The Folklore of Discworld

becomes irritable, due to Pre-Lunar Tension. When she is in wolf form the touch of any silver object gives her intense pain, and (like werewolves on the Earth) she is vulnerable to silver bullets. Some strong smells overwhelm her delicate nose, bringing on the equivalent of acute hay fever.
    Angua’s parents are the extremely aristocratic Baron Guye von Uberwald (also known as Silvertail) and Baroness Serafine von Uberwald (also known as Yellowfang). The Baron spends most of his time in wolf form, to the annoyance of his wife. Angua had a brother named Wolfgang, a magnificently built and very athletic young man, with strongly Nietzschean views, who made a terrifying wolf and would have felt quite at home in the SS. Even his father was afraidof him. But, as she tells Carrot, she also has another brother, Andrei, and she did have a sister named Elsa, till Wolfgang killed her.
    ‘He said it was an accident. Poor little Elsa. She was a yennork, just like Andrei. That’s a werewolf that doesn’t change, you know? I’m sure I’ve mentioned it. Our family throws them up from time to time. Wolfgang and I were the only classic bimorphs in the litter. Elsa looked human all the time, even at full moon. Andrei was always a wolf.’
    ‘You mean you had a human sister and a wolf brother?’
    ‘No, Carrot. They were both werewolves . But the, well, the little … switch … inside them didn’t work. They stayed the same shape. In the old days the clan would kill off a yennork quickly, and Wolfgang is a traditionalist when it comes to nastiness. He says they made the blood impure. You see, a yennork would go off and be a human or a wolf but they’d still be carrying the werewolf blood, and then they’d marry and have children … or pups … and, well, that’s where the fairytale monsters come from. People with a bit of wolf, and wolves with that extra capacity for violence that is so very human. But Elsa was harmless. After that, Andrei didn’t wait for it to happen to him. He’s a sheepdog over in Borogravia now. Doing well, I hear. Wins championships.’ [ The Fifth Elephant ]
    Not surprisingly, Angua has broken with her family.
    But the existence of the yennork explains a lot. No doubt the aristocratic werewolves guard their pedigrees carefully, but mistakes will happen, even in the best regulated families.
I GORS
    The Igors are a very numerous humanoid family in the Uberwald region, each of whom is named either Igor or Igorina. They are not,of course, undead, but are usually standing very close to a corpse. They are, in fact, a big nod to the cinematic cliché that whenever there is a brain to be collected or a big crackling switch to be pulled, then there is an Igor, or someone who looks very much like him, ready and willing to do the job.
    Igors are heavily built, with a strong tendency to lurch and shamble, and they speak with a heavy, spluttering lisp. For generations many of them have gone into service in the households of aristocratic vampires in Uberwald, where it is their pride and joy to ensure that massive doors creak, candles gutter, cobwebs abound, and carriages look as much like hearses as possible. They have a keen appreciation of all the traditional trappings of horror. Sadly, Earthly vampires, unlike those of the Disc, seem never to have employed Igors. As we have pointed out, they did not have many visitors.
    Another reason why Igors like working for vampires is that their castles usually have large, deep, cool cellars where an Igor can quietly pursue his real interests. The whole clan has a remarkable hereditary skill in surgery, especially transplants and wound repair, including the replacing of severed limbs. This they practise both on themselves and on others. You can always recognize an Igor by his distinctly patchwork look and interestingly individual scar patterns, and maybe an extra thumb or mismatched eyes. In many cases, you could place a ball on the top of his head, and it would not roll off.
    The Igorinas, on the other hand, use their skill to look absolutely stunning, but always include some fetching little detail – a beautifully curved scar under one eye, a line of decorative stitching round the wrist – to maintain the Family Look.
    Since Igors hate discarding any body part that could be recycled, an elderly member of the clan will make arrangements for the best bits of himself to be shared out among his kin when the time comes. They have a great fondness for heirlooms; among