The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 23: Pyramids Pt.1 (Not For Internal Use)

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan-Young and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “Pyramids”.Things we should all bang on about:Resources:Black Lives Matter8 Can't WaitPolice ReformBlack Visions CollectiveSystemic Police Brutality in BritainBlack Lives Matter in London Donate:Places To DonateThe Okra Project Black Trans Lives MatterMore Places to Donate Further Reading: Black-Owned Bookshops - USBlack-Owned Bookshops - UKGraphic Novels that deal with anti-racism When They Call You a TerroristWhy I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race  So You Want to Talk About Race Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Hi, Francine here. We'd like to start this podcast with an acknowledgement of the atrocities being carried out across the United States by police forces, egged on by their government. We hope that anyone who's listened to this podcast already knows our stance on this. Black Lives Matter. We are behind the protesters 100%. Although, of course, this has been going on for decades and centuries, never before has there been such an influx of footage proving the incompetence and malevolence of police forces across the States. Joe and I tried to discuss this in our usual style, but we are two white women in England, and frankly, we decided it was unhelpful and incoherent. So instead, please check the show notes of

this episode for a list of resources, which includes ways you can help and where to find black voices speaking about what's actually going on in the States. The hieroglyphs on the top of this, by the way, say the truth shall make you frat. I need one of those. I need one of those hieroglyphs logo. Yeah, I did one of those silly website things. If I have time, I might look into hieroglyphs properly and try and translate it, but I think that's just, like, phonetically. What?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's, I think it's literally done letters. Equal hieroglyphs. Yes, no, exactly. Yeah, that's what it's done there. The only one that's a word word is the you. Instead of you, which is the loop bird means you. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, loop bird, loop bird. So that's more effort than I've gone to. I did a lot of reading and just came out with. Ancient Egypt is one of those subjects.

Where there is just so, so much to learn that you can spend hours and still not really come out with anything solid because you just scrape the surface of like a million different subjects, which is kind of what it's also hard to imagine the concept of how much time it spans. We talked about this like a few episodes ago, you've got a book that talks about all the things in history that happen concurrent with each other. And there's things like Cleopatra was alive closer to now than to the early days of Ancient Egypt. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the famous one, isn't it?

And yeah, and like Willie Mammas was still around when the pyramids were being built and stuff, which like, I know they weren't in the same place, but I can't help but picture Willie Mammas like wandering around sniffing at pyramids. Oh, I like that idea. Maybe so hot though for Mammas. No, yes. Maybe just a little holiday and then they can go back to the nice icy places. Mammas in some hats.

That mental image has brought me a lot of joy. But yeah, it's mental. So it's 5000 years ago. The, you know, this is before you start even going into the prehistory time. But I think from the, you know, I just read all of this. I just read it and I can't tell you what bloody time period is called. What? I have no head for remembering time periods and dates. If it's not written down in front of me, I do not know it.

But it's just that I know, obviously it changed a lot, but considering it was that kind of time span, the fact that there were any, there was any cultural carryover from the beginning to the end is just astonishing and weirdly fascinating. Yeah, it's, I feel like there must be countless books on how exactly that happened and what the unique circumstances of that region and there are so many red holes you can go down, which instead of doing that, do you want to, do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's do that instead, because I've only got like a couple hours. Right, OK.

Introduce us. Well, I'm Joanna. Sorry, I'm sorry. Hello and welcome to the Two Shall Make He Fract, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one at a time, in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan Young. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today starts our discussion of Pyramids, the seventh.

Seventh. Seventh's Discworld novel. The first standalone novel published 1989 and it won the 1989 British Science Fiction Association Award. That's nice for it. Yes, it is. Consumers, not science fiction. Yeah, it's also our third book we've we're doing remotely on this this new format.

Yeah, someone pointed out on my work Zoom call that it's been 10 weeks and I looked at what I've achieved in 10 weeks and felt some shame. I have learned how to paint and I've been doing perspective drawings the last couple of days, like two, three and five point perspective. Nice. Five point perspective is like convex, which is pretty cool. It is trippy. I had studied perspective drawing a long time ago.

I'd like to get back into doing it. But yeah, I've done a bit of writing, but not as much as I would like. I've generally not been in contact with all the theatre stuff, which I need to start. I did like a fun little theatre Zoom call last week. We read some of King John and then we talked about ideas and things of it, which was nice. You got a great new haircut. That I gave myself, learned to cook a couple more things added to my repertoire. Susan was born.

Susan was born. Susan is still alive. Susan got cloned due to my oven breaking. That was the whole thing. So I had two gels of starter on the go for a few days. Are they back together now? Sort of. One is now one is going into bread today and not keeping the rest of.

And then the other one I'm keeping alive and fed to make for catcher for the weekend. This all sounds very cruel and unusual. I should stop allowing you to personify things you're going to cook. I named all my herb plants and I ripped them up on a regular basis. Cool, cool, cool. So pyramids is. I'm liking it. We always end up saying this.

I'm liking this a lot more than I thought it would. I think I'm rereading this for the first time as maybe not as an adult, but as an adult. Who knows a fair bit about mythology and more of the references and. Yeah, this is I think this is probably only the third time I've read this one. It's always been one where I've been like not fussed about going back to it. And you said the first standalone one, like to clarify, obviously, because we are. Spoiler light. In fact, yes, she probably do a note on spoilers.

Oh, yeah, sorry. I was launched into it without anybody any warning. Note on spoilers. We are a spoiler light podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book we're on pyramids, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we are saving any in all discussion of the final Discworld book, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there.

