Glwenda. The daughter of a garlic farmer in DJELIBEYBI. Romantically linked with GERN the apprentice embalmer. [P]
Gnolls. A softer-skinned variety of troll, but without the latter’s intelligence and noble disposition. A few are now moving into Ankh-Morpork. They are scavengers, both as a means of eating and also for more complex, hard-to-understand reasons; they’ll make careful collections of old spoons or dead seagulls, which appear to be extremely significant to both themselves and other gnolls. It is believed that the huge foetid heaps carried on the bent backs of gnolls are not, in fact, some kind of carapace but are their worldly goods. [ER, TT]
Gnomes, goblins (and pictsies) A more or less interchangeable term (a gnome is merely a goblin found underground, a goblin is merely a gnome coming up for air, a pictsie is a gnome fighting) for the Discworld’s smallest (4" to 2') humanoid species. Seldom encountered, not because of their rarity but because of their speed and natural desire to keep out of the way of creatures to whom they would merely be something sticky on the sole of the boot – although a well-trained gnome, with that strength so often found in small creatures, can in fact lift a human being. They are generally hunters and gatherers, usually of property belonging to someone else. [SN]
Goatberger, Mr. Publisher in Ankh-Morpork. Responsible, among other books, for publishing Nanny OGG’S Joye of Snackes. An honest, helpful man, who cares nothing for profit and seeks only to enrich the cultural environment of his fellow men. A typical publisher in every way, in fact. [M!!!!!]
Goatfounder, Hilta. A witch in OHULAN CUTASH, where she sells thunderdrops and penny wishes at a small, covered, market stall. Small and fat, Hilta wears an enormous hat with fruit on it and gives the impression of a mass of lace and shawls and colours and earrings and ordinary rings and so many bangles that a mere movement of her arms sounds like a percussion section falling off a cliff. She laughs like someone who has thought about life for a long time and has now seen the joke.
Her lodgings are over a herbalist and behind a tannery, offering splendid views over the rooftops of Ohulan. Among her ‘back of the stall’ preparations are: Tiger Oil, Maiden’s Prayer, Husband’s Helper, ShoNuff Ointment, Stay Long Ointment and Madame Goatfounder’s Pennyroyal Preventatives. She performs an important function in the town, although no one talks very much about what that actually is. The only clue is that, if Hilta wasn’t there, the town would be a good deal larger. [ER]
Godmothers, Fairy. A specialised form of witch with particular responsibility for the life of one individual or a number of individuals. They use wands – probably a modification of the wizard’s staff – and tend to have an interest in travel. Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding of human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful. [WA]
Gods, the. The Discworld has gods in the same way that other worlds have bacteria. There are billions of them, tiny bundles containing nothing more than a pinch of pure ego and some hunger.
Most of them never get worshipped. They are the small gods – the spirits of lonely trees, places where two ant-trails cross – and most of them stay that way. Because what they lack is belief. A handful, though, go on to greater things. Anything may trigger this. A shepherd, seeking a lost lamb, for example, may find it among the briars and take a minute or two to build a small cairn of stones in general thanks to whatever spirit might be around the place.
Despite the splendour of the world below them, the Disc gods are seldom satisfied. It is embarrassing to know that one is a god of a world that only exists because every improbability curve must have its far end; especially when one can peer into other dimensions at worlds whose Creators had more mechanical aptitude than imagination. No wonder, then, that the Disc gods spend more time bickering than in omnicognisance.
They are quarrelsome and somewhat bourgeois gods, who live in a palace of marble, alabaster and uncut moquette three-piece suites they choose to call DUNMANIFESTIN. It is always a considerable annoyance to any Disc citizen with pretensions to culture that they are ruled by gods whose idea of an uplifting artistic experience is a musical doorbell.
The gods don’t play chess, they haven’t got the imagination. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you ‘Do Not Pass Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion’; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god’s idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
They are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into a cruet.
