Welcome to the Discworld & Pratchett Wiki. Have fun, contribute and be warned articles may contain nuts and spoilers to the plots of the books.
XXXX
From Discworld & Pratchett Wiki
Pronounced "EcksEcksEcksEcks", or "Fourecks", if and when people on the main continent bother about this mysterious continent of XXXX. It is so named because rumors have long held that a landmass exists in such-and-such a position in the oceans, but no explorers ever made it there to learn its proper name and then come back to tell of it.
The continent indeed exists. Its people are characterized by an easy-going attitude and an absolute refusal and incomprehension of the phenomenon of rain, until the events chronicled in The Last Continent. The Ecksians have a very colorful language with many complicated colloquialisms. They have learnt to live with the almost exclusively poisonous nature of their flora and fauna.
The continent of XXXX sports a tangled space-time continuum, in which a story to fool foreigners at one location becomes a reality some miles away; for example, on one ranch, the drop-bears were stories to scare foreigners, but some miles away, a traveler indeed got an attack of drop-bears. There are also "places where there's very little time, and times when there's hardly any place." As the Trickster, alias "Scrappy" (Hoki?), says, "imagine the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, only the piece is a bloody great continent which has got to be turned through about nine dimensions" until it finally slots into place.
XXXX is also called the Terror Incognita. Almost all animals and plants in XXXX are dangerous. The land is inhospitable because there is never any rain. It is a baking-hot land of red sand. The Ecksians generally dig into the ground to get water. The continent is surrounded by a permanent storm. Even in the direction that people can get their boats out in the ocean, they have to remember not to go too far out, because the Edge of the Discworld is right that way.
Known locations include the major city Bugarup with its magical university and Dijabringabeeralong.
Since the events of The Last Continent, XXXX has supplied most of the Disc's bar staff.
Annotations
XXXX resembles in many ways the Australian continent. The letters XXXX themselves form the name of a famous Australian beer.