So you, dear listeners, can come on the journey with us. I'm just going to say now, I don't believe calling something a standalone book as a spoiler. And I will not be sticking to that concept. You just reminded me that I needed to do a standalone. Oh, I think I needed to do a spoiler warning by a standalone book, which just mean it doesn't fit into any bigger story arcs. Whereas yeah, it's not like the witches or the guards or Ridswind. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Once you've done so far, there are arcs over multiple books, which is exciting. But yes, this is the first standalone one. We still haven't had a book where we don't go to Antmoor book for those keeping track. Cool, cool, cool. Do you want to summarize what's happened in this first section? Oh, no, we should say what the first section is first, because this is weirdly organized book, isn't it?

There are four books within the book, and we're doing just the first one for this section. Yeah, yes. So apologies to the person who asked me on Twitter because at the time they asked me, I hadn't started planning, so I said we'd go a bit further in. But no, we're just doing book one today, book two next week, and then book three and four the week after. People asking us things. They're engaging.

I know. That's a good sign. Yeah, it's really exciting. It's fun. Yes, in this first book within a book, the book of going forth opens on great artuans swimming majestically through space. We zoom in on the pyramids in the ancient valley of the gel, firing quietly into space. The high priest Díos begins the rituals of the day as tepid dresses preparing for his

evening before climbing out of a window. The greatest mathematician on the disk eats his lunch for supper. We see the beginnings of tepid's assassin's exam and gasp as he plummets towards certain pavement. Flashback to tepid leaving his home in the valley of the gel for the assassin's guild in Inkmoorpork. As he continues falling, we flash back to his arrival at the guild and the history of his education.

As we in real time watch tepid grab a window sill above a bakery and he continues to reminisce. In flashback, he settles into the guild and we get a handy bit of exposition about his kingdom being slightly in debt due to pyramids. Tepid's assassin's exam continues as he spends in flashback his first night in the dorm and meets a couple of new religions. In the next flashback, he gets some assassin lessons from Merrithit and during his exam he faces off against a potential victim and realises he can't strike the killing blow. As in flashback, he learns about the founding of the assassin's guild, tepid fails at failing

his assassin's exam. He heads out on the piss with the lads for some risky fish and we have one last educational flashback. We watch the sunrise with King Tepeki-mon, the 27th, as he nails, especially good as I did that from memory and didn't put them in the summary, as he fails to fly. The assassin's lads get a little bit attacked. King Tepeki-mon has a disappointing chat with a non-scarabitled death and learns he's got to hang about in ghostly form until his pyramids ready, discovers that with the loss of his

corporeal form he can now think clearly. A seagull visits Tipsy Tepic as Deos contemplates death and deities. The dead king starts manifesting some powers, somehow becomes a god and also dead with a bit of comedy Latin and a walrus on the side. The dead king watches Dylan Gunn start his embalming process and Tepeki heads home. Dill is apparently a pun. Oh, was it? Pickle.

Oh, I did not get that. Yeah, yeah. I came across that by accident while I was on the forums. I feel I need to point out now that obviously one of the main locations of this book is the kingdom of the jelly baby and on my first read through I didn't pick up on that at all. I think on my earliest read of this I just looked at that word and when I'm not going to think about how to produce it it's got too many consonants. Yeah, I've always found that quite easy in books and it has been to my detriment when

I then try and say the words later. I will just ignore words that look difficult and then I will miss jokes like jelly baby. Onto helicopter and loincloth watch. I have to issue a formal apology that in Weird Sisters I did miss an actual quote and there was the troglodyte wanderer a rather faded monkey man in a fairy loincloth. Not even an implied loincloth. A literal loincloth and I missed it. Thank you to Victoria in Melbourne for getting in touch and pointing that out to me in the

voice of RP Tyler because it was an excellent email. Victoria in Melbourne in Victoria, the Russian doll of listeners. Thank you Victoria in Melbourne in Victoria for pointing that out. I am deeply, deeply, deeply sorry and it won't happen again. I'm pretty happy and also Joanna's ridiculous corner has been highlighted for what it is. Okay, it has been highlighted for what it is but there was a loincloth which means it's worth keeping helicopter and loincloth watch. I don't have the time to go into why that's wrong but okay.

That means I'm right. Okay, okay, that's fine. Look, I need a win today. Let me have this. What's your favourite quote, Joanna? My favourite, I've done a short one, I've done a very short one and that is to make up for the fact that I cannot promise that in a later part of this book I will not have a favourite quote that's two pages long.

This is page 21 in my copy so I'm on the Corgi paperback. Francine has a fun little hard bank version. Yeah, my page numbers do not correspond. It's a quote from Tepec's mother. People never learn anything in this place, she'd said. They only remember things. Which I just like because it's the first hints of this whole concept of the book and gel being a sort of stagnant country.

Yeah, it kind of reflects Pratchett's general view on education as well. I think he's always been very against the just learning things, like learning lines, learning dates and whatever. It's not an education, it's a learning your lines. This was something that used to really upset me in primary school to the point where I am still bitter about it. We'd have to do these speed multiplication tests and there were like ranks you'd go up in like if you got full marks for a certain number of weeks you'd get the harder ones

and the harder ones and I got stuck in the bottom rank because I couldn't just memorise a set of multiplications and then look at three times ten and go thirty. I'd have to do each sum in my head rather than just having memorised the corresponding things which meant I could never do it in a short time because I was doing each sum rather than just I have learnt by rote this time's table. Anyway, what's your favourite quote Francine? Mine's super short as well. It is in the Poisons class and the teacher, what's her ladyship's name?

My apologies. Tomalia. Tomalia. Lady Tomalia says, truly the world is the mollusk of your choice. That is a lovely line. Which of course means the world is your oyster but the world is the mollusk of your choice is possibly my most quoted line from Pratchett and it faces stiff competition but so we can launch straight into the characters.

