Note that the various architectural styles suggest that the roof and upper floor of the University were constructed several hundred years before the other storeys.
Now the massive gates open rather jerkily to admit us to the main octangle of the University’s campus. UU has never satisfactorily been mapped. It is much bigger on the inside than on the outside and those maps that have been attempted look like a chrysanthemum exploding.
We enter a wide courtyard surrounded by lawns and dominated by some ancient chestnut trees. There are benches under the trees. Around the octangle is a great rambling building or buildings, looking not so much an architectural design as a lot of buttresses, arches, towers, bridges, domes, cupolas, etc., huddling together for warmth. Wizards like quantity. Visitors are asked particularly to note the cunning and disconcertingly alert gargoyles, a range of beaks, manes, wings, claws and pigeon droppings. Avoid feeding them if possible. They are at least as intelligent as trolls, by the way. You are being watched.
Behind us now is the University Clock Tower, with its ancient cracked bell (rumoured to be of octiron rather than bronze), Old Tom. The clapper dropped out shortly after it was cast, but the bell still tolls out some tremendously sonorous silences every hour.
Crossing the octangle, we proceed up a broad flight of steps to an impressive pair of doors, again made of octiron. Note the heavy locks, curly hinges and brass studs on the door itself and the intricate carvings on the archway. Passing through this entrance, we notice the University’s keys on their huge iron ring. Not all of them are metal, not all are visible; some look very strange indeed, as if they are not entirely in this world.
We will go straight to the Great Hall. Around its walls hang or stand portraits or statues of past Archchancellors – full-bearded and pointy-hatted, clutching ornamental scrolls or holding mysterious symbolic bits of astrological equipment. They stare down at us with ferocious self-importance or, possibly, chronic constipation. In many cases they are unfinished, the subject having prematurely expired during the sitting.
However, it is worth seeking out the niche containing not the likeness but the actual body of Archchancellor ‘Trouter’ Hopkins, whose will stipulated that upon his death the University should continue his own work and pickle his body in alcohol. It sits beautifully preserved in its niche gazing happily at the festivities below, and is occasionally purloined by students and left around the University in a variety of humorous poses (sitting at the High Table with a bib on, wearing a nightcap in the Bursar’s bed, etc.).
The floor is decorated with a worrying pattern of black and white tiles, and covered with long tables and benches. There is a big fireplace at the turnwise end and a big clock at the other. A third wall is largely occupied by the Mighty Organ. This magnificent instrument, recently restored, was the work of Bloody Stupid JOHNSON, famed wherever buildings are constructed back to front.
Genius knows no limitations. Leonardo da Vinci would design lock gates and new ways of soldering lead just as happily as he would paint pictures. In the same way, the reverse genius of people like Johnson also likes to dabble a bit. As he said, ‘It’s only air going through pipes, it can’t be that difficult.’
And, indeed, the resulting construction must be one of the most versatile instruments known to pre-electronic mankind, with its three giant keyboards and range of additional controls seldom before encountered, including the one that floods all the pipes with poisonous gas to kill the mice. Dextrous use of resin, strips of metal, rubber tubing and special pipes allows a whole range of surprising effects, permitting composers to explore whole new areas of music-making (one has only to cite Bubbla’s ‘Variations On a Man Taking His Foot Out of a Pile of Mud’, say, or Fondel’s ‘Double Top Overture’, on the first playing of which the audience were mystified that they could hear nothing but were being stunned by falling bats).
No one is now allowed to use the Terraemotus pedal, which opens up the 128-foot pipe known as Earthquake. On the first occasion when it was used the sixteen students doing the pumping were sucked into the machinery, the population of a quarter of the city experienced acute bowel discomfort, and the building moved a quarter of an inch sideways.
To supplement the light from the small high windows, with their gentle patina of antique grease, the Great Hall is lit by a massive, heavy, black, tallow-encrusted chandelier which hangs from the Hall’s dark, owl-haunted rafters like a threatening overdraft. It can hold one thousand candles.
