Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion ... So Far

by Terry Pratchett

  All the Little Angels (How Do They Rise Up?) [NW]

  Amber & Jasper [MP]

  Ankh-Morpork Malady [RM]

  Ankh-Morpork! Ankh-Morpork! So Good They Named it Ankh-Morpork! [RM]

  Ball of Philodelphus, The [E]

  Ballad of Amber and Jasper, The [MP]

  Bells of St Ungulant’s, The [H]

  Bonny Flowers, The [HFOS]

  Carry Me Away from Old Ankh-Morpork [RM]

  Cavern Deep, Mountain High [SM]

  Claws of Iron Shall Rend the Ungodly [SG]

  Colonel Crapski[MR]

  Devil Shall Be My Sergeant, The [MR]

  Dingdong, Dingdong [WA]

  Don’t Tread On My New Blue Boots [SM]

  Gathering Rhubarb [SM]

  Girl I Left Behind Me, The [MR]

  Give Me that Music with Rocks in [SM]

  Gold [MAA]

  Good Gracious, Miss Polly [SM]

  He is Trampling the Unrighteous with Hooves of Hot Iron [SG]

  Hedgehog Cakewalk [CJ]

  Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All, The [WS]

  Hiho Song, The [MP]

  I Fear I’m Going Back to Ankh-Morpork [RM]

  Ich Bin Ein Rattarsedschwein (from The Student Horse) [CJ]

  I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her [MR]

  Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier [MR]

  Larks They Sang Melodious, The (also – Pleasant and Delightful) [ISWM]

  Lift Me to the Skies [CJ]

  Light the Good Light [CJ]

  Lo, the Infidels Flee the Wrath of Om [SG]

  May I Suck of the Water Pure [TT]

  Om Is In His Holy Temple [CJ]

  Om Shall Trample the Ungodly [CJ]

  Pathway to Paradise [SM]

  Pedlar’s Song, The [M!!!!!]

  Plogviehze! (The Sun Has Risen! Let’s Make Beer!) [MR]

  Prancing Queen [TLC]

  Questa Maledetta [M!!!!!]

  Red Rosy Hen [H]

  She Sits Among the Cabbages and Leeks [M!!!!!]

  Sioni Bod Da [SM]

  Something’s Gotten into My Beard [SM]

  Steady Progress and Limited Disobedience While Retaining Well-Formulated Good Manners (a big hit in Hunghung) [IT]

  Sto Helit Lace [SM]

  Streets of Ankh-Morpork, The [RM]

  Sweet Polly Oliver [MR]

  There’s a Great Deal of Shaking Happening [SM]

  Twelve Days of Hogswatch, The [H]

  Twilight Serenade (TEARS of the Mushroom) [SN]

  Waking in Sunshine [TT]

  Way of the Infidel is a Nest of Thorns, The [SG]

  We Shall Overcome [RM]

  Where Has All the Custard Gone (Jelly’s Just Not the Same) [TFE, NOCB]

  Winkle’s No Use If You Don’t Have a Pin, A [M!!!!!]

  Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob on the End, A [WS]

  World Turned Upside Down, The [MR]

  Wouldn’t It Be Nice If Everyone Was Nice (a haunting refrain) [H]

  Song Sung Lo, General. Author of The Craft of War. He once moved his army disguised as a field of sunflowers. [MR]

  Sonky, Wallace. Ankh-Morpork tradesman and maker of rubber boots and other . . . goods. Sonky’s shop smells of incontinent cats and sulphur, an unfortunate aspect of the chemicals used in his trade. Sonky had a brother in Überwald, who is likely to continue the family business which must, after all, be very profitable. Mr Sonky gave his name to the street term for his ‘Penny-a-Packet Preventatives’ – a packet of sonkies. These come in an extensive range, including Sonky’s Eversure Dependables and Sonky’s Ribbed Magical Delights. [TFE]

  Soon, Shine Sun. Runs the Shonky Shop in Clay Lane, Ankh-Morpork (a shonky shop being, more or less, the second-hand clothes shop of last resort.) He is a small, glossy little man, totally bald, and wears some vague clothing that presumably even a shonky shop hadn’t been able to sell. He is, besides, a HISTORY monk of the secret Ankh-Morpork section. [NW]

  Soto, Marco. A member of the Ankh-Morpork section of the HISTORY MONKS. A heavy young man in a grubby yellow robe and with very long, black hair. Actually, to say that it’s black and bound up in a ponytail is to miss the chance to use the word ‘elephantine’. It is hair with personality. Master Soto is a hard-working and friendly monk . . . provided you don’t touch his hair. History Monks are supposed to have shaved heads but Soto argues that, underneath his hair, he is bald. He is the man who found Lobsang LUDD for the Order. [NW]

  Soul Cake Days. The first Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday after the first half-moon in Sektober.