We meet a lot of characters in this book because it's the first section which is where we tend to meet all the characters. Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you begin with P-T-E apparently, let's go. I'm just clarifying now that if anyone's name starts with a P I'm treating it as silent so Tepic is Tepic, when we meet Tracy she'll be Tracy, King Patepiki Mon. I'm pretty sure it's based on the Ptolemies which is a T so pronounced as a T rather. We're ignoring all silent P's and some loud ones which is going to be really really difficult

when we get to the hippopotamide. I did love the line of a legend has it to thank more pork if they're threatened they will run away. So Tepic or Patepik if you fancy. He is introduced as he's dressing for his assassins exam so he's had this, I like the little line about him having a headache all day and that paying off later but you know the outfit, all of the weapons and it's a nice callback to Weird Sisters when we were talking about how like so much of Granny and Magretts characters are summed up by how

they dress to go to the castle and rescue Nanny. There's the quiet ceremony of Nanny and Granny and her hatpins and there's Magretts decision to put a bread knife in her boot and it feels like a callback to that here where you learn a lot about. A very confident young man who at the same time is massively over preparing. Which I think is a nice little summation of his character. Yeah, I like Tepic. He's quite a sweet little hero actually he's for someone who he's described as sort of

education has settled on him like Dandruff like he's curious and he looks into a lot of things. He could easily be written as overconfident as an overconfident dickhead and he's not he's allowed to be wrong about things. Well to me that that is more the mark of somebody who kind of grew up that way with like a million different influences instead of told this is this is how things are. Although it's obviously in the main thing he is told how this is how things are but he seems to accept that it's not quite quickly when he gets there and he's like sorry I recognize

your ignorant protocol that you really should put your forehead to the ground when you address me. Yeah he gets like that brief moment of kingly arrogance when he arrives at the assassin's guild and then is corrected and he's just like oh okay right not being worshiped here crack on. Yeah, there's a brief intro early on to Dios the High Priest but we get a bit more about him later and I'm going to talk about him a lot more in the next couple of sections because yeah there's a good comparison to Grand Viziers in a later section.

He is probably comparable to some actual Viziers in Egyptian history as well. Yeah I mean he's at least in this first section he sort of set up as the intelligence behind the throne and the one who actually does things while the king thinks he's a seagull. Dios of course meaning god in Spanish. Yeah I like where he's described as not a natural, bearing in mind he's the first minister in High Priest. It wasn't a naturally religious man, it wasn't a desirable quality in a High Priest, it made you unsound, start believing in things and the whole business became a farce and this

idea that he is much more focused on ritual than on actual belief in the gods. Yeah and a lot of that comes back in small gods, just for the kind of, yeah. A lot of ideas in this book really really develop in small gods, this is like a starting to play with the ideas that small gods does in a much bigger way. Yeah definitely, I quite like that this is more contained in a way. Artela I wanted to, which is Tepec's mother, I wanted to just highlight, she's the one who says people never learn anything in this place they only remember things, she's not from within the kingdom, she didn't like pyramids, she's the one who insists that Tepec goes

to school outside of the kingdom, she actually liked cats as well as venerating them, which I thought was very sweet little detail, but also like there's a hint of Disney to that he starts off the book with a dead mother and a dead father. The mother unfortunately went for a swim in what turned out to be a crocodile. Tragic. But yeah she's an interesting one, I didn't and I should have done looked into whether she has a direct parallel but that is a story you hear a lot of having basically a princess shipped in to marry a prince or a king in a country they have no connection with and

are just expected to then take it on as their native country and often just do not and are disliked for it. Yep and also install a bit of funny ideas in a sun before dying tragically young or young or while the sun is tragically young because you've got to kill them off. Anyway moving on from dead parents. We meet Tepik's lovely school friends Chida, Arthur and she's right, RIP, she's right, he doesn't make it through the assassin's exam. Yeah that's pretty casual death for she's right there.

It is but I think it's something the book does quite well as it establishes like how cut to write the assassin's business is, I'm really sorry I said that. And that these kids have all sort of grown up with acknowledging that not all of them number are going to make it. Yeah because they've had seven years to get used to the idea haven't they? I'm sure they would have been horrified the first time they heard it. But I think I put a bit of a soft spot for Arthur the scholarship kid who starts off really never trying to sacrifice a goat in his bedroom and then turns out to stay on

for post-grad work because he's a particularly talented assassin. I just really enjoyed that whole sequence of the he's bringing the goat in and very calmly sacrificing it and I was like why are you sacrificing a goat it's just oh you stupid little kids earn your prayers before bedtime. You then get a few more religious scuffles of one of them trying to sacrifice like someone else in a wicker way. A shyly put them in a wicker mask. One of them asking if anyone sort of liked mind having their intestines wound around a tree,

a little war breaking out between one who worships the mother goddess in her aspect of the moon and those who worshiped her in the aspect of huge fat women within almost buttocks. And the the master's intervene and ask them all to calm down the religion of it. But I like the fact that's happening against the background of Tepik who's sort of like oh yeah no I mean my dad's technically a god. Yeah I also liked how Arthur and Tepik could be perfectly comfortable with the idea that both of these religions were true and I'll get my god to talk to your god about not coming and killing you in the night all right cool.

That was very sweet and yeah I like Shiddas as well I like having this character who's very confident and seems to know everything from a family of smugglers who's not a dick with it. Yeah it's one of those characters who is actually confident not arrogant. They're apparently based fairly heavily on Tom Brown's school days which is a kind of Victorian classic not very widely read nowadays but something Terry Pratchett liked and it's kind of the whole boarding school bit is a bit of an homage to that. I've never read those maybe I should at some point. Like the reference of not going up to what's his tops his name for toast

is because there's a scene in that about being the the main character like being burned in front of a fire on purpose by the older boys. I was so desperate to go to boarding school when I was a kid because I read like the Enid Blyton Mallory Towers books and yeah exactly and it turns out apparently not very much like that. Yeah no I would have very much struggled. My mum went to boarding school. How did she? Yeah she did military perhaps but she loved it actually.