The Great Hall is the scene of all major magical activities in the University, and it also hosts the four main meals of the day. The senior members of the faculty used to sit at the High Table which was indeed high, since it could float several yards up in the air, and landed only between courses. It now remains grounded as a result of what is referred to only as the Incident at Dinner.
Also in the main building are the Uncommon Room, with its roaring log fire, summer or winter, the University’s small chapel and modest sanatorium (wizards tend to be either in rude health or dead), and of course the classrooms designed on the funnel principle, with their benches sloping precipitously over the central teaching areas.
Also worthy of note, for visitors who are interested in this subject, is the senior wizards’ lavatory, which has real running water, interesting tiles and two big silver mirrors placed on opposite walls.
One room, amongst the more than 5,000 known rooms in UU, which we may experience trouble visiting is 3B. It is not locatable on any floor plan of UU – but all virtual lectures take place there. That is to say, those lectures that neither the students nor the lecturers wish to attend, but which must have some type of existence since they are down on the timetable, are therefore held in this room which, in fact, does not exist. There are other rooms which contain rooms which, if you enter them, turn out to contain the room you started with.
In the cellars are a maze of cold-rooms, still-rooms, kitchens, sculleries, bakeries and taprooms that together form the driving engine of the University. It will be noted that while most of the University is in a permanent state of happy decay, the kitchens are quite modern and also in a permanent state of bustle. An army, it has been said, marches on its stomach; wizards sit holding theirs. Also in the cellars is the curiobiological museum, probably best not visited after a meal, particularly since it is situated next to the pickle pantry. You will also find the Museum of Quite Unusual Things down there, although this is now more or less abandoned. The cellars also contain a privy built by Archchancellor WEATHERWAX on a black hole into another dimension. It was found to discharge into another hole in one of the attics.
The cellars also house the washing engines. Each is two storeys high. A huge treadmill connects to a couple of bleached wooden paddles in each vat, heated by fireboxes underneath. In full production, they need half-a-dozen people at least to manhandle the loads, maintain the fires and oil the scrubbing arms. Were it not for the fact that they are very efficient at getting clothes clean they may have been designed by the famous ‘Bloody Stupid’ JOHNSON, although if this really was the case he undoubtedly intended for them to do something else.
Passing through the main building we come to the University Gardens. Dominating these, as it dominates the entire city, is the Tower of Art, 800 feet tall, and the subject of a separate tour. To our left is the main Observatory, with its broad mosaic floor inlaid with the sixty-four signs of the Disc ZODIAC18 and the gym, a large room lined with lead and rowan wood, where neophytes can work at High Magic without seriously unbalancing the universe. In that building is also the University squash court.
To our immediate right is the LIBRARY; access to this glass domed building is via the inside of the University but is only with the permission of the Librarian.
There is, incidentally, a second observatory in the deepest cellars. It is lined with lead, and it is used for viewing . . . the other stars.
Further to our right is the tiny-windowed High Energy Magic Building, the only building on the campus less
than a thousand years old. The senior wizards have never bothered much about what the younger, skinnier and more bespectacled wizards get up to in there, treating their endless requests for funding for thaumic particle accelerators and radiation shielding as one treats pleas for more pocket money, and listening with amusement to their breathless accounts of the search for ever more elementary particles of magic itself. They are, though, nervous of the fact that the students there seem to be engrossed in their work and, in fact, apparently enjoy it. This is always a dangerous thing in a student.
The grounds, with their rose beds and ancient velvet lawns, their neat patterns of gravel paths and hedges, stretch right down to the river, where some of the University’s boats are moored to the jetties. A small bridge leads over the Ankh to WIZARDS’ PLEASAUNCE.
The grounds, which incorporate the Archchancellor’s garden and verandah, are protected by walls twenty feet high, lined with spikes. To our left are the ornamental drain covers, bearing a likeness of Archchancellor William Badger, not a popular man.
And now we should just make our way into this mossy courtyard, criss-crossed with washing lines. Yes, that is what wizards wear under their robes . . . What did you expect?
