Plagiarism of the Gods: Equestrians of Discworld
The Disc is hardly a world of originality. That's not to say that it's a dull, uninteresting, normal, or mediocre sort of world; far from it. It is more that its interestingness comes from being a sort of cosmic melange[1] of everything its gods took a shine to that hadn't been securely bolted down.
[1]: which is not, contrary to popular belief, the name of a sort of rusty orange color
That's the sort of behavior that gives you a disc floating through space balanced across the backs of four primordial pachyderms who circle, in turn, atop the shell of a truly astronomical turtle.
Sometimes, a god or few would take inspiration from a passing wonder on a nearby world[2], and cobble together something similar to it. That's how the first swamp dragons[3] happened.
[2]: The view atop Mt. Dunmanifestin, at the Hub of the Disc, is quite lovely.
[3]: Adorably disgusting creatures, rather like reptilian pugs[4] in a number of ways. They have the unique feature of being able to rearrange their own innards on-the-fly to try to turn things they eat into a fiery breath weapon. They are biological alchemical plants, with all of the fumes and explosions that implies.
[4]: Except that their host of alarming medical issues can be blamed more on the gods than on man.
Other times, though, the gods just lazily copy something wholesale without even bothering to file the serial numbers off.
The gods were feeling quite lazy when Equestria flew by…
Thankfully, the great melting pot of the City of Ankh-Morpork exists to accept such fruits of the gods’ caprice, whether they like it or not.
Author's Note
It finally happened. A fey mood struck me, and I decided to expand upon a story that was in my cryogenic ficfrag storage. Accordingly, "The Gryphon Take of Postal Service" has been disappeared from said storage (unpublished, but not deleted) so that it could be the nucleus for a new collection here.
I'd been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series lately (especially the Watch novels featuring Sam Vimes), and a few ideas came together this morning. I'm happy with the results so far.
There isn't planned to be any sort of overarching plot, nor is there any particular schedule for updates beyond "whenever the heck inspiration strikes or I feel like it". Hopefully I do
both worlds justice.
I hope y'all enjoy these vignettes for what they're worth.
Plagiarism of the Gods: Equestrians of Discworld
“Hi. I’m Maud.”
Slate looked out from his dark alcove in the Shades[1], saw nothing, and then looked down. There was a grey horse-thing with purple hair in a dull blue dress staring up at him with half-lidded, too-huge eyes. It looked to be about dwarf-height.
[1]: A part of Ankh-Morpork that, had railroads been invented on the Disc, would be on the wrong side of the tracks. Well, wrong-er.
“Youse one o’ dem hall-Lucy-nations? I ain't touched tha slab[2] in a while, but…”
[2]: A sort of troll narcotic said to melt their brains. It's uranium-based.
“No,” the horse-thing said in a monotone so cold, Slate could feel himself getting smarter[3] just hearing it. “What sort of rock are you? You’re much more talkative than most rocks I’ve met.”
[3]: A troll’s silicon-based brain brain doesn't become exponentially more efficient as temperature drops, so much as it becomes factorially so, and magic of many sorts have a certain weakness for wordplay.
“Uh… fanks. Trolls is made of…” he knew he'd heard this word before... “metamorphorical rock, which means, eh” – the horse-thing was tapping him now with a hoof – “that we’s made up a’ local rocks. Except for our teef, which is always diamonds.” He tried to grin menacingly, but Maud just kept tapping at the bits of him she could reach.
“My name is Slate, 'cause I’m made a’ slate.” Slate’s beady eyes flickered back and forth to make sure they were alone. “An’ maybe a little shale.”
“More than a little. You are at least thirty-seven point six percent shale. Is there some kind of stratification in troll society based on strata?”
Slate's blood began to boil. You didn't tell a troll with a big club that he wasn't exactly what he said he was. And you really didn't tell him he was mudstone. It was time to teach the horse-thing a lesson. A very blunt and swift lesson.
“HWUAAAAA-ack!”
“Sandstone,” Maud said in her eternal monotone as Slate stared at the settling pile of sand that used to be his club. The horse-thing had done this with one hoof rather than becoming a greasy splatter on the jagged cobbles, forcing Slate's brain into a reboot. “Heavy, but not strong. Not good for making blunt instruments.”
She pulled a pebble out of a pocket and held it up to her ear.