I really wanted to go I'm not sure I would have done quite as well because I was not as socially apt as my mum was. Yeah I was incredibly awkward socially as a child and boarding school would have either knocked that out of me very quickly or I would have been horrifically bullied for years. While we're on the subject of the boarding school but it's um this is quite a nice mix of kind of the romanticized oh chaps all growing up together and having a thing and the kind of reality of it's a little bit horrible. Further reading for people interested in the often depressing culture of posh English boarding

schools which continues to a certain extent this day but at least with not so much corporal punishment. Moab is my wash pot. Stephen Fry's first memoir. Yes that's a good one. Is a very good look into that. Lady Tamale? Yeah I and she's not a major character she's just someone they have a lesson with political expediency but I really really liked her description.

Also a shout out to a fantasy name random apostrophe we haven't had one of those for a while. She was stunningly beautiful but with the kind of calculated beauty that is achieved by a team of skilled artists manicurist plasterers corsetiers and dressmakers and three hour solid work every morning when she walked there was a faint squeak of whale bone under incredible stress. And I really really enjoyed that description and just found her rather entertaining. Yeah and obviously she's kind of put this appearance together very carefully to be the destruction from what she's actually doing. Which is poisoning people.

Yeah and I imagine like the kind of verbose difficult to follow way she explains things is another facet of that. Yeah she's talking and there's a nice line about the boys learn to watch her hands not the rest of her because that's where the poison is. We also have a quick lesson with Dr Cruz's head tutor later on which I just want to because at the moment Dr Cruz's head tutor but he becomes head of the entire guild in a later book. I thought it was quite nice to notice that the name turns up this early and he's the one talking about the sanctity of life and that's why they charge so much to do it and why they only

kill for money. Which is a very weird way to look at the sanctity of life but it's quite sweet in its own way. Yeah I um the the whole way the assassins are portrayed and that bit in particular. I actually do not know I'll come back to that. So King Tepeki Tepeki on the 27th something like that. Yeah I like him a lot Seagull King. Yeah he's quite sweet I like the fact that the book does acknowledge that it's quite stressful to think everyone thinks you make the sun come up every day. Yeah especially if you don't know how you're doing it. It's a bit depressing really because he sort of jumps out of a window a little bit thinking he's a seagull. Yeah it's interesting obviously this whole book is like scattered with ancient Egypt references

and parallels. Tepeki and Tepeki Mon I imagine are like based off the Ptolemies of whom there are eventually 15 and the whole seagull thing. Like so the so the Bennu bird was like a heron but a mythological bird at the possible source of the Phoenix myth interestingly but it kind of represented the soul of the sun god Rey and like the the pharaohs were also kind of incarnations of sun gods and the the heron was also kind of like a resurrection symbol and I'm guessing like the whole seagull thing is just like a funny play on the birds being the resurrection birds and the because then a seagull comes and passes on his kind of godly soul bit to his son and so like seagull is phoenix in this part. That makes sense he has a lovely little conversation

with death that's so lovely I mean he's dead that's a bit depressing but it's nice to see death nice to know he's he's everywhere. Yeah actually sorry briefly going back like did you find it I don't know like reading about his madness was quite troubling in a way like the whole like it was very dark. Yeah like the roar of the sea in his ears every morning and the I found myself like vaguely researching like auditory hallucinations to see if it was a specific one but I think it was just quite a well-written non-specific madness. It was a very dark moment and like don't get me wrong Pratchett does dark quite well but it was a very jarring dark page and what was otherwise quite a light hearted bit but then also it kind of came just as Tepik was realising he

couldn't take a life so it had like quite an interesting parallel. And death did say that like the the part of uh I keep wanting to call in Ptolemy now uh Tepik Imon that was a god had flown off into the sun and like there was this spot on the sun and the yeah it was only his earthly body that went yeah which you know he's pissed off enough about but yeah but I like the fact that death is decided he's not going to bother dressing up as whatever's expected because people wouldn't be happy about it anyway. Yeah look if you get a complaint when I make an effort I'm just going to turn up how I want to yeah thanks. He was supposed to appear as a three-headed giant scarab beetle carrying the flail of mercy and the reaping hook of justice just looking

points out he would have to carry in his mandibles and I just want to shout out mandibles because I really love the word. Mandibles strongly implied. The scarab god by the way I looked at briefly because like I think it's mentioned here that the scarab god pushing the dongle of the sun across the sky and he's kind of portrayed as a man with a scarab head but it's not how you think it's not like a man with the weird head bit of scarab it's like a man with like an entire beetle yeah whereas head should be yeah it's super weird like if you look at the Egyptian photos photos of it pictures of it. The scarab beetles and dung beetles the same thing because I thought it was a dung beetle put the scarab okay. I think so let's quickly check that I'm almost certain because it's the

yeah because there's the and I'm talking about in the book not actual Egyptian mythology there's the three-headed scarab beetle of death and then there's the dung beetle that puts the sun in the sky and I don't think they're the same god. I don't know if they're the same beetle because dung beetles have like those weird mandibles at the front for pushing the sun. They are a type of scarab beetle. Ah that's good to know. Oh we've managed to get entomology in as well as etymology. Oh yeah entomology etymology crossover episode. Oh my god very exciting very specific niche of listeners. Do you have any entomologists listening? If so please get in touch because I think it's very interesting. And tell us about beetles because beetles are really pretty cool. I want a bad thing.

