History Literature / TheColourOfMagic

* TrainingTheGiftOfMagic: The book establishes the principle that Discworld magic-worker have a unique gift, but still need training and competence to use it safely. (Even Rincewind has the gift, though he lacks any competence whatsoever.) The gift is defined here as the ability to see octarine light (see above), though that is largely forgotten in later books.

* WideEyedIdealist: Twoflower.

* [[YouSaidYouWouldLetThemGo You Said You Would Let Me Go]]: This was the reward the High Priest of Krull promised his architect, a man so brilliant he had already been mutilated by three previous employers so he could never surpass his work for them. Unfortunately for the architect, ILied.

* Creator/HPLovecraft: Bel-Shamharoth's temple

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: [[EldritchAbomination Bel-Shamharoth]]

* ChestMonster: The Luggage, a walking chest made of sapient pearwood. One of the few good-guy examples... [[HeroicComedicSociopath for a given value of "good"]]

* IncrediblyLamePun: Noted in-universe when Rincewind has an inner monologue of exposition about Bel-Shamharoth and how wizards never say the number between seven and nine because "you'll be eight alive" as the saying goes. (The Discworld Companion later {{lampshaded}} the way that apparently saying 'ate' doesn't summon Bel-Shamharoth despite sounding identical to 'eight').

** Garrett's levitator ended up flying home over an ocean that he'd persuaded himself to loath.
** Garrett is not usually listed among Pratchett's influencers but was in the right time and genre to be one.

The very first ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel, from 1983. Written as a travelogue in which cowardly failed wizard Rincewind and FishOutOfWater Twoflower, the world's first tourist, travel much of the Disc while running away from things with big teeth and men with swords. Unlike most of the later ones, it was primarily a vehicle for Creator/TerryPratchett to mock, play with, and deconstruct ''specific'' other fantasy series, rather than the much broader field of his later work. Introduced his interest in using nuclear physics (his previous area of expertise as a scientific journalist) as a metaphor and parody for how magic works. And unlike later Discworld novels, is split into six parts rather than a continuous chapterless piece.

** For that matter, perfectly reversed in the German translation, where Twoflower is named Zweiblum ("Zweiblumen" actually is the plural form and would correspond to "Twoflowers"; also, the German translator rendered Twoflower as Zweiblum to make it sound like a genuine German [[labelnote:note]] contrary to popular perception, not exclusively Jewish, despite the the ''-blum'' ending [[/labelnote]] name). The name of the aforementioned counterpart is, obviously, reverse-translated as Jack Twoflower.

* ILied: The Arch-astronomer of Krull, after the spaceship is completed, promised that Dactylos would be simply be released from his services, rather than mutilated as he was by previous employers. The the Arch-astronomer has him shot with an arrow, even admitting that he lied about it.

-->"ILied." ''(arrow shot)''
-->"Sloppy workmanship."

** Rincewind's explanation of hydrophobic wizards' ability to levitate over water is a rewording of the way levitation was controlled by the protagonist of Creator/RandallGarrett's ''What The Left Hand Was Doing'':

-->Whoever would be wearing those suits, Rincewind decided, was expecting [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries to boldly go where no man--other than the occasional luckless sailor, who didn't really count--had boldly gone before]].

* DarkSkinnedBlonde: Taken to Drow-like extremes with the natives of Krull, whose skin is pitch black and hair, pale like moonlight.

* MagicSword: Kring, Hrun's talking sword.

* FantasticNuke: The Wyrmberg area suffered a direct hit by one during the Mage Wars, and the ensuing magical fallout means that it is home to an upside-down mountain, imaginary dragons, and coins land on their edge or don't come down at all.

* ChainmailBikini: Liessa.

** The Ankh is treated as an actual river, wherein it's entirely possible to drown with ease, as opposed to the highly euphemistic river (or more accurately, mud with some water in it) of later books.

** Death acts psychotically, randomly killing people out of spite, unlike his later sympathetic view on humanity, seeing his role as a duty and not being the one who decides who dies and when. Also, some of the details of his job aren't quite ironed out, showing him actively taking souls, rather than just severing the link between corpse and spirit.

* AndroclesLion: A fairly straight example; Rincewind saves a frog from being swept over the Edge and it later turns out to have had The Lady "riding in its mind". Being that The Lady is... The Lady, it is implied she set this up herself

* GravityScrew: After Rincewind threw a wine bottle at the Guestmaster, he retaliated with Atavarr's Personal Gravitational Upset, a spell that left Rincewind standing on the wall.

* AbsurdlySharpBlade: Death's scythe is mentioned to have bisected a breeze and spoken words, and sliced a candle flame into three parts.