Anjin-San Chapter Four
INTERIM CHAPTER
V0.02 (first authorial impression: looking at an empty page soon to be populated by spelling errors, random cut-outs and author errors/clunky little bits of writing that could be rephrased more elegantly). quick first check.
In which Emiko and Erma have more adventures in Ankh-Morpork. The Air Watch report puzzling things going on in the sky, Olga Romanoff reviews the evidence so far, and there are more, and louder, explosions and screams at Unseen University. And Sam Williams has several interesting encounters by night.
New chapters may be interrupted for a while as I'm shortly going on a long-awaited recuperative holiday for two weeks: I will be available still for PM's and to answer reviews! (Genuine PM's, that is, and not bot-generated invitations to buy products from Artstation, via people with no presence on FF, whose personal pages are a single line of text, a website address for ArtStation and absolutely nothing in the way of personal information or what fandoms they read. Scammers and spammers, do at least TRY to do better?)
I may post this (incomplete) so you at least get a few scenes that move the story on, while I'm on holiday. This is a first draft, done at speed, and will e expanded later.
Now read on.
The High Energy Magic Building, Unseen University.
Ponder Stibbons shook his head, as the hapless Bernard Dufflecoat was carried away on a stretcher, burbling gently to himself. It had taken ages to get simple record iconographs of the image on the screen. A very expensive iconograph had become useless, after the imp inside had screamed in terror and exploded. Ponder had sent a runner to the Thaumaturgical Park for a box of freshly trained replacement imps. Two more had followed the first into screaming oblivion when trying to copy what looked like a perfectly natural scene of a woman and a girl standing on the deck of a ship. Puzzled, Ponder had retrieved the half-finished prints from the machine and noted that every time, the imps had self-destructed when it had got to the little girl's face. Her hair was there hanging down over her dress, but there was nothing above the neck. The rest of the page was white.
Ponder had wondered about this.
Eventually a junior Wizard had remembered there was a very old iconographic machine, sir. It's got one of the old-fashioned imps in it, an earlier model, nowhere near as good as the new ones that paint what's actually there, as opposed to what we see. Tim Haslet's been keeping it in working order, feeding the imp and everything... errr...
"Take the iconographs" Ponder ordered. "And thank you, Mr Haslet."
This time, an exact copy emerged of what was on the screen. Ponder, reflecting that it was always advisable to be well in with the Watch, asked for lots of copies. His intuition that the woman and the girl were key to this, and that they were somewhere in Ankh-Morpork, persisted. He could give a stack of copies to Olga Romanoff. He could also get Rincewind to run one past Miss Pretty Butterfly, to ask if she knew the Woman from the Agatean community in the city.
"Can do." Rincewind said, relieved to be allocated a task with little actual danger to it. This made a change.
They watched Mr Bernard Dufflecoat picking up the top print, out of curiosity. Then he screamed and dropped the iconograph print.
Ponder picked it up.
Just for less than a second, the face of the little girl turned from that of a more than usually appealing child, with big eyes and a wide innocent smile, into some sort of snarling shrieking demonic entity. Despite HEX only being able to handle blue at the moment, the child's eyes in the iconograph had become two fiery red almonds. Her mouth hung open with a suspicion of teeth, lots of teeth, and her inhumanly gaping mouth looked like a portal to a dark Hell.
Ponder shuddered and closed his eyes. Working as a wizard could inoculate you against things like this. That sort of thing still wasn't pleasant to encounter, but defensive spells and wards kicked in practically automatically. Ponder was glad of this as he had an instant of primal gut-knotting panicked fear. His eyelids slammed closed and he took a few deep breaths. When he opened them again, the iconograph showed only a cute appealing child with long lustrous black hair.
He breathed out.
"Tell me you saw that too." he requested.
Rincewind also took a long breath.
"That was scary." he admitted. "But not as scary as the time when..."
Ponder let him go on. Inwardly he was thinking "the new-model imps paint what's really there. Not what you actually see. And what they saw was..."
he paused, working it out.
"And Butterfly told us a few odd things this afternoon. Not just me, Captain Romanoff of the Air Watch was there too."