Ask me about beetles. I can't answer anything but I just like the idea of it. Yes entomologists listening please get in touch. We've also got the greatest mathematician alive on the disk and the last one in the Old Kingdom who has his breakfast again and has his supper for lunch. Yes he really has some kind of ruminant but what is he? We'll find out next week. Next week I want to say next week. Onto locations obviously we've already mentioned that we're we start in Ankh-Morpork so we still haven't had a book where we haven't visited Ankh-Morpork. Ankh-Morpork. There's a really good description of Ankh-Morpork though the book is complaining about it being too sunny. It was by inclination a city of mists and drips of slithers and chills and

it sat panting on the crisping plains like a toad on a fire brick. I said it was good description I didn't say it was pleasant. We meet the Assassin's Guild which has a very chilled out entrance exam but it's very difficult to get out of. Yeah we talked about the whole boarding school Assassin's Guild comparisons. Shout out also to the YMRCIGBSA which I'm now trying to find what that's not going to be. The Young Men's Reform Cultists of the Icogodd-Belshameroth Association which Tepik briefly runs over the roof of. We also learn a bit more about Ankh-Morpork's Heraldry which is the apple mentioned hippos. The peas are not going to be silent there because here isn't fun to say. Hippos. I'm excited about the hippos. I'm pleased by the hippos. We learn

more in a later book about the details of Ankh-Morpork heraldry and that's one of my favorite parallels to Round World in the Discworld books is all the stuff about heraldry because heraldry is fun. It is yeah that's one of those subjects that you can tell practically it just went down a rabbit hole. It's like oh this is weird and obscure and full of out obsessed people. Let's follow it. But I like also that one of the legends about the founding of Ankh-Morpork is too often brothers who built the city were found unsuckled by a hippopotamus. Yeah nice little ancient Rome reference in a book about ancient Egypt. And do you know which I meant to look it up it didn't which myth it's paralleling when it says that the you know the statues will awaken if the

city is threatened. I think there's a couple of different ones. Okay that would make sense. Do we have some lions that are meant to wake up somewhere? Not me personally although I oh you should get one they're great. I hold out hope that if danger ever threatens Eric the sparkly crow, Quaith the cuddly raven and the as-yet unnamed diving barn owl will all awaken and squawk at intruders. So the other main location is obviously the kingdom of jelly baby literally children of the gel the gel being the river slash delta that creates the fertile valleys etc. Direct parallel to the Nile obviously. There's a nice little description of it. The jelly baby really was a small self-centred kingdom even its plagues were half-hearted

all self-respecting river kingdoms had vast supernatural plagues but the best the old kingdom had been able to achieve in the last 200 years was the plague of frog. It was quite a big one however. That made me laugh but so yeah so one of the big traditions of jelly baby and this is obviously from ancient Egypt and stuff that rulers are gods. So I looked up to see if there are other cultures that have treated rulers as gods apart from ancient Egypt and I'm not going to do the whole list I'm not going to lie wikipedia ended up being a lot of my research today because I'm good at not going down rabbit holes on there whereas really they make it so easy. I know but I knew what I need which information I needed got that and got out again whereas if I'd gone on other

things so yeah. So Japan from 660 BC to 1945 there were shintoists including government officials claiming to be defying defendants of the goddess Amiturasi and Hirohito the Showa emperor repudiated the false conception of his divinity in the humanity declaration in 1945. I say. So these are these are really long-running beliefs. China there were claims that rulers were deities in some way up to 1911. There were some ancient Roman emperors who claimed deity status obviously the Dalai Lama the idea is that they are sacred reincarnations ancient Inca culture very similar to ancient Egypt and believing that their rulers were deities of some form. I don't know what the timeline is with how parallel Inca is to Egypt. Yeah I mean the church of England is kind of based around the

idea that the monarch is a direct line to God. Yeah it's divine leader of the church and the one below God whereas like in the Catholic church obviously that's the pope sort of. It's the the big schism between Church of England and Catholicism started with a bit of who is the direct line to God. Just kept getting worse with all the massacres. Yeah lots of those. I was reading about the Huguenot massacre in France that was gosh oh that was reading about it I was listening about it. Oh podcast recommendation noble blood fantastic. All kinds of cool. Is that the Dana Schwartz one? Yeah I love her. I've only listened to a couple of the weirdest ruler is deity thing I found is Hitler. Oh good. Yeah yeah

he was genuinely glorified as a deity in propaganda. There were loads of religious aspects to Nazism which like I knew there was somebody I've never really looked into this before. Goebbels stated Arfura is the intermediary between his people and the throne of God so he held like a I guess church of England quasi deity status. Sure sure. Apparently the regime genuinely tried to replace religion in Germany with Nazi ideology is in a lot of ways so I just thought I mean I don't know if interesting is the word but this is sort of as like this super ancient belief that the silly Egyptians thinking they're leaders were gods but yeah no that that was happening. If you can get people believing it it's a pretty good way to

guarantee some loyalty isn't it because it's not like democratically or even hereditary position where you can say all right you're shit at it let's get someone else like if they are a god you're stuck with them. Yeah unless you're an angle pork where I can kind of imagine them kicking out a god like no you are being a shit god we're getting anyone in. Yeah they'll just smash up the tech. Yeah who hasn't gotten ears. Do crocodiles like I feel like this is a thing a known thing but like do crocodiles have ears can they hear? Surely. Surely they can. Do they not have like ear holes like other reptiles? We're not doing well on zoology today Francine. Well I wasn't expecting a pop quiz.

