Klatch the country is the centre of a prosperous and expanding empire, whose capital city is now AL KHALI, and has a proud and venerable civilisation. Its tongue is said to have all the subtlety of a language so ancient and sophisticated that it had fifteen words meaning ‘assassination’ before the rest of the world caught on to the idea of bashing one another over the head with rocks. Klatch has a big trading fleet, and is also known for its ‘bhong’ music, its blue-black-skinned people and its cuisine (curry, boiled fish, dark green sauce, rice, etc.).
Klatch is the nearest ‘foreign’ nation to Ankh-Morpork. Technically, of course, Pseudopolis and QUIRM and STO HELIT are all independent city states and much closer, but they are really for all their protestations economic and social satellite states of Ankh-Morpork. Klatch, however, is clearly a rival and is also obviously foreign, and there is therefore that strange love-hate relationship that always exists between two nations whose fortunes are historically intertwined (cf. England and France, the United States North and South, Western Australia and the rest of Australia, Scotland and Scotland, etc., etc.). Traditionally, this means that Klatchians are regarded as being at one and the same time incredibly cunning and irredeemably stupid, bone-idle and deviously industrious, highly cultured and obstinately backward.
The continental hinterland consists of deserts, jungles and rain forests. It also contains lost kingdoms of Amazonian princesses, volcanoes, elephants’ graveyards, lost diamond mines, strange ruins covered in hieroglyphics and hidden plateaux where reptilian monsters of a bygone era romp and play. On any reasonable map of the area there’s barely room for the trees.
Klatchian Foreign Legion, the. A special force set up by KLATCH (the country) to defend its rather vague desert borders against predatory neighbours and also against the D’regs, a desert tribe. It is, however, open to recruits from any country and traditionally is a refuge for the disgraced, the fugitive and the lovelorn.
It is well known that people join the Klatchian Foreign Legion to forget (everything except sand) and this seems to work, because no one in the Klatchian Foreign Legion can remember why they are there.
Or their name. Or their rank.
The Klatchian Foreign Legion has a famed drinking and marching song, which goes ‘Er . . .’
Klopstock. Mr Klopstock is the proprietor of the Bull Pit in Pseudopolis, a crude theatre. [SM]
Knibbs, Lettuce. Lady’s maid to Queen MOLLY of the BEGGARS’ GUILD. Killed in error for Queen Molly. As was remarked by Lance-constable ANGUA, she was one of those people whose chief role in life is to die. [MAA]
Knock, Sergeant. Sergeant Winsborough ‘Knocker’ Knock of the Ankh-Morpork City Night Watch. A man with little weaselly eyes. He taught policing to Sergeant COLON. [NW]
Knurd. Knurd is the opposite of drunk. It should not be mistaken for sobriety. Sobriety is merely the median state; knurdness is a sort of super-sobriety. By comparison, sobriety is like having a bath in warm cotton wool.
Knurdness strips away all the illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they’ve screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again.
Klatchian coffee makes you knurd.
Koom Valley. Koom Valley, the site of the most famous battle between the dwarfs and the trolls, is basically a drain. Nearly thirty miles of soft limestone rock edged by mountains of harder rock, so what you had would have been a canyon if it wasn’t so wide. One end was almost on the snowline, the other merged into the plains.
It was said that even clouds kept away from the desolation that was Koom Valley. Maybe they did, but that didn’t matter. The valley got the water anyway, from meltwater and the hundreds of waterfalls that poured over its walls from the mountains that cupped it. One of those falls, The Tears of the King, was half a mile high.
The Koom River doesn’t just rise in this valley. It leaps and dances in this valley. By the time it is halfway down this valley, it is a criss-crossing of thundering waters, forever merging and parting. They carry and hurl great rocks, and play with whole fallen trees from the dripping forests, colonising the scree that has built up against the walls. They gurgle into holes and rise again, miles away, as fountains. They have no mappable course – a good storm higher up the valley could bring house-sized rocks and half a stricken woodland down in the flood, blocking the sinkholes and piling up dams. Some of these could survive for years, becoming little islands in the leaping waters, growing little forests and little meadows and colonies of big birds. Then some key rock would be shifted by a random river, and within an hour it would all be gone.
