Line #12 Headscratchers/MonstrousRegiment


1	New entries on the bottom.
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4	[[folder:Daylight]]
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6	* How come Maladict gets to march during daytime in Monstrous Regiment without turning into ash?
7	** Otto Chriek is also seen outside in the daytime (in the same book, among others) only turning to ash when exposed to the intense light from the salamanders. We know from Carpe Jugulum that vampires can train themselves to resist the usual ways of killing them, though the technique isn't perfect. Since both Otto and Maladict are Black Ribboners, this caused me to speculate that the vampire temperance league teaches the technique to its members, perhaps as a sort of carrot: "give up the b-word and we'll teach you how ''not'' to burn in sunlight!"
8	** Apparently it just being cloudy is enough to shield the average vampire, as this is part of the reason stated for Otto's survival walking around Ankh-Morpork, that it is, like England, typically overcast. Could be a similar situation in Borogravia.
9	** Or perhaps they borrow sunscreen from the city's trolls, who originally couldn't walk around in the sunlight either.
10	** When Vimes asks Sally a similar question in "Thud", she states that she's fine with long sleeves and a brimmed hat. Maybe it's direct exposure of sun to skin?
11	** Well, it has been [[Literature/CarpeJugulum established]] that the Disc has as many kinds of vampire as tropical diseases[[note]]"presumably this means that some vampires are virulent and deadly, while others just make you walk funny and avoid fruit"[[/note]]. It's conceivable that even without the training posited above, some would not have the vulnerability to sunlight.
12	*** Dracula himself could walk around in sunlight, as could the older and more experienced vampires of Creator/AnneRice, so there's plenty of precedent for it.
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15	[[folder:Burial]]
16	* While the chronic failure of the Borogravian military to catch on to its infiltration by females is justified by RuleOfFunny [[spoiler:and the fact that so many of the brass are part of the SweetPollyOliver brigade]], it's never said why its army's ''burial details'' would fail to notice that the fallen aren't always the right shape. They ''do'' strip their own dead for uniforms and equipment, after all, and RuleOfFunny tends to lose its persuasiveness when senseless battlefield carnage is involved.
17	** Presumably the burial details are also women infiltrators, or men who don't want to question a constant supply of replacement socks.
18	** Or simple TheoryOfNarrativeCausality. Was there ever a SweetPollyOliver who ''did'' die ingloriously in her first couple of battles? No; SweetPollyOliver always goes on to be quite successful. Narrative runs strong on the Disc; the story would protect most infiltrators.
19	** FridgeBrilliance: No wonder so many of them have risen to become the top brass. In a universe as troperiffic as Discworld, how could it be any other way?
20	** Once a SweetPollyOliver gets killed in battle, there's little call to report her gender to anyone, as there's no point in drumming her out of the army posthumously. There ''is'' ample reason to keep quiet about it, as a unit commander who admits he'd had a woman among his troops and not noticed until she got herself killed is bound to be punished for such ignorance, or at least branded too stupid to ever promote. If it happened while she was doing something heroic, High Command (at least two-thirds of it, anyway) might even see it as a desperate attempt to slander a poor brave soul and steal the glory for oneself.
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23	[[folder:What Language Were They Speaking?]]
24	* The obvious answer is "Borogravian", including a reference to a word that isn't in Polly's native language, but Polly and Mal have a fluent conversation with both Angua and Vimes, who (especially Vimes) are not likely to speak anything other than Morporkian. Vimes even butchers a sentence in Borogravian and Polly explains which word he messed up. Polly also reads the Ankh Morpork Times several times over the story, which suggests she's literate in Morporkian as well. Is she just especially bilingual? Borogravian seems similar to German[[note]]Maybe the canonical link to Austria - see below[[/note]] and not especially similar to Morporkian and it seems unlikely that in a country where women aren't allowed to read and write Polly is fluent and literate in two languages, one from an enemy country.
25	** Earlier books established that Morporkian is the Discworld's CommonTongue due to its status as the trade language. Everywhere from Klatch to Uberwald to Genua, everyone a protagonist has to speak with knows it.
26	** In the very earliest books, reference is made to a scholarly and archaic language called High Borogravian, used for ancient histories, religious texts and magical scrolls.
27	** Polly was a barmaid at a busy inn that was considered to be a nice place to stay and was engaged enough with the clientele for them to teach her things like swordplay (albeit as a joke). Perhaps she picked up enough knowledge of Morporkian there to communicate with Vimes and Angua.
28	* The canonical ''Compleat Discworld Atlas'' covers Borogravia, Zlobenia, Mouldavia and Far Überwald, presenting them as a Discworld analogue of Eastern Europe as far as the Urals. Borogravia comes out as a sort of take on the historical Austro-Hungaran Empire, Zlobenia as a sort of portmanteau of the Balkans with a hint of the Ukraine/Russia; Far Überwald contains local analogues of Poland and Czechoslovakia as was, and shades into the Discworld's Russia, which is pretty much covered by Mouldavia on the Discworld. It isn't unreasonable that Borogravia, like Austria-Hungary, covered as many languages as there were ethnicities, including "German" and "Russian", with Morporkian perhaps used as a Common Speech.

Context Headscratchers / MonstrousRegiment