Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion ... So Far Read online

  Skunk Club, Brewer Street, SoSo. You can buy drinks and watch females of various species take their clothes off (in the case of trolls, put their clothes on; trolls are normally stone naked, in their natural surroundings, and the males find the idea of the females wearing fifteen overcoats strangely exciting. They’ve never understood why humans seem to see things the other way – after all, they say, it’s not as if you don’t know what to expect. Most troll robers get embarrassed and rush off after putting on no more than fourteen layers of clothing).

  Smell Preservation Society, Ankh-Morpork [SN]

  Überwald TEMPERANCE Movement. Also the Überwald League of Temperance. The Black Ribboners [TT, NW]

  Unpleasantly Squeaky Animal Front [FGD]

  White Hand Gang [FGD]

  Young Men’s Pagan Association [LF]

  Young Men’s Reformed Cultists of the Ichor God Bel-Shamharoth Association [P]

  Coalface. A troll privy cleaner in Ankh-Morpork. Sometime right-hand troll for CHRYSOPRASE, but not a henchman on account of failing to understand how to hench; subsequently enlisted into the militia by Corporal, now Captain, CARROT. Considered stupid by other trolls. This is like being considered flat by other carpets. [MAA]

  Coates, Ned. Constable in the Night Watch when Vimes was a new recruit. Promoted to lance-corporal by Sergeant Keel. A freethinker, probably a revolutionary at heart and better fighter than Keel in every respect except that of unscrupulous cunning. A hero of the Glorious Revolution of 24/25 May (it happened overnight). [NW]

  Cohen the Barbarian. The greatest hero the Disc has ever produced, with an uncanny ability to get close to money. His father drove him out of the tribe when he was eleven and he has been living on his wits and other people’s nerves ever since. When first encountered, he was a skinny, little eighty-seven-year-old; totally bald, with a beard almost down to his knees and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins have traced the street map of quite a large city.

  Cohen had only one working eye – the other was covered by a black patch. He has so many scars that you could play noughts and crosses on him, although your hand would have been chopped off if you dared. His teeth quit long ago but, inspired by TWOFLOWER, he obtained a set of dentures made of troll’s teeth, which are diamond. He also suffered from lumbago, arthritis, backache, piles and bad digestion, and smelled strongly of peppermints as an alternative to just smelling strongly.

  Although he could read, after a fashion, he never really mastered the pen and he signed his name with an ‘x’, which he usually spelt wrong. He is, nevertheless, claimed as the author of Inne Juste 7 Dayes I wille make You a Barbearian Hero! There is some evidence that C. M. O. T. DIBBLER was involved in this publication.

  Cohen, in fact, just went on doing what he has always done. Many a younger opponent challenged him in the belief that he couldn’t be any good because he was so old, whereas a moment’s thought would suggest that since he’d managed to become old he must have been very good indeed. He was also something of a philosopher. His answer, when asked what are the greatest things in life, was: ‘hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper’.

  Possibly it was in search of these towards the end of his life (and even closer to the end of the lives of anyone who stood in his way) Cohen put together his SILVER HORDE of equally elderly men and conquered the AGATEAN Empire, where he effectively became new Emperor. However, the soft life got them all down, and faced with the unthinkable prospect of dying in their beds the remnant of the Horde undertook one last, very final adventure. They climbed CORI CELESTI, the Disc’s central mountains and the home of the gods, to – shall we say – get their own back.

  What finally became of them is a little unclear. Cohen’s life was just too big, it seems, for mere death to put an end to it.

  Coin. The eighth son of the wizard IPSLORE THE RED and a SOURCERER. When we encountered him, he looked about ten years old, with a slender, young face framed by a mass of blond hair, a thin mouth and two golden eyes that seemed to glow from within. He wore a simple white robe. He inherited his staff from his father; it was of black OCTIRON, so dark that it looked like a slit in the world, with a meshwork of silver and gold carvings that gave it a rich and sinister tastelessness. Most wizards have no taste, of course, but this staff had a very stylish kind of tastelessness.