Nothing that couldn’t fly lived in the valley, at least for long. The dwarfs had tried to tame it, back before the first battle. They’d never tried again. Hundreds of dwarfs and trolls had been swept up in the famous flood, and barely a few had ever been found again. Koom Valley had taken them all into its sinkholes and chambers and caverns, and had kept them.
There are places in the valley where a man can drop a coloured cork into a swirling sink and could count for twenty minutes before it bobs up on a fountain less than a dozen yards away.
The valley has guides who tell the history of the place. They’d tell you how the wind in the rocks, and the roaring of the waters, still carry the sounds of ancient battle, continuing in death. They say, maybe all those trolls and dwarfs the valley took are still fighting, down there in the dark.
Koomi. Koomi of Smale. A religious philosopher and author of ‘Ego-Video Liber Deorum’. [SG]
Koomi, Hoot. Bald-headed Djelibeybian High Priest of Khefin, the Two-Faced God of Gateways. [P]
Kring. A magical, talking, black sword. Forged from thunderbolt (meteoric) iron. It has highly ornate runic inscriptions running up the blade, a couple of rubies set in its pommel, a slight nick two-thirds of the way up the blade and what it would really like to be is a ploughshare.
Kring speaks in a voice like the scrape of a blade over a stone. Once owned by HRUN the Barbarian, but present whereabouts unknown. [COM]
Krona, Heme. The owner of the Camels-R-Us livery stable in DJELIBEYBI. [P]
Krull. A secretive island kingdom. Geographically, it is a large island, quite mountainous and heavily wooded, with pleasant white buildings visible among the trees. The land slopes gradually up towards the Rim, so that the highest point in Krull slightly overhangs the Edge.
The island not only gets higher as it nears the Edge, it gets narrower, too. Here at the very lip is its major city, also called Krull. At the very edge of the city is a large amphitheatre, with seating for several tens of thousands of people. Its rim-most mountains project over the RIMFALL. In fact a large part of its coastline sticks out over the Edge, so native Krullians need to look where they are going and avoid sleepwalking at all costs.
Since building materials on Krull are largely salvaged from the CIRCUMFENCE, their houses have a distinctly nautical look. Entire ships are morticed together and converted into buildings.
The city rises, tier upon tier, between the blue-green ocean of the Disc and the soft cloud sea of the Edge, the eight colours of the RIMBOW reflecting in every window and in the many telescope lenses of the city’s multitude of astronomers.
Krull is known to the rest of the Discworld but it generates little commerce or trade. It does have a magical university, far smaller than Unseen University. Krullians have a far more practical attitude to magic, and it is frequently employed for everyday purposes.
The Krullians once had plans to lower a vessel over the Edge to ascertain the sex of the Great A’TUIN. [COM, M]
Ksandra. A young woman, employed at the Unseen University on laundry duties and dusting. [ER, MP]
K!sdra. A dragonrider from WYRMBERG. His steed is Bronze Psepha. He wears general dragonriders’ clothing: a pair of high boots, a tiny leather holdall in the region of his groin and a high-crested helmet. [COM]
Ku. A continent that slipped into the ocean s
everal thousand years ago. It took thirty years to subside; the inhabitants spent a lot of time wading. It went down in history as the multiverse’s most embarrassing continental catastrophe. [E]
Lackjaw. Dwarf jeweller. He made COHEN the Barbarian’s dentures. Current whereabouts unknown, but he is probably a floating piece of onion in the great melting-pot that is Ankh-Morpork. [LF]
Laddie. A pure-bred RAMTOP hunting dog who found fame in HOLY WOOD as Laddie the Wonder Dog. A friendly personality, but in the opinion of his manager (GASPODE) he was as dim as a ha’penny candle. [MP]
Lady Jane. An ancient and evil-tempered gyrfalcon in LANCRE. Trained by HODGESARRGH as only he knows how. [LL]
Lady, the. (See LUCK.)
