Octogen. A gas that radiates dangerous amounts of raw magic.
Odium. A moving-picture house in Ankh-Morpork. Owned by Bezam PLANTER. Destroyed by fire. [MP]
Offler. Great Offler of the Bird-Haunted Mouth. Six-armed Crocodile God of Klatch, but also the default god of any place with a big river and warm climate. He has a flock of holy birds that bring him news of his worshippers and also keep his teeth clean. The teeth in his fanged snout cause him to speak with a marked lisp. [M, S]
Of the Wind Regretfully Blown. Goblin name of Billy SLICK. [SN]
Ogg, Gytha. ‘Nanny Ogg’ – most Ramtop witches of any note have some suitable grandmotherly honorific (Granny, Nanny, Gammer, Old Mother, etc.), regardless of actual marital status, but she is definitely a grandmother.
Age: uncertain, even to her. Probably in her seventies, which means she was still capable of bearing children in her early fifties (this is by no means unusual for a healthy LANCRE woman, especially a witch, and certainly for an Ogg). There is a large population of long-lived dwarfs on the mountainous fringes of the country, and the Oggs are a remarkably ancient family with traditional skills in magic and ironworking; it may be, as CASANUNDA has claimed, that she has some dwarf in her, although this is probably an expression of his hopes rather than any genetic expertise.
After an adventurous girlhood – always chaste, as she says, and often caught – and a period as a maid at Lancre Castle, Gytha Ogg was accepted by a Biddy Spective as her successor to the cottage in Lancre town, where she brought to the craft of witchery an honest, earthy outlook, a non-judgemental understanding of human nature, and the ability to crack walnuts with her knees.
Nanny Ogg’s family arrangements are cosy but haphazard. She has been formally married three times, to Albert Ogg, Winston Ogg and Sobriety Ogg (witches are matrilinear and in any case a man would be expected to accept the family name when marrying into such an ancient lineage as the Oggs). All three have passed happily, if somewhat energetically, to their well-earned rest.
She has fifteen living children: Jason, Grame, Tracie, Shirl, Daff, Dreen, Nev, Trev, Kev, Wane, Sharleen, Darron, Karen, Reet and Shawn. Many of them, Shawn, for example, live and work around Lancre; others have sought their fortune in far-flung foreign parts. There are innumerable grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Only two grandchildren have appeared in the chronicles – Shane, a bold sailor lad, and Pewsey, the stickiest child in the world. Contrary to the rules of traditional witchcraft, Nanny Ogg now lives in quite a modern cottage in the centre of Lancre (‘Tir Nani Ogg’ – Nanny Ogg’s Place), with up-to-date conveniences like a modern wash copper and a tin bath a mere garden’s walk away on a nail at the back of the privy. The cottage is between those of Shawn and Jason. She likes to have all her family around her in case of an emergency, such as when she needs a cup of tea (which she takes with three lumps of sugar) or the floor washed.
NANNY’S COTTAGE
Nanny’s cottage tends towards jolly clashing colours and smells of polish. The outside is spanking new with a gleaming thatch and manicured front lawn with gnomes, toadstools, pink bunnies, big-eyed deer around a tiny pond. On the edge of the pond, a tiny gnome is fishing . . . oh, no, er, that isn’t a rod he’s holding. Let’s move swiftly inside, which is a shrine to bad but enthusiastically painted ornaments.
There are no skulls or strange candles – apart from a pink novelty one she bought in Ankh-Morpork. There are lots of tables – mainly in order to display the vast number of drawings and iconographs of the huge Ogg clan. These pictures are carefully advanced or retarded around the room as various family members temporarily fall in or out of favour. What space is not taken up by pictures is taken up by ornaments, because no Ogg who travelled more than ten miles from Lancre would dream of returning without a present. Usually, these are cheapjack stuff bought from fairs, but Nanny Ogg doesn’t mind, so long as they’re colourful and shiny. There are lots of cross-eyed dogs, pink shepherdesses and mugs with badly spelled slogans like: ‘To The World’s Best Mum’ and ‘We Luove Our Nanny’. There is a huge china beer stein in a glass-fronted locked cabinet (a present from Shirl Ogg) and a blue clockwork ballerina which pirouettes to ‘Three Blind Mice’. Oh, and a little hourglass with the legend, ‘Tempus Redux’. That might come in useful one day.
