A lonely man may while away many an hour playing dominoes and Chase My Neighbour Up the Passage with Mrs Palm and her girls with no fear that he will end up naked in an alley with all his money gone (unless of course his tastes run that way).
Mrs Palm is president of the SEAMSTRESSES’ Guild.
Panter, Lemuel. A wizard, one of RINCEWIND’S old tutors and a Member of the Order of Midnight. [LF]
Pantries. One universal manifestation of raw, natural magic throughout the universe is this: that any domestic food store, raided furtively in the middle of the night, always contains, no matter what its daytime inventory, half a jar of elderly mayonnaise, a piece of very old cheese, and a tomato with white mould growing on it. [M]
Paps of Scilla. An eight-peaked mountain range, visible on the route from ZEMPHIS to Ankh-Morpork. Many have speculated about the lady concerned. [ER]
Parker, Robert, Mr. Chairman of the Merchants’ Guild. As (also) a member of the Ancient and Venerable Order of Greengrocers’, Mr Parker is honour bound never to put his punctuation in the right place. Example: ‘As chairman of the, Merchant’s’ Guild gentlemen may, I point out that these thing’s represent a valuable labour force in this city—’ [MM]
Parrot. ERIC’S pet. It spoke, but utilised a somewhat limited vocabulary based around one metasyntactic variable. It had one evil but intelligent red eye; most of the rest of it was pink and purple skin, studded with fag-ends of feathers, so that the net effect was of an oven-ready hairbrush. It was given to PONCE DA QUIRM. [E]
Pasha of Re’Durat. A past owner of the magical sword Kring. Re’Durat has never been identified, but is presumed to be in Hersheba. [COM]
Patrician, Office of. The Patrician is the ruler of Ankh-Morpork. There have been no monarchs in Ankh-Morpork for 300 years, since the death of the last and possibly nastiest (see LORENZO THE KIND). The only real qualification to rule Ankh-Morpork is the ability to stay alive for more than five minutes, because the great merchant families of Ankh have been ruling the city as kings or Patricians for the last twenty centuries and are as about to relinquish power as the average limpet is to let go of its rock. Past Patricians have included:
Hargarth, Frenzied Earl [GG]
Harmoni, Deranged Lord [MAA]
Nersch the Lunatic [GG]
Olaf QUIMBY II
SCAPULA, Laughing Lord
Smince, Lord [GG]
Snapcase, Mad/Psychoneurotic Lord [GG, MAA]
WINDER, Homicidal Lord
The holder of the office throughout the Discworld chronicles (apart from some of the events in Night Watch) is Lord Havelock Vetinari. (See also MONARCHY.)
Patrician, the. (See VETINARI, Lord Havelock)
Patrician’s Palace. The old Royal Winter Palace of the Kings of Ankh. The most famous room in the Palace is the Oblong Office, which is the personal sanctum of the current PATRICIAN. Although much of the Palace is given over to the Patrician’s clerks, collating and updating the information gathered by his exquisitely organised spy system, it still contains the public rooms left over from the city’s royal heritage – in particular the Throne Room, which houses the magnificent Golden Throne of the Kings of Ankh. This throne is not used by the current Patrician; he prefers to sit on a plain wooden chair at the foot of the steps leading to the throne. Also of note are the Palace dungeons, which include all the usual equipment, together with the scorpion pit.
It is, however, the Palace Grounds that are the crowning glory. These include a bird garden, a little zoo, a racehorse stable – and gardens laid out by Bloody Stupid JOHNSON. Of particular note are the ornamental trout lake, the fountain, lawn, maze, ornamental chiming sundial and the hoho. (A haha is a cunningly concealed dip in the land enabling one to enjoy the view without being nibbled by inconvenient cows – it is, in fact, a sort of negative fence. A hoho is merely a much deeper version.)
The trout lake has room for one long thin trout, the fountain only operated once when it blew a small stone cherub right outside the city, and the maze, far from being big enough to get lost in, is so small that people get lost looking for it. All in all, the gardens represent Bloody Stupid’s erratic genius in full flower.