  While acting under the influence of the staff, Coin caused wholesale devastation in Ankh-Morpork and put at risk the continued existence of the Discworld itself. After his technical defeat by the wizard RINCEWIND, he retired to a better plane. [S]

  Colette. A worker, if that is the term, at Rosie PALM’S House of Negotiable Affection. She would be described as a very handsome young woman in any language, particularly Braille. She is noted for her unusual earrings. [M!!!!!]

  Collabone, Devious H. Unseen University’s representative in Genua. He is studying Oyster Communications in a Low Intensity Magical Field for his B.Thau. His terrible halitosis means he is known as ‘Dragon-breath’ Collabone. [GP]

  Collar, Mrs. Bedder at the ASSASSINS’ GUILD. TEPPIC’S bedder in the sixth form. (For those readers who have escaped the clutches of higher education, a bedder,well, makes the beds, cleans the rooms, and so on. And nothing more.) [P]

  Colon, Frederick. Sergeant in the Ankh-Morpork City WATCH. Age believed to be about sixty. A fat man with a huge red face like a harvest moon. He likes the peace and quiet of the night and owes thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs Colon works all day gutting fish and he works all night. There must have been occasions when they were in the same room, however, since he has three grown-up children and some grandchildren. He has looked retirement in the face and didn’t like it.

  Fred Colon used to be in an army or armies (including, at one time, the Duke of Eorle’s First Heavy Infantry [the Pheasant Pluckers] and, prior to that, the Duke of Quirm’s Middleweight Infantry) but has been in the City Watch for thirty years all told, and has known Commander VIMES for many years. Fred is now ‘Head of Traffic’ in the Watch. He smokes a pipe, and wears sandals with his Watch uniform, along with a breastplate with impressive pectoral muscles embossed on it, which his chest and stomach fit into in the same way that jelly fits into a mould.

  In Vimes’ opinion, Fred Colon is not the greatest gift to policing. He is slow, stolid and not very imaginative. But he’s plodded his way around the streets for so long that he’s left a groove and somewhere inside that stupid fat head is something very smart, that sniffs the wind and hears the buzz and reads the writing on the wall, admittedly doing the last bit with its lips moving.

  When out on the streets, he has a habit of loitering near large buildings – not in case they are stolen, but because he enjoys a quiet smoke out of the wind.

  He is the sort of man who, in a military career, will automatically gravitate to the post of sergeant. As a civilian, his natural role would be something like a sausage butcher – some job where a big red face and a tendency to sweat even in frosty weather are practically part of the specification.

  He looks like the sort of man who, if he fell off a cliff, would have to stop and ask directions on the way down.

  He is currently the Watch Liaison Officer and the Custody Officer. He has an office in the Watch Training School (in the old lemonade factory) in the old Twaddle Room (named for the basic soft drink syrup).

  It is known that, as a child, Sergeant Colon had a pink stuffed pig called Mr Dreadful. This sort of thing can come back to haunt you in later life.

  Computers. The Disc’s main known computer is now HEX, the computer at Unseen University. Although originally powered by ants (‘Anthill Inside’) HEX now more or less redesigns itself to suit any problem it encounters, and the only thing preventing it from becoming a full member of the Faculty is that no one has yet perfected Artificial Stupidity.

  In physical size the great computer of the skies on the Vortex Plains is much larger. It is an immense construction of grey and black slabs of stone, arranged in concentric c
ircles and mystic avenues; a triumph of the silicon chunk, a miracle of modern masonic technology. Designed and built by druids, but, oh, so fifteen centuries ago. (See also RIKTOR, HEX.) [LF, SM, and most of the series!]

  Confectionary School of Architecture. A style responsible for the house encountered by Rincewind and TWOFLOWER in The Light Fantastic; the style in which gingerbread houses are built. [LF]

  Conina. One of the daughters of COHEN the Barbarian, and therefore genetically a barbarian heroine who, unfortunately, wants to be a hairdresser. A superb fighter, she carries a large number of concealed weapons, although absolutely anything she can get hold of – a hairgrip, a piece of paper, a hamster – is used as a deadly weapon.