Ogg, Jason. Eldest son of Gytha Ogg. Master blacksmith and farrier, and a member of the LANCRE Morris Men, for whom he plays the fiddle.
With his hairy brow, cheese-grater chin and fifteen-stone body, Jason looks as though he was not born but constructed. In a shipyard. He is a man with an essentially slow and gentle nature that should have gone to a couple of bullocks, arms like tree trunks and legs like beer barrels stacked in twos.
The smith in Lancre is a very powerful smith indeed. The Lancre smiths have an ancient bargain – if they shoe anything brought to them, their reward is the ability to shoe anything. It is not clear who the pact is with, but it may have something to do with Lancre’s proximity to the worlds of the ELVES, against whom iron is a sovereign defence. Or it may be because, every so often, someone comes at the appropriately named dead of night to have his horse reshod. Whatever the reason, Jason can put a shoe on anything with feet.
They brought him an ant once, for a joke. He sat up all night with a magnifying glass and an anvil made out of the head of a pin.
Jason also knows the mystic secret of the Lancre Horseman’s Word, used by smiths to calm the wildest stallion. It broadly consists of a whispered explanation into the animal’s ear of what all those hammers and pliers will be used for if the horse doesn’t stop kicking and present a docile hoof right now. [WS, WA, LL]
Ogg, Shawn. Private/Corporal/Sergeant/Commander-in-Chief Ogg, S. is Gytha Ogg’s youngest son: a short, red-faced youth in his early twenties. He is guard and general odd-job man at LANCRE CASTLE, where he dreams of a glorious military career. He empties the palace privies, delivers its mail, operates the Royal Mint, balances the budget, helps out the Royal gardener in his spare time and butles when Spriggs the butler is not on duty. He is also the Royal Historian (on Wednesday evenings), Lord Chamberlain and Conductor of the Lancre Light Symphony Orchestra. He is also the creator of the LANCRASTIAN ARMY KNIFE. Many days spent guarding Lancre Castle on a repetitive carbohydrate diet have given him an inner self-reliance and an ability to fart in tune.
Oggham. Ancient runic alphabet, still used by dwarfs throughout the RAMTOPS. There is some suggestion that this has something to do with the Ogg family – a suggestion which Nanny OGG is careful to foster.
Ohulan Cutash. A quite barbaric and uncivilised sprawl of a hundred or so houses about fifteen miles from LANCRE and considered by Lancrastians to be a big city. It has one suburb. It’s too small to have more than one, and this is just an inn and a handful of cottages for people who can’t stand the pressure of urban life. There is a cobbled main square and on one side are the temples of the Disc’s more demanding deities.
It has a tiny river dock, on the upper ANKH, with broad, flat-bottomed barges bobbing gently against the wharves. [ER]
Old High Ones, the. Only very obliquely referred to in the Discworld religions. Such piecemeal references as have been discovered suggest that there are eight ‘entities’ that oversee the universe, although ‘oversee’ is far too strong a word. There is no single word that really does explain their role, which seems to be to observe in a dynamic way, in order for the observed events to be able to happen. It might be simpler to say that the universe exists because they believe in it. They are not gods – from their point of view, gods are only a slightly more troublesome version of human beings. They are far above the AUDITORS OF REALITY, who are their executive arm. The names of seven of them, if they have names, have not been revealed. The eighth is AZRAEL.
Old Man Trouble. One of a large number of ‘anthropomorphic personifications’ brought into existence by the low reality quotient of the Discworld universe, which means in essence that anything believed in strongly enough will eventuall
y come into existence.
Old Man Trouble wears a long mac and a large, raggedy, broad-brimmed hat. All that can be seen between the two are his dreadful glowing eyes. He is a personification variously of Murphy’s Law, the general intractability of the universe, and the darkness in the cellar. He is easily summoned by failing to have 1) rhythm or 2) music or even 3) your girl. In which case, if you hear a soft knocking at your door – don’t open it.
