Cunning Man: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 21:56, 23 September 2012
Cunning Man | |
Name | Cunning Man |
Race | Originally human, now a malevolent spirit |
Age | |
Occupation | Omnian witch finder |
Physical appearance | Eyeless figure in black |
Residence | |
Death | A thousand years ago |
Parents | |
Relatives | |
Children | |
Marital Status | |
Appearances | |
Books | I Shall Wear Midnight |
Cameos |
The Cunning Man was, a thousand years ago, an Omnian witch-finder, who had fallen in love with a witch. That witch, however, knew how evil the Cunning Man was. She was eventually burnt to death - not coincidentally by his co-religionists, but as she was being burned she reached through her bars and held him to her, trapping the Cunning Man in the fire as well. The Cunning Man became a demonic spirit of pure hatred, able to corrupt other minds with suspicion and hate.
This spirit seems to do a perpetual tour of the Multiverse, appearing at random intervals of a few human generations to spread fear and loathing, hatred and mob violence against targets of convenience like Witches. There may actually be many versions of him, as each world has its own Death, for example, although this is strictly non-canonical speculation.
On Discworld he appears as a man (or humanoid shape) dressed in black clothing with a wide-brimmed black hat. There are no eyes in the featureless black face, only holes that lead all the way through to the back of the head, and the black-clad black body casts no shadow in direct sunlight. When he encounters the objects of his aggression, he attacks them with fulminating vituperation1, otherwise, he operates in the subliminal domain, persuading the general population toward suspicion, hatred and violence against the objects of his rage: Witches. The Cunning Man functions as a demonic spirit of pure rage, specifically against witches. He hates them simply for existing, and infests others with his hatred. His presence in the vicinity can be detected by those with knowledge of magic by his smell (for lack of a better description). His hatred is so intense that it surrounds him like an aura and the minds of others, not knowing how to classify it, catalogue it as a foul stench of rot, powerful enough to turn the stomach.
Rather like the Hiver, the spirit of the Cunning Man is capable of occupying a human body to carry out his agenda. It searched out the malicious as, in the words of Mrs Proust, "poison will go where poison's welcome". In I Shall Wear Midnight, he takes the body of the depraved killer Mackintosh from the Tanty in Ankh-Morpork and drives it to the Chalk in search of Tiffany Aching.
Poisoning people against witches is quite easy to accomplish as they, by their nature, focus on doing the right rather than the popular thing, and are thus always at risk of a backlash. The Cunning Man’s poison complicates Tiffany’s dealings with the dying Baron of the Chalk, his son Roland and Roland’s new fiancée, and many other people whose respect she has come to take for granted. Despite the fact that the vitriol stirred up against her leads to her imprisonment (in the dungeon of the castle, with the goats) she manages, with (or perhaps despite) the help of the Nac Mac Feegle, to face the Cunning Man, without requiring the help of veteran witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.
Tiffany, fortunately, knows why the hare runs into the fire; the Cunning Man's cunning does not go that far. As Granny Weatherwax did many years before, Tiffany destroys the latest manifestation of the Cunning Man; he will, sadly, be back.
1 North American readers may recognise some Fox News commentators here, as well as orators from the "Christian" right.
Annotation
The Cunning Man is possibly based on the Roundworld historical figure Heinrich Kramer, a German Inquisitor, although there has been a long tradition of the phrase "Cunning folk" in parts of England and Wales. Certain Christian theologians and Church authorities believed that the cunning folk, being practitioners of "low magic", were in league with the Devil and as such were akin to the more overtly Satanic and malevolent witches. Partly due to this, laws were enacted across England, Scotland and Wales that often condemned cunning folk and their magical practices, but there was no widespread persecution of them akin to the Witch Hunt, largely because most common people firmly distinguished between the two: witches were seen as being harmful and cunning folk as useful.