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Great A'Tuin, the star turtle
Great A'Tuin is the Giant Star Turtle (species: Chelys galactica) who travels through space, carrying the four giant elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon, and Jerakeen) who in turn carry the Discworld, and is introduced as such in nearly every book. The narration has described A'Tuin as "the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram." The substance it swims through is called aether, and may be identical to the ancient Greek mythical fifth element of the same name, or to the 19th century concept of luminiferous aether. The idea for a world supported by elephants on top of a giant turtle was first mentioned by British philosopher John Locke when questioning the source of knowledge.

Great A'Tuin's gender is unknown, but is the subject of much speculation by some of the Disc's finest scientific minds. The sex of the World Turtle is pivotal in proving or disproving a number of conflicting theories about the destination of Great A'Tuin's journey through the cosmos. If (as one popular theory states) Great A'Tuin is moving to his (or her) mating grounds, (this is known as the "big bang" theory) then at the point of mating might the civilisations of the Disc be crushed or simply slide off? Attempts by telepaths to learn more about Great A'Tuin's intents have not met with much success, mainly because they did not realise that its brain functions are on such a slow timescale. All they've been able to discern is that the Great A'Tuin is looking forward to something. The other theory is that he/she came from nowhere and is going to keep walking through space to nowhere for ever (this is known as the "steady gait" theory, and is popular among academics).

Following the events in The Light Fantastic, Great A'Tuin attended the hatching of eight baby turtles, each with four baby elephants and a tiny Discworld of their own. They have since gone off on their own journeys. Whether this was the event the Great A'Tuin was looking forward to or merely one step towards its ultimate goal is unknown.

The Great A'Tuin frequently rolls on its belly to avoid asteroid and comet collisions, or even to snatch these projectiles out of the sky. This doesn't affect the Disc's population, other than to induce severe seasickness on anyone who happens to be looking at the night sky at that time. A'Tuin has been known to do more complex rolls and corkscrews, but these are rarer.

Due to the Great A'Tuin's traveling through the universe, the night sky of the Discworld, unlike that of our world, changes markedly over the course of decades, as the turtle departs older constellations and enters new ones. This means that astrologers must constantly update and alter their horoscopes to incorporate all-new zodiacs.

A tiny sun and moon orbit the Great A'tuin, both about 1 mile in diameter when described at the start of the series, but the description of their diameter is increased to at least 80 miles later in the chronicles. The moon is slightly closer to the Disc than the sun, and is covered, on one half, with silvery glowing plants, which feed the lunar dragons. The other half is burnt black by the sun. The moon rotates, and completes a full revolution in about a month; the full moon occurs when the luminescent side is completely visible from the Disc, the new moon when the dark side is shown. The sun's orbit is so complex that one of the elephants has to cock its leg to allow the sun to continue on its orbit.

A'Tuin is also orbited by a number of small "planets" made from the droppings of the elephants by giant dung beetles.


[edit] The Disc
Main article: Discworld geography
The Disc itself is roughly 10,000 miles wide, giving it a surface area two fifths that of the Earth. Its principal geographic feature, other than its flatness, is the Cori Celesti, a great, 10-mile-high spire of rock that lies at its exact centre and is the point of origin for its standing magical field. The Cori Celesti is also the location of Dunmanifestin, the home of the Disc's many gods, a nod towards Mount Olympus. The area including the Cori Celesti is known as the The Hub, a land of high, icebound mountains that serves as an analogue both to the Himalayas, to Roundworld's polar regions (since, although the Disc has no poles as such, it is as far as possible from the Disc's edge and thus the sun), and to Roundworld's Scandinavia - the Hublanders share many features with our vikings. Polar bears are known as "Hubland bears" on the Disc, while the Disc's equivalent of the aurora borealis (here produced by the Disc's magical field, rather than by magnetism) are known as the "aurora coriolis." Directions within the Discworld are not given as North, South, East and West, but rather as directions relating to the disc itself: Hubward (towards the centre), Rimward (away from the centre) and to a lesser extent, turnwise and widdershins (relation to the direction of the Disc's spin).