The Air Station, Ankh-Morpork
Olga Romanoff took the evening muster of Air Witches. She smiled benevolently. Sergeant Hanna von Strafenburg, who would take over command for the Night Witches' shift, stood next to her and glowered.
"Good evening! First thing: may I remind you that everyone in this room, no exceptions, is required to do at least two street patrols with the Ground Watch in the course of any given month. Including me. Like it or not, it's in your contracts."
Olga smiled, and brandished a list as These obligatory groans emerged. No Air Witch really liked doing street patrols.
"These are the people who are yet to complete those two mandatories..." She read the names.
"Now, there is an issue out there. I will be getting on to the briefing. As the result of the Issue, we require Air Witches to accompany ground patrols. As far as I'm concerned, this is a good opportunity to complete your mandatories and do something actually useful at the same time. For the rest of you, it's good overtime and we need bodies on the street to deal with a magical incident. Would you like to volunteer, or to be volunteered? Your choice."
Eventually, she exchanged salutes with Hanna.
"All yours, Sergeant." she said. "I'm off to get clean."
The Sauna and Banya House, Clean Cut, Tuesday evening.
The Rodinian officers of the Air Watch, where they could, always contrived to get Tuesday evening off. An Überwaldean officer who also valued physical cleanliness had an open invitation, and in the days when there'd been a Swommi officer, she was welcomed too. Well, sauna. It said it over the door. Some things were understood.
Olga Romanoff looked forward to her daughter being old enough to introduce to Banya culture. At present, she was only three years old. She and her twin brother were back in the apartment with Eddie, and he was capable of administering bath-time, and making it a fun experience. Olga felt pleased her daughter, even at three, insisted on hot water. When it was right for Valentina to come to the banya with Mummy, Olga felt she'd fit in. (1)
She smiled amiably at her officers, and reflected that there was an expression that was beginning to filter into the language, called "team-building". It was the kind of thing that made her shake her head. She didn't know about "team-building", but an evening out with her comrades was always welcome. Then the inner head-shake became an inner wince. She'd just used a word like "team-building", which was bad enough,and followed it up with "tovarischnii". Calling people Comrade was for Irena Politeka.
Olga felt a sudden warmth, anyway. These were her people, whatever collective noun you used, in any language, to describe them.
Rosa, the duty attendant, welcomed them warmly and led them inside.
Vasilisa Budonova, who felt oddly privileged to have been invited, stowed her uniform in the locker provided. She reminded herself she'd been in banyas a thousand times before with female relatives and friends, and this should be no different, even if everybody else in the room was of a senior rank to her. And everybody is naked under her clothes. After the necessary brief hot bath, Vasilisa passed with the others into the steam-room, and carefully refrained from choosing a bench until the others had selected. Then she let herself relax into the steam and the heat, as Olga Anastacia began a discussion with Sergeant Popova and Lieutenant Politeka, and the others joined in the discussion about this mysterious business with the Agateans, the mother, and definitely the daughter, who have been seen wherever mysterious things have happened in the city.
Her head picked up.
"Sergeant Popova!" she said, urgently.
Nadezhda frowned. She tapped her bare arms to make the point.
"Devyushka, am I Sergeant Detritus, who is so proud of his rank that he has sergeants' stripes etched into his arms?" she demanded. Vasilisa recognised this was a fair point. They were all naked, except for towels for those who wanted them. It would be hard to pull rank here.
Nadezhda softened.
"Here, you may address me as Nadezhda Veranovna." she said.
"And I'm Olga Anastacia." Olga said. "Now what do you need to say, Vasilisa Danutovna?"
Vasilisa explained about the afternoon's incident involving the woman and the girl. Olga frowned and demanded to know why she hadn't been told this before.
"The reports could still be awaiting attention in the in-tray, Olga?" Irena Politeka reminded her.
Olga hoped the growing reddening of her skin could be put down to the general heat. Fortunately for her, Rosa the attendant came in. Rosa, a big wide Rodinian woman in middle age, looked diffident and reluctant to speak for a moment, and then she said
"Olga Anastacia, I realise you're discussing police business and I should not be listening, but such a couple came here this afternoon, an Agatean woman and her daughter? They used the hot bath and eventually left together."
