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First troll member of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, hired under Lord Vetinari's "special hiring procedures", at the same time as Cuddy (a dwarf) and Angua (a werewolf). Before getting this job, Detritus had been a splatter (like a bouncer, but with more force) and hired muscle for various establishments in Ankh-Morpork.

Detritus also had a brief career in Holy Wood, where he met and fell in love with the troll Ruby (see Moving Pictures). In fact, the initial reason why Detritus joined the Watch was to get a respectable job in order to appease Ruby. In Thud! we are told that their marriage is happy but childless, which may be partial motivation for Detritus taking the drug-addled young troll Brick under his wing.

City trolls are generally not very smart because of the high temperature, and Detritus is dumb enough that even city trolls consider him stupid. Regardless, Detritus is another natural sergeant in a way very different from Fred Colon; Detritus has a big voice and can shout until the suspect confesses without knowing what it is that he is supposed to confess to. Detritus is also the main drill sergeant training new recruits, as the Ankh-Morpork City Watch grows.

One of the reasons behind Detritus's emerging cleverness is the special helmet he is wearing which has a fan that cools his head. (Since trolls' brains are made from impure silicon, they work better when cooled.) The helmet has been constructed by his friend and first partner on the job, acting-constable Cuddy (deceased). In colder climates (such as Bonk winters), Detritus displays intelligent wit and humour.

Detritus's weapon of choice is a crossbow which he modified himself. It was originally a 2000-lb-draw siege crossbow firing a large iron rod. It is now a crossbow that fires a large bundle of ordinary wooden arrows. If fired at a door, the arrows shatter, the splinters hit the door, the wood practically evaporates. Detritus is not very good at aiming with that weapon, but given its destructiveness it does not really matter. In any case, even when he aims, the arrows are capable of shooting outwards in all directions around him. The people around him get a bit nervous, because Detritus has never managed to understand the concept of the safety bolt.

In Thud we get an explicit measure of how far Detritus has grown when Commander Vimes calls him "one of my best officers."

One Successful Troll

Detritus may very well be the single most successful character in the entire Discworld canon, moving from a semi-sentient, brutalized bouncer chained to a wall to a highly-regarded (at least by Vimes) senior sergeant in the Watch who makes very important and significant contributions to plot development in many of the major events in Ankh-Morpork, and is instrumental (albeit not entirely responsible) in helping heal the enormous rift between dwarfs and trolls, by accepting all City Watch dwarfs as non-dwarf but Watchmen, by shaking the hand of Rhys Rhysson the Low King of the Dwarfs (see Jingo) and being present during the events of Thud!, where the parley between the Low King and Mr. Shine the Diamond King of the trolls is brokered.