  Her hair is long and almost pure white, her skin tanned. She is a demure and surprisingly small figure. Although she inherits her looks from her mother, a temple dancer, she inherits from her father sinews you could moor a boat with, reflexes like a snake on hot tin, a terrible urge to steal things and a sensation that she should be throwing a knife at everyone she meets. [S]

  Conjurers’ Guild. Motto: NVNC ILLE EST MAGICVS. Coat of arms: a shield, decorated with a vierge, dévêtée on a field, azure et étoilé. The whole bisected by a bend, sinister et indented.

  The Conjurers have a very small Guildhouse annoyingly close to Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, but it’s really more of a club house – there is no such thing as a professional conjurer, it being more of an evenings-and-weekends hobby for respectable men who do other jobs during the day. They tend to be jolly and fat and well balanced and inclined to drop their aitches and drink beer and, besides the usual cries of ‘hey presto!’, pepper their normal conversation with terms like ‘many moons ago’ and ‘for my sins’. They go around with sad thin women in spangly tights and unsuitable feathers in their hair; it’s impossible to imagine a conjurer without one (as in the Amazing Bonko and Doris). And they infuriate wizards by not realising how lowly they are in the magical pecking order and by telling them jokes and slapping them on the back. They are very popular in Ankh-Morpork – knowing something is done by trickery and sleight-of-hand is somehow much more intriguing than boring old magic. (See also THAUMATURGISTS.) [ER]

  Cool, Monks of. Tiny and exclusive monastery, hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower RAMTOPS. The Brothers of Cool are a reserved and secretive sect which believes that only through ultimate coolness can the universe be comprehended and that black works with everything and that chrome will never truly go out of style. They’re so cool they sometimes never get out of bed. [LL, TOT]

  Coplei, Bosun. Bosun of the Omnian ship, the Fin of God. [SG]

  Copolymer. The greatest storyteller in the history of the world. It is only unfortunate that this basic skill is confounded by a very poor memory and a lack of any practical narrative ability so that, for example, his actual stories tend to proceed on the lines of: ‘It was a Thursday . . . No, I tell a lie, it was a Wednesday . . . When – what’s his name, tip of my tongue, forget my own head next – set out . . .’ [P]

  Copperhead (Mountain). One of the more impressive mountains in the RAMTOP chain, on the edge of the Kingdom of LANCRE; the mountain and its lesser mountains and foothills are home to both dwarfs (in whose low mines CARROT Ironfoundersson grew to a slightly concussed manhood) and trolls.

  Cori Celesti. A spire of grey stone and green ice ten miles high at the Disc’s hub. It rises through the clouds and supports at its peak the realm of DUNMANIFESTIN, home of the Disc gods. As the AURORA CORIALIS discharges over it, it becomes a column of cold, coruscating fire. Other mountains cluster around it, and although these are no more mountains than termite mounds by comparison, in reality each one is a majestic assortment of cols, ridges, faces, cliffs, screes and glaciers that any normal mountain range would be happy to associate with.

  Corksock. Proprietor of Corksock’s Natty Clothing in Ankh-Morpork. [MAA]

  Cornice Overlooking Broadway. A GARGOYLE on the Opera House, Ankh-Morpork. [MAA]

  Cosmopilite, Mrs Marietta. An elderly seamstress (a real one, with needles and everything; not the other sort) who lives at 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-Morpork with ‘Rooms to Let, Very Reasonable’. During the HOLY WOOD times she became a wardrobe mistress, becoming Vice President in Charge of Wardrobe.

  She is known occasionally to run a haberdashery shop and is also, much against her wishes, a religious icon.

  This is because people always assume that wisdom is, well, more wise if it comes from a long way away. So while impressionable people in Ankh-Morpork follow the path of distant religious teachers with names like Rinpo and Gompa, the orange-robed, bald young men from the high mountains follow the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite (down to the shops, dropping in on her sister for a cup of tea, an appointment with the chiropodist, and then back home). Principal among these is the skilled LU-TZE, who has collected all her cosmically-wise sayings (such as ‘It’ll end in tears’, and finds them a pretty good guide to understanding the universe. Wisdom is where you find it.

