Dorfl

Dorfl
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Name	Dorfl
Race	Golem
Age	Ancient
Occupation	Constable in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Physical appearance	Made entirely of clay, vaguely man-shaped
Residence	Ankh-Morpork
Death
Parents
Relatives
Children
Marital Status
Appearances
Books	Feet of Clay
Cameos	Jingo The Fifth Elephant Thud! Making Money

Dorfl is one of the old golems baked from clay. He collaborated with several other old golems in making a golem king, hoping that the king might lead them out of slavery (which shows perhaps even regular golems with a standard holy-word chem have personal initiative).

While this attempt faltered and golems were being destroyed in the streets, Captain Carrot bought Dorfl off his original owner and put the sales receipt in place of the standard chem. Dorfl rapidly acquired a personality, and became the golem who cleaned up the mess of the king golem. Dorfl was dismembered in the process and his sales-receipt chem was crumpled up, though he still managed to come to life and defeat the King Golem.

Captain Carrot collected the pieces and had him re-baked; upon Mr. Vimes's order, they slightly re-engineered Dorfl during the re-baking to give him a voice. He assists Commander Vimes in the apprehending of Dragon King of Arms ("Undead Or Alive, You Are Coming With Me") for his role in the plot against Vetinari and the use and abuse of the Golem King, Meshugah.

Afterwards, Dorfl joined the Ankh-Morpork City Watch- reasoning that there is no better job for someone who loves freedom than to be a Watchman-, and is the force's first "ceramic policeman"; Vimes also provides him with official documentation to confirm that he is alive if he ever runs into trouble, Dorfl noting that he will read the paperwork if he ever feels that he is not alive.. He is an atheist, or the Discworld equivalent, and resistant to lightning ("thunderbolts,") and hellfire. And he's not just an atheist, he's a ceramic atheist - Feet of Clay.

He later purchases and frees two other golems, who together set up the Golem Trust.

He works for the Watch through the rest of the series, and is not the only golem so to do. Immensely strong and fiercely logical, he is a boon to the Watch and a terror to criminals throghout Ankh-Morpork.

We first meet Dorfl in Soul Music, in a conversation between Glod and Cliff. There is a slight inconsistency here, as Glod doesn't believe that the seller of sausages down on Long Hogmeat is a golem. Cliff assures him that he has a holy word on his head - as opposed to a chem inside it. Soul Music is quite a few books before Feet of Clay, though. perhaps TP hadn't fully worked out his thoughts on golems at that point.

Annotation

Carrot's hoarse cry of "we can rebake him, we have the pottery,", confronted with the ruined fragments of Dorfl, is an echo of the key scene of the film Robocop, where the sundered parts of the part-human, part-robot policeman are brought together, and made new... Also, when arresting a vampire, Dorfl says "Undead Or Alive, You Are Coming With Me", which is an obvious reference to Robocop's line "Dead or alive, you are coming with me."

It is also a quote from the opening narration of the '70s TV show, The Six Million Dollar Man.