“Boulder says that wasn't very nice of you, and that you should apologize.”
“Sorry, erm, Maud.” He thought he saw Boulder move. “And Boulder. Is… Is Boulder a troll?”
Though Maud’s face stayed locked in its perpetual flat expression, she tilted her head in a thoughtful way.
“No,” she said after a few seconds, “though I have wondered a few times. He doesn't have teeth, though, or a mouth for that matter, so he can't be a troll.”
Slate scratched his head for a bit, making a sound like nails on a chalkboard that made Maud's ears fold back but otherwise left her expression unchanged.
Maud’s stomach rumbled.
“Do you have any food on you? Like some gypsum? Or hematite. I’m not picky.”
Slate fished around in a bandolier pouch and pulled out some gypsum chips to hand to her.
Maud crunched through them.
“Thanks,” she said. “That was some good sulfur. My compliments to the grower[4].”
[4]: While a few of the fancier trolls in Ankh-Morpork preferred to get their food “free-range”, even though it meant paying a dwarf[5] to mine it, most trolls just ate the freely available farmed rocks.
[5]: A race that trolls have had an infamously bad time getting along with.
Slate’s befuddlement deepened. “Is you some funny-lookin’ kind a’ troll?”
Her teeth didn't look like diamonds, and she was awful smooth, but she wasn't the wrong colors…
“No. I’m a pony. Who likes rocks.” She looked down at the pebble in her hoof. “Let's go, Boulder. I think I felt some mining down below.”
Slate stared at the pony, dumbfounded[6], as she walked off into the depths of Ankh-Morpork.
[6]: Well, moreso than usual.
Plagiarism of the Gods: Equestrians of Discworld
The Gryphon Take of Postal Service
"I will not stand for this. It is a menace!" the foremost member of an unruly mob[1] said. "Mark my words, it'll be devouring things!"
[1]: Decidedly less threatening than the more ruly sort of mob.
"Indeed," Vetinari said. "She might even devour some of Dibbler's pig onastick. That would be truly tragic. Not only would the mail system lose much of its hard-fought efficiency, I'd be out the best crossword help I've had in decades."
The mob collectively shuffled a step back, but it wasn't done yet.
"Think of the children!" somebody shouted.
"Ah yes, the children," Vetinari sighed. "I suppose they do accost her frequently, asking for rides or to play all sorts of inane games. She doesn't seem to mind, though, as long as they don't play too rough, and she still completes her route with alarming speed and accuracy, so I'm not too concerned about it."
"But sir!" the mob's apparent spokesman said, pulling out what he was certain was his trump card, "She's a gryphon!"
"And?" Vetinari replied, eyebrow quirked back up into its accustomed position.
"But... Gryphon?" the ringleader said, as if realizing that the card he'd so cleverly hidden up his sleeve had in fact been replaced with a two of clubs while he'd been looking the other way.
"And we've got a golem doing postal work alongside her, not to mention a troll that's found gainful employment as the splatter[2] for The Mended Drum, and our streets are thoroughly policed by the Thieves' Guild. We take pride in our ability to make good use of potentially dangerous elements."[3]
[2]: A splatter is like a bouncer, but with less restraint.
[3]: It has been hotly debated whether or not Vetinari makes use of "the royal we". Not least of the reasons for this debate is that Ankh-Morpork's most recent royalty was, in fact, a literal fire-breathing dragon.
"Well, uh... Everything seems to be in order.[4] I suppose we'll be going now."
[4]: In truth, it wasn't much in order at all.[5] Vetinari prefers it this way, as this particular form of chaos is far easier to direct than order ever could have hoped to be.
[5]: After all, the forces of chaos are far better organized.
"Don't let me detain you."
Author's Note
The original author's note, from when this was part of my cryogenic ficfrag storage:
A lengthy-ish comment I left on Carabas's Winterheart in response to FoME suggesting Carabas write a crossover where Gabby the Gryphon helps out Moist von Lipwig in Ankh-Morpork's postal system.
The inspiration to write this bit managed to squeeze its way through my migraine-haze, and I'm kinda proud of the results.
Fun fact: At least one person nearly mistook this for an excerpt from an actual Discworld book, up until I mentioned the gryphon.
This fragment features Lord Vetinari, Gabby the Gryphon, and an unruly mob.
