Rincewind

Rincewind is a failed student at the Unseen University for wizards in Ankh-Morpork, often described by scholars as "the magical equivalent to the number zero", and spends just about all of his time running away from various bands of people who want to kill him for various reasons. The fact that he's still alive and running is explained in that although he was born with a wizard's spirit, he has the body of a long-distance runner.

Rincewind's main ambition is to be completely bored, to have a life totally absent of adventure. Rincewind is also extremely unluckly in this regard as he's had many adventures including those with the tourist Twoflower, who hails from the Counterweight Continent, a continent across the Discworld from the 'hub' continent where Ankh-Morpork is situated. He and Twoflower wandered around for quite a while, and got chased by everything from the personification of Death to a grotesque creature named Bel-Shamharoth, and being thrown off the edge of the Discworld by astronomers who wanted to know the gender of Great A'Tuin, the turtle upon which the disc rides, and designed a space-ship (bronze and shaped like a fish) to do so. They both survived, for rather complicated reasons involving the structure of the universe and the necessity of Rincewind's continued existence in order to save the world.

Rincewind is most frequently seen with his hat with the word WIZZARD emblazoned across it in sequins and his Luggage, which has hundreds of little legs and follows him everywhere. He is widely believed to be an elderly man, but it could be that all his worrying has made him old beyond his years. This is further complicated by comments made by Death about Rincewind's life-timer. Rincewind's life-timer is described as being highly unusual (most likely as a result of his constant mishaps involving magic, the nature of reality, and shiftings into alternate dimensions), and represents something of a curiosity to Death who keeps the hour-glass on his desk. As such, even Death Himself is unaware of how old Rincewind is supposed to be, or if he will ever even die.

Over the course of his adventures, he has turned his cowardice into a fully fledged philosophy of life. He believes that, when running, "to" is never important, what matters is "from". When it was pointed out that running just lands him in more trouble his response was "Yes, but you can run away from that, too." He's almost started describing running away as a religion; it might not give you eternal life, exactly, but it certainly gives you more life. Very few of his various travelling companions (who, at various times, include watchmen, barbarians, a tourist, a teenage demonologist and a kangaroo) take him seriously. This is partially because Rincewind has an unusually pessimistic outlook on life, and partially because bad things seem to single him out for misfortune. Many of them have noticed, however, that Rincewind manages to survive everything that happens to him, and suspect there's a deeper purpose behind this, although he himself insists it's just a coincidence.

Rincewind apparently believes in karma, however. From his point of view, he has pre-emptive karma--if it even looks like something good will happen to him in the future, his karma will insure that something bad happens immediately, and continues happening so the good things never come around.