Patricio. Twenty-three-stone Despot of Quirm. He was the largest victim/client of the ASSASSINS’ GUILD; they had to break for lunch. [P]
Peaches. A sleek, female rat in the Clan, and the devoted scribe and personal assistant of the philosopher DANGEROUS BEANS. She has a small, squeaky but clear voice and she tends to clear her throat before speaking. In the rat troop she is also the official carrier of the copy of their holy book, Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure. [TAMAHER]
Peavie. Treasurer of the ALCHEMISTS’ GUILD. A nervous man whose contribution to the development of moving pictures was the invention of banged grains. This may have done nothing for his nerves. [MP]
Peedbury, Iago. A farmer neighbour of Miss Flitworth. The first man to use a Combination Harvester. [RM]
Pelc, Ladislav, D.M.Phil. Prehumous Professor of Morbid Bibliomancy at Unseen University. Professor Pelc works in a room full of books, and made of books – even his desk and chairs are shaped out of books. He keeps his beard on a hook on his door. When in use, that beard slots nicely over his very large ears. He works with Professor Goitre, who is the Posthumous Professor of Morbid Bibiomancy (he took early death as a part of a very good package, but he can come back at a week’s notice). [GP]
Pencillium, Osric. Discoverer of the pencil bush in the graphite-rich sands of Sumtri. So it is widely believed, in any case, and as so often happens what everyone ‘knows’ is wrong. The idea is ridiculous. What he discovered was probably the bush Plumbago Scribens Officianalis, which has a very thick lead and a mere veneer of wood-like casing and was used by the Sumtrians only for crude sketching purposes. It wasn’t until ten years of careful cross-breeding that Osric produced the reliable HB varieties found today. [H]
Pepe. He is, in his own estimation, a fashionista, working with Madam SHARM. Pepe is a dwarf, but he is a willowy dwarf – willowy like someone made from sinews. He was originally from Lobbin Clout in Ankh-Morpork (Old Cheese Alley) but he now moves in more stylish circles. He is not just someone who makes clothes – he creates gorgeous works of art that just happen to require a body to show them off. Keen on the occasional glass of strong liquor. [UA]
Perdore, Brother. A member of the Nine Day Wonderers, a religious order in the RAMTOPS. He is an amiable old man, which is just as well given that his flexible parish contains so many witches. [LL]
Peripatetic Teachers. Self-employed teachers who, usually in ragged bands, travel from village to village in remote districts offering small amounts of education in exchange for food, a night’s shelter or clean used clothing. A child might be excused from general homestead chores and given some spare vegetables and maybe an egg or two to ‘get some learning’. Teachers are encouraged to move on before nightfall lest they steal chickens. Don’t buy clothes pegs from them.
Perks, Polly. ‘Ozzer’. A volunteer to the Borogravian Army. She used to have long hair, long golden curls, worn in a net when she was working in her father’s inn. Now that her mother’s dead, she runs the inn, in fact. The inn has a picture of the Duchess ANNAGGOVIA as its sign. Polly is not conventionally beautiful and that, plus her small bosom, is useful when she decides to enlist in the army as Oliver Perks. She performs well, becoming batman to Lieutenant BLOUSE at one stage, and gains promotion by the end of her adventures, to sergeant. [MR]
Pessimal, A.E., Mr. A government inspector. Mr Pessimal is neat. Beyond neat. He is a folding person. His suit is cheap but very clean, his little boots sparkle. His hair gleams, too, even more than the boots. It has a centre parting and has been plastered down so severely that it looks as though it’s been painted on his head. He twinkles as he walks – every move is neat. He’s the sort of person you’d bet would have a shovel purse and spectacles on a ribbon. He joins the City Watch as an acting constable. Later he becomes Vimes’ adjutant and achieves the rank of lance-constable. [T!]
>
Pestilence. Anthropomorphic personification. A member of the Four Horsemen of the APOCRALYPSE. He has a breathy, wet voice, which is practically contagious in itself. He likes hospitals because there is always something for him to do there. Humans created Pestilence, just as they created FAMINE. They have a genius for crowding together, for poking around in jungles, and for siting the midden so handily next to the well. [LF, TOT]
Petty, Amber. Daughter of Seth Petty, who did not treat her kindly, and suffered for it. Amber was helped by Tiffany and, more importantly, by the Nac Mac Feegles. She now has a young man, William, who is a very skilled tailor. [ISWM]
Philosophy. EPHEBE is the home of philosophy, but other lands have also produced famous philosophers, most notably, of course, LY TIN WHEEDLE. There are almost as many systems of philosophy as there are philosophers. They include: Sumtin, Zen, Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, Stochaticism, Anamaxandritism, Epistemologism, Peripateticism, Synopticism and Ismism.
