#ankh-morpork

[discworldquotes]

“Ankh-Morpork is a godless city—” “I thought it had more than three hundred places of worship?” said Maladict. Strappi stared at him in a rage that was incoherent until he managed to touch bottom again. “Ankh-Morpork is a godawful city,” he said.

Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

[authorbreannawrites]

There was definitely something hungry in Angua’s eyes as she watched him.

Vimes was just starting to get comfortable with the fact there was a werewolf in his watch (and it really was his watch now, Lord Commander, and no matter how much good he could do with that title apparently renaming it was not a power Vetinari saw fit to bestow). Angua was definitely proving useful, and even more than her nose she had a good head on her shoulders which was even rarer in a watchman.

But there was still something discomfortingly wolfish in the way she stared at his exposed throat, standing too straight at attention in front of his desk.

Pseudopolis Yard used to house nobles, with all their fancy decorative ideas. Maybe Nobby hadn’t quite gotten around to prying every gram of silver out of it. 

“Sir?” Angua said, a little stiffly.

“Mmm?” Vimes looked at her, pretending he hadn’t just been trying to subtly peek at the light furnishings.

“You’ve got a little,” she tapped the side of her cheek.

Vimes wiped at his face. A smudge of bacon grease slid onto his fingers.

He didn’t miss the way Angua’s gaze followed it, her focus going to the fingers and then on the paperwork he used to clean it. More dog than wolf, that.

“You miss lunch, Constable?”

She valiantly only turned a little bit pink, keeping her gaze straight at the wall. A natural watchman, this one. “The bread was against my lips when the shopkeepers went sprinting after what turned out to have be a fully licensed thieving, and I dropped it while… dispensing justice.”

That sounded like Carrot’s phrasing, but then that was who she’d been having most of her lunches with.

“We’ve all been there,” Vimes said, not without sympathy. “You learn to shove it in your pocket as you run.”

“Yes, sir.” Angua’s eyes lingered a little longer on the bacon stains again.

Fresh bacon was indeed one of the more torturous things to smell when you weren’t permitted to eat any of it, and that probably didn’t get any easier with a werewolf’s senses.

There was nothing stopping her from going back out and buying another sandwich, except that despite whatever horrid blackmail Carrot had inexplicably managed to use on Vetinari without going into the scorpion pit a constable’s pay still wasn’t that high, and rent in this city tended to take up more than its fair share, and while a second lunch was unlikely to wipe out her savings it was a habit that added up quickly if you indulged too much.

And Vimes had somehow become the kind of person that really could buy multiple fancy meals every night.

He sighed, taking a second to mourn the fact his intended dinner had been the perfect amount of bacon versus lettuce (which was to say, an overwhelming victory by numbers) and then pulled the wrapped foil out of his desk drawer. “Here.”

“I couldn’t, sir,” Angua said, despite gazing it with an expression that was best described as longing.

“It’s fine, I’ll buy a pie or something.”

She still hadn’t looked away from the badly wrapped square on his desk. “Thank you, sir, but I’m vegetarian.”

Vimes stared at her.

“It’s unusual in my family,” she admitted a little sheepishly.

“Right.” In which case, it might be cruel to leave the bacon in front of her. Vimes slowly put it back into his drawer, and her eyes followed it the whole time. “You sure you don’t want —”

“I’m sure.”

He shut the drawer with a click, and almost definitely she could still smell it but there was a little bit of relief on her face. “I thought Carrot bought you a live chicken last month?”

“He told you about that?” Angua asked, her head snapping up to stare at him in mortification.

“He arrested a smuggler while holding it, came into the watchhouse with one hand on the perp and one hand on a chicken. It wriggled out, left some white stains on Colon’s armour.” Vimes shrugged. “Don’t see what the problem is, I’ve certainly eaten enough of them.”

She grimaced. “I only eat meat I’ve hunted myself.”

“Fair enough.” Although if her family thought it was unusual, that probably wasn’t a specific werewolf thing. “Can I ask why?”

Angua took a few seconds. “I can never be sure there isn’t someone I’ve met in it otherwise.”

There were indeed some horrific things in Überwald, wasn’t there? Too many undead in power. “I can promise you you don't need to worry about that in Ankh-Morpork.”