Lancrastian Army Knife, the. Created by Shawn OGG. It was obvious to King VERENCE that even if every adult were put under arms the kingdom of Lancre would still have a very small and insignificant army, and he’d therefore looked for other ways to put it on the military map. Shawn had come up with the idea of the Lancrastrian Army Knife, containing a few essential tools and utensils for the soldier in the field, and research and development work had been going on for some time. One reason for the slow progress was that the king himself takes an active interest in the country’s only defence project, and Shawn is used to receiving little notes up to three times every day with further suggestions for improvement. Generally they are on the lines of: ’A device, possibly quite small, for finding things that are lost’ or ‘A curiously shaped hook-like thing of many uses’. Shawn diplomatically adds some of them but loses as many notes as he dares, lest he design the only pocket knife on wheels.
Nevertheless, the current knife includes, among more normal devices such as nose-hair tweezers and a folding saw, the following rather more existential attachments:
Adjustable Device for Winning Ontological Arguments
Tool for Extracting the Essential Truth from a Given Statement
Device for Dissecting Paradoxes
Appliance for Detecting Small Grains of Hope
Spiral Thing for Ascertaining the Reality of Being
Instrument for Ending Arguments Very Quickly
[CJ]
Lancre. A kingdom on the STO PLAINS side of the RAMTOP mountains. Coat of arms: two bears on a black and gold shield. Pop. (inc. humans, trolls, dwarfs and miscellaneous): approx. 600. (Dwarfs and trolls do not formally acknowledge the Crown of Lancre, but the three species get along quite amicably, or at least seldom practise open warfare within shouting distance of the border.)
Pop. for tax purposes: 27
Size: technically it has a border some 100 miles in length. The actual acreage of the kingdom is hard to calculate because of its mountainous nature and, in any case, it backs on to the Ramtops themselves and areas that are claimed by no man, troll or dwarf. The fact that there are at least two gateways into other dimensions in the country could also be held to give it a possibly infinite area.
Imports: none, except for various minor items (rare herbs, some manufactured goods). The people of Lancre are smugly self-sufficient.
Exports: iron ore and gold (from the dwarfs) and people (from mothers and fathers). People are Lancre’s greatest export; the tiny kingdom has produced many wizards, at least one ARCHCHANCELLOR of Unseen University, one possible king of Ankh-Morpork and a vast number of industrious dwarfs and humans who have gone off to seek their fortune and send some of it back to their mum every week, regular. Lancre is one of those places, like A-Town-You’ve-Probably-Never-Heard-Of, Iowa, in which are generated people who go off somewhere and become famous.
Geography: Lancre occupies little more than a ledge cut into the side of the Ramtop mountains. Behind it, towering peaks and dark, winding valleys climb to the massive backbone of the central ranges. In front, the land drops to the Sto Plains. Most of Lancre is thus cruel mountainside with ice-green slopes and knife-edge crests, or dense, huddled forests. As has been indicated, it gives visitors the feeling that it contains far too much geography. There are few places in the kingdom where you could drop a football and not have it roll away.
On the Hubward side of the country are glacier lakes and alpine meadows. This end of the kingdom is dominated by COPPERHEAD – by no means the biggest of the Ramtops, but an impressive mountain whose slopes and foothills are home to many dwarfs and trolls.
The kingdom has a number of human habitations: Lancre Town, where most human inhabitants live, and the villages of BAD ASS, Slippery Hollow, Razorback and, of course, Slice.
Slice is in a deep forested cleft in the mountains, and contains both the original Rock and a Hard Place, and the Place Where the Sun Does Not Shine. The inhabitants of Slice are considered strange even by the lax standards of the rest of Lancre. We are talking twenty-toe country here; we are talking the kind of place where you may have to learn to play the banjo to survive and marrying your cousin is considered posh.
Other features of note include the DANCERS, a circle of standing stones on a small area of moorland not far from the town, and the LONG MAN, an assemblage of one long and two round barrows, now badly overgrown. Both of these features contain secret entrances to the world of the ELVES and, in the case of the Long Man, also to Lancre Caves.
