View source for Meshugah

The king of the [[golems]], appearing in {{FOC}}. He was made by a group of golems with the assistance of Mr. [[Hopkinson]] and Father [[Tubelcek]], and is the first to have been created in several centuries.  Meshugah is white, with a clay crown molded on to his head.  He also displays many cracks, which widen over the course of the novel.

Unfortunately, the golems were far too ambitious with their creation. They gave him far too many [[chem]]s, all of which were impossible to fulfill. This drove the king completely insane, and was further exacerbated by being baked out of leftover clay in a bread oven, which left him extremely brittle. Prior to the main events of the novel, he was sold to Mr. [[Arthur Carry]], a candle maker, for little more than thirty [[Ankh-Morpork]] dollars, and was given the name Meshugah. 

Meshugah proved to be so productive that Carry gradually managed to put all of his competitors out of business and acquire a complete monopoly over candle manufacturing in the city. It is also presumed that during this time, the [[Dragon King of Arms]] enlisted Carry in a plot to poison [[Vetinari]]. The golem king would serve as the silent accomplice to this crime, and nobody except for Carry or the Dragon King would know how the Patrician was being poisoned. Whether from inherent insanity or because being directed to harm a human pushed its fragile mind over the edge, the king golem used its "holy day" exemptions from work to murder Mr. Hopkinson and Father Tubelcek soon after it crafted the arsenic-laden candles.

Eventually the [[City Watch]] discovered the cause of the poisonings, and confronted the golem king in Carry's factory. Despite its flawed construction, the golem king proved deceptively fast and powerful. Only due to the actions of the golem [[Dorfl]] did the Watch manage to finally subdue the insane golem. 

==Annotations==
Meshugah is probably related to the [[Roundworld]] Yiddish mashugga/meshuggeh, which means "crazy". See [[Book:Feet_of_Clay|here]] for more. 

''Meshugah proved to be so productive that Carry gradually managed to put all of his competitors out of business and acquire a complete monopoly over candle manufacturing in the city.'' - this is a point reiterated by Hubert Turvy in  {{MM}} when advising the Patrician on economics - that using golems for routine production would only succeed in having the opposite effect of driving thousands out of work, with consequent recession and civil unrest.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
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