A wizard. At least, generally referred to as a wizard.

He is tall, thin and scrawny, with a raggedy beard that looks like the kind of beard worn by people who aren't cut out by Nature to be beard-wearers. He is a non-smoker (unusual in a wizard). He is a survivor. There are scars all over him. Mostly on his back.

He traditionally wears a dark red, hooded, frayed plush robe on which a few mystic sigils are embroidered in tarnished sequins. The robe has been made darker by constant wear and irregular washings. Under his robe he wears britches and sandals. Around his neck is a chain bearing the bronze octagon which marks him as an alumnus of Unseen University (quite wrongly, it must be pointed out, since he has never passed any kind of magical exam. Indeed, he never scored more than 2% in his exams, and that was for spelling his name almost right). On his head is a battered pointy hat with a floppy brim, which has the word 'WIZZARD' embroidered on it in big, silver letters by someone whose needlework is even worse than their spelling. There's a star on top. It has lost most of its seqins.

He was born under the sign of the Small Boring Group of Faint Stars - a sign assciated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plaster images of small religious significance and people allergic to pewter. His mother ran away before he was born, and the young Rincewind grew up in Morpork.

He does have an inate gift for languages, which enables him to shout 'Don't kill me!' and be understood in a hundred different countries. He is also good at practical geography, which means that he always knows exactly where it is he is running away from. He has a razor-sharp instinct for survival equalled only by an uncanny ability to end up in situations where every bit of it is required.

Rincewind's room number as a student at UU was 7a (wizards avoid the number eight). Later, during his spell as deputy Librarian (an ape's Number Two, as the Dean nastily remarked), he lived in a room close to the Library used mainly to store old furniture. It contained a large wardrobe (on top of which the Luggage hibernated) and a banana crate which he used as a dressing table. It also housed a wicker chair with no bottom and three legs and a mattress so full of life that it occasionally moved sluggishly around the floor bumping into things. The rest of the room was a litter of objects dragged from the street - old crates, bits of planking, sacks, etc.

There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after all there years, Rincewind has failed to achieve level one. It was in fact the opinion of some of his tutors that he was incapable of achieving level zero, which is what most normal people are born at. It has been contended that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will go up a fraction.

'To call his understanding of magical theory "abysmal" is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice,' said one of his tutors. He is also not very good at precognition: he can scarcely see into the present.

Some of this is unfair. For a bet, the young Rincewind dared to open the pages of the last remaining copy of the Creator's own grimoire, the Octavo. A spell leapt out of the page and instantly burrowed deep into his mind, whence even the combined talents of the Faculty of Medicine were unable to coax it. No one knew which spell it was, exept that it was one of the Eight Great Spells that were intricately interwoven with the very fabric of time and space itself. Since then, no other spell dared stay in the same head. For that prank, he was expelled from UU.

Subsequently he has been an unwilling travel guide, has been through Hell, has visited most of the countries of the Disc, has travelled extensively in time as well as space, has been present at the creation of the Discworld where he caused the origin of life by dropping an egg-and-cress sandwich into the sea, has defeated the greatest magic-user on the Disc while armed with nothing more than a half-brick in a sock,[1] and is believed to have been one of only nine people to have visited the country of Death while mortal. His maost recent unwilling adventure was on the Counterweight Continent where, while intending to do something else entirely, he made a major contribution to the overthrow of the old and corrupt political system.

His current whereabouts are in doubt, but owing to some error on the part of the wizards who tried to teleport him back to UU, they are believed to have a certain boomerangy, didgeridooy quality to them.