"Describe them." Olga said, as all five watchwomen in the sauna looked at Rosa together. "No, wait."
She swung herself off the bench and wrapped a large towel firmly around herself, for modesty's sake. She remembered the iconographs couriered over from the University by Professor Stibbons, and the story that came with them.
She nodded through the steam of the sauna.
"Cadet Budonova." she said, to communicate this was Watch business again. "Ger a towel. Come with me,"
She remembered she had a copy of the iconograph in her Watch pouch. Others had been distributed to Air witches going on the night foot patrols. It would be useful. Especially if Rosa and Vasilisa could confirm it was the same couple.
Towel-wrapped, they went with Rosa to the changing rooms.
Konnoblers' Way, just off Grunefair, nearby to the Killing Ground.
Sam Williams was fascinated with this part of the City by night. The public park and open space known as The Killing Ground looked eerie and sinister by night; the children's play area, deserted and lit up only by distant street sconces and intermittent watery moonlight, provoked a slight shudder. The part of his mind that wanted to write creative fiction had a sudden intuition, that if he was magical in any way at all, he might see the lonely ghost of a forlorn child, going through the motions of play and perhaps wondering why it was always dark here, and nobody else was around, like playmates or parents. The mental picture made him shudder with revulsion and with pity for such a child-ghost, even though he was still storing it up for later, as a possible theme for his own comic book, or even for a written novel. (2) He dabbled in written fiction, although his passion was still for comic books.
"Anything wrong, Sam?" Emily Pargeter asked, curiously.
Sam shook his head.
"Maybe I'm too overimaginative." he said, honestly. Then, given that they'd been instructed to block off a potential escape route just in case the people the rest of the patrol were seeking to flush out ran this way, and that they were alone here – he hoped – he explained the thoughts that had gone through his mind.
Emily smiled, kindly.
"I'll take a Look, shall I?" she said. "Cover me."
Sam was reminded that she was a Witch, as she focused and went to a different place inside her own head.
After a moment or two, she shook her head and smiled.
"I can see why you thought that." she said. "It's the sort of place. But there's nothing here, Sam."
"Would you, you know, have been able to do anything about it if there was?" he asked.
"A Deliverance?" she replied. "Perhaps. It depends on how firmly a ghost would be attached to the location, or the circumstance that brought them here. But in principle, yes. If I couldn't do it, I'd need to report it to Captain Romanoff, and she'd send a Squad over. Standard Witch stuff. Even in the Watch, that takes precedence." (3)
Sam Williams understood. He also wondered how Commander Sam Vimes might respond to the idea his Witches were doing exorcisms in Watch time. Was that a valid police duty? And if so, how would they write the report afterwards? He also wondered if, you know, they encountered the ghost of a murder victim, and took a statement. Would that still count in court?
He stored up the interesting thought for a possible fiction story.
After a while, the rest of an enhanced street patrol came back to find them.
"Lost them." Captain Carrot said, with a resigned shrug. "It happens. And now they know we're here, we probably won't see any dealers or customers. They're warned off. Shall we move on?"(4)
They would return this way for another sweep of the Killing Grounds before the end of the shift, but the patrol beat was a big one covering lots of ground. Besides, they had other jobs to do. The five Watchmen, plus Sam, duly moved on down to Grunefair.
The apartment above Mrs Lydia Dustbin's General Stores, Dimwell.
Emiko Yureimoto judged the time was now right. She advised Erma that Mummy-san was going out for a little while, and would be back in maybe an hour, and there are snacks in the ktichen.
Erma acknowledged her with a smile and a wave, and returned to the thrilling adventures of the Warrior Unicorn Princess.
Alone in the kitchen, Emiko opened the window wide, then straddled the broomstick. She remembered her earlier experimentation.
Just fly a few wide circles above. And not very high. For no longer than an hour, or until I feel the magic fading, whichever is sooner, and then home. And maybe the other thing...
She thought of the special fox-tail she had stored, very carefully, in her Luggage.
But later.
After very carefully exiting the open window, and trying not to feel apprehension about the increasing drop beneath her, she visualised the command "Up!", and the city of Ankh-Morpork fell away below her. She ascended to possibly five hundred feet, judged this was high enough, for now, and decided fixing her position against a few landmarks, like the green space of the public parks beneath her, would be prudent.
