The Folklore of Discworld

one could find an old temple of his and set up a bakery in one corner and a fish-and-chip shop in the other, and see what happened.
    One writer who had no doubts at all on the matter was the American H. P. Lovecraft, whose eerily receptive mind picked up many strange influences from the worlds of gods and demons, and indeed from the dreaded Dungeon Dimensions. In 1917 he published a story, ‘Dagon’, in which a shipwrecked man reaches an unknown land of mud and rocks, newly risen from the ocean floor. There are weird buildings there, with repulsive carvings. Then he sees, emerging from a deep abyss, a vast and loathsome monster with scaly arms, webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, and bulging, glassy eyes. Though he escapes, he remains haunted by the thought of huge nameless things crawling and floundering at the bottom of the ocean until the day when they will come to destroy mankind:
    Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon the Fish-god; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my enquiries.
    This may well be significant, since it is strongly suspected on the Discworld that Dagon had some connection with the sunken land of Leshp, which occasionally rises to the surface of the Circle Sea, as described in Jingo . On Leshp, there are fragments of buildings with an uncomfortably non-human look about them, a bodeful atmosphere, and plenty of pretty mosaics showing squid and octopuses. All in all, it seems probable that Dagon is actually one of the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions still lurking on the Disc, like Bel-Shamharoth (see below).
Fate
    This, possibly, is the god most feared and hated by men. He is proverbially stern and implacable. Some Earthbound poets have claimed that he is blind, but this is far from true; anyone who looks into his dark and bottomless eyes will see that they are holes opening on to the blackness of infinite night. He enjoys gambling and chess, largely because when he plays, the roll of the dice is always fixed and there are always two queens on his side of the board – unless, of course, his eternal rival the Lady has a hand in the game, in which case there is a million-to-one chance that somebody might cheat Fate.
    In the mythologies of the Earth, Fate is sometimes personified as three old women, the Fates – three because triplicity symbolizes power. More often, however, he remains an abstract figure.
The gods of Djelibeybi
    In the river kingdom of Djelibeybi, the national religion has been accreting and fermenting and bubbling away for seven thousand years, during which time nobody ever threw away a god, in case he might come in useful one day. As a result, the gods are far too numerous to list. One might start by mentioning Scrab the Pusher of the Ball of the Sun, Thrrp the Charioteer of the Sun, Jeht theBoatman of the Solar Orb, Vut the Dog-Headed God of Evening, Bunu the Goat-Headed God of Goats, Ket the Ibis-Headed God of Justice, Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, Bast the Cat-Headed Goddess of Things Left on the Doorstep or under the Bed … From which, two things are already obvious: they just love fooling around with funny faces, and most of them reckon they can do the top job. They can also be quarrelsome:
    There was a monstrous splash out in the river. Tzut, the Snake-Headed God of the Upper Djel, surfaced and regarded the assembled priesthood solemnly. Then Fhez, the Crocodile-Headed God of the Lower Djel, erupted beside him and made a spirited attempt at biting his head off. The two submerged in a column of spray and a minor tidal wave. [ Pyramids ]
    There are remarkably close and no doubt wholly coincidental similarities here to the pantheon of Ancient Egypt, where many of the deities have the heads of animals or birds, and where it was perfectly possible for several of them to be credited with the same important function. Thus, Amun, Aten, Atum, Ptah, and Ra were each said to have been the creator of the world, and all except Ptah were also sun gods. This does not seem to have caused any quarrels, either among the gods themselves or among their priests. In Egypt, as in Djelibeybi, priests, very much in the way of advanced physicists, took for granted that mutually incompatible statements could still both be true, and that in any case the really important thing was to carry out rituals correctly.
    The kings of