The Folklore of Discworld

please, others distinctly surly. The great lords of Hell never, ever, mention this.
T HINGS FROM THE D UNGEON D IMENSIONS
    It is well known on the Discworld that Things from the shadowy, chaotic wastelands outside space and time which some call the Dungeon Dimensions are always trying to break through into the little circle of candlelight loosely called ‘the real world’. They prowl round its flimsy stockades, searching for places where the fabric of reality has worn thin. Their shapes are unstable, but nasty, with random combinations of tentacles, talons, mandibles, spindly limbs, and wings; this reflects their sad, mad, incoherent minds. They hoot and howl and buzz, giggle and flutter, and produce a horrible chittering sound. Any large concentration of magic attracts them. They crave the solidity, light, and life of real worlds, and hate all living creatures with a deep and jealous hate; if they did gain a foothold on the Disc they would inevitably drain all life from it. Occasionally some deluded power-seeking magician imagines that he can safely invoke and control them – or manages to trap the even more mysterious parasitic entity known as the hiver, described in A Hatful of Sky . This brings disaster on the magician himself, and on others. More often, someone accidentally creates a point of entry by, for example, conducting a powerful magical or religious ceremony at a spot where the walls between the dimensions are already weak. So far, the breaches in the walls have always been healed and the Things repulsed before too much harm has been done.
    It appears from the obscure writings of some exceptionally erudite wizards that the Things were once Dark Gods, existing on the Discworld until they were driven out by even more ancient and powerful beings, the Old High Ones. Their names are listed in the utterly forbidden and totally perilous grimoire known as the Necrotelicomnicon or Liber Paginarum Fulvarum (Book of Yellow Pages) compiled by the Klatchian necromancer Achmed the Mad. The first edition of this dread opus is kept in conditions of maximum security in the vaults of Unseen University, and students are only permitted to read tenth- or twelfth-hand copies.
    Awareness of these occult matters first reached the Earth through the receptive mind of the American writer H. P. Lovecraft, creator of horror fantasies in the 1920s and 30s. He too described monstrous beings from other dimensions forever trying to break through into the normal world; he too wrote of a potently evil book of spells written by a mad Arab, the Necronomicon , which could be used to summon and worship them. Alarmingly, it appears from his writings that these creatures have more than once managed to establish themselves in isolated parts of America. One can only hope he was mistaken, but sometimes one fears he was not.
B EL -S HAMHAROTH
    It is hard to know how to classify this extremely unpleasant entity.
    On the one hand, it could be argued that he should be considered a god, since he inhabits a black eight-sided temple deep in the forest of Skund, near the Hub. He lurks there under an eight-sided stone slab in a hall with eight walls, reached by eight corridors and lit by the dim, eldritch glow of eight-sided crystals. Whether he currently has any worshippers is a very moot point – those who built the temple died long ago, and people who enter it now have an extremely short life-span. However, the level of belief they experience during the few moments that they are face to face with Bel-Shamharoth is so exceptionally intense that it keeps him in existence. His appearance is totally non-humanoid. He looks rather like a spider, or maybe an octopus or squid, or maybe something altogether more strange; something black, at any rate, that is all suckers and tentacles and mandibles, with a single great glaring eye in the middle.
    On the other hand, the gods of Cori Celesti have never accepted Bel-Shamharoth as one of their number. The Lady went so far as to say on one occasion that he should never have been spawned, and that she thought all such creatures had died out at the beginning of Time. This seems to imply that he was one of the Old Dark Godsthat once existed on the Discworld, and that he managed to remain there when the others were driven out to the Dungeon Dimensions.
    One of his powers, we are told in Equal Rites , is an ability to enter people’s dreams. Amazingly, this is so strong that he has been able to reveal something of