And if all else fails, I can go low enough to read street names. Or else to go lower and ask for directions.
Emiko flew on, getting the hang of the basics of flying, very quickly. She smiled with a sort of blissful exultation at how easily flight, in the gai-jin way, was coming to her.
She almost didn't notice the Air Watch patrol until she very nearly collided with them.
AUTHOR NOTE (At this point, it's important to note that this is only an interim chapter to get something out before I'm forced to go off-line for a fortnight. Here in the story, other scenes will be inserted: Sam dealing with a maladjusted citizen – he is an Assassin-trained Dark Clerk, after all – and Emily proving her Watch training by dealing with a troublesome customer. Emiko will be pursued by the Air Watch patrol – a mutual misunderstanding and culture clash will apply – but she will shake off and lose the pursuit, something people hardly ever get away with when pursued by the Air Witches. Slightly shaken by this, she will return home, but the need to be a Majokko Witch is strong. So the special fox-tail comes out and she goes for another excursion. She is glimpsed by Sam, who now realises what they're dealing with; he calls for the Watch Werewolf to provide specialised assistance. Angua goes fox-hunting. Meanwhile, Erma wakes up – she has dozed off over WUP – and decides to go exploring, on her own account.)
The Killing Ground, a public open space in Ankh-Morpork.
Sam Williams reflected on the night. Especially on the mystery of the foxes. No, not a mystery: he had a very good idea of what it was. But it was now Angua von Überwald's call: she had gone fox-hunting. Overhead, there'd been some sort of aerial chase: two Witches on broomsticks chasing down a third, who obviously didn't want to stop. Sam wondered if it was a traffic thing, could you be drunk in charge of a broomstick, or break a speed limit, or something? Emily, excited, had said that for some reason, that Witch doesn't want to introduce herself. "That's suspicious, as any Witch visiting the City knows to call in at the Air Station, so she's Known. She can get a cup of tea and a biscuit out of it, for one thing. It's also good manners. So I wonder what the woman they were chasing was up to?"
They turned the corner and were back at the childrens' play area.
This time, Sam saw the ghost of a little girl, a child so pale her skin appeared corpse-white, dressed in a white funeral shroud loosely belted at the waist. She had long black hair that covered half her face, and was quite happily propelling herself on the swing, as if being in a park on her own at one in the morning was the most natural thing on earth. The sparklingly clean white tabi socks on her feet were a visible detail.
"She might be sleepwalking. Or just wandering by night." Captain Carrot said. "We'd better bring her in, for her own safety. Officer Pargeter, walk with me?"
Carrot and Emily walked forward.
Carrot called, in a reassuring voice, "Hello, miss. What's your name?"
The little girl got off the swing, and stood up. She gave a wide appealing smile that Emily thought was absolutely adorable and the cutest thing ever, and made a shy little wave of "hello". Carrot and Emily drew nearer.
Then the girl lifted off the ground slowly, almost lazily, gathering speed as she ascended, rising vertically, in a standing position, until she was about fifty feet up. Then she waved goodbye to the nice policeman, fell forward on her front, and flew at a fast speed in the direction of Dimwell, a diminishing white spot in the sky.
Carrot turned to Emily.
"Officer Pargeter. You did see that, didn't you?"
"Yes, sir." she replied.
He shook his head.
"Thank Io for that. I wasn't hallucinating it, then."
Sam Williams ran up.
"I know what we're dealing with now!" he half-shouted in excitement. "That's a classic onryo!"
And here we have to leave it: I probably won't be able to return to it for about a fortnight, except for nibbling at the edges with a basic Ipod thingie, with one of those keyboards where you have to prod at the letters with a fingertip. Fingers too fat, keyboard too small... see you after we get back from Kent!
(1) In countries with a sauna/banya culture, it is recommended that six is the youngest feasible age, as very young children are not capable of standing the heat. And even after the age of six, should not be exposed to heat for longer than 15-20 minutes at a time. Puberty is considered to be the best time for full exposure to sauna/banya heat. Also, Sam Vimes was as near to happy as he ever got, knowing his Rodinian officers' idea of a good night out wasn't necessarily six double vodkas and a lot of shrieking, (1a) but merely that they went to the baths together as a social thing.
