Expanding the Kythia entry of the Compleat Discworld Atlas.1 (1)
Previously published, with helpful inspiring illustration, on the Ankh-Morpork Times: News of the Disc group on Facebook.
Editorial Note: From our intrepid foreign correspondent, the Compte de Yoyo, who has very kindly taken time out from the necessary administration required following his bringing back the survivors of an Assassins' Guild School field trip and nature ramble in remote Kythia.
That inestimable publication, The Compleat Discworld Atlas, to which I am a contributor, remarks about Kythia that "it is subject to the most dreadful infestations of bloodsucking insects, including mosquitos, ticks, and worst of all the Samo-Thrip (Anophiles Culicinida Giganticus) , which inflict such irritating bites as to cause frenzied, often terminal, scratching". I can report that I am now in a position to update the next edition of the Atlas with new information.
in accordance with the Guild's principle of "noblesse oblige" and Lord Downey's oft-stated directive that we must be seen to be good neighbours and public-spirited people prepared to act in the public interest, my students and I were unanimous in agreement that the current advisory notices stating "WELCOME TO KYTHIA; WARNING! DO NOTTE SETT FOOTE ON THYS LANDE!" which are prominently displayed on all access points into the region, were not nearly enough and were in any case written only in Morporkian. I am grateful to my colleague Miss Gillian Lansbury (Art Department), who politely declined an invitation to join this expedition, for her thorough grounding in the use of semiotic and imagery to communicate a universally understood message. The new signs that were designed in the Art Department, and which were erected by our hardy students, are reproduced in the accompanying iconograph.
Doctor Smith-Rhodes (Natural History and Zoology) also declined to accompany our expedition. I now appreciate her most earnest and forcibly expressed advice to call it off and go somewhere less hazardous instead, such as the nearby volcanic island of Krapatoa.
She was appreciative of the living specimens of Anophiles Culicinida Giganticus which after some exertion, we managed to trap and safely bring back for her attention. I understand these are now housed, for study purposes, in the Maximum Security Wing (Entomology) of the Animal Management Unit. The concern of the Patrician concerning giant and lethal predatory insects in Ankh-Morpork has also been noted. Doctor Smith-Rhodes is likely to preserve confirmed dead specimens for zoological study. She has requested a budgetary increase to cover the substantial additional costs of the outsize killing jars and industrial quantities of formaldehyde which will be needed.
A list of pupils who, sadly, failed to make it back is appended for the obituaries page. They will be remembered.
(1)The Atlas is sort of canonical. There is some Terry Pratchett in this book, from notes and scraps of writings, but people like Bernard Pearson, Stephen Briggs, Rob Williams and Rhianna Pratchett bulked it out a bit. It reads like high-end fan fiction in places, (with some not so good), probably necessarily.