Olerve the Bastard. King of STO LAT and father of KELI. A tall, heavily built man with a golden beard and the kind of stolid, patient face you’d confidently buy a used horse from. No sense of humour, but kings don’t need them, since people will laugh at their jokes anyway. [M]
Om. The Great God Om. When he is first encountered, he is a small tortoise with one beady eye and a badly chipped shell. When at full strength, he is an enormous, shimmering, golden figure (the appearance of a god when manifest is directly proportional to the amount of belief they command). Om is omnipotent, omnipresent, and many other omnis, but only within the boundaries of the Omnian church. Strangely enough, since the events of Small Gods, and his covenant with BRUTHA, Om worship has increased enormously largely because he doesn’t do anything, but might. Since the rest of the Discworld gods tend to thunder, rant and bicker in public, a people find a quiet god curiously reassuring [SG]
Om, Book of. Principal book of the Omnian religion. In its original Second Omnian IV text, it is known to contain, amongst other things, the following books:
Testament of Mezerek
Letter to the Omish, Brutha’s First
Letter to the Omish, Brutha’s Second
Letter to the Simonites, Brutha’s
Cena, Book of
Riddles, II
Gospel According to the Miscreants
Prophecies of Tobrun
Omnia. A dry country on the Klatchian coast between the deserts of KLATCH and the plains and jungles of HOWONDALAND. There are two million people in the Omnian empire. Its principal city is Kom.
The Citadel in Kom extends for miles – temples, churches, schools, dormitories, gardens and towers. It also has a lot of underground cellars and sewers, forgotten rooms, dead ends, spaces behind walls and natural caves. There are very few steps in the Citadel – the progress of the many processions demands long, gentle slopes. What stairs there are are shallow enough to allow for the faltering steps of very old men.
One of the main thoroughfares leads to the Place of Lamentations – a square 200 yards across. On one side of the square is the Great Temple, its roof adorned with the golden horns of OM. The doors in the central temple are 100 feet tall, weigh 40 tons each and are said to be made of bronze, reinforced with Klatchian steel. They open only outwards. On them, in letters of gold set in lead, are the Commandments (512 of them by the time the doors were melted, during the events of Small Gods).
Until those events Omnia and the Church of Om were more or less synonymous; there was no civil authority. The entire country was ruled by the priesthood. Since the Reformation, however (which happened more or less instantaneously) there is a government that perforce is made up of laymen, since the priests are now too busy arguing amongst themselves.
Since the accession of the prophet BRUTHA, whose genius lay in taking one of the most objectionable and bloody-thirsty religions in the world and turning it into a huge debating shop, Omnia has become internationally known for its output of door-to-door evangelists and religious tracts. These are annoying, but so much better than the merciless armies they have replaced. You couldn’t put them off by shouting ‘Not interested!’ through the letterbox (See QUISITION.) [SG]
One-Man-Bucket. Spirit guide of Mrs CAKE. A member (once) of a HOWONDALAND tribe who was killed when he was run over by a cart in Treacle Street, Ankh-Morpork, while drunk. He is a ghost, with a reedy and petulant voice. Called One-Man-Bucket because of his tribe’s tradition of naming a child after the first thing its mother saw after giving birth. The first thing his mother saw was a man pouring a bucket of water over two dogs causing a, um, a disturbance outside the tent. One-Man-Bucket’s marginally older brother, who slid into the world a few seconds earlier, was not so fortunate in his name. [RM]
One Sun Mirror. A past emperor of the AGATEAN EMPIRE. He has two claims to fame: 1) He had the stone garden of Universal Peace and Simplicity laid out, and 2) His habit of cutting off his enemies’ lips and legs and then promising them their freedom if they can run through the city playing a trumpet. [M]
Opera House, Ankh-Morpork. This is located in Pseudopolis Yard, one of the city’s largest open spaces. The Opera is almost as big as the Patrician’s Palace, but is far more, well, palatial, and covers three acres. It is basically a cube, covered in a riot of friezes, pillars, corybants and curly bits glued on the architecture afterwards. Gargoyles have colonised the higher reaches. The effect, seen from the front, is of a huge wall of tortured stone. Round the back, of course, the usual drab mess of windows, pipes and damp stone walls, and the roof is a forest of skylights and airshafts. Public entry to the Opera is via the Big Foyer, with its marble banistered grand staircase.
