No one knew which spell it was, except that it was one of the Eight Great Spells that were intricately interwoven with the very fabric of time and s.p.a.ce itself. Since then, no other spell dared stay in the same head. For that prank, he was expelled from UU.

Subsequently, he has been an unwilling travel guide, has been through h.e.l.l, has visited most of the countries of the Disc, has travelled extensively in time as well as in s.p.a.ce, has been present at the creation of the Discworld where he caused the origin of life by dropping an egg-and-cress sandwich into the sea, has defeated the greatest magic-user on the Disc while armed with nothing more than a half-brick in a sock,13 aided the rebels in the Counterweight Continent, visited x.x.xx (where he was called Rinso) and flown to the Moon. He is believed to have been one of only nine people to have visited the country of DEATH while mortal.

But what Rincewind has always sought is some secure, safe position somewhere, and he seemed to get this when he was appointed as Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography (even though the previous inc.u.mbent was probably eaten by a giant lizard) The post has no salary and total insecurity of tenure, but he does get his laundry done for free, a place at mealtimes and, because of a quirk of the coal porter, seven bucketfuls of coal every day. He also gets his own (superheated) office, and no one chases him much. Despite the fact that he is the least senior member of the UU faculty he is also, now, Chair of Experimental Serendipity, Reader in Slood Dynamics, Fretwork Teacher, Chair for the Public Misunderstanding of Magic, Professor of Virtual Anthropology and Lecturer in Approximate Accuracy. He has in fact acc.u.mulated all those jobs that require absolutely nothing more than that something in theory is doing them.

Rinpo. A HISTORY MONK. Chief acolyte to the ABBOT at the Monastery of Oi Dong. [TOT]

Rjinswand, Dr. This is the name a.s.sumed by RINCEWIND when he and TWOFLOWER appeared briefly on an aircraft in COM. He was then thirty-three, a bachelor, born in Sweden, raised in New Jersey, a specialist in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors. It is believed that, while falling off a dragon in a field of high magical energy, he desperately wished to remain airborne and was re-arranged in the nearest available dimension where this could be possible. [COM]

Rock. (See GALENA.) Rock is a perfectly good name for a silicaceous troll, but it has also become a term of abuse used by the more speciesist humans in Ankh-Morpork.

Rocksmacker, Minty. CARROT'S childhood sweetheart. A dwarf. It was partly in order to get him out of her life that Carrot was originally sent to Ankh-Morpork. After all, as his parents pointed out, when he was 6' 6" she would still be only 4' 2". [GG]

Rodley, Lady Brenda. The Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Quirm. A small, white-haired, wiry woman with a face like old saddle leather. She owns Treebite Brightscale (a swamp dragon) and is a friend of Sybil Ramkin. She lives at the Dower House, Quirm Castle, Quirm. [GG]

Rodley, Lord (of Quirm). Heir to the fabulous Quirm estates. A rather stupid and fat young man who once danced with Death at a party. [M]

Rodney. Brother-in-law to Brother WATCHTOWER. It was his undeserved success (in the view of his brother-in-law) which was one of the motives behind the Elucidated Brethren's search for a better social order, i.e., one where they got more of the cake. [GG]

Roland. Roland de Chumsfanleigh (p.r.o.nounced chuffley it's not his fault). He is now the Baron of the area around the Chalk. He is handsome, in his way, but also so stiff in his way that you could iron sheets on him. His encounters with Tiffany Aching have helped to make him a less starchy person.

Ron, Foul Ole. A member of the BEGGARS' GUILD and of the Canting Crew. He is a Mutterer he seems unable to move without a sort of low-key, random mumbling, and is capable of keeping a pretty good conversation going all by himself. He walks behind people muttering in his own private language until they give him money not to. His familiar phrases included 'Bug'r'em', 'Bugrit' and 'Millennium hand and shrimp'. People a.s.sume that Foul Ole Ron has no grasp on reality but this is not true. He holds very tightly indeed on to reality, but it is not the one shared by most of the rest of the world.

Ron wears a huge overcoat several sizes too big and a felt hat that has been reshaped by time and weather into a soft cone that overhangs the wearer's head. The grubby coat stretches from the pavement almost to the brim of the hat above it. There is a suggestion of grey hair around the join.

Foul Ole Ron is often but not always accompanied by his Smell, which has become so powerful over the years that it has developed a life of its own and often goes about its own occasions in the city without its theoretical owner. It is in fact rather more socially aware than Ron, and has been known to attend the opera while Ron is enjoying a meal of old boiled boots several streets away.

Ronald the Third. A past king of LANCRE. He is believed to have been an extremely unpleasant monarch, and is remembered by posterity only in an obscure bit of rhyming slang. Ronald the Third = . . . er . . . manure. [WA]