  A STO PLAINS/RAMTOPS festival roughly corresponding to the traditional European/North American festivals of Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night. Celebrated both by dwarfs (Bobbing for Trout, Toffee Rats on a Stick) and humans (Trickle-Treating, All-Comers Morris Dancing, and a rather mysterious custom involving the rolling of boiled eggs down the Tump in Ankh-Morpork). In short, a three-day feast and celebration whose origins are lost in the mists of alcohol.

  Soul Cake Tuesday Duck, The. A species of magical fauna in the Easter Bunny/Reynard the Fox league, possibly associated with the fact that Soul Cake Tuesday is the opening of the duck-hunting season. The sighting of the first duck on Soul Cake Tuesday is considered very lucky, except, of course, for the duck.

  Sound of the Rain on Hard Ground. An old goblin from the mound close to Ramkin Hall. Widower to The Pleasant Contrast of the Orange and Yellow Petals in the Flower of the Gorse. Names such as hers are one of the many reasons why goblins don’t wear identity badges [SN]

  Soup II. Mad King Soup II. Past king of Lancre. He had a mistress, Mme Cupidor. [LL]

  Sourcerer. A type of super-wizard; one who can create magic rather than simply utilise it. See MAGIC

  Specials, The. Technically, the Citizens’ Militia. Made up of men who could be a copper at times of dire need but who are generally disqualified from formal Watch membership by reason of shape, profession, age or – sometimes – brain. [T!]

  Spells. A spell can be thought of as a kind of mental pill, containing all the ingredients necessary for achieving its purpose. They are short cuts, the results of tireless experimentation by wizards in the past. A wizard wishing to change the shape of some living thing could, of course, start from first principles and carefully work out how to do it; but he will generally use Stacklady’s Morphic Resonator, for example, simply because it is tried and tested.

  A spell, once memorised, will remain in the wizard’s head until it gets said or he dies, in which case it auto-casts itself, with unpredictable results.

  A spell takes up quite a lot of mental space. For instance, RINCEWIND in possession of one of the Great Spells was unable to memorise any others at all. The fact that he had never been able to do so before this happened is beside the point.

  Many deceased wizards are remembered by the spells they have added to Unseen University’s grimoire.

  Spelter. Fifth-level wizard and former Bursar of Unseen University. A tall and wiry man, he looked as though he’d been a horse in previous lives and only just avoided it in this one. Killed for trying to prevent the LIBRARY’S destruction during the brief reign of COIN. [S]

  Spent, Mrs. Landlady of the boarding house in Market Street where Ossie BRUNT stayed during the events of Jingo. [J]

  Sphinx, The. An unreal and therefore chronically bad-tempered creature, with the body of a lion, the bosom of a woman and the wings of an eagle. It lurks on the dimensional borders of DJELIBEYBI. [P]

  Spigot, William. An old farm worker with skin like leather. He helps out with the harvest at Miss Flitworth’s. He is also known for his folk singing and fiddle-playing. [RM]

  Spircle. A low-value chameleon gemstone that can take on the hue of real gemstones when put in a bag with them. Spircles are mined from the mountains near BAD ASS. [ER]

  Spold, Greyhald. A wizard of the Ancient and Truly Original Sages of the Unbroken Circle. In his day, he was the oldest wizard and determined to remain so. He tried, unsuccessfully, to find a place impre
gnable by DEATH, and built a dense and magically protected box that nothing whatsoever could penetrate. This included, as he became briefly aware, any air molecules (the last words he ever heard were DARK IN HERE, ISN’T IT . . . ?). [LF]

  Spolwhittle. Author of the Trans-Congruency Theory. [UA]

  Spools. The kind, and enthusiastic, proprietor of Teemer & Spools in Ankh-Morpork. The company is a quality printer who produced the Discworld’s first postage stamps. Teemer & Spools had gone up in the world because of the big stamp contract. They’d always done the best printing work in any case, but now they had the men and muscle to bid for all the big contracts. [GP, MM]

  Spriggins. Mr Spriggins is the butler at Lancre Castle. He has a bad memory, a nervous twitch and a rubber knee. [ LL ]

  Spudding, Mrs. Lives in New Cobblers, Ankh-Morpork, seventy-five years old and with a fine set of wooden teeth. She’s the cleaner at the Pink Pussycat Club. [T!]