The building includes stabling for twenty horses and two elephants in the cellar. Rooms behind the stage are so large that entire sets are stored there. The building is almost a town in its own right, and includes a whole ballet school with a mirrored practice room, canteens for the staff and artistes, and a warren of little rooms for the chorus approached by multiple flights of back stairs. Young female members are encouraged to reside in the Opera House, to avoid the dangers inherent in returning to possibly distant lodgings late at night, although this does make them easy prey for any crazed masked musical geniuses with good tenor voices that happen to be lurking around. Ahahahah!!!!! Ahem . . .
The auditorium is huge and cherub-infested – an explosion of plush velvet and rococo carving. Within all this the stage itself is comparatively small – almost an afterthought. [M!!!!!]
Operas. The Discworld has an excellent history of the arts and this history features opera quite prominently. Better-known works include:
Barber of Pseudopolis, The
Bloodaxe and Ironhammer (a dwarf opera)
Cosi Fan Hita
Enchanted Piccolo, The
Flabberast, Die
Flederleiv, Die
Lohenschaak
Meistersinger von Scrote, Die
Ring of the Nibelungingung, The
Triviata, La
Truccatore, Il
There has also been a trend towards new, profit-making operas, including:
Guys and Trolls
Hubwards Side Story
Miserable Les
Seven Dwarfs for Seven Other Dwarfs [M!!!!!]
Student Horse, The [CJ]
Orang-Utan/Human Dictionary, The. A major project being undertaken by the LIBRARIAN of Unseen University, who is himself of the orang persuasion. Since he was also, once, a human being, he feels himself in a position to advance the understanding between the two species. This may be a problem since one of the species consists of mankind, but he is persevering.
A flavour of the work, which already runs to more than 500 closely written pages, may further illustrate the difficulties:
Ook: Oh, I do beg your pardon, I didn’t realise there was a dominant male in this group.
Ook: I’ll just go and sit over here very quietly, shall I?
Ook: You’re out of your tree. This is my tree.
Ook: Yes.
Ook: No.
Ook: Banana.
Ook: It may be vital oxygenating biomass to you, but it’s home to me.
Ook: Did you see a rain forest around here a moment ago?
Orinjcrates. Ephebian philosopher and author of On the Nature of Plants. [SG]
Orohai Peninsula. (On the Rim coast of KLATCH.) Home to the sponge-eating pygmies, who live in little coral houses. For further information, see General Sir Roderick Purdeigh’s book: My Life Among the Sponge-Eating Coral-House-Dwelling Pygmies, in whic
h he discusses at length the twin problems of daily indigestion and concussion. [COM]
Osric. Victor Tugelbend’s uncle. Victor thought that the Holy Wood statue of a golden knight resembled him. [MP]
Ossory. One of the Great Prophets of the Omnian church. The 193-chapter Book of Ossory was dictated to him by the Great God OM, it is said. It was certainly said by Ossory, and no one was going to argue with anyone who came out of the desert just after the mushroom season with his eyeballs spinning in different directions.
The Book contains the Directions, the Gateways, the Abjurations and the Precepts. Ossory’s staff is a religious artefact. [SG]
Oswald. An ondergeist who lives with Miss Level. He is a sort of anti-poltergeist, and he is obsessive about tidiness and keeps putting things away. He is shy and usually hides if anyone new comes to the cottage. [HFOS]
Ottomy, Frankly, Mr. A Bledlow (sort of policeman) at Unseen University. Ottomy has a red Adam’s apple and is a hefty man seemingly carved out of bacon. He is good at shouting in public, but strangely less happy at public speaking. It is in the way of Ottomies all around the worlds to look as if they have been built out of the worst parts of two men and to be annoyingly hushen footed on thick red rubber soles, all the better to peep and pry. And they always assume that a free cup of tea is theirs by right. [UA]
Palm, Rosemary. (‘Rosie’, although not to her face these days.) Mrs Palm is a stout and refined lady with a no-nonsense chin, who lives with a lot of younger ladies in a house in the SHADES, and whose occupation is broadly understood. It has been said that she keeps a house of ill-repute but, on the contrary, a lot of people have spoken very highly of it.
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