Snuff characters

Also known as His Grace, the Duke of Ankh, Blackboard Monitor Vimes

Appears from the start

Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch and, by marriage, Duke of Ankh, a rank he has never become reconciled to. A copper by instinct and conviction, suspicious of privilege, including his own, and grimly aware of how much anger he keeps under control. He is a devoted, awkward father who reads his small son a bedtime story every night without fail, and he is about to be removed from the city and the job for the first time in his adult life.

First appears in chapter 2

The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, who governs by knowing exactly what people will do and arranging matters accordingly. He has taken an interest in the idea of Commander Vimes being sent somewhere with no crime in it.

First appears in chapter 3

Vimes's wife: an aristocrat by birth, a dragon breeder by enthusiasm, and immovable once she has decided what is good for her family. She has inherited a large country estate and has determined that her husband is going to take a holiday on it.

First appears in chapter 4

Vimes's six-year-old son, cheerful, observant, and currently engrossed in a natural history of animal droppings, a subject he can discuss at any length and in any company.

First appears in chapter 5

The Vimes household's gentleman's gentleman: impeccably correct, quietly amused, and equipped with a past on the streets that he has never entirely put down. He carries useful things in his hat and is a great deal more dangerous than any butler needs to be.

First appears in chapter 19

The landlord of the village pub, an incomer with a professional welcome and a very good memory for faces, who recognizes Vimes rather faster than a country publican should. He knows a good deal about what happens locally and is careful about which parts of it he mentions.

First appears in chapter 26

A retired officer among the local gentry, straight-backed, courteous, and rather more troubled by the district's arrangements than his neighbours are. He has old-fashioned ideas about honour that his acquaintances find inconvenient.

First appears in chapter 25

The young local chief constable, the third generation of his family to hold the post, with no training, no colleagues, and a rule book he has largely worked out for himself. Earnest, badly out of his depth, and braver than his situation deserves.

First appears in chapter 30

A goblin who attaches himself to Vimes: filthy, evil-smelling, sardonic, and entirely unbothered by either fact. He knows the country, the caves, and the river better than anyone alive, and turns up whenever Vimes is about to need him.

First appears in chapter 30

A writer of children's books who lives locally and is regarded by the county as an eccentric. She has spent years among the goblins, has learned their language and their beliefs, and teaches those who will learn, which the neighbourhood considers at best foolish.

First appears in chapter 36

A young goblin woman living in the caves above the estate, taught music by Miss Beedle, who plays the harp with a skill that is impossible to explain away. What she can do is an argument in itself about what goblins are.

First appears in chapter 45

A local man who works as an enforcer for people with money: fast, capable, and entirely without hesitation, and unusual even among killers in that he seems to feel nothing about it at all.

First appears in chapter 30

A veteran Ankh-Morpork Watch sergeant of limited ambition and considerable seniority, who handles an item of goblin property in the course of a routine inquiry and begins, slowly and frighteningly, to stop being himself.

First appears in chapter 52

A six-inch-tall Watch officer who was raised by gnomes and does the jobs no full-sized copper can, going into places nobody thinks to guard. He is a formidable fighter and is beginning to have questions about where he actually came from.