“You’d be surprised.”

 Vimes almost tried to reassure her again, before he remembered that out of the two of them, she was the one who most definitely could tell the difference between cow and human blood. “You – wait, have you seen that?” He stood up from his chair. “Where?”

“Not human,” she said dismissively. “Although I can tell you there’s some butchers that don’t really seem to care if they bleed on top of it. But half the stalls have wolf in them.”

“Wolf.”

“Yes.”

“People sell wolf meat in Ankh-Morpork.” Vimes took a seat again, more surprised by the logistics than anything else. Surely if you took the effort to hunt a wolf it’d sell for more if you labelled it correctly.  

“Dibbler’s pies, for one.”

Vimes snorted. “Dog, maybe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“…Ah.” That would do it. Someone who considered dogs the same as wolves, and wolves the same as people, would have to be very picky about what they ate in Ankh-Morpork. "Does that bother you? Just seeing them around?” he asked, unsure what he would even do if the answer was yes. He couldn’t exactly ban pies from the watchhouse without inciting a riot, wouldn't besides.

She shrugged. “Wolves understand food hierarchy better than humans do. The stray packs are well aware what happens if they get caught, just as much as a human knows to stay away from a hungry tiger.” She wrinkled her nose. “Wolves at least. Not always dogs, some of them have been around humans too long and don’t even know where their dinner comes from. But just because it’s part of life doesn’t mean I have to get involved.”

She wanted to, very clearly, from the way her eyes kept flicking to the bacon grease. But frankly, it was probably for the best that Angua kept avoiding eating anyone she had a conversation with. That also seemed like a bad habit.

“Alright. Here, buy a cabbage or something then.” Vimes put a coin on the table. “Call it expenses for sacrificing your sandwich in the line of duty.”

“No, sir, it’s fine, really —”

“Take another twenty minutes, and if someone commits another crime in front of you learn to carry your lunch. If Carrot can tackle a man as big as a troll while holding a live chicken you can manage a cabbage.”

Angua hesitated, then took the coin. “Thank you, sir.”

“And I’m sure you didn’t come in here to talk about bacon.”

“No, sir. We wanted to let you know that we caught the arsonist of Tober Omee Walk. Turns out it was an accident; a little girl who very much wanted to be like her dad the alchemist.” She paused. “The Alchemist Guild have already paid her bail. Something about never before seen skill. I think she’s already replaced her father in the guild.”

“How old is she?”

“Eight and a half.”

“Probably more sensible than any other alchemist in the city.”

"Yes, sir."

[elliottjpg]

"Boo."

Happy Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May to all who observe.

Like last year, I opted to do a redraw of an old drawing from 2020; a companion piece to my previous drawing, a redraw from 2019. Night Watch is a good context to revisit the past and look at how I've evolved.

Rise up!

[pratchettquotes]

"Where're you from, Henry?" said Nanny.

"Really from," said Granny.

"I grew up in the Rookery Yard in the Shades. They're in Ankh-Morpork," said Henry. "It was a terrible rough place. There were only three ways out. You could sing your way out or you could fight your way out."

"What was the third way?" said Nanny.

"Oh, you could go down that little alleyway into Shamlegger Street and then cut down to Treacle Mine Road," said Henry. "But no one ever amounted to anything who went that way."

Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

[ground-zoro]

If you HAD to live in one of these cities for a year, which would you chose?

Gotham

Ankh-Morpork

Voting ended onApr 7

[spookyghostcupcake]

I started to re-read and re-listen to the Watch books again....

.... and, of course, I'm kinda obsessed with Vimes again 😅

I really should have expected it.

He's my favorite character and has been for ages.

That's the post. Just wanted to exclaim my application for Sam Vimes, the Watch books, Discword and,naturally, Sir Terry

So excuse me, I'm off to write fanfiction I'll ,most likely, never publish, because I'm insecure AF 😅😭

[ansatsu-sha]

No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well, technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders always found, after a few days, that they didn't own their own horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.

Terry Pratchett / Eric

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

How many Discworld books can you read in a row?

I can only read one, then I need something else

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

The Limit Does Not Exist

I don't read Terry Pratchett (bc I suck)

Nuance, other, show results

Voting ended onSep 28, 2025