And crocodiles had peach and narrow openings that lead to their sophisticated inner ears. When crocodiles fully plunge their bodies into water these openings promptly shut thanks to the presence of tiny skin folds. So offler is an unusual crocodile by not having ears. Closable orifices. On to little bits we liked them. Shall we talk about synonyms? Shall we talk about synonyms? Yes let's talk about synonyms. Let's talk about deadly synonyms. Should have said euphemisms rather than synonyms here. Basically clinical ways of saying murder so the assassins do this and this is what I was briefly going to get at earlier. How Terry portrays

the assassins here can be seen as kind of in a pretty shallow way kind of a charming devanua you know how the kind of romanticism of assassins that we get and like the guild of assassins is very gentlemanly and stylish and easy to like. I kind of feel like I might be reading too much into it but he betrays his true feelings on the whole thing by giving them these euphemisms for murder because what does he use as an example here? There's inhum conclude a null. Yeah all of that crap. In Round World kind of euphemisms for murder are used a lot in the military so wet work is a term reportedly used by the CIA. Neutralized as well and we're probably all familiar with and terminate with extreme prejudice is an interesting way of saying

summary execution. Yeah the extreme prejudice bit comes up in this book as well. Oh it does doesn't it in the context of whatever cartel tune is part of yeah but yeah so terminate with extreme prejudice slash summary execution is basically killing somebody without trial yeah in it in some kind of pseudo official capacity so it was used in the vietnam war quite a lot to kill vietnamese people that they decided weren't doing their american drug well enough. Yeah I'm saying this and not a very amused tone of voice probably largely because of the events of the last couple of weeks one I found particularly darkly amusing was when the one of the authorities in washington dc I think it was we're talking about an investigation

they're going to open into the fact that they'd been using helicopters to intimidate the citizen citizenry which is an incredible line to be crossing yeah and referred to it to them as rotary aviation assets. I feel like it's a particular I don't want to say American thing I think it happens in England as well there's a describing things in any way other than what they actually are to sound like you're doing something that isn't 100% evil if that makes sense. Yeah absolutely yeah and it's come up a lot in the last couple weeks but that that was the most blatant example I found of it rotary aviation assets instead of helicopters. Oh lighter note a little call back to more the re-annuals. I don't think it's just actually

I think they're mentioned in colour of magic as well. Yeah it's already by book seven actually we found a lot of recurring references and themes and everything which is pretty cool like the guild of assassins for a start has come up in several books already hasn't it. Yeah and I like that we get more of a description of how it works here but also like it's a kind of counterpoint yeah I think Terry Pratt is too true feeling is like cool as bait as bait he's still murder. The assassin an assassin's guild in any other fantasy series would be some kind of shadowy organization underground it wouldn't be a it wouldn't be effectively a finishing school yeah posh boys boarding school and it would be a

villainous thing whereas here is just another thing you can do you can go to the assassin's guild you can go to the fool's guild or you can go to the thieves guild. So I think he does play with it and stop it from being tropey. Yeah no absolutely I like the way it's portrayed because it's interesting and very amusing but I do think he kind of drops in these little tones to say by the way we're not like this is still murder yeah legal murder is still murder. Yeah and why are at this point Joanna do you want to give us a quick word from our sponsors. Yes I will Francine. Now Francine I don't know about you but I'm often concerned about how to educate my child. Having raised a somewhat fictional sprog who seems to possess the cold

dead eyes of a killer I need to make sure my sinister offspring gets the best learning experience one could acquire and make some profit off the terrifying toddler and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Luckily the assassin's guild of Ang Moorpork are available for all your schooling needs they'll teach you on a various little nipper to exterminate, inhuman, eliminate, liquidate, execute, wipe out, take out, smoke, waste, top, wax, scrag, slay and neutralise in style all while earning enough to keep you in the manner to which you'd like to become accustomed in your old age. Is it morally dubious? Sure. Will you be swimming in some filthy lucra? Definitely. And who can put a price on a lethal little one's education?

Well the assassin's guild can. Now we at the trees shall make ye fret have joined with the assassin's guild of Ang Moorpork to offer you, our lucky listeners, a one-off special deal. Just quote code fretful facilitate to receive one week's free tuition, a special set of commemorative throwing knives while stocks laughed and one free disposal on graduation. The assassin's guild. We know the cost of living. But yeah, so there's a little line when Tepic is dressing that he's had a headache all day and then it's finally revealed when they go out to eat afterwards that he had a hang-under which is grapes, wine made from re-annual grapes that grow before the seeds have been planted

and the hangover comes before you've drunk them. So that made me giggle and it's just nice to see them called back to you because that's what Mort's family were growing. Yes. You have a note here that just says quack. Is this a visit from the Patriarchy Duck? No it's not a visit from the Patriarchy Duck. I'm sorry I keep forgetting to edit him in. It's the new software you understand. But anyway it's the doctor. That sort of quack. So this is the doctor who suggests some cod latin and then walrus. He's managing to say stuff in plain English then realizes look if I'm going to be taken seriously as a profession I've got to start making this in-comprehensive. Yeah. Instead of forehead so hot you could fry an egg on it he says hiro cerebrum earth culinair which is a

Terry Pratchett's particular brand of terrible latin which I love and is throughout. Yeah. I was trying to find one of the other lettucey bits I like. Latiny bits I like. Mortis portales attackulatum. Yeah that was the one which is Pratchett does cod latin very well. Dead as a doordale? Yep. Which I like the doctor also eventually says he's probably a walrus he's caught a walrus there's a lot of them going around. Is that meant to be virus? Probably. Walrus is just another word that's really really funny like porridge it's just one of those works as a punchline no matter how you insert it and I don't recommend inserting a walrus. I'm not a doctor but probably no walrus insertion. Not for internal use.

