Making Money

The novel is set in Ankh-Morpork, a city-state on the Discworld.

Moist von Lipwig, a reformed con artist who was secretly reprieved from hanging by the city's ruler Lord Vetinari and put to work rebuilding the Post Office, has grown bored with his success. He climbs the Post Office drainpipe at night for the thrill of it and still carries lock picks. Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, summons Moist and offers him a new challenge: running the Royal Bank and its attached Royal Mint. Moist declines, but Vetinari exploits his restlessness by parking a coach outside the Post Office all day until Moist voluntarily climbs in.

At the bank, Moist meets Mavolio Bent, the gaunt, humorless chief cashier who is obsessively devoted to numbers and the gold standard. The gold vault holds about 10 tons. He tours the Royal Mint, where hereditary craftsmen produce coins so inefficiently that each penny costs more to make than it is worth. Moist then meets Mrs. Topsy Lavish, the elderly chairman, who sits behind loaded crossbows and immediately identifies him as a crook. Topsy explains the bank's problems: bad debts, a dwindling customer base, and the constant scheming of the Lavish family, a feuding old-money dynasty. She controls the bank by owning 50 percent of shares plus the one share held by Mr. Fusspot, her small, ugly dog, which was left its share by her late husband Sir Joshua.

In the bank's undercroft, a former temple, Moist meets Hubert Turvy, Topsy's eccentric nephew, and Hubert's assistant Igor. Hubert has built the Glooper, an elaborate hydraulic model of glass tubes and colored water that simulates the city's economy and demonstrates how a collapse in public confidence causes cascading financial failure.

Moist formally declines the job, but that night Topsy dies at her desk. Her will, delivered by the zombie lawyer Mr. Slant, leaves Mr. Fusspot and an additional 50 percent of shares to Moist, making the dog chairman and Moist his handler. If the dog dies of unnatural causes, the shares revert to the Lavish family, and a $100,000 contract with the Assassins' Guild ensures Moist is killed. Cosmo Lavish, Topsy's calculating stepson, offers to buy the dog. Moist refuses.

Moist moves into the bank and begins reforms: cleaning the lobby, offering interest on small deposits, and making loans based on character rather than conventional collateral. He creates experimental paper dollar bills and tests them among shopkeepers, who accept the concept but insist gold must still exist somewhere to back the money. He learns that the ideal engraver for high-quality banknotes is Owlswick Jenkins, a condemned stamp forger.

Moist breaks Jenkins out of prison by forging transfer papers and stealing a Watch uniform. He brings Jenkins to the undercroft, where Igor gives him a new identity. Moist persuades Jenkins with the same offer Vetinari once made him: a new life in exchange for service. Igor uses electrical equipment to transfer Jenkins's anxieties into a turnip, but the procedure strips away his artistic genius. When Igor reverses the treatment, Jenkins produces a stunning dollar-bill design overnight.

Meanwhile, Cosmo Lavish is secretly obsessed not merely with replacing Lord Vetinari but with becoming him. Through his terrified secretary Heretofore, he has acquired what he believes is Vetinari's signet ring. The ring is made of stygium, a rare metal that absorbs light and becomes dangerously hot in sunlight. It is too small, and Cosmo's finger begins to rot, though he interprets the agony as transformation. Separately, a former criminal associate named Cribbins recognizes Moist from his con-artist days and begins a slow blackmail campaign that eventually connects Cribbins with Cosmo.

Moist's fiancée Adora Belle Dearheart returns with alarming news. She is an agent of the Golem Trust, an organization dedicated to freeing golems, which are clay servants animated by holy words. Her team detected ancient golems singing underground and found four intact specimens from Um, the civilization that invented golems 60,000 years ago. The golems may be made of gold, and removing them violates Adora Belle's lease with the dwarf king. She has secretly transported them underwater toward Ankh-Morpork. At Unseen University, the city's school of magic, the ghost of Professor Flead, an expert on the ancient Umnian language, agrees to translate the golems' song.

Mr. Bent makes a calculation error for the first time in his career. The revelation shatters his identity; he screams and flees the counting house, paralyzing the bank. Moist deduces that Bent has locked himself in the gold vault. He has Gladys, a golem at the Post Office, smash through the ceiling to rescue Bent. When the vault opens, the gold is revealed to be lead ingots coated in a thin layer of gold. The actual gold was stolen or sold years ago, presumably by Sir Joshua Lavish.

While Cosmo presents an emergency audit confirming the vault is empty, the city shakes. Four thousand massive Umnian golems march out of the sea and through the streets, accompanied by golem horses. They spread around the city walls in a defensive ring, and the city appears to possess an unstoppable army, creating an international crisis. At an emergency council in the palace, Hubert warns that using the golems as workers would cause mass unemployment.

Moist rides a golem horse to the outskirts and orders the golems to bury themselves. He proposes basing the currency on the buried golems rather than gold, calling this the "golem standard." His ability to command them rests on a simple insight: The golems were built to obey Umnian priests, and Moist's golden suit makes him look like one. Vetinari has Moist arrested on the Lavish family's embezzlement charges and schedules a hearing.

At the hearing, Moist shocks the room by openly confessing his criminal past. Vetinari confirms the arrangement, explaining that Moist survived his hanging and was put to work as an alternative to execution. Mr. Bent then bursts in, transformed into a clown in full makeup, hurling custard pies with devastating accuracy. Miss Drapes, a senior clerk who loves Bent, arrives with secret ledgers from Bent's wardrobe proving that Sir Joshua sold the gold and forced Bent to hide the discrepancy. Pucci Lavish, Cosmo's sister, loudly confirms the family's guilt, incriminating the Lavishes before the assembled press. Cosmo, delirious from the poisoned ring, draws a fake sword on Moist. Moist calmly removes Cosmo's glove, revealing a gangrenous finger, and leads Cosmo into sunlight, where the burning ring is destroyed, saving his life.

Vetinari negotiates a settlement: The Golem Trust receives custody of the golems, 400 are assigned to improve the clacks communication system, and the golems back the new currency. Someone, implied to be Vetinari, leaks the command secret to every major city, neutralizing the golems as a military threat. Cribbins ambushes Moist with a knife but is incapacitated when his decrepit false teeth spontaneously explode. The bank reopens with Mr. Bent, now wearing a small red clown nose, announcing his engagement to Miss Drapes. Moist launches the paper currency to enormous public enthusiasm.

In the undercroft, Hubert discovers the Glooper can alter reality and instructs Igor to restore 10 tons of gold to the vault, an unwelcome complication to Moist's gold-free vision. Vetinari quietly contemplates that when Moist grows restless again, the city's aging taxmaster will need replacing. In an epilogue, Cosmo wakes in a hospital ward full of men who all believe they are Lord Vetinari. He wins the ward's eyebrow-raising competition, happier than he has ever been.