Death of the Discworld

PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: Chess
OOC Journal: winter_snap
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: N/A
Email + IM: twinkly.memos@gmail.com ; sylphaen (plurk)
Characters Played at Ataraxion: None

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Death of the Discworld
Canon: Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: After Soul Music but before Hogfather
Number: 080


Setting:

Gaze upon the Great A'Tuin gliding amongst the infinite vastness of space. Shell pocked by a great many meteor. The slow deaths of stars reflected in its forward cast gaze. Upon its back tower four great elephants, burdened since birth with the task of supporting the land of the Disc: the Discworld.

The Discworld is an ordinary world of the variety fantasae. It is home to your regular fare of magic, mages, heroes, and animals fantastic but also to your everyday mailman, thief and hawker on the street. All things considered however, the Disc's denizens perceive themselves and their situation as pretty bloody normal.

The Discworld is a verse where all your regular run-of-the-mill fantasy fare is treated with a healthy dose of realism. Your pet dragon on your shoulder is not as eyebrow raising as the tiger on your porch (but it may set your hair on fire with one misplaced hiccup). Your heroes are not so much glorified as can be found in the papers under the classified ad, crime, and obituary sections. Your mages are concentrated in the finest universities where they spend their valuable time practicing the non-practice of magic. And magic... while intrinsically pervasive and known for "keeping things together", is not a commodity one can simply tap into without a couple of decades of hitting the books and a healthy fear of the dungeon dimensions and its denizens.

Plot on the Discworld can happen to anyone and anything with the spotlight rarely centering on only one character. However, there are a series of recurring characters that are subject to different stories on the Disc. Several books follow the life of a peace loving failure of a wizard trying his best not to be the savior of the world. Another set follow the trials and tribulations of the Disc's most multi-cultural and multi-racial police force in their multi-hazardous city, Ankh-Morpork. Yet another set ditches fancifulness and fairytales for good old sensibility in the form of the tales of the Witches of Lancre. But of course, there are also stories revolving around everyday people just trying to get some decent work done.

The set that you're invited to follow is that of a funny olde fellow called Death.

Links:

Discworld:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld
- http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Discworld_(world)
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Discworld?from=Main.Discworld


History:

In the beginning, there was only The Duty.

The Death of the Discworld came into existence as soon as the very first living thing on the Disc was conscious of the idea of the cessation of life. As an anthropomorphic entity, It (not yet a he) did its duty by being there at the very end of a life to sever the soul from its mortal shell and usher it into the afterlife. It has been there for everything: from the smallest of plants to the grandest of animals up to the risen ape. It is only in the recent memory of the Great A'Tuin that, thanks to the not-so-vivid imagination of humans, Death has settled into his final shape: a 7ft tall skeleton in a dark robe with a scythe.

Since then, Death has delegated most of The Duty to lesser Deaths (imagined in the skeletal shape of whatever life form it would eventually collect) while showing up for wizards, witches, royalty and other persons of note. However, in order to keep the universe in balance, Death also handles those deaths which result from the calculation of 'nodes' which makes him also show up for less significant and perfectly normal deaths which are still fundamental for the universe to not come crashing down on people's heads.

However, with Death's current appearance settled and his Duty defined also came the development of a personality. Hanging around and being imagined by the members of the human race has made some traits of humanity rub off on Death over the centuries. No longer supposed to attend to each and every individual death, Death has had a lot of free time on his hands (being able to step out of time aside) and has used it to observe humans. Death has grown curious about those who he has to take the life of and regularly tries to engage in a little small talk before the souls fade away into oblivion.

The fruits of his labor have garnered him a face-value understanding of how humans tick as well as an assumed list of responses that humans have to certain situations. Thus, Death has fashioned himself his very own domain outside of time and space complete with a replica of faraway mountains and countryside, a garden, a hedge maze, a fishpond and a house, all in jolly shades and hues of the colour black. Decorated with a tasteless skull and bone motif, his house serves as his resting place for whenever he is free from The Duty but also contains a room with the entire Disc's life-timers, a library full of self-writing biographies, and a grandfather clock which slices precise seconds of time with every swing of its pendulum. Also, due to a magical backfire, Death has acquired his very own manservant as well in the form of Albert, Lord of the Frying Pan and Ex-Founder of the Disc's Unseen University.

The story of Death the anthropomorphic personality really begins when one day he decides that he thinks he ought to feel pity for a girl who just lost her parents at sea. Thus, he takes a 16 year old Ysabel to his domain to "take care" of her, stopping her growth and interaction with the rest of the human race for a good 35 years. A conscious but selfish choice on his part, Death had tried his best to raise her as his own daughter even while he himself may not have understood what being a father meant or what a daughter needs. What was obvious however was that he did enjoy the company and genuinely liked having his human companions around to talk to and be the subject of his endless queries about the mundane.

After a couple of decades, Death decides to do another social experiment and tries the human custom of apprenticeship. This brings a boy named Mort into his household, the second human to come live with him in under half a century. He teaches his young but keen apprentice about The Duty and assigns him the execution of the practical side of the job. In turn, Mort teaches Death about "taking a day off" and why a human doing Death's job may not be a good idea after all.

On one of Mort's first jobs, instead of fulfilling his duty to the letter and idly standing by while a princess gets assassinated, he decides to play the morally upright young man card and kills the assassin instead; saving the princess, altering reality, and inadvertently giving the finger to fate. Feeling guilty about the act as well as discovering that everything ends happily ever after even if the princess died however, Mort tries to cover up his mistake while trying to find a way for the princess to escape her postponed but inevitable death.

While all of this is happening however, Death takes a holiday. With Mort temporarily taking over The Duty and accidentally incepting human emotions and concepts into Death's psyche, it is Death's turn to take a day off, which he does by sampling day to day human experiences such as eating street food, going fishing, attending a party, gambling and even finding another job. The problem arises however when due to continued exposure to humanity and The Duty respectively, Death and Mort begin to exchange characteristics. Death becomes more human and susceptible to emotions while Mort's emotions die and begins to talk like this.

Everything eventually comes to a head when Death is finally able to confront Mort about what he has done and the latter challenges the former to a duel to stay alive. Death wins the duel but decides to spare Mort's life because of the possibility that maybe... there was someone who truly understood his yearning for something more in his existence. Time resets to the point that the princess is not killed but lives to reign in her kingdom instead and Mort is made an honorary Duke of Sto Helit. Mort also takes Ysabel for his wife, finally taking her away from Death's household and leaving Death all by his lonesome with Albert.

This is Death's first brush with feeling what it is like to be human, what it is like to be alive. A feeling he would learn to relish but also hate as he too joins the ranks of those who yearn for more in life (or un-life).

The anomaly of Death's emerging personality does not go unnoticed. Beyond the reach of space-time in the realm of Azrael the "Ultimate Reality" and the Death of Universes exist the Auditors of Reality, entities motivated by the pursuit of ultimate order in the universe while hating all that is unpredictable and alive and therefore messy. These Auditors, fearing the emergence of a personality in Death and therefore the end of his impartiality and efficiency, absolved him of his duties as Death and gave him his own life-timer with his own time to spend before he dies at the hands of the new Death. This forces Death into his second long holiday from The Duty. Thus, Death adopts the persona of "Bill Door" and decides to work in a farm under Miss Renata Flitworth.

During his time as "Bill