My favorite uh Pratchett my favorite Pratchett cod latin is uh Fabricate DM Covent. It's in a later book but it's Make My Day Punk and I don't know how well it relates to actual latin because I don't speak actual latin there was someone on twitter offering latin classes during lockdown but I realized that I do not need to learn to speak latin. No again I feel like I would like to speak latin because it would make french and italian and spanish easier to learn but at this point. I'm not learning latin I don't know. I've got other things on Francine. Not the time the inclination or the breeding. While the boys are drunk they are singing a song called a wizard staff as a knob on the end we are not thinking

about that. That'll come up again in a later book in more detail and we may end up with another musical interlude. It's another wonderful drinking song along the lines of The Hedgehog Can Never Be Bugged as in Pratchett occasionally makes up a snippet he feels like putting in there and I imagine some fans somewhere have written a full version. There is a full version. Believe me there yeah there is. Oh I'm very sorry you look like a lady who's heard a ukulele recently. Yes um at some point it'll make it into the podcast I just want listeners to be aware that we've noticed it here and it'll come up again. The wizard staff will come up again. Your concerns have been noticed. Life on rails what the fuck was I on about there? Fuck most. I don't even know

what page that is in mine. Oh that's right yes. This is after Tepic is feeling a little better after his brief brush with death and then omniscience. Before his life had been ambling along bent by circumstance now it was clicking along on bright rails. I like that. I like that as a snippet and I like it as a concept both because it's clever and because oh god I wish knowing what you're meant to be doing in life instead of kind of floating vaguely from thing to thing as other things happen in your vicinity. Hey gestures vaguely to entire life. Which is all you know they're a little bit on fire and such. Have you seen some countries getting like literal locust plagues at the moment as well? No. Are we actually in the end times? Possibly.

This is Irfan Crowley when you need them. Oh that would be nice. Right sorry that got depressing. Lunchmats. This entire episode is just us trying to sound cheerful. We haven't done this badly since the first Good Omens attempt. I can't even remember what was wrong with us that time. Oh I think an election. Oh that's right yeah. Right lunchmats. We haven't learned what ruminant it is yet in the book although we have already said spoilers for the whole work. Yeah it's a camel. Yeah I was just browsing at Pratchett's input on pyramids on the fan group the alt dot fan dot Pratchett whatever it was called and somebody asked a question in pyramids. The camel uses five minutes to prove something very mathematical. It said something like that

any automorphic resonance field contains a semi-infinite number of irresolute prime ideals. Some of it are recognised but not all. Is that something Mr. T has copied from a random book of mathematics or is it junk? And Pratchett answered saying it could be that I know some maths others do not. Or it could be that I bought a maths graduate friend a drink and asked him to gibber in math which he did. What do you think boys and girls? Yeah I might consult with a friend who like I'm good at maths in that I can do sums in my head but I know people who are good at maths like they understand that there are actually 12 dimensions. So I may ask a friend who understands a lot more about maths than I do to translate some of the camel lunchmats as you have so eloquently

described it. That's the kind of maths that instead of making life easier makes life harder because you know too much about the universe and it's distressing. Yeah and that is what scares me about learning physics is that I will understand so much less about my place in the greater universe and it's bad enough listening to Infinite Monkey Cage when I try and sleep. Yeah my brain I think it's just not wired to grasp concepts like quantum and higher mathematics and things some kind of self-defence mechanism. I don't have a good head for quantum and I may consult with someone who has a better head for quantum before next week because the main concept of this book is a bit difficult. Yeah I don't have a good head for quantum in the

same way I don't have a good head for heights I get dizzy and distressed when it's placed in front of me and I feel like it's for an evolutionary reason. Flashbacks is a storytelling technique Joanna this is something you'll know more about than I do. Oh it's different for Pratchett to tell a story in this way. Are you splitting the book up into the small books which hasn't happened since Colour of Magic. And it's kind of done in a different way here because it's not like four novellas. Yeah Colour of Magic was four stories this is one book but broken up nicely into four section things with some little time jumps between and what have you. Using the whole flashback structure in the first section so as Tepik's going through his assassination exam you get all

these different flashbacks that's not something I noticed in any other discworld levels. No. But the whole theme of the book is kind of being stuck in the past and not allowing growth and change and I thought it was quite a nice reflection of that theme that you have all these flashbacks to how he got to where he is at the beginning and there is this whole idea of that's the only stuff he's got that allows him to break the kind of horrible stagnant cycle of the kingdom in the later book. I don't know if what I'm saying is making sense enough. By letting the writing linger in the past in the first section that allows Tepik to break free from lingering in the past of gel in the later three sections. Yes I think I get what you mean yeah yeah yeah kind of yes.

So anyway I thought that was fun I found it interesting. On to the actual assassination itself which we've already talked about a lot. I was looking at the section where he's doing his exam and he's kind of listing all the different things he could do etc so there's things like the the priests which were the reinforced overshoes and the poisons and crossbow bolts and cow traps and things. I was trying to research more about these techniques and methods and stuff so if anyone looks at my search history I look great. The problem is that trying to look this stuff up I mostly was finding like how to spec out your assassin rogue in this RPG. I looked it up for you in my Victorian Encyclopedia and weirdly even that was talking about World of Warcraft. I would have

had Victorians as more of a Guild Wars type. Minecraft not minecraft but a bit runescape is the early yeah. We can name MMORPGs look at us. The runescape for World of Warcraft come first. The chicken. Cool cool yep what are you annoyed about? Oh well so I just finished playing Dragon Age 2 and I was playing a rogue with an assassin build and I'm very annoyed that I found a lot of stuff about how to spec out my character having completed the game last night. Yeah nice. But in researching assassination techniques I did find a couple of interesting bits one of which in the East and Roman Empire around the time of the Middle Ages a very popular assassination technique was strangling someone in the bath. Dignified? Yeah and the first heads of government

to be assassinated with a firearm were James Stewart 1st Earl of Moray the region of Scotland in 1570. Very good. That is early. Was that a musket? There were firearms in the late 1500s. There were pistols. Oh were there? Okay I've got all my centuries mixed up never mind. Yeah this is 16th century. I took me second. I'm so bad at like which way around the numbers go. I know which way it goes because if you think about it we're now in the 21st century and our thing is 20. Yeah but it always takes me manually remembering that. I have to go through that whole process. It's like I still sing the alphabet song when I'm putting a book away. Oh yeah me too. I sing the alphabet song or picture the letters on a keypad like on a Nokia 3310.

