Rite of AshkEnte
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In the fictional Discworld universe as described in the book series of the same name by Terry Pratchett, the Rite of AshkEnte is the ancient magic ritual that summons and possibly binds Death to the mortal lands for a short time.
Since Death is professionally involved in almost everything that is going on everywhere, the Rite is usually performed so that he can be asked questions. Death hates this because he is always summoned at the worst possible time, like when he is at a party. The senior wizards performing the Rite are not too happy about it either, though, since they don't enjoy drawing Death's attention to them; they are often very senior.
Although the Rite can be performed by a couple of people with three small sticks and 4 cc of mouse blood or even with a fresh egg and two small sticks, wizards prefer to do it the old fashioned way, with heavy equipment consisting of numerous drippy candles, octograms written on the floor, thuribles and similar paraphernalia. They feel it's not proper wizardry if it's not showy enough. There are ten more ways of performing the Rite (bringing the total to thirteen), but nine of them cause instant death and the tenth is very hard to remember.
The founder of Unseen University Alberto Malich disappeared from the world when he tried to perform the Rite backwards. Apparently, he thought that an inversed Rite of AshkEnte would keep away Death from him, allowing him to live forever. Unfortunately, what actually happened was that he was summoned to Death. He has since elected to stay in Death's domain as Death's manservant (as no time passes there, it might be said that Alberto's ambition of immortality was fulfilled after all).
In the Discworld books, the Rite has been used a number of times:
- In The Light Fantastic, Death was summoned to be asked about the imminent destruction of the Disc.
- In Mort, Albert, briefly returned to the world, summoned Death who was having a vacation to let him know that Mort, his apprentice, was making a terrible job as replacement.
- In Eric Death was asked about an occult disturbance that turned out to be Rincewind.
- In Reaper Man, where Death had been forced to retire by The Auditors of Reality, an Auditor appeared in Death's place to inform the wizards about the situation.
- In Soul Music, where Death had again taken a break from work, the Rite instead summoned his granddaughter by adoption, Susan Sto Helit.