  Cotton, Corporal. Or is it Medium? or Handwash Only? Anyway, a Corporal in the, er, KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION whose soldiers are so successful at joining to forget that they have to rely on the labels in their uniforms to remind themselves who they are. [SM]

  Counterweight Continent. Almost a legend, although a real one. It is a small continent, but equal in weight to all the mighty land masses on its opposite hemicircle. It is said to be made of gold – the area is also known as the Aurient, or ‘place where the gold comes from’. But sailors searching for it return empty-handed or not at all. In fact, although gold is very common there, most of the mass is made up of vast deposits of OCTIRON deep within the crust. There is a very small amount of surreptitious trading. (See also AGATEAN EMPIRE.)

  Counterwise wine. (See RE-ANNUAL PLANTS.)

  Counting pines. These grow right on the permanent snowline of the high RAMTOPS. They are one of the few known examples of borrowed evolution. The counting pines let other vegetables do their evolving for them, to save all the millions of years of trial and error. A pine seed coming to rest anywhere on the Disc immediately picks up the most effective local genetic code via morphic resonance and grows into whatever best suits the soil and climate, usually doing much better than the native trees themselves, which it usually usurps.

  What makes them particularly noteworthy is the way they count. Being dimly aware that human beings learned to tell the age of a tree by counting the rings, the original counting pines decided that this was why humans cut trees down. Overnight every counting pine readjusted its genetic code to produce, at about eye-level on its trunk, in pale letters, its precise age. Within a year they were felled almost to extinction by the ornamental house number-plate industry, and only a very few survive in hard-to-reach areas. [RM]

  Cranberry, ‘Professor’. A hired killer in the pay of Cosmo Lavish. Cranberry was a scholarship boy at the ASSASSINS’ GUILD – a foundling. He is quietly spoken and modestly dressed, with a shiny bald head (in fact he has no body hair at all). [MM]

  Crank, Arthur. Lives in Prattle Alley. A serial suicide jumper, or more correctly a serial threatener – he does it for the tobacco money, a cup of tea and the conversation. He was a steeplejack by trade and has been married for thirty-five years (though his wife can’t cook cabbage to save her life or, presumably, his). [TT]

  Crash. Son of a rich dealer in hay and feedstuffs. Also the leader of a would-be Music With Rocks In group, originally called Insanity. [SM]

  Creator, the. A little rat-faced man, with a slightly put-upon voice made for complaining with. He created the Discworld while the main universe was being built, and it was obviously on a budget. It is clear that World Creation is a purely mechanical function and doesn’t call for any godlike attributes. [E]

  Creosote. Seriph of AL KHALI. A rather fat, middle-aged man whose chief pleasure is in writing very bad poetry and indulging in the kind of simple life only the very rich can afford. His grandfather built up the family fortune by
somewhat mysterious means, which left the family in possession of a magic carpet, lamp and ring and a deep distrust of caves. Creosote, however, bears out the old Klatchian saying ‘Going from very rich to quite poor in three generations’ (Klatchian sayings lose something in the translation) and the money he did not squander on building an artificial Paradise around his palace was stolen from him by his evil Grand Vizier. Creosote is very fond of stories, and somehow manages to confuse the practice of narration with that of sex, and is given to accosting decent young women and asking them for a swift anecdote. The many trite comments that could be appended here will, out of decency, not be made. [S]

  The Assassins’ Guild

  Cribbins. He was just Cribbins. No one knew his first name. He has a serious personal problem that made him smell of bananas.

  The teeth! They were that man’s pride and joy. He’d prised them out of the mouth of an old man he’d robbed, while the poor devil lay dying of fear! He’d joked that they had had a mind of their own! And they spluttered and popped and slurped and fitted so badly that they once turned around in his mouth and bit him in the throat! He used to take them out and talk to them! And they were so old – the stained teeth had been carved from walrus ivory and the spring was so strong that sometimes it’d force the top of his head back so that you could see right up his nose.

  And he was a nasty piece of work. Cribbins didn’t have style. He wasn’t violent, unless there was absolutely no chance of retaliation, but there was some generalised, wretched, wheedling malice about the man that just gets on your soul. [MM]