Plagiarism of the Gods: Equestrians of Discworld

by Bugsydor

The Gryphon Take of Postal Service

"I will not stand for this. It is a menace!" the foremost member of an unruly mob_[1] said. "Mark my words, it'll be devouring things!"

[1]: Decidedly less threatening than the more ruly sort of mob.

"Indeed," Vetinari said. "She might even devour some of Dibbler's pig onastick. That would be truly tragic. Not only would the mail system lose much of its hard-fought efficiency, I'd be out the best crossword help I've had in decades."

The mob collectively shuffled a step back, but it wasn't done yet.

"Think of the children!" somebody shouted.

"Ah yes, the children," Vetinari sighed. "I suppose they do accost her frequently, asking for rides or to play all sorts of inane games. She doesn't seem to mind, though, as long as they don't play too rough, and she still completes her route with alarming speed and accuracy, so I'm not too concerned about it."

"But sir!" the mob's apparent spokesman said, pulling out what he was certain was his trump card, "She's a gryphon!"

"And?" Vetinari replied, eyebrow quirked back up into its accustomed position.

"But... Gryphon?" the ringleader said, as if realizing that the card he'd so cleverly hidden up his sleeve had in fact been replaced with a two of clubs while he'd been looking the other way.

"And we've got a golem doing postal work alongside her, not to mention a troll that's found gainful employment as the splatter_[2] for The Mended Drum, and our streets are thoroughly policed by the Thieves' Guild. We take pride in our ability to make good use of potentially dangerous elements."_[3]

[2]: A splatter is like a bouncer, but with less restraint.

[3]: It has been hotly debated whether or not Vetinari makes use of "the royal we". Not least of the reasons for this debate is that Ankh-Morpork's most recent royalty was, in fact, a literal fire-breathing dragon.

"Well, uh... Everything seems to be in order._[4] I suppose we'll be going now."

[4]: In truth, it wasn't much in order at all._[5] Vetinari prefers it this way, as this particular form of chaos is far easier to direct than order ever could have hoped to be.

[5]: After all, the forces of chaos are far better organized.

"Don't let me detain you."

Author's Note:

The original author's note, from when this was part of my cryogenic ficfrag storage:

A lengthy-ish comment I left on Carabas's Winterheart in response to FoME suggesting Carabas write a crossover where Gabby the Gryphon helps out Moist von Lipwig in Ankh-Morpork's postal system.

The inspiration to write this bit managed to squeeze its way through my migraine-haze, and I'm kinda proud of the results.

Fun fact: At least one person nearly mistook this for an excerpt from an actual Discworld book, up until I mentioned the gryphon.

This fragment features Lord Vetinari, Gabby the Gryphon, and an unruly mob.

Comments

[Reese]

Bit surprised Gabby didn't actually appear, but this was a short piece.

And I'm definitely favouriting this. :)

[Reese]

8622142
:)

8622146
Hm, interesting. I wonder how exactly they work on the Disc?

[Bugsydor]

8622149
Thanks for the fave! Don't let me detain you.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Oh, this is going to be a most fun collection. Are you accepting submissions?

[NobodieZ]

8652792
You're welcome.

[Ultra-the-HedgeToaster]

This seems like a fun dive into the Disc.

Heh, "hitting copy/paste on another realm" is actually a fairly good explanation for "Type B" crossovers. It means the characters were not "displaced", as such, merely duplicated and integrated into the new setting. Which means...

- Celestia's and Luna's jobs are a whole lot more interesting here.

- Rainbow Dash can easily outfly the speed of light, which is pretty slow in DiscWorld. Makes me wonder how an outside observer would perceive a Sonic Rainboom, versus what Dash herself would see.

- Books bend spacetime. ...I can't help but imagine Twilight is actually at least 100 years removed from her original time (in either direction), when she got lost in the science-section of the library as a filly.

- Books = Knowledge = Power = (Force x Distance ÷ Time). We all know that books bend spacetime. But books only do so because of the knowledge they contain. Knowledge bends spacetime. Twilight reads books with a passion, absorbing all that knowledge, concentrating it in one single place. ...And that's how Twilight Sparkle almost became known as "Black Hole", instead.

- The Elements of Harmony, the Tree of Harmony... are, if present here, only one among a plethora of powerful magicks. So... would they even be on the top of the food chain, here? Just wondering if "we will use the Elements of Harmony on the villain" would be the 100%-works-all-the-time McGuffin it'd be in Equestria. ...And in the end, the day is saved by the town guard instead.

- Do the town guard accept ponies?

...So yeah, I am hoping to see more eventually.

[Bugsydor]

9039562
A lot of excellent ideas I'll have to file away for later. I'd already had plans for somepony to join the Guard, much to Vimes's dismay. Well, at least until his assumptions hit the fan.

[Neece]

Please write more of this, is hilarious and oh so close to the source material

[Bugsydor]

9365036
That is high praise, indeed. Here's hoping my muse kicks me hard enough to drop some more stuff here. Might need to read more Discworld first, though... Oh well.

[truebuckshot]

9039562
Sounds about right. And the ankh morpork guard has saved the disc on a couple occasions without some powerful magic mcguffin like the elements of harmony lol. Though I dont think twilight would like commander vimes once she finds out he's been marked by the darkness lol

[truebuckshot]

Laughing my Ass off already. Looking forward to more lol

[Bugsydor]

9545126
Glad to have been of service.

See you once the next idea for this beans me in the noggin.

[truebuckshot]

9545126
Here's one: rainbow dash vs Rincewind. If like to see if she can catch up to him once he starts running xD. Twilight and the archchancellor of Unseen University. Pinkie pie and nanny ogg lol

[A.P.O.N.I.]

Dibbler's pig onastick

"pig"

[Bugsydor]

9978386
It's Dibbler. The quotes are implied.

[A.P.O.N.I.]

9979161
Or even assumed.