  Spuds, Hoggy. An old army pal of Sergeant COLON. [MAA]

  Staffs, wizards’. Wizards in foreign parts may think they can get away with a crystal ball and some magic scarves, but what an Unseen University wizard expects to find in his hand is six feet of good solid oak or ash – or even SAPIENT PEARWOOD, if he is lucky – as a repository and storehouse of personal magic, a walking aid and, if necessary, a weapon. As the current ARCHCHANCELLOR of UU has pointed out in his robust way, what cannot be stopped by the magic in a staff can often be brought short by a good poke in any available soft bits with a length of heavy timber.

  Most staffs in use today are quite venerable, having been handed down from wizard to wizard for perhaps hundreds of years, and in very extreme cases – the staff possessed by Drum BILLET and subsequently by Eskarina Smith (see ESK), for example – can be so imbued with magic as to have lives of their own.

  A wizard will treat his staff with respect, taking care to top up its power every day and then give it a good polish, paying particular attention to the knob on the end. The fact that there is a popular song about said knob is deeply puzzling to wizards. So what? they say, staffs have always had knobs on. What’s funny about that? It’s just the tool of our trade. It’s nothing to joke about.

  The knobs may be ornate jewellery, a complicated piece of sculpture, a music box or even a small polished container handy for some matches and a packet of fags. Sometimes, such artificial additions are not required because the staff grows its own knob, a growth rather like the ‘knees’ grown by the American swamp cypress. Because this gall is the wood’s response to the magic within it, it can take many forms – the face of the wizard himself, or an object dear to him, or even stranger things . . .

  Staffs made of metal are occasionally tried. They are efficient, but somehow the magic always seems to change for the worse.

  Stamp, Miss. Teaches Maths at the Quirm College for the Daughters of Gentlefolk. [SM]

  Standards, Ankh-Morporkian. Obviously any civilisation needs some way of standardising weights and measures and time. In modern times, for example, an official unit of measurement is likely to be a length of metal bar kept at a precise temperature, or some reproducible count based on atomic decay or the speed of light. The old Ankh-Morpork Bureau of Measures in the Barbican still performs this role for a large part of the Discworld, but less so for its common units of measurement (which in any case have been filed down, soldered on to, drilled and had bits of chewing gum stuck to them on too many occasions) than for its more esoteric ones, a legacy of the precise-minded Patrician Olaf QUIMBY.

  Here, for example, may be found the exact Blunt Stick, a crude but effective measurement of the acceptability of just about anything; it is this Blunt Stick14 that the test object may, or may not, be better than. Although the official Pie that it may even be as nice as is not maintained here, there is a standardised recipe readily available. Also, kept in a glass cabinet, are the original Two Short Planks and the stone used in the original Moss-Gathering trials.

  Bureau officials still maintain a small programme of tests of, for instance, the degree of similarity of any two peas or the alcoholic tendencies of newts. It is vital, as the current PATRICIAN has noted, that something like this is found for people with minds like that to do, otherwise they might do anything.

  Standing Stone, The. Stands on the crest of the moor in the RAMTOPS. It is the same height as a tall man and is made of bluish tinted rock. It is considered to be intensely magical because, although there is only one of it, no one has ever been able to count it. If it sees anyone looking at it speculatively, it shuffles behind them and, in extreme cases, goes and hides in the peat bogs. It is also one of the numerous discharge points for the magic that accumulates in the Ramtops. [WS]

  Stanley, Apprentice Postman. (Later, Head of Stamps.) Young man who works at the Ankh-Morpork Post Office. He is an orphan from the Siblings of Offler Charity Home, both his parents having died of Gnats on their farm out in the wilds. He was raised by peas until the home took him in. He is a good lad, if he doesn’t get upset and he once was quite obsessional about pins – he even edited Total Pins. When we first meet him, he has a blue cotton shirt with the legend ‘Ask Me About Pins’.

  When he stands to attention, his right side stands considerably more to attention than his left side. He stands like a banana, with a huge nervous grin and big, gleaming eyes – he radiates keenness, quite probably beyond the bounds of sanity.