And now here is the University’s back door, made of normal wood and with a knocker shaped like a dragon’s head.
If you would just follow me through this door, which is used by most of the University’s ‘normal’ visitors, we should find ourselves back in the streets of Ankh-Morpork.
Ah . . . It would seem that the party now includes an extra person, and he smells very strongly of embalming fluid and alcohol . . . Those students, eh?
Upshot, Feeney. Chief Constable of the local village near Ramkin Hall. Upshot is seventeen years old and smells of pigs – due to Masher, an enormous boar who used to live in the village lock-up. Feeney’s granddad used to work on the tall ships and he sailed to Bhangbhangduc, coming back with Ming Chang, the lady who would become Feeney’s granny. [SN]
Upwright. Big Jim ‘Still Standing’ Upwright became, at one time, the owner of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office coaches by buying out the other coach drivers. That business was then taken over and run by his sons – Harry ‘Slugger’ and Little Jim ‘Leadpipe’ – both huge men, made practically spherical by multiple layers of waistcoats and overcoats. They look like twins, built out of pork fat and bacon. [GP]
Urglefloggah. A demon. Spawn of the Pit and Loathly Guardian of the Dread Portal. He is over 30,000 years old, has various mouths and has more tentacles than legs, but fewer arms than heads. He bears a certain resemblance to QUEZOVERCOATL. Like most demons, he is irredeemably stupid. [E]
Urn. A young man with a paintbrush hairstyle. Nephew to DIDACTYLOS the Ephebian philosopher. Urn built the Disc’s first known steam-powered boat, and it is perhaps typical of his approach to life that he never thought it worth naming. [SG]
Valkyries. Anthropomorphic personifications, appearing as women dressed in chain mail, with shiny 46D-cup breastplates and helmets with horns on. They are normally associated with BLIND IO and other gods of the thick-necked, celestial rugby-playing persuasion, and their function is to carry off the souls of warriors who have died in battle. These apparently go to some huge hall somewhere and carouse for ever. (‘Carouse’ belongs to the same vocabulary as ‘quaff’; there’s a strong suggestion that bread rolls are thrown and a lot of good food ends up on the floor. ‘Carouse’ offers no possibility of a vegetarian option.) [SM]
Vampires. Or, Vampyres. It is said that there are as many vampires as there are types of disease and it is certainly true that there are more ways to kill vampires than you could shake a sharpened stick at. They are now attempting to work their way into normal society and the Überwald League of TEMPERANCE is attempting to distance itself from past crimes.
Van Pew, Urdo. President of the Guild of Thieves, Burglars and Allied Trades. [GG]
Varneshi. Ox-cart driver in the Ramtops. A trader in metals. The only regular contact Carrot’s adoptive father had with the outside world, and therefore responsible for some of his old-fashioned views. [GG]
Vassenego, Duke. A demon. One of the oldest demons – if he didn’t actually invent original sin, at least he made one of the first copies. He generally takes the form of an old, rather sad lawyer, with an eagle somewhere in his ancestry. [E]
Va Va Voom, Miss. A feather dancer at the Skunk Club, Ankh-Morpork. [SM]
Vena the Raven-Haired. An elderly barbarian heroine, later encountered as a mother and grandmother then called Mrs McGarry, running an inn. Her raven hair was now grey and the only armour she wore was an armoured corset. She was attractive, or had been conventionally so about thirty years ago. Now she looked like the teacher you wished you’d had in your first year at school. She knits, but still has her large sword to hand. [TLH]
Venturii, Lord Charles. A nobleman in Ankh. [MAA, NW]
Venturi, Lady Alice. Eldest daughter of Viscount Venturi and Wilhelmina, née Higgins. Lady Alice, the eldest of four daughters, took to travel late in life when she had at last got access to the family fortune. She wandered widely throughout rimward Klatch and Howondaland, usually by elephant or camel. She produced a very large collection of watercolours, sketches, maps, notes, dried flowers and pressed reptiles accumulated on her extensive tours. She published a number of books – The Harem Frescoes of Old Klatch, Interesting Customs Among the N’Kouf, Travels in the Dark Hinterland and numerous pamphlets. Lady Alice seems to have been either unshockable or almost terminally dense. The books are not for the easily offended. [DM]
Verence I. A past king of LANCRE. Coat of arms: a shield bisected vertically; on the right side an ours, d’or on a field, sable; on the left an ours, sable on a field, or. Seen in the chronicles only as a ghost. Verence I, whose death at the age of forty only marginally slowed him down, was a big, well-muscled man with a moustache and flowing hair. His enviable physical condition meant that he was one of the very few ghosts ever able to manipulate physical objects. [WS]
Verence II. Current King of Lancre. Used to be the court FOOL. An apparently short man, with permanently harassed expression, runny eyes, ears that stick out a bit and clothes that never seem to fit right, he is the most amiable monarch in the history of LANCRE. He has, of course, a weak chest. He is a great believer in the usefulness of knowledge derived from books and is using them to teach himself kinging.