The trouble with gods is that, if enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. People think the sequence is: first object, then belief. In fact it works the other way. Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods get created. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief résumé of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers and the smiting of your enemies.
Gods and humans are inseparable. Because what gods need is belief, and what humans want is gods. (See also DEITIES.)
Gogol, Mrs Erzulie. A voodoo woman in GENUA, who smokes a pipe and is known to have made use of zombies when household chores need doing. She is tall, handsome, middle-aged, and wears heavy gold earrings, a white blouse and a full red skirt with flounces. She has a black cockerel, Legba, as her familiar. She used to be romantically linked with Baron SATURDAY, who was later a zombie, and is the mother of Ella SATURDAY.
For practical purposes she can be considered a witch, although perhaps with a slightly different moral sense from the classic RAMTOPS craftswomen.
She foretells the future ostensibly by staring into bowls of jambalaya (but probably by relying on close observation and a deep study of human nature – all witches understand the need for a little magic in people’s lives).
She lives in a house in the swamps close to Genua. From the river it looks like a simple affair of driftwood, roofed with moss and built over the swamp itself on four stout poles. They end in four large duck feet on which the house can, when necessary, move around the country. [WA]
Golems. One of the rarest of Ankh-Morpork’s minority groups, and unique in that it has not yet been found anywhere outside the city. It can hardly be called a ‘species’, since golems are created by priests or holy men from clay animated by a spell (or holy word). The word or spell is carved on their forehead or inserted in their hollow head and is in effect their life force. Highly moral creatures.
No such creation has been attempted by humans for a thousand years, it being held to be a little tasteless, but the events recounted in Feet of Clay reveal that there is a third group that can create golems and that is golems themselves. All they need is some more clay, an oven and a Word. There are no such things as golem children, merely golems who are younger than other golems.
Traditionally, even trolls have looked down on golems, who tend to be (physically) larger and more shapeless even than computer programmers and (mentally) withdrawn and rather sad yet very alert creatures doomed to do the jobs that men disdain and trolls don’t want; not for nothing are they called ‘horny-handed tons of soil’. A golem is not legally a living creature, merely property . . .
But now, the golems are freeing themselves. It’s the quietest, most socially responsible revolution in history. Legally they are tools – property, and so, often supported by the GOLEM TRUST, they save up and buy themselves.
A Golem must not harm a human being or allow a human being to come to harm – unless ordered to do so by a Duly Constituted Authority.
Golem Trust, the. (Motto: ‘By Our Own Hand, Or None’.) A charitable foundation set up by Adora Belle DEARHEART to help to free golems. What happens is that the free golems support the Trust, the Trust buys golems whenever it can, and the new golems then
buy themselves from the Trust at cost. The free golems earn 24/8 and there are more and more of them. They don’t eat, sleep, wear clothes or understand the concept of leisure. The occasional tube of ceramic cement doesn’t cost much. They buy more golems every month now, and pay Adora Belle’s wages, and the iniquitous rent the landlord charges her for their offices because he knows he’s renting to golems. [GP]
Goodmountain, Gunilla. A dwarf, who opened a ‘word smithy’ at the sign of the Bucket in Gleam Street, Ankh-Morpork. Co-founder, with William DE WORDE, of The Ankh-Morpork Times. Gunilla was later husband . . . er, wife . . . er, partner to BODDONY. [TT]
Goom, ‘Wazzer’. A volunteer, with Polly PERKS, to the Borogravian Army. When first encountered, appears to be a small, nineteen-year-old, stick-thin lad with round eyes and a bad haircut and a reedy little voice. Wazzer is very religious and says grace loudly before meals. Stands just slightly too close to you and stares slightly to the left of your face – very disconcerting – as is the fact that Wazzer hears voices – in particular the Duchess ANNAGOVIA. Some friends call Wazzer ‘Alice’. [MR]