(1a) They could also do the lots-of-vodka thing. But not on bath night.)
(2) This is the theme of Alice Cooper's haunting songs about Steven (side two of Welcome To My Nightmare) in which the ghost of an abused and murdered little boy finds solace in haunting the playground he loved to visit in life. I'm also pretty sure Stephen King has used this idea somewhere. I see the Discworld's Sam Williams, like his Roundworld counterpart, evolving into a successful author of macabre horror fiction. Well, Sam married into a family who provide a reliable stream of ideas.
(3) Olga and Irena perform such an exorcism, with the help of other Witches, in my story Hyperemesis Gravidarum. These are unquiet souls of people who died violently and who heeded help in moving on. Discworld Witches do not mess around.
(4)By night, the Killing Grounds were a market for things like illegal drugs and for people willing to brave the perils and buy them. The Watch ran patrols here to arrest, if they could, or at least to disrupt criminal activity.
Notes Dump:
Maybe some more Erma notes for people more familiar with the Discworld? I've already sketched out my understanding of what the webcomic is about through forewords and endnotes to the three chapters previously published, so the following will be more random bits:
In the canonical webcom, Erma's grandparents/Emiko's parents are called Osamu and Amaya. Amaya takes a completely human form with nothing obviously "youkai" about her. Very powerful Witch? However, Word of God (Brandon Santiago) in a commentary on his comic strip, says she is a Kijo (鬼 女, lit. demon woman), an oni woman from Japanese legends.
Osamu, family head, is Tengu or a Shinto Kami. "Shinto Kami" suggests an entity with god-like powers: (although in the Discworld, "god-like" is everything on the spectrum from Blind Io, Greatest of Gods, right down to a Small God)
Other designations (copied here to get the characterisations right in my head – should any enter the story - and to have reference points for look-ups)
Emiko (in the webcom) - is an onryo. (In my version, she necessarily has to be re-cast as human to fit continuity with her earlier appearances and flying Witch status)
Kentaro (brother) is an oni (Japanese troll) oldest brother to six sisters.
Fumiko (oldest sister) - is a harionaga ("Barbed Woman") Family head in the absence of her parents. Locks of her long hair terminate in lethally sharp razor barbs.
Yori (sister) - Rokurokugi (woman with unfeasibly prehensile neck) mother of Mitsu and Momu (Zashiki-Warashi) Her husband was either killed or jailed for life by Osamu leaving the delinquent twins fatherless. (so a little of Yori's backstory is conflated into my Emiko)
Rin (sister) Nurei-onna. Effectively an enormous serpent with a human head, kin to the Indian concept of a Naga.
Ena (sister) - Nuekubi (has detachable floating head capable of autonomous movement)
Mayumi (youngest sister) The "Faceless", a Noppera-Bo. Can use her totally blank face as a canvas which can take whatever form she wishes.
Discworld notes for Erma readers:
I will stick strictly to Canon here. (My Discworld begins here but adds OCs, and expands on characters and concepts TP only hinted at)
Sir Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" is a "what-if" fantasy scenario, beginning from the premis that there really is a flat Earth out there and people living normal unremarkable perfectly ordinary lives on it. Terry also concluded that the only thing which can really make it work would be Magic – as basic physics and cosmology have come up with many very good reasons why a Flat Earth is impossible and would not just be difficult to live on, it may even be inimical to life. (braces for angry rebuttals from Flat Earthers – there seem to be a depressingly large number of those around lately).
And where there's Magic, there's a niche for all those magical or mythological species and peoples – Trolls, Dwarfs, E*s, Gnolls, Pegasi, Unicorns, et c. If you can name it, it exists somewhere on the Disc. This i especially true of supernatural entities from all and every tradition.
The focal point of the Discworld is the great sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, with well over a million inhabitants, a place where a fugitive from somewhere else can easily disappear and fade in. A-M is based on various aspects of London, especially in the later books, a London drawn from the Earth era of maybe 1850-1920. (with little pockets of earlier Londons). Look at the City Mappe, rotate it through 90, and that river is the Thames.