Entered the oeuvre (in Wyrd Sisters) as the jester at the LANCRE court, and a very loyal servant to his master. He was then seventeen years old and wore a red and yellow costume with silver bells on his hat and a red and yellow hankie, also decorated with bells. He looked a sad and thin little man with runny eyes, although he was in fact of at least average height, but he made himself look small by hunching his shoulders, bandying his legs and walking in a half-crouch.
He was a Fool like his father and grandfather before him, and was raised by his stern grandfather following his father’s abrupt departure from Lancre. He was soon sent away to the FOOLS’ GUILD in Ankh-Morpork, where he had the traditional education and, by employing application and hard work to make up for lack of talent, actually passed out as a very respected Fool.
He was half-brother to and slightly older than TOMJON, who was acknowledged as the son and heir of King VERENCE I. It is believed in Lancre that the Fool’s father was also King Verence I, who had a somewhat old-fashioned approach to the young women of the kingdom, and that he had been christened Verence by his late mother in memory of that royal, er, connection.
However, the witches of Lancre have a slightly different, if unspoken, view of events. King Verence I was indeed a ladies’ man, but so was the Fool’s official father, who achieved with kind words and a fetching manner what the King achieved by hammering on the door with his sword. They also recall that the man left town hurriedly shortly after the birth of Tomjon, and that the Queen was a rather lonely lady who may well have appreciated a little gentle attention on those long nights when her husband was exercising
his droit de seigneur around the kingdom. The witches are also midwives, and can count rather better than she could. They’re quite certain that Tomjon and the Fool are half-brothers.
Further evidence that Verence is the son of a commoner and has no genetic tradition of kingship in his bones may be gathered from the fact that he is hardworking, intelligent, conscientious, humble and kind. His only failings, if such they be, are a tendency to try to better the lot of his fellow men even if they are happy with the lot they’ve got – and he has no sense of humour whatsoever, and a strong aversion to custard. There is something about the regime at the FOOLS’ GUILD that can do that to a man.
Vermine. A small, black-and-white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions, particularly the RAMTOPS. Its pelt is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it. The fur is used primarily for trimming robes, especially those of wizards.
It is a more careful relative of the lemming; it only throws itself over small pebbles. The point is that dead animals don’t breed and over the millennia more and more vermine are descendants of those vermine who, when faced with a cliff edge, squeal the rodent equivalent of ‘Blow that for a Game of Soldiers’. Vermine now abseil down the cliffs and build small boats to cross lakes. When their rush leads them to the seashore they sit around avoiding one another’s gaze for a while and then leave early to get home before the rush. [S, WS, RM]
Vernissage. A hat maker in Slice, in the Ramtops. [WA]
Vestigial virgins. Found in the temples of a number of Discworld religions, most particularly in those belonging to OM. A vestigial virgin is more easily pictured than described. There is a certain good-natured rumpledness about her, a suggestion that whatever the body has done the mind has remained more or less uninfluenced by it.
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