These scenes reveal that what he thought were victimless crimes actually resulted in death and ruin for many families, including the Dearheart family and the sole survivor, the lovely Adora Belle, with whom von Lipwig is immediately smitten on first sight.įorced labour at the post office under threat of death isn’t just punishment, it’s his penance for his crimes, balancing von Lipwig’s immoral acts with improving people’s lives, by delivering long overdue mail, such as acceptances of proposals and other good news.

He’ll need looking out for, as each of von Lipwig’s predecessor post masters has met with a gruesome end.īut in the quiet hours of night, when no one’s around, the words in the envelopes have whispering voices and ink mingles in the air and combines to magically show von Lipwig the consequences of his many cons, in black-and-while silent films with title cards, projected on the post office walls. This will be difficult, though, as a huge Golem, Mr Pump, has been put in place as both protector and parole officer. Von Lipwig, a man who’s lived by his wits since he was orphaned, becoming a master manipulator of men and women, takes the job, with escape and profit his end game objective. Vetinari wants to abolish the clacks’ monopoly and fakes captured conman Moist von Lipwig’s death at the gallows with an offer of reviving the post office once more. Patriarch of the city, Lord Vetinari, the highest ranking government official, has the advantage of his own mythical creature in the form of a gorgeous female werewolf sergeant who can scent track criminals. There is no competition to communication by clacks, as the all but abandoned post office of Ankh-Morpork is in an even worse state than the dilapidated clacks towers. His preferred dispatcher is a banshee, a half-man half-bat creature who’s perpetually covered in ooze. Gilt isn’t averse to hiring assassins to remove anyone who gets in his way or threatens to thin his fully packed wallet. Control then passed to Reacher Gilt, an unscrupulous man who threatens employees into doing his bidding and who’s let the clacks system fall into disrepair and suspicion after an employee drops to his death in the opening scenes, while a large dark figure flies away. The system was the property of the Dearheart family until its inventor, Robert Dearheart, met with financial tragedy and an unexpected death.

The clacks system is a mode of communication in Discworld, a sort of telegraph business that converts customers’ messages to ticker tape which are then relayed from one clacks tower to the next through the city and beyond by semaphore signals using opening and closing shutters at each tower’s top.

Going postal discworld