As the books evolved, they moved from a purely fantasy world to be a mirror of our Earth: various Earth nations were "mapped" to aspects of the Discworld yet to be properly visited in the stories.
Agatea/The Counterweight Continent was probably the first. It appeared right at the start of the first book, where an Agatean tourist called Twoflower turns up in Ankh-Morpork and leaves a trail of chaos behind him. (Word of God is that TP intended Twoflower to be a version of all the Japanese tourists who turn up in places like London and Paris to marvel at the sights)
Later novels developed the idea of Agatea, a continent a long way away from Ankh Morpork (there's a reason why British people refer to Japan and China as "The Far East" - this might not be a perception or a convention outside the UK?). In the novel "Interesting Times", it becomes a sort of portmanteau of China and Japan, with the local culture taken Up To Eleven. Other writings introduce a region called BhangBangduc (the Discworld's Thailand) and the novel "Snuff" even has a BhangBangDuc-ese character (or at least, half-"Thai").
Other non-novel writings from the wider Discworld universe introduce a "Korea" on the Disc, although this is not explored in great detail. There's also a region way at the other end of the Central Continent (the main landmass) called Rehigreed, which may from inference be a Discworld Mongolia. (A place for fast-moving horse-tribes to come from). Elsewhere, "Sumtri" appears to be a Discworld take on Indonesia (Sumatra) and the Brown Islands may well be a sort of Polynesia combined with locations like Fiji and Borneo.
Meanwhile, Ankh-Morpork and its environs became the Discworld analogue of England and the English, with The Shires, Lancre, and the Chalk representing various sorts of Englishness. Wales and possibly Ireland are a bit further out, as Llamedos and Hergen, while the general idea of Scottishness doesn't have a canonical physical location as such, but is embodied in the Pictsie folk of the NacMacFeegle.
Other European nations are, as you might expect, roughly in the same sort of geographical relationship to Ankh-Morpork that you might expect from looking at a map of Europe, to get an idea of Britain's relationship with its European neighbours. (5) "Belgium", "Luxembourg" and "The Netherlands" appear to be relatively near to, while "Poland" and "Russia" are a longer way away, for instance. (One "Rodinian" pilot in the Air Watch comes from the Lake Mouldavia region – as far away relative to Ankh-Morpork as Lake Baikal in Siberia is from London)
Another continent called Klatch or Howondaland (it depends what end of it you're from) conveys the notion of the Discworld's "Africa". The "Mediterranean" end of it has the vibe of Arab North Africa; there's a Sahara Desert (The Great Nef). There's a "Sub-Saharan" belt (Syrrit and Laotan) and after an interestingly out-of-place idea that belongs to an earlier conception of the Discworld (6), you get "The Kingdoms of Howondaland" - ie, a take on places ranging from Nigeria to what was once called the Zulu Empire. There is even a suspicion, in canon, that the far end of Howondaland, almost at the Rim of the Disc, has a white-skinned population left over from Empire and General Tacticus's conquests. (If elsewhere the canonical Disc has Fourecks and the Foggy Islands – its Australia and New Zealand – then why not also a South Africa?) Similar hints exist concerning a Discworld Canada/USA, also a former imperial Dominion of Ankh-Morpork.
TP, alas, died before being to expand on some of these ideas, and in my own unworthy way, I've been running with the ball on them. (Especially that elusive, hinted-at, idea that the Discworld has a "South Africa")
Discworld locations:
Dimwell: a stolidly working-class inner city suburb of the city. It parellels the dockside residential areas of London, such as Millwall. Downmarket, but nowhere near as downmarket as THE SHADES, which could best be described as the abode of the avoiding-working classes and a classic fantasy fiction Den of Iniquity. Best avoided, as Emiko finds out for herself. Sheer Street is noted for hosting the headquarters of the (hem, hem) Guild of Seamstresses, who are a seriously affluent working Guild.
Nap Hill is a pretty affluent well-off suburb, possibly an equivalent of Islington or Clapham, (but not the high-end Belgravia/Mayfair/St James' Wood parts of London – that's Scoone Avenue and King's Way).
