Guilds of Ankh-Morpork - Alchemists' Guild

Alchemists' Guild

• Motto: OMNIS QVI CORVSCAT EST OR ("All That Glitters Is Gold")
• Headed by Thomas Silverfish in Men at Arms and Moving Pictures
• A group of thin, wide-eyed, socially inept dreamers who have never let reality get in the way of their ideals. Their Guildhouse constantly needs rebuilding, as it frequently explodes. Thought of by pretty much everyone as a bunch of lunatics, they are nonetheless the Discworld's closest analogue to actual scientists. While the vast majority of alchemists are mindless experimenters who spend too much time around boiling mercury and unusual breeds of fungus, some, such as Cheery Littlebottom, have a solid base in chemistry, and have parlayed their skill into other fields, such as forensics.
• Although they have yet to locate the Elixir of Life or the Philosopher's Stone, they did come close to discovering TNT, and, thanks to outside influence, inadvertently created a film industry in Moving Pictures
• It's said that there are two major types of alchemists, the athletic and the intellectual. A good alchemist of the first sort was someone who could leap over the bench and be on the far side of a safely thick wall in three seconds, and a good alchemist of the second sort was someone who knew exactly when to do this.