The caves are rumoured to run everywhere in the kingdom; it is widely believed that there is a secret entrance in the castle. But they are also one of those features that are not bound by the laws of time and space. Travel far enough in the caves and you will find mythical kings, asleep with their warriors; you will hear the roar of the Minotaur and the sheep of the Cyclops. Walk far enough and you will meet yourself, coming the other way.
Politics: in theory, under VERENCE II, a constitutional monarchy. This is not running smoothly because the citizens of Lancre, bloody-minded monarchists to the bone, feel that if someone is supposed to be king he should damn well get on with it. They don’t expect the king to tell them how to farm or thatch, and so don’t see why he should expect them to tell him how to king.
Verence and his queen, Magrat (Magrat GARLICK), have devoted themselves to the well-being of their subjects, instituting a number of social, agricultural and educational improvements which the people of Lancre seem to be surviving by dint of ignoring them all as politely as possible.
State religion: none. However, various wandering monks and priests tour the mountains for those who need them. The Nine Day Wonderers and the Priests of Small Gods are generally welcome, if only because their religions hinge on the uncertainty of knowing anything at all.
Lancrastians, however, do instinctively practise a kind of civil religion. It is felt right and proper to have some kind of religious service to mark births, marriages and deaths, without much attention being paid to which god or goddess is actually involved, and a regular feature of the Lancre calendar is the harvest festival, when the people give thanks – not to anyone, exactly, but in general terms.
Another peculiarly Lancrastrian custom is that new-born children are formally named at midnight, so that they start a day with a new name.
Lancre operates on a feudal system – everyone feuds all the time and hands on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders have been handed down for generations. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckons, was like a fine old wine; you looked after it carefully and left it to your children.
Lancrastians never throw away anything that works. The trouble is, they seldom change anything that works, either. They wouldn’t dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They’ve done it for thousands of years and they know it works. In any case, you don’t need to pay too much attention to what the King wants, because there is bound to be another King along in forty years or so and he’ll be certain to want something different and so you’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they see it is to mostly stay in the palace, practise the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting.
It is a social contract. They do what they always do, and he lets them.
Lancre Castle. The most striking thing about the castle is that it is much bigger than it needs to be. This may be a relic of the time when elves – as has been said, Lancre contains at least two dimensional doorways into their worlds – made more incursions than they do now.
It is built on an outcrop of rock, leaning vertiginously over the River Lancre and immediately overlooking the town square. It is in very bad repair, and one of the first jobs of the staff in the morning is to see what parts of the castle have fallen down during the night.
Under the present monarch the staff have been reduced somewhat, and now consist of Mrs SCORBIC the cook, SPRIGGINS the butler, Millie CHILLUM the maid and Shawn OGG (Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the rest of the Army, Captain of the Guard, the Guard, the Seneschal, the kitchen boy, the armourer, the odd-job man, the herald, the gardener, Chief Constable, the gatekeeper and Lord Privy of the Privy).
Other outside staff, who in many ways pursue their own jobs with only a mild interest in whatsoever is actually running the place, consist of HODGESAARGH the falconer and Mr BROOKS the beekeeper.
Lancre River. A shallow and very fast river, a tributary of the Ankh. As it curves around the town it foams over a series of rapids and weirs, but further into the mountains there are occasional hidden water meadows and quiet pools. Lancre Bridge, over which travels the road to the Plains, is three miles from the castle, upstream of the town of Lancre Gorge. The road from the bridge to the town curves between high banks, with the forest crowding in on either side.
Lancre Town. The town is a stone’s drop from the river. Technically it would barely pass anywhere else as a village, but by dint of being that much bigger than anywhere else in Lancre it acts as though it were a city. A town rule is that all mummers, mountebanks, etc., must be outside the gates by sundown. This is not a problem as the town has no walls to speak of, and after sundown they just come back again. It boasts a tavern (the Goat & Bush) on the main square, plus an old forge and a lodging house.
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