FAQ

The Discworld is a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle Great A'Tuin.

The Disc is roughly 10,000 miles (16,000 km) wide, giving it a surface area two fifths that of the Earth. Its principal geographic feature - other than its flatness - is the Cori Celesti: a 10-mile-high (16 km) spire of rock that lies at the centre of the Disc and is the location of Dunmanifestin, the home of the Discworld's many gods. The central area of the Disc including the Cori Celesti is known as The Hub, a land of high, icebound mountains. The areas closer to the Rim are warmer and tropical, since the Disc's sun passes closer to them in its orbit.

There are four main continents on the Disc, along with a number of geographical and political regions and islands. The majority of the Disc's landmass is composed of a single supercontinent comprising a large main region and a smaller Counterweight Continent, an island connected to an ice cap.

The Ramtops are the Discworld's principal mountain range. They are the Disc's main magical conduit, as they lie like a metal rod across the centre of the Disc's magical field, and are thus alive with unreality. Portals to various dimensions dot the range's hidden crevices; "gnarly ground" compresses vast areas of land into tiny patches, and where witches, wizards, and godlike monks alike practice their arts within these secluded communities.

Due to a relative rarity of horizontal flat surfaces (vertical flat surfaces are plenty), kingdoms in the Ramtops tend to be small, isolated, and sparsely populated. Much of the economy is agrarian and communities largely consist of loosely affiliated groups of self-sufficient farms.