Gorphal. A bearded, elderly diplomat in Ankh-Morpork. Famed as a student of Agatean Empire affairs. [COM]
Gorrin the Cat. A thief in Ankh-Morpork. B12 was his code identification from YMOR. Called the Cat because of his tendency to sleep a lot and not do much work. [COM]
Gortlick. A writer of dwarf songs with HAMMERJUG. Songs are important to the dwarf community and new ones are commissioned for birthdays, weddings, and so on. Cynics say that the word ‘gold’ will inevitably turn up somewhere. It rhymes so easily with others words. Well, in fact it rhymes most easily with ‘gold’, but that’s fine for dwarfs, who know what they like and like lots of it. [SM]
Gorunna Trench. An undersea chasm in the Disc’s surface that is so black, so deep and so reputedly evil that even the krakens go there fearfully, and in pairs. In less reputedly evil chasms the fish go about with natural lights on their heads. In Gorunna they leave them unlit and insofar as it is possible for something without legs to creep, they creep. No living thing knows what lies down there; those who have found out have not been in a position to tell. [COM]
Granny’s Cottage. Home to Granny Weatherwax. A witch’s cottage so typical that, if there were any kind of tourist organisation in the RAMTOPS, it would be given a grant. The description can be taken to apply to a greater or lesser extent to all rural witch cottages, although, as indicated, this one can be considered a witch’s cottage par eldritche.
It nestles in the woods. It leans against itself for support. It’s of the architectural style known as ‘the vernacular’, i.e. somebody swearing, and by now it gives the impression of having grown in place rather than having been built. Granny’s cottage pulses with the force of Granny’s personality.
Access to the cottage is exclusively via the back door, but it is first worth taking some time to look at the garden. In the front of the building is a bit of lawn, with a forlorn windsock on a pole, although the cottage is largely surrounded by unruly beds of herbs which seem to move, even on windless days. There are also some leggy soft fruit bushes and, in front of the Rimward wall, a bleached wooden bench to catch the sun. Such shrubs and flowers as are otherwise found are all cuttings or spare clumps given to Granny Weatherwax by neighbours. A witch would never dream of buying anything for the garden. Around the side is a water butt and a walled paddock for her goats when they are not turned loose in the forest (witches prefer goats to cows). In a corner are half a dozen beehives and an old goat shed.
Marking a boundary of the herb garden is a tree stump, beyond which is Granny Weatherwax’s privy. Apart from the usual offices, the privy also contains the key to the cottage (on a nail), half a copy of an Almanack and Booke of Dayes (also on a nail), a stump of candle on a shelf and a chrysalis (this shelf tends to be a repository of things Granny Weatherwax has found on her walks and which appear to be interesting: oddly shaped stones, strange roots, fossils, and so on). Next to the privy is a large beech tree.
A key sign that this is the garden of a witch is the lack of a wall. Creatures of the forest could wander across it at any time. They very seldom do.
And now, the cottage . . .
Through the back door is the hall, with Miss Weatherwax’s official witching hat hanging on a hook. This leads through into the stone-flagged kitchen, dominated by its wide chimney and inglenook fireplace, with its firedogs and hook over the fire for a big black kettle. Over the mantelpiece hang a small key and a clock, kept mainly for its tick; in front of it are a rag rug and a rocking chair.
The room is otherwise furnished with a kitchen table and chairs, a dresser (which contains Granny’s box of memorabilia) and an old chest, with a pair of pewter candlesticks. There is also a small speckled mirror. None of the furniture is new. None of it even looks as though it could ever have been new. In a drawer on the dresser is a clean bandage and on top of the dresser is a box of dried herbs: medicinal herbs, because people will even seek out Granny Weatherwax when whatever ailment they have got gets too bad. The room is grey-walled – the colour plaster gets from age, not from dirt. There is not a thing in it that isn’t useful – except perhaps a green glass ball, a present from Magrat GARLICK.