The areas closer to the Rim are warmer and tropical, since the Disc's sun passes closer to them in its orbit. Technically, the fact that the Disc's sun, like Earth's, passes from solstice to equinox once a year should mean that the Rim would be alternately scorched desert and frozen wasteland rather than the balmy tropical region it is presented as, and the seasons generally would be significantly more pronounced than on Earth. It has been theorised that the standing magical field equalises the sun's energy across the Rim (the "slow light phenomenon").

At the Rim, a great, encircling waterfall sends the Disc's oceans cascading into space. Pratchett is evasive about how the water eventually returns to refill the oceans, only saying, "Arrangements are made." The mist from the plunging waters creates the Rimbow, an eight-colour (the eighth is octarine) double rainbow consisting both of light and of magic.

There are four main continents on the Disc, along with a number of geographical and political regions and islands. The majority of the Disc's landmass is composed of a single supercontinent comprising a large main region and a smaller Counterweight Continent connected by a narrow isthmus. The main continent comprises the unnamed Continent upon which most of the novels are set, and Klatch, akin to Africa. The island continent of Fourecks is the smallest of the four. On these continents a large number of countries, kingdoms, cities and towns can be found; the most widely mentioned in the books being Ankh-Morpork, Lancre, the Klatchian Empire and Überwald. In the Discworld Companion, Pratchett writes "there have been other continents, which have sunk, blown up, or simply disappeared. This sort of thing happens all the time, even on the best-regulated planets." [1]


[edit] Magic
See also: Wizards (Discworld), Witches (Discworld) and Discworld gods

Magic is the principal force on the Discworld, and operates in a similar vein to elemental forces such as gravity and electromagnetism on our own world. The Disc's "standing magical field" is basically the local breakdown of reality that allows a flat planet on the back of a turtle to even exist. The force called "magic" is really just a function of the relative absence of reality in the local area, much in the same way that we describe absence of heat as "coldness." Magic warps reality in much the same way as gravity warps space-time. Areas with larger than normal quantities of background magic tend to display unusual qualities, even for the Disc. Very high quantities of magic can knock a hole in reality, leading to an invasion by Lovecraftian monstrosities from the Dungeon Dimensions, or, almost as bad, the world of the Elves. On the Disc, magic is broken into elementary particulate fragments in much the same way that energy and other forces are in quantum physics. The basic unit of magic is the thaum, but the thaum is in turn made up of particles known as "resons" (literally, "thingies") or reality fragments. These are in turn composed of five "flavours": up, down, sideways, sex appeal and peppermint (see quarks).

In the opening books, the number eight (the number of the eighth colour and colour of Magic octarine) is extremely magical on the Disc, and should never, ever, be spoken by a wizard, especially in certain places. Doing so may allow the ancient dungeon dimension creature "Bel-Shamharoth the sender of eight" to break into our dimension. On the other hand, eight turns up in many places one would expect the number seven in our world (e.g. the Discworld week contains eight days, not seven). After The Colour of Magic, both the colour and the number eight no longer appeared as dangerous; this is possibly due to the destruction of the temple of Bel-Shamharoth by Rincewind during the book.

The Disc's magical field is centred on the Cori Celesti. Everyday natural forces, such as light and magnetism, are muffled by the power of the Disc's magical field, and rather than a magnetised needle, navigators on the Disc use a compass with a needle of octiron, which will always point towards Cori Celesti. Light is so oddly affected by magic that, as it passes into the Disc's atmosphere, it actually slows down from millions to hundreds of miles an hour, so that, as the Disc has no horizon, it is actually possible to see days into the past from some of the higher mountain peaks. One odd effect of this is that the Disc has time zones, when, as a flat world, it shouldn't. Another effect is that, as reported in Thud!, the red- and blue-shifting of light becomes noticeable when traveling at speeds of a hundred and twenty miles per hour.


[edit] The power of belief
With reality spread as thin as it is on the Disc, it is not surprising that events are easily affected by human expectations. Such a world is not governed by physics or logic but by belief and narrative resolution. Essentially, if something is believed strongly enough, it is true. Our world has jokes about treacle mines and drop bears; the Disc has treacle mines and drop bears. In our world, lemmings don't actually rush en masse off cliffs, but on the Disc they do, because that is what people believe. This acts as a useful energy saver in both wizard and witch magic. For example, if you wish to turn a cat into a human, the easiest way is to convince him, on a deep level, that he is a human.

