The Witches Part Three

This entry has a bit of everything (and a lot of Greebo)!!

Agnes Nitt - DW68

I love Agnes with her nice hair and good personality!! She is a really well observed character. She starts off in Lords and Ladies as part of a group of young witches who change their names to be more witchy. Agnes is an exceptional singer and a natural witch. Her 'witchiness' is aided in no small part to the thin girl within (the one that accompanies the lot of chocolate!). Agnes thin girl is called Perdita (in the roundworld, Latin for 'lost one'). A name that Agnes herself uses as her nom de plume when she goes to the Opera House in Ankh Morpork. She did toy with using Perdita X Dream (the X standing for someone who has a ‘cool and mysterious middle name’). She did try this back home in the Ramtops but ended up being referred to as ‘that Agnes what calls herself Perditax’ so she gave that bit up! Whenever I read that quote I hear it in a broad West Country accent. It always makes me smile and I think of Perditax at the oddest times!

In the August 1996 newsletter it says that the inspiration for Agnes, as suggested by Terry was a young Dawn French and an Agnes who had played Agnes in a recent production (alas, not named in the newsletter!). it also mentions that on seeing Agnes Terry asked "Does Leigh know a lot of large ladies, because he's got her just right." I think he got her just right too :-)

It is a nice little piece (tactile again :-)) but like a lot of the female pieces it didn’t sell in droves. When this piece was first released Clarecraft promised that an Agnes in a more ‘witchy’ pose would follow. This never happened and the Agnes piece shows her in full operatic mode.

The quote is from Maskerade.

"She concentrated on the notes, working her way stolidly upwards from sea-level to mountain top, and took no notice at the start when a chair vibrated across the stage or, at the end, when a glass broke somewhere and several bats fell out of the roof."

It was sculpted by Leigh and released in August 1996. Due to people missing out when pieces suddenly retired (particularly with female pieces such as Magat and Sybil) her retirement in November 1999 was given with plenty of notice. Still, only 1055 of these lovely pieces were ever sold. The RRP was £29.99 throughout and she has reached more than £60.

 

Greebo!

Now we move onto Greebo!! There are many Greebo pieces, some of the situations he gets in just lend themselves to sculpting and he makes for nice, small, easily affordable pieces. He also features in the chess sets but these have already been covered.

Greebo has been described as looking like a fist with fur on!! He has only one eye but this has never seemed to slow him down (but this does allow him to wear a rather dashing eyepatch when he changes into a man). Nanny, normally a good judge of character has a complete blind spot where Greebo is concerned. She can only see him as the cute fluffy kitten he once was, rather than the evil, murdering ball of malevolence he turned into.

Greebo - DW45

This piece just shows Greebo standing. It was sculpted by Leigh and introduced in 1995. It was retired on closure so I have no numbers sold. I'm not sure on exact RRP but these tended to be at the lower end of the scale.

The quote is from Witches Abroad

"He's an old softy really, said Nanny".

 

Greebos Vampire Snack - DW104

This piece was inspired by a scene in Witches Abroad. Greebo frees a village from the tyranny of a vampire by eating it (in its bat form, even Greebo couldn't manage to eat a whole Vampire!). Vampires apparently have risen from the grave… but never from the cat! Greebo has the bat safely trapped under a paw. He now just has to figure out how to take his paw off it without losing it. It looks very similar to the first one so I assume Leigh sculpted it but mine doesn't have a sculptors mark on it. I'm not sure when it was introduced or retired.

The quote is from Witches Abroad

"....The bat squirmed under his claw. It seemed to Greebo's small cat brain that it was trying to change its shape, and he wasn't having any of that from a mouse with wings."

Greebo - Bloody Furious - DW125

A resourceful Magrat uses that well known principle that a cat stuck in a box is an angry cat. This is a box with the lid open a bit and Greebo peeping out. This was a brilliant scene in the book. The piece doesn't really convey the comedy of the scene though.

The quote is from Lords and Ladies and has a lovely reference to Schroedingers cat :-)

"Greebo had spent am irritating two minutes in that box. Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or it may be deas...although in this case there were three determinate states that cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead and Bloody Furious."

It is the part after this quote that makes me laugh, Greebo is described as going off 'like a claymore mine'. However, he is shown simply in the box so the rest of the quote isn't relevent.

I cannot find my Greebo Bloody Furious so I don't have a picture for you. I do try and add things I've missed though so I'll keep looking.

I don't know when this was introduced. It was still available at closure so I nave no numbers sold.

Greebo as a Man - DW76

In Witches Abroad the witches turn Greebo into a man. Unfortunately when a morphic field has been changed once it makes it easier for it to happen again. In future, whenever Greebo is under stress (eg when he is caught stealing!) he changes involuntarily. In Maskerade the witches find they require an escort for the opera and once again Greebo is pressed into service. He has no social skills and is usually baffled by human goings on, he may look like a man but he is still all cat.

Greebo makes quite a dashing man, looking like a pirate with a patch covering his blind eye. The image in my head is quite different to the piece. This doesn't happen very often I must admit as Clarecraft generally got it spot on.

Sculpted by Joe and released in 1997. This was still available at closure and I have no numbers sold.

The quote is from Maskerade

"Greebo fully clothed still managed to communicate the nakedness beneath."

Greebo and the Nac Mac Feegle - DW151

This piece shows Greebo facing off with a Nac Mac Feegle, not quite sure what to make of him. The scale in this one is slightly different to the Feegle event piece. I don't have this piece and I don't know much about it really. I don't know the quote or the sculptor. If any of you have the piece and want to let me know the quote or any details about it, feel free to email me and I will add the information to this entry (properly credited of course :-)).

There are further characters and artefacts associated with the witches which I will include with them. Vlad is the first of these. The others will be covered in the next entry.

Vlad - DW108

Vlad has been included here as he appears in Carpe Jugulum and is associated with the witches, notably Agnes. He is used to being able to get inside people's minds and control them. He clearly wasn't reckoning on Perdita!!

He was part of a family of modern vampires, trained from a young age to not react to religious relics etc. Unfortunately, sometimes blood will out. As a piece he seems to borrow heavily from a certain Hollywood blockbuster featuring Tom Cruise

He was sculpted by Joe and introduced in 1999. He was still available at closure so I have no numbers sold.

The quote is from Carpe Jugulum

"A pony tail on a man was unheard of in Lancre, and the cut of his clothes also suggested that he'd spent time somewhere where fashion changed ore than once in a lifetime. No one in Lancre had ever worn a waistcoat embroidered with peacocks."

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