Astro-philosophers of KRULL once succeeded in proving conclusively that all places are one place and that the distance between them is an illusion. This news was an embarrassment to all thinking philosophers because it did not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of wrangling, the whole thing was then turned over to Ly Tin Wheedle who, after some thought, proclaimed that although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place was very large.
Xenoists say that the world is basically complex and random. Ibidians say the world is basically simple and follows certain fundamental rules. DIDACTYLOS says basically it’s a funny old world – and it doesn’t contain enough to drink.
Phoenix. Also called the firebird. This bird nearly always hatches in the burning deserts of Klatch. It has found a way of making incubation work very, very fast: it lays a silvery grey egg with a very light shell and then burns itself up to hatch the new bird. In theory, you only ever get one phoenix at a time. Its cry is described as ‘like unto the cry of a buzzard yet of lower pitch’. The phoenix is able, more or less, to disguise itself as other birds. Phoenixes share their minds and their memories. They don’t tolerate evil and it is said that firebird feathers burn in the presence of evil. [CJ]
Pills, Dried Frog. The wizards of Unseen University are right at the forefront of modern medical thinking when it comes to the therapeutic use of frog products, and make up these pills for the current Bursar, who is mentally as stable as a tapdancer in a ballbearing factory.
Pin Exchange, the. The ‘Home of Acuphilia!’ in Dolly Sisters, in an alley between a house of negotiable affection and a massage parlour. It is run by Big Dave – a huge bearded man with dreadlocks, a pin through his nose, a beer belly belonging to three other people and the words ‘Death or Pins’ tattooed on a bicep. [GP]
Pin, Mr. Also known, for a very short while, as Brother Upon-Which-The-Angels-Dance Pin. He, with Mr TULIP, comprised the New Firm, which arrived in Ankh-Morpork ready to make the town their own.
They didn’t see themselves as thugs. Nor were they thieves . . . at least, they never thought of themselves as thieves. They didn’t think of themselves as assassins (assassins are posh and have rules). They thought of themselves as facilitators. Men who made things happen; men who were going places. He and Mr Tulip were the sort of people who would call you ‘friend’. People like that aren’t friendly.
Mr Pin was the brains of the outfit only in comparison to Mr Tulip. His one vice was smoking (at least, it was the one vice that he thought of as a vice). He was small, slim and, like his namesake, slightly larger in the head than ought to be the case. He drank little, watched what he ate and considered his body, malformed as it was, as a temple, albeit one of those strange ones without windows. He carried a wallet with a legend burned on it in pokerwork: ‘Not A Very Nice Person At All’. He wasn’t so much killed as spiked. [TT]
Pine Dressers. A village high in the RAMTOPS and 500 miles from the sea which nevertheless has managed to develop a thriving fish-gutting, smoking, and canning industry based on the very frequent rains of fish that occur in the area. The townsfolk see no reason to object to strange phenomena if they can make a decent kipper out of them.
Pivey, Mrs. Neighbour of Count and Countess NOTFAROUTOE. Known to be unsympathetic to things like moats and crypts in a next-door context. [RM]
Pizza. The first pizza was created on the Disc by the Klatchian mystic Ronron ‘Revelation Joe’ SHUWADHI, who claimed to have been given the recipe in a dream by the CREATOR of the Discworld Himself, who had apparently added that it was what He had intended, all along. Those desert travellers who have seen the original, which is reputedly miraculously preserved in the Forbidden City of EE, say that what the Creator had in mind then was a fairly small cheese and pepperoni affair with a few black olives, and things like mountains and seas got added out of last-minute enthusiasm, as so often happens.
After the Schism of the Turnwise Ones and the deaths of some 25,000 people in the ensuing jihad, the faithful were allowed to add one small bayleaf to the recipe.
Pizzas are a food that is highly adaptable to the multi-species community in Ankh-Morpork, as attested by the Quatra-rodenti (for dwarfs) and Four Strata (for trolls).
Plays, etc.
