Discworld Gods - The Old High Ones

The Old High Ones

These are beings far more powerful than gods (who are, from their point of view, only slightly more troublesome versions of human beings) who control the workings of the multiverse. There are eight of them, according to The Discworld Companion, and they are not worshipped on the Discworld, the general populace being unaware of their existence. They are only very ambiguously referred to in some of the Discworld religions and the most that Discworld scholars have learned is that eight 'entities' exist.

There is no single word that can effectively explain their role, which seems to be to observe in a dynamic way, in order for the observed events to actually be able to happen (think of the old Berkeleian question "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound?"). It might be simpler to say the multiverse exists because they believe in it.

Virtually nothing is known about their role in Discworld affairs, except that, in prehistory, they substantially reduced the amount of magic on the Discworld and made humans smaller, owing to the strain the Sourcerers were putting on the fabric of reality in their war on the gods and each other.

Death is their servant, and it is likely that The Creator and Time are as well. They are also the apparent employers of The Auditors of Reality, although they seem to ignore the Auditors' recent tendency to break their own rules. Presumably they have their reasons.

They may be derived from the Great Old Ones in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft.

Only one has been mentioned in the books so far, Azrael. The other seven – if they have names – have not been revealed.