Off the kitchen is the dank little scullery, which contains the walk-in pantry, a well (topped with a stone slab and a pump), a copper washpot, washboard, scrubbing brushes, slop bucket and a big copper still. Shelves containing bottles and jars of ingredients suggest quite correctly that this is where some of the more physical, take-one-spoonful-at-night-and-another-if-you-wake-up-in-the-morning aspects of witchcraft are carried out. A door in the scullery leads to the lean-to where the goats are bedded down in bad weather.
Back in the kitchen is a small door opening on to the cramped staircase which leads to the bedroom. The plaster on the bedroom ceiling is cracked, and bulges like a tent. On the wash stand are a jug and a basin with a fetching rosebud pattern which also matches another china item under the bed. On the bed itself is a patchwork quilt which looks like a flat tortoise. It was made by Gordo SMITH and was given to Miss Weatherwax by ESK’S mother one HOGSWATCHNIGHT. On the quilt is Granny Weatherwax, lying very still and holding a card saying ‘I ATE’NT DEAD’.
Er . . .
Don’t all rush for the stairs . . .
Granny Whitlow. A witch. She used to live in the gingerbread cottage encountered by RINCEWIND and TWOFLOWER. The art of residential confectionary now seems to have died out on Discworld. Healthier modern variants, such as the houses of cheese and crispbread, never really proved popular. [LF]
Grateful, Lady Sara. A pupil at the QUIRM COLLEGE FOR YOUNG LADIES. Another horsey gel and an INTERCHANGEABLE EMMA. [SM]
Great Pyramid of Tsort. A now-derelict ancient wonder of the Discworld. Made of 1,003,010 limestone blocks, ten thousand slaves were worked to death in its construction. It is a maze of secret passages, their walls reputedly decorated with the distilled wisdom of ancient TSORT. In the circumstances the most important of these wise sayings must have been: Don’t be a Slave.
It took sixty years to build. Its height plus its length divided by half its width equalled exactly 1.67563, or precisely 1,237.98712567 times the difference between the distance to the sun and the weight of a small orange. [LF]
Greebo. Nanny OGG’S cat. A huge, one-eyed tom who divides his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most incestuous feline tribe. He is technically a mottled grey but is covered with so much scar tissue that he looks like a fist with fur on it. He can only be said to have ears because there’s no other word for the things left on top of his head.
Greebo’s good eye, his left one, is yellow. The other one is pearly-white. He radiates genuine intelligence. He also radiates a smell that could knock over a wall and cause sinus trouble in a dead fox. Although he is addressed by virtually everyone as ‘Yarrgeroffoutofityahbarstard’, to Nanny Ogg he is still a cute little kitten and still sleeps on her bed when not out at nig
ht looking for something to fight, rape, eat (or all three). The way he affectionately tries to claw her eyeballs out in the morning is as good as an alarm clock.
However, a residual effect of a hasty spell on the part of his owner has now left Greebo with the ability, not always controllable, to turn into human form. As a human, he is 6 feet tall, broad shouldered and leather clad, with rippling muscles under his shirt. He has long sideburns, a mane of black hair, a broken nose and a black patch over his bad eye. And, it should be added, a worried expression for much of the time. A lot of the things which, as a cat, he would do quite naturally, present him with all kinds of problems when he attempts them in human form.
Greebo tends to flip into his alternate shape when he finds a situation he can’t deal with in the current one. On top of all his other problems, this means that people occasionally find a naked human running around meowing.
Greenyham. Treasurer of the Grand Trunk Company, also of Ankh Sto Associates. [GP]
Greetling. Master Greetling is the Head of the Teachers’ Guild, and allergic to loud noises, chalk, and anyone under the age of 16. [GG]
Greggs, Miss. Teaches History at the Quirm College for the Daughters of Gentlefolk. [SM]
Greicha the First. Lord of the WYRMBERG. He was killed by his daughter LIESSA but, because he was also a powerful wizard, he resolved to remain alive unofficially until only one of his children was left to conduct the funeral. [COM]
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