Wazzer Goom

Alice "Wazzer" Goom
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Name	Alice Goom
Race	human
Age	19
Occupation	soldier, formerly an inmate of the Girls' Working School
Physical appearance	thin as a stick
Residence	Borogravia
Death	not yet
Parents	unknown
Relatives	unknown
Children	possibly...
Marital Status	single
Appearances
Books	Monstrous Regiment
Cameos

Wazzer Goom was a - in fact, the - fervent believer in the Duchess Annagovia, who had been deified by the people of Borogravia as a kind of all-too-human response to the god-shaped hole left by the incompetence of their national deity Nuggan.

She claimed to hear the Duchess' voice and that she was being led to some glorious end that would culminate in an epiphany. "She prayed like a child, eyes screwed up and hands clenched until they were white. The reedy little voice trembled with such belief that everyone felt embarrased."

Wazzer joined up, being assigned to the Tenth Foot regiment, known colloquially as the Ins-and-Outs, or the Cheesemongers, where she met Polly Perks and had a series of adventures which she serenely endured as she knew that the Duchess would see her right. Her unit all considered her mad as a hatter (alas, all prophets are mocked: just ask David Icke) but tolerated her as one of them, as she too had disguised herself as a man in order to enlist.

As it turns out, Wazzer could hear the Duchess, and through her she reanimated the corpses of all the long-dead Borogravian military, who had been interred in the same crypt, and led them to a notable victory over the alien forces that had come to their country.

When the Duchess finally left poor Wazzer, she collapsed. Eventually the truth came out. Her real name was Alice, and she had been to a school where she'd been severely maltreated. She ended up on a general's staff, had her own room and was never beaten. It must have been heaven.

Character Annotation

Wazzer appears to be analogous to Roundworld's Joan of Arc. Her physical description bears a passing resemblance to that of Jean Seberg, who played the title character in the 1957 film of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan.

She also appears to be to Annagovia what Brutha was to Om in Small Gods - the last remaining true believer. By the time of Monstrous Regiment the original deity of Borogravia, Nuggan, seems to have suffered the fate feared by Om - no more believers and effectively dead.