Watch Rincewind.
Look at him. Dcrawny, like most wizard, and clad in a dark red robe on which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for heterosexuality.
Zing!
Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon that marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University, the high school of magic whose time-and-space transcendent campus is never precisely Here or There.
Graduates were usually destined for mageship at least, but Rincewind - after an unfortunate event - had left knowing only one spell and made a living of sorts around the town by capitalizing on an innate gift for languages. He avoided work as a rule, but had a quickness of wit that put his acquaintances in mind of a bright rodent.
And he knew sapient pearwood when he saw it. He was seeing it now, and he didn't quite believe it.
In an interview, Pratchett said that he unwittingly took Rincewind's name from "Churm Rincewind", a fictitious person referred to in early Beachcomber columns in the Daily Express (an English newspaper).
Rincewind is the protagonist of the first two Discworld novels - The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic.
I personally dislike Rincewind, as I dislike all inept characters who are made the heroes of books. If The Color Of Magic had been my introduction to the Discworld, I probably would not have continued on. (Fortunately, it was Guards! Guards!)
Of course Rincewind is important to the saga of the Discworld because it's because of him that the Librarian was turned into an orangutang - but we'll come to that in due course.
The books featuring Rincewind:
The Color of Magic (1983) 1st novel in the series
The Light Fantastic (1986) 2nd novel in the series
Mort (cameo) (1987) 4th novel in the series
Sourcery (1988) 5th novel in the series
Eric (1990) 9th novel in the series
Interesting Times (1994) 17th novel in series
The Last Continent (1998) 22nd novel in series
The Last Hero (2001) 27th novel (or rather short novel)
Unseen Academicals (extended cameo) (2009) 37th novel in the series
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