Blood-Soaked Tragedy of the Mad Monk of Quirm, The [LL]
Chicken Lake (a ballet) [TFE]
Comedy of Cuckolds, A [MR]
Dragon of the Plains, The [WS]
Gretalina and Mellias [WS]
King of Ankh, The [WS]
King Under the Mountain [WS]
King’s Brides, The [WS]
Mage Wars, The [WS]
Mallo, the Tyrant of Klatch [WS]
Night of Kings, A (also called The Lancre Play) [WS]
Starcrossed (by Hwel) [UA]
Swan on a Hot Tin Lake (a ballet) [ISWM]
Taming of the Vole, The [LL]
’Tis Pity She’s a Tree [MR]
’Tis Pity She’s an Instructor in Unarmed Combat [MM]
Troll’s Tale, The [WS]
Tyrant, The [WS]
Wizard of Ankh, A [WS]
Wizard of Sorts, A, or Please Yourself [WS]
Many of these appear to have flowed from the quill of HWEL, the dwarf playwright attached to VITOLLER’S Men.
Pleasant, Mrs. A fat, naturally jolly black lady who is a cook at the palace in GENUA (and this is just as well, in a period when failing to be fat and jolly while being a cook was punishable by death). A very superior cook, with the Genuan talent for making a gourmet meal out of things found under a damp rock. She is a close personal friend of Mrs GOGOL. [WA]
Plinge, Walter. Originally and possibly still the odd-job man at the Ankh-Morpork OPERA House. A scarecrow with spiky, black, greasy hair, clammy hands and pale, rubbery features. What most people noticed first of all, though, was his unique walk, which looked as though his body was being dragged forward and his legs were being left to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. Not so much a walk, in fact, as a collapse, infinitely postponed. Walter, the aforesaid most people considered, was clearly several ariettas short of a full opera. But others might speculate that, as in opera, what the scenery shows is not always what is actually there. [M!!!!!]
Plugger. A shoemaker with premises in New Cobblers, Ankh-Morpork. The first to take advertising space on C.M.O.T. DIBBLER’S invention, the short-sleeved-singlet-made-of-cheap-cotton. [SM]
Plumbers’ Guild. (Guild of Plumbers and Dunnikindivers). Motto: NON ANTE SEPTEM DIES PROXIMA, SQVIRI. Coat of arms: a shield, per pairle reversed. Top right, appaum e, argent on a field, gules. Top left, a bezant on a field, vert. Below them a coq, gules on a field, bouse.
The Guild House is in Pleaders Row, Ankh-Morpork.
Ankh-Morpork does not, currently, have a functioning sewerage system, and fresh water, once brought from distant hills by aqueduct, is now generally pumped from shallow wells. No one knows why this has not resulted in the city being a soup of diseases; it has been suggested that the cent
uries have bred a very high resistance among the population, and also that germs don’t attack Ankh-Morpork citizens out of fellow feeling.
The Guild digs wells, plumbs houses and empties cesspits (the dunnykin, or dunnikin, divers – a small, select but lonely group of men who are always incredibly well-scrubbed and neatly dressed when off duty but never seem to attract many friends).
It is believed that the plumbers possess a specialised form of time travel which means they have no grasp of the concept of ‘today’, since ‘immediately’ to a plumber is identical with ‘next week, maybe the week after’.
The president of the Guild is C.H. LAVATORY (Sir Charles Lavatory), of Mollymog Street. He, in fact, invented the device which bears his name (and is fast replacing the somewhat primitive invention of William de Privy). This marvellous device cleans and flushes beautifully, but not to anywhere particular. The people of Ankh-Morpork have a cat-like approach to sanitation and waste disposal: if you can’t see it, it isn’t there, and if it’s next door then it’s their problem.
The Guild has no training school as such, being a prime exponent of the apprentice system. Boys are taught to carry bags, tell a three/eights Gripley from a 0.3 Cosworth, and never, ever, to do today what you could do next week, maybe the week after.
Pointer & Pickles. Co-owners of a rock emporium on 10th Egg Street. Two people with one body – one young, one old. Apparently, it’s a sort of illness. [T!]
Ponce da Quirm. A Discworld explorer from the famous da Quirm family. He sought for the Fountain of Youth for most of his life and in fact found it, dying shortly afterwards having failed to remember to boil the water before drinking it. [E, DM]
Pony, George, Mr. The fifty-eight-year-old Chief Engineer of the Grand Trunk Company. Mr Pony is a methodical craftsman, with a sick wife at home, twinges in his knuckles and a bad back. He is a member of the Artificers Guild. [GP, T!]
Poons, Windle. 130-year-old deaf, toothless wizard.
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