  When he later becomes Head of Stamps, he then sports a T-shirt with ‘Ask Me About Stamps’ on it. [GP]

  Stibbons, Ponder. Originally a fellow student wizard with Victor TUGELBEND at Unseen University and also known, to his UU colleagues, as Poncy Stibbons and Stibbo. He graduated by getting Victor’s rigged exam paper in error (which had one question – Name?). Originally rather lazy by nature, he seems to have blossomed to become the youngest and most depressingly keen member of the UU faculty. He is now the Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, as well as Reader in Invisible Writings and Praelector of UU. However, as one of the few wizards at the University with his head screwed on in any fashion, he now seems quite against his will to be in the front line. He has discovered too late that he has the unfortunate defect of a logical mind and an incipient desire to understand the Universe. He is in some way the creator of HEX, the UU computer, although now Hex appears to be self-creating.

  Every organisation needs at least one person who knows what’s going on and why it’s happening and who’s doing it, and at UU this role is filled by Stibbons, who often wishes it isn’t. He does all the jobs that involve paperwork, everything that requires even a modicum of effort and responsibility. Ponder now sees it as his mission in life to stoke the fires that keep Mustrum RIDCULLY bubbling and make the University a happy place. As a dog reflects the mood of its owner, so a university reflects its Master. As the University’s sole self-confessed entirely sensible person, his job is to steer things as best he can, and find ways of keeping the Archchancellor too occupied to get under Ponder’s feet.

  He now has twelve jobs at UU, including the posts of Master of the Traditions and Camerlengo. This means that if the Archchancellor drops dead, from any cause other than legitimate succession under the Dead Man’s Pointy Shoes tradition, he runs UU until a successor is elected which, given the nature of wizardry, could mean a job for life.

  Ponder once played third goblin in his school play.

  Stinky. A goblin from the caves close to Ramkin Hall. He is as skinny as a skeleton and, like most goblins, looks like a cross between a wolf and an ape; sounds like a bag of walnuts being jumped on, and smells like . . . Well, it’s more a sensation like your dental enamel is being evaporated and any armour you have is rusting at some speed. [SN]

  Stitched, Sir Reynold. Curator of Fine Art at the Royal Art Museum, Ankh-Morpork. A tall, thin figure, with the attitude of a preoccupied chicken. [T!]

  Sto Helit, Duke of. Original motto: FABER EST QVISQVE FORTVNAE SVAE. Original coat of arms: a boar’s head, sable, on a field, argent.

  A man with a
little moustache and a grin like a lizard. Not the nicest of people, since he was quite capable of killing all who stood between him and the throne of Sto Helit or even between him and the drinks cabinet. He murdered his way close to the throne of STO LAT and was only prevented from killing Princess KELI, the last barrier to his accession, by the actions of MORT. [M]

  Sto Helit, Susan. Daughter of MORT and YSABELL, and granddaughter of DEATH, from whom she has inherited a number of traits (this should be impossible, since Ysabell was adopted, but see GENETICS).

  A self-possessed and somewhat chilly young woman. As a pupil at the QUIRM COLLEGE FOR YOUNG LADIES, she was good at those sports that involved swinging some sort of stick (hockey, lacrosse, rounders) and she was academically brilliant at the things she liked doing. But brilliant, though, like a diamond – all edges and coldness, as it were. It is noteworthy that the only other pupils she even vaguely considered friends were a dwarf and a troll, both in some way ‘outcasts’ from normal school society. She had – and has – the ability to make herself so inconspicuous as to be invisible to non-magical minds (a definite family attribute).

  She is attractive, in a skinny way, and while still quite young has an indefinable air of age about her. Her hair is pure white apart from a black streak. Initially it was uncontrollable, but now it tends to follow her mood, re-styling itself into a tight bun or a ponytail or whatever other shape suits the occasion (this is clearly a by-product of all the other talents she has ‘inherited’ from her grandfather, although Death himself needs few tonsorial attentions other than the occasional moment with a duster). She moves like a tiger and she has a most disconcerting Look – cool and calm but not something you’d want to see twice.

  On Susan’s face is a birthmark, which shows up only when she blushes, or when she is angry, and these days she is angry far more frequently than she is embarrassed. It takes the form of three pale lines across her cheek (Discworld students will recall that her father was once slapped across the face by Death, leaving just such a mark – Discworld ‘inheritance’ at work again, it seems).

  When she is covering for her grandfather she wears a black lace dress of the sort worn by healthy yet necronerdic young women who want to look consumptive. She currently works as a schoolteacher, and is a remarkably effective one. Because of her own rather special upbringing (her parents, although very caring, avoided the whole ‘magical childhood fantasy’ business in an ultimately useless effort to shield her from the influence of her grandfather) she tends to treat children as inconveniently small adults and to her amazement this works very well.