Hector Tugelbend

Seen only in the TV adaptation of The Light Fantastic and not in the original book, Hector Tugelbend was a Level Eight wizard during the events of The Light Fantastic, and head of the Sages of the Unknown Shadow.

As head of one of the eight orders, Hector held a seat on the University Council, and in The Light Fantastic he joined with the other senior wizards to perform the Rite of AshkEnte in order to question Death about the events of the morning. They learned they needed to be specific as Death informs them that 'A GREAT MANY THINGS HAPPENED THIS MORNING. PEOPLE WERE BORN, PEOPLE DIED, THE WIND MADE INTERESTING PATTERNS ON THE SEA'.

After the wizards explained that they wanted to know why the Octavo had released powerful magic that day, Death informed them all of the lost eighth spell and how the Disc would be in danger if the spells were not read together at the correct time.

All the orders, save the Order of the Silver Star, competed with each other to locate the spell and the illusive Rincewind in whose head it was hiding. Hector dispatched a team of Sages of the Unknown Shadow to the Forest of Skund, but this ended badly when rival orders met and fought a seven way battle with each other and the Luggage in Granny Whitlow's gingerbread cottage where Rincewind and Twoflower had taken refuge. In the confusion Rincewind escaped and at least one wizard was killed when he failed to correctly engage his Seven League Boots.

Hector Tugelbend and the other Heads of the Orders were later tricked by Ymper Trymon and locked in the Octavo cell while he stole the book, but when it appeared that Trymon had succeeded in reading the spells they were only to happy to congratulate him. Their view that ‘the end justify the means’ might have changed when they realized that Trymon's mind had broken and a path in his head opened to the horrors of the Dungeon Dimensions but by that time it was too late. At the summit of the Tower of Art Trymon’s first act was to turn the leading wizards to stone and proclaim himself supreme head of the orders. While Rincewind was able to stop and defeat Trymon, nothing could be done for the petrified wizards.

Although dead, Hector's legacy endured in the form of his statue that can now be viewed in the University gardens (all but one of the statues were very carefully (a rarity even on the Discworld) and unmagically winched down from the top of the Tower of Art). More contentiously, the name, which ocurs only twice in the Discworld, suggests some sort of kinship, perhaps uncle-nephew, to Victor Tugelbend (fatherhood is out, wizards cannot legally marry and have children - this is against the Lore).

In order to encourage his nephew Victor to become a wizard, Victor's uncle had left him a legacy that would pay his tuition as a student at Unseen University. This supports the theory that the generous uncle was a wizard who wanted the family link to Unseen university to persist (but does not conclusively prove it). The exam mark required to pass and become a wizard was 88, but the will made it very clear that if Victor scored less than 80 the money would dry up. Since Victor much preferred the life of the student wizard, where nobody was actively trying to kill him, he studied extremely hard and carefully got an 84 on every single exam except for three (once he passed by accident but argued his grade down a few points and got an 82 and an 83 on the next two to be safe). In a way his uncle had won, he had forced Victor to study, and his knowledge of magic could rival that of the most senior wizards, a fact that was to come in handy during the events of Moving Pictures.