Unseen University began as the standard fantasy-fiction world's College of Wizardry and Magic. Magic is still very much in the mix, but it's evolved into a parody of Oxbridge colleges with their several-hundred-years old traditions and academic snobbery. (7)
Ankh-Morpork itself is a sort of democracy. It's run by Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, who has contrived to be the One Man with the One Vote.
Order is kept by the City Watch, who have evolved into a surprisingly competent and wide-reaching police force. This includes the Air Watch, which canonically began in "Snuff" with Feegle (aggressive Scottish-flavoured pictsies) on ravens and trained birds of prey. Maybe because the one class of human who can command and rebuke Feegle without getting beaten up are Witches, I imagined Sam Vimes recruiting his first Witch Police Constables, pilots who brought their own broomsticks. (at the time, viewed as a great saving) My Air Watch continues where TP left off.
Elsewhere, the seaport of Bes Pelargic in "Agatea" began as a place with a suitably random and plausible fantasy name, but which evolved into a take on Hong Kong and possibly Shanghai, with Japanese overtones – Nagasaki, perhaps, or given that people from Bes Pelargic are universally considered odd and strange, perhaps Osaka in the Kansai Prefecture. "Agatea" (especially in the novel Interesting Times) promiscuously mixed up-to-eleven Chinese and Japanese cultural features into one great big chow mein stir-fry with teriyaki sauce; my take on the Discworld seeks to separate "China" from "Japan", (as far as my understanding applies).
(5) Do not mention Brexit at this point. A lot of us are hideously embarrassed about what this almighty screw-up did to European perceptions of British people. Some of us actually quite like being Europeans.
(6) In Reaper Man, TP introduces the concept of "Native Americans" to the Discworld, in the context of spirit small Mrs Evadne Cake having the stereotypical Red Indian Spirit Guide. As this was at a time when TP was adamantly against having any form of North America whatsoever on the Disc, he has One-Man Bucket explaining his tribe roamed the majestic open prairies of Howondaland. Discworld "Native Americans" are therefore to be found in the heart of "Africa". I use this notion in my travelogue road-trip tale "Gap Year Adventures". And yes – it sounds odd. But that's where TP put them.
(7) For non-British readers: "Oxbridge" is a portmanteau word for the two "Great Universities", as in "Oxford and Cambridge". Often used in a semi-derogatory way, as in "Oh, I see the BBC gave the latest bunch of Footlights graduates from Oxbridge their own comedy show, what a surprise." ("Footlights" is the comedy revue club at Cambridge; the perception is that BBC executives and producers who are also Oxbridge grads are looking after their own here, and providing a career ladder not available to others. In fairness, it works when the performers/writers are actually funny – eg, Monty Python, Douglas Adams.).
Re werefoxes: a reply to a PM from reader Ksandra Malan, which jogged my memory of asides and side-plotlets in previous tales:
The Agatean were-fox (Kitsune-san) at the Embassy makes an appearance in "The Many Worlds Interpretation", when a group of City weres of various species decides to go out roaming together in Effing Forest. I did once have a continuation fic planned where Angua is driven nuts trying to apprehend a new Were in town who hasn't yet registered herself at the Watch-house, as is now mandatory for new people in town (after the business with the were-leopards: Vetinari has made it clear he would like to be aware of such things). A honest hard-working werewolf is outwitted and annoyed by a were-fox, sort of thing. Never got round to it, though: Angua does acknowledge in one tale that it drove her nuts. So this remains a noodle incident.
Going on holiday for a fortnight tomorrow (Saturday 9th) but hoping to get something up before, even if it's a shorter-length chapter. It's in preparation.
I recollect from the web comic that Erma has so strange books on her shelves alongside her W.U.P. collection; I'll look these up and then refer to them as part of the Library's collection. I may also hint the Librarian is a bit sniffy about graphic novels, which are beginning to appear on the shelves and cluttering the place up (even though Unseen University Library is potentially infinite in size, we all know the number of books you accumulate always exceeds the shelf-space available for them, which is an interesting philosophical conundrum. Does this apply even in an infinitely large Library?) The Librarian, confronted with graphic novels, has to think "They're book-shaped. But..."