Oh smart. I like it. Like ah I'd have to press nine three four times to get this. That is such a millennial specific way of doing things. It is moving swiftly on. I did have a quick look at like the background of assassination as a political tool and what have you as well. One interesting thing I found is that the earliest known use of the assassinate as a verb was 1600 five years before it was used in Macbeth called back to last week. By Matthew Sutcliffe in a brief reply to a certain odious and slanderous libel lately published by a seditious Jesuit. I really wish people titled essays and books in the way they used to. I love insanely long titles. There is so much to know there. I mean it's it's what back then is to ridiculous headline writing is now.

Yeah yeah clickbait. This is one of the main things stupid tiny thing I have missed in lockdown is the fact that at the moment or it used to be my walk to work would take me past the local newspaper office which should always have a little labelled outside with truncated headlines on and there's something about looking at this piece of paper on a little labelled out of context would make these things fucking hilarious. But yeah assassination for military purposes even Sun Tzu was suggesting that back in 500 BC so not the oldest profession but one of them. I'm sure there is absolutely never ever going to be any way to know but I would like to know which came first. What assassination or prostitution. Yeah the egg. Yes that's it. The chicken came

before RuneScape but the egg came before assassination. Should we round out with some other parallels to Ancient Egypt then? Sure sure. Not the prostitution and assassination I mean. Yeah yeah Tepec's mother he just makes sure that the river floods every year do you see and services the great cow of the art of the sky. The great my mother explained Tepec which I think is referencing Nut who was the goddess of the sky stars cosmos mother's astronomy and the universe in Ancient Egypt and she was depicted as often a star-coloured nude woman arching over the earth which by the way is my new aesthetic or as a cow which is my other aesthetic depending on the day. I didn't realise that was based on natural thing but there's another

reference to a nude star-covered woman in which I was going to look up in a later section of the book so now I don't have to think. Ah cool cool. What was another one? This is possibly a little bit tenuous. The wheat growing from the bread when oh yeah Tepec is doing his spring god thing and a Cyrus you know the story of a Cyrus he was kind of killed and resurrected as God yeah he was depicted with wheat growing from his body which was a symbol of resurrection saying we're getting a lot of resurrection symbols in this part of the book. Resurrection, reincarnation and what have you. Yeah and then probably the most obvious one is the chapter name the book of going forth is the original Egyptian name for the book of the dead it's

translated as the book of going forth by day or the book of coming forth by day or utterances going forth by day because it's quite hard to literally translate five thousand yeah what's it's because book two which we will talk about next week is the book of the dead right do you have an obscure reference finial for me Francine? Yeah I do um one of the characters the lovely curly headed little boy is called Arthur Ludo Rum and uh his father was one of the assassins and. Scholarship boy. Scholarship boy yes Victor Ludo Rum or Victrix Ludo Rum is Latin for the winner of the games still kind of used in Pottery sports now but it initially was last man standing in Roman Gladiator tournaments so. Ah I like that it's a good obscure reference and I think in either

in one of the other proper books or in the assassin skill diary which I don't have a copy of um Victor Ludo Rum is written in one of the like uh ledgers so it seems like Ludo Rum is like an old assassin's name which makes sense. Oh that's nice. I couldn't find whether Johann was in any way relevant. I started and then there were Swedish kings and I stopped before I could go down any about rabbit hole yeah the last thing you need is a Swedish monarchy rabbit hole on a Thursday. Exactly not for internal use and I think that's everything for this section I think it had better be what have I got here oh that says for next week so I'll talk about that next week I had to make a whole other section because I kept coming across really cool little bits where I'm like no that's

more relevant for next week. Yeah that was part of the logic of splitting this up the way I did hopefully maybe um yeah so next week we are going to talk about book two the book of the dead so we'll be uh hanging out in gel jelly baby. Well gel but very sorry for this episode listeners we tried. We're meant to be kind down on apologizing I'm so sorry for the amount we've apologised dear listeners. We all meant to be cutting down on apologizing I don't apologize nearly enough so you know it comes genuinely from me. Right. I'm very sorry listeners but I think you'll understand why we're quite low energy this week. Until next week dear listeners when we discuss the book of the dead you can follow us on Instagram at the true show makey fret on twitter at makey fret pod

you can follow us or you can find our facebook page at the true show makey fret we might even return with some wednesday head cannons which have died down for a few weeks for varying circumstances including my plague. So got ill and then everything was awful so. Yeah you can email us your thoughts queries castles snacks and albatrosses the true shall makey fret pod at gmail.com especially entomologists listeners we hope there are at least one of you. Yeah that would be cool. Yeah if you're an entomologist let us know tell us about Beatles we just want fun Beatle facts. Ask questions we'll try and give you answers. Oh Francine. Francine. And until next time dear listener don't let us detain you. Oh we need to stop insulting our own podcast on our podcast save that for twitter. Oh self-deprecation

is our generation's. Did I tell you about my stupid apology moment the other day. No. You know I was talking about how someone was trying to take blood and struggling to the point where this elbow was a mess for a couple of days it looks better now. I actually apologise for my blood not coming out fast enough. I literally apologise for my own veins. Well you know if you had better moral standing your blood would flow like justice as it is it is sluggish with your sin. Yeah I literally apologise for my own blood so I might need to cut down slightly. Sorry about that. We'll get therapy when we can go outside again.