We get, rightfully imo, pretty sad and somber and naval-gazey about Discworld and Sir Terry on the 25th of May but I need everyone who might be discovering this series through this annual outpouring of love and sadness to know that these books are mostly just really fucking funny. Like, they’re heart-wrenching and poignant but really they can only pull that off because they’re also the funniest books ever written. There’s a line near the end of Hogfather that, when I read it, made me feel more deeply connected to, like, the concept of humanity then I ever have before, but the book was only able to deliver that because the rest of it is about what if Santa Claus got kidnapped and a Big Skeleton had to take over his job? It’s a patently ridiculous series but that is absolutely also where it’s power comes from.
night watch, the book that established the 25th of may as important, is a beautiful, riveting, and eye-opening novel about the horrors that are possible when ‘justice’ is seen as more important than rights, about how it’s okay to just fight to protect the precious things within your reach when there’s nothing you can do to save the world from falling apart, and about a man having to mourn people who aren’t dead yet because he knows he can’t save them. it’s also like 30% full of that man cringing at his younger self and has a bit where he destroys a siege weapon by shoving ginger up an ox’s ass.
There, still wearing his hugely oversized coat but now with the addition of a helmet much too large for him, was Nobby Nobbs. “How did you get there, Nobby?” “My mum says I’m insidious,” said Nobby, grinning. A concertina sleeve rose to the vicinity of Nobby’s head, and Vimes realized that somewhere in there was a salute. “She’s right,” said Vimes. “So, where—” “’M an acting constable now, Sarge,” said Nobby. “Mr. Colon said so. Gave me a spare helmet. ’M carvin’ meself a badge out of, of—what’s that, like, waxy, kind of like candles but you can’t eat it?” “Soap, Nobby. Remember the word.”
It’s finally the Glorious 25th of May, so here’s the final character(s) in my countdown: John Keel himself. Or rather, himselves - on the left is Vimes-as-Keel, and on the right is the original Keel. The similarities and differences between the two men were really fun to draw, and I think that’s my new favourite Vimes that I’ve ever drawn.
Night Watch is a hell of a book, and I’ve really enjoyed this little character design project to celebrate it. They’re an interesting group, the men who are remembered with the lilacs, and I hope I’ve done them all justice.
John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil ‘Snouty’ Clapman, Ned Coates and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there.
Countdown to the Glorious 25th, Day 6: Reg Shoe, well-meaning but largely ineffectual revolutionary, and future zombie.
Reg is an endearing character, and it was a lot of fun to see his origin story as a zombie in Night Watch. Tragic too, but in the great Terry Pratchett tradition of being funny and tragic all at once. I’ve actually drawn Reg before, back in Inktober 2019 when I was drawing members of the Watch, and it was fun to reverse engineer that character design from a zombie back into a living person.
(Also yes, I am just drawing him as a send-up of Enjolras from Les Miserables, that’s pretty much his whole deal in Night Watch and I wasn’t going to pass that up.)
Countdown to the Glorious 25th, Day 5: Ned Coates, one of the actual revolutionaries.
Ned was a really interesting character in Night Watch, and he’s one of the folks whose story in the original timeline that I’d be most interested to know. He wouldn’t have been driven away from Treacle Mine Road by a man impersonating his old sergeant from Pseudopolis, so did he succeed in radicalising his fellow Watchmen? Was he Keel’s right hand man when the barricades went up? Or did he play some other role in the events of the Glorious Revolution? There’s a lot of interesting questions with Ned that are a lot of fun to think about.
Countdown to the Glorious 25th, Day 4: Sergeant Dai Dickins, a great example of a Discworld character who’s clearly supposed to be fantasy-Welsh. It’s one of the particularly fun things about a world so built of parody and allegory as Discworld, picking out real world equivalents like that.
It’s never mentioned in Night Watch whether he wears a muscle cuirass-style breastplate or not, but there is a line about “the proper sergeant’s shape” and other books mentioned those breastplates were traditional for Watch sergeants, so I thought it would be fun to include. (Also, his face is a bit of an Easter egg that should look a little familiar to anyone who’s watched Call the Midwife…)
Countdown to the Glorious 25th, Day 3: Cecil ‘Snouty’ Clapman, the Treacle Mine Road Watch House’s jailer, maker of cocoa and acquirer of useful items.
Snouty is one of the more clearly described Watchmen in Night Watch, and it was fun to try and work in all of those details. I decided to make him a little less scruffy than the others, since he was less involved in the fighting and also as the unofficial quartermaster he’d be able to claim the least rusty (although still dented) equipment for himself.
Countdown to the Glorious 25th, Day 2: Billy Wiglet, who was once accused of navelling a sergeant because he was too short to eyeball anyone.
The second Watchman to die in the modified version of history, Wiglet was another one without too much visual description beyond his height. If you can figure out why I decided to draw him holding a crossbow, you get major points for remembering minor details!
Countdown to the Glorious 25th, Day 1: Horace Nancyball, always the first Watchman on duty to know when it’s raining.
I wanted to do something slightly more involved to celebrate the Glorious 25th this year, so I’m drawing all seven of the folks who died on the barricades (at least in the original version of history) and are remembered with the lilacs. Nancyball was an interesting one to start with, since he’s barely described other than the fact that he’s tall, but a couple of lines suggest he’s a bit on the nervous side so that at least gave me a direction to go in with his expression.