More significantly, it is also belief that gives the gods their powers. Discworld gods start off as tiny spirits, and gain power as they gain believers. A similar effect has led to the "reification" of mythological beings symbolising abstract concepts, such as Death. In Hogfather, the assassin Mr. Teatime tries to kill the patron of Hogswatch by using an old magic that involves controlling a person with a part of their body (in this case, the teeth collected by the Tooth Fairies), in order to stop children from believing in him, and almost succeeds.

On the Disc, if a story or legend is told often enough and believed by enough people, it becomes true. This is known as the law of narrative causality. Dragons, as Terry Pratchett explains, do not breathe fire because they have asbestos lungs, they breathe fire because that is what dragons do. On the Disc, if a witch goes bad, she will inevitably build a house of gingerbread and lure children to their doom, only to be thrown into her own oven. If a miller has a fourth son, he will invariably leave him only his cat, and that cat will then of course lead the boy onto fame and fortune. A hero will win only when outnumbered. Million-to-one chances to escape certain death are routinely successful and they "crop up nine times out of ten". Witches often employ narrative in their magic, but consider it ethically tricky since it is interfering with free will. This is the source of Granny Weatherwax's hatred of fiction. The habit of many Discworlders to take metaphor literally has combined with the power of belief to produce some very odd areas. The Place Where The Sun Does Not Shine, for instance, is a deep crevasse in Lancre, incidentally located between a rock and a hard place.

The Disc's nature is fundamentally teleological; its basic composition is determined by what it is ultimately meant to be. Its primary element, out of which all others spring, is known as narrativium, the elemental substance of Story. Nothing on the Disc can exist without a Story first existing to mold its destiny and determine its form. This is, perhaps, a take on the fact that nothing can ever happen on the Disc unless it is written in a story by Terry Pratchett (see metafiction).


[edit] Populace
New Team Page Beta
Player Ma St Ag Av Skills Inj G Cp Td It Cs Mvp SPP Cost  
2
Blitzer
6 3 3 7
Block, Frenzy, Jump Up
m 3 0 0 0 1 0 2/ 90k
(0)k
 
3
Lineman
6 3 3 7
Block
  18 0 0 0 1 0 2/ 50k
(50)k
 
4
Catcher
6 3 3 7
Block, Catch
  5 0 1 0 1 0 5/ 70k
(75)k
 
5
Thrower
7 3 3 7
Block, Pass
Accurate, Pro, +MA, Safe Throw
  36 35 3 0 2 4 68/ 160k
(180)k
 
6
Lineman
6 3 3 7
Block
Tackle
  11 0 1 0 1 1 10/ 70k
(75)k
 
7
Lineman
6 3 3 7
Block
n 1 0 0 0 0 0 0/ 50k
(42)k
 
8
Lineman
6 3 3 7
Block
Pass Block, Tackle
n 33 1 1 0 0 5 29/ 90k
(88)k
 
9
Lineman
6 3 3 7
Block
Tackle, Pass Block
  21 0 0 0 4 2 18/ 90k
(105)k
 
10
Lineman
6 3 3 7
Block
Guard, Tackle
n 18 0 1 0 1 4 25/ 100k
(96)k
 
11
Lineman
6 3 3 7
Block
Tackle
  19 0 0 0 2 1 9/ 70k
(75)k
 
12
Blitzer
6 3 3 7
Block, Frenzy, Jump Up
Dodge, Guard, Mighty Blow
  33 2 2 0 5 3 33/ 160k
(180)k
 
14
Catcher
6 3 3 7
Block, Catch
Dodge, Sprint
n 31 1 3 0 1 2 22/ 110k
(115)k
 
11 players (+1 player missing next game)  
Coach: Hudson Re-Rolls (120k): 3  
Race: Norse Fan Factor: 8  
Current Team Value: 0k Assistant Coaches: 11  
Treasury: 55k Cheerleaders: 4  
Team Value: 1480k Apothecary: Yes  

Games Played:37 (4/3/30) |TD Diff:-41 (33 - 74) |Cas Diff:-21 (32/24/17 - 36/47/11)
Last Opponent: Assassin Crew