Turtle Recall Part 19

Jones, Llamedos. One of the Disc's semi-mythical religious explorers. Legend has it that he set out one day in his leather coracle armed with no more than a holy sickle, a sack of mistletoe, a small portable stone circle and a harmonium, in an inspired effort to bring the advantages of Strict Druidism to the heathen. No one has yet found out what these advantages were.

Jorgen. A cousin of Lance-Constable CUDDY. A dwarf, and a watchmaker. [MAA]

Judy. A goblin. Works, reluctantly, with Chas SLUMBER. [TOC]

Jupe, Father. A priest of Nuggan. [MR]

Kaos. An anthropomorphic personification. The Fifth Horseman of the APOCRALYPSE, although he left before they got famous, and always said he didn't begrudge them their later success. He embodies apparently complicated, apparently patternless behaviour that nevertheless has a simple, deterministic explanation and is a key to new levels of understanding of the multidimensional universe (or so LU TZE says). He rides out on a chariot drawn by a black horse which shines as though illuminated by a red light redness spangles off its shoulders and flanks. Kaos' eyes are black shiny and black without any whites at all. Carrying his sword of burning cold, he wears a full-face helmet with eyeholes that look slightly like the wings of a b.u.t.terfly, and rather more like the eyes of some strange, alien creature. See also SOAK, Ronald. [TOT]

Keeble, Liona. A job broker in Ankh-Morpork. [M, RM]

Keel, John. Past sergeant of the Night Watch. He used to be with the Watch in Pseudopolis. Notable by his eyepatch and a noticeable scar on his face, Keel was the sergeant who taught young Sam Vimes all he needed to know about proper policing. His grave is in the Cemetery of Small G.o.ds. [NW]

Keepsake, d.u.c.h.ess of. Turkey-necked mother of Let.i.tia. When we first meet her she is a bully, with a shiny black stick with a silver k.n.o.b at the end. She always travels in funeral clothes because, she says, you never know when someone is going to drop dead. She lives at Keepsake Hall, at the far end of the Chalk. Before she married the Duke, she was a dancer in the music hall, and was called Deirdre Parsley. [ISWM]

Keith. A fair-haired young man, called 'Kid' and 'Stupid-looking Kid' by MAURICE. He was found on a doorstep at the Guild of MUSICIANS. He is good at playing musical instruments and has been earning his own living since the age of six. With MAURICE, and some educated rodents, he was part of the 'Pied Piper' scam in uberwald. [TAMAHER]

Keli. Princess Kelirehenna of STO LAT. When first encountered, she was a slim, red-haired girl of fifteen with a strong jawline; not beautiful, being over-endowed in the freckle department and, frankly, rather on the skinny side. Her role in life was to fail to be killed by an a.s.sa.s.sin owing to the gland-led incompetence of MORT.

She eventually became Her Supreme Majesty, Queen Kelirehenna I, Lord of Sto Lat, Protector of the Eight Protectorates, and Empress of the Long Thin Debated Piece Hubwards of Sto Kerrig. [M]

Ken, Stalling. A beggar on the streets of Ankh-Morpork. He had the privilege of supping with Death, or at least of supping with Death and getting up the next morning. [SM]

Kepple. A past sergeant of the Night Watch in Ankh-Morpork. He was head of the Watch when Sam Vimes was a recruit. [MAA]

Khat-leon-ra-pta, Queen. A past monarch of DJELIBEYBI, during the 2nd Empire. She conquered Howandaland, but it was subsequently sold back to its inhabitants to pay for yet more pyramids. [P]

Kheneth XIV. Past monarch of DJELIBEYBI. [P]

Khuft. Accidental discoverer of the subsequently mighty land of DJELIBEYBI. A small, dark man in a loincloth and with two blackened stumps of teeth. He fled into the desert to escape disgruntled purchasers of his sub-standard camels, and founded a huge dynasty. [P]

Khufurah, Prince. Younger brother of Prince Cadram of Klatch. A tall, bearded man, with disconcertingly intelligent eyes, who had once been athletic until all the big dinners a.s.sociated with his cla.s.s took their effect. [J]

King, Harry. Known as 'King of the Golden River', and less politely as p.i.s.s Harry. Harry can't read or write, but that has been no drawback to his career, because he employs people who can. He is an enormous man, pink and shiny-faced, with a few strands of hair teased across his head. It's hard not to imagine him in shirtsleeves and braces, or not smoking a cigar. He is married to Effie and they have two daughters, Daphne and Hermione. He has a persistent, but not particularly bad, odour of old potatoes and abandoned tunnels. Except for the pinky of his left hand, he has a heavy gold ring on each finger spelling H.A.R.R.Y.K.I.N.G.

Harry King had made his fortune by the careful application of the old adage: where there's muck there's bra.s.s. There was money to be made out of things that people threw away. Especially the very human things that people threw away.

The real foundations of his fortune came when he started leaving empty buckets at various hostelries around the city centre, especially those that were more than a gutter's length from the river. He charged a very modest fee to take them away when they were full. It became part of the life of every pub landlord; they'd hear a clank in the middle of the night and turn over in their sleep content in the knowledge that one of p.i.s.s Harry's men was, in a small way, making the world a better-smelling place.

They didn't wonder what happened to the full buckets, but Harry King had learned something that can be the key to great riches: there is very little, however disgusting, that isn't used somewhere in some industry. There are people out there who want large quant.i.ties of ammonia and saltpetre. If you can't sell it to the alchemists then the farmers probably want it. If even the farmers don't want it then there is nothing, nothing, however gross, that you can't sell to the tanners.

Harry felt like the only man in a mining camp who knows what gold looks like.

He started taking on a whole street at a time, and branched out. In the well-to-do areas the householders paid him, paid him to take away night soil, the by-now established buckets, the horse manure, the dustbins and even the dog muck. Dog muck? Did they have any idea how much the tanners paid for the finest white dog muck? It was like being paid to take away squishy diamonds.

Harry couldn't help becoming rich. The world fell over itself to give him money. Someone, somewhere, would pay him for a dead horse or two tons of prawns so far beyond their best-before date it couldn't be seen with a telescope, and the most wonderful part of all that someone had already paid him to take them away. If anything absolutely failed to find a buyer, not even from the cats-meat men, not even from the tanners, not even from Mr Dibbler himself, there were the mighty compost heaps downstream of the city, where the volcanic heat of decomposition made fertile soil ('10p a bag, bring your own bag . . .') out of everything that was left including, according to rumour, various shadowy businessmen who had come second in a takeover battle ('. . . brings your dahlias up a treat').

He'd kept the woodpulp-and-rags business closer to home though, along with the huge vats that contained the golden foundations of his fortune, because it was the only part of his business that his wife Effie would talk about. Rumour had it that she had also been behind the removal of the much admired sign over the entrance to his yard, which said: H. King Taking the p.i.s.s Since 1961. Now it read: H. King Recycling Nature's Bounty. [TT]

Kings, of Ankh-Morpork. The named ones have included: Aguinna IV (Queen) [MAA]

ARTOROLLO.

Cirone IV [MAA]

Coanna (Queen) [MAA]

LORENZO the Kind Paragore [MAA]

Tyrril [MAA]

Veltrick III [MAA]

Webblethorpe the Unconscious [MAA]

Kite, the. Flying machine devised by LEONARD of QUIRM to transport him, Captain CARROT, and RINCEWIND (oh, and the LIBRARIAN) into orbit around the Disc in order to travel to CORI CELESTI during the events of The Last Hero. It resembled a huge, wooden eagle and had functional wooden wings so that it could glide or swoop, given appropriate winds and thermals. Its main power to achieve its amazing journey, however, came from the segmented Salmon of Thunder it carries in its claws; this fish-shaped construction contained arrays of dragons facing movable mirror mechanisms to get them to flame on demand and provide the motive force to get the Kite into orbit around the Disc. [TLH]

Klatch. The name of both an individual country and the great mysterious continent, between the CIRCLE SEA and the Rim Ocean, which is its hinterland. Klatch too once had an empire and ruled, more or less, the greater part of the continent. Hence the name has lingered on, at least as far as the people of Ankh-Morpork are concerned.

It has to be said that the words 'Klatch' and 'Klatchian' are used by people of the STO PLAINS as practically interchangeable with 'foreign', in the same way that the fierce D'reg nomads in the Klatchian desert use the words 'foreigner' and 'traveller' interchangeably with the word 'target'.

The sovereign countries of TSORT, DJELIBEYBI, EPHEBE and even OMNIA are all on the Klatchian coast.

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 'a.s.sa.s.sination' 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 melt.w.a.ter 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 G.o.d 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 CIRc.u.mFENCE, 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 mult.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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 s.e.x 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 several 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 embarra.s.sing 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 ma.s.sive 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 a.s.s, 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 a.s.semblage 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 const.i.tutional monarchy. This is not running smoothly because the citizens of Lancre, b.l.o.o.d.y-minded monarchists to the bone, feel that if someone is supposed to be king he should d.a.m.n 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, inst.i.tuting 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d or G.o.ddess 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 s...o...b..C 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 pa.s.s 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.

Lankin. An elf. High cheekbones, a perfect nose and a ponytail. He wears odds and ends of rags and lace and fur, confident in the knowledge that anything looks good on an elf. Like all elves, totally self-confident and immensely cruel but with style, so that's OK. [LL]

Larsnephew, Lars. 'Father of Exploration'. He himself never travelled further than ten miles from the village of NoThing, in NoThingfjord, where he was born. He managed, however, to inspire one of the most sustained periods of exploration in the history of the Disc. He was not so much an explorer as the cause of exploration in other people. This is thought to be due to his mastery of the art of ancient sagas, some of which could last several years. The mere sight of Lars looking thoughtful was enough to send local people dashing to their longboats and rowing desperately for the open sea. Most of them later grounded on islands which, while often hospitable, had the major advantage of not containing Lars Larsnephew. [DM]

Lasgere. A former prince of Tsort. Killed by a slave during an experiment in 'learning while you sleep'; the slave's duty was to read to him all night. What Lasgere presumably did learn was that it is not a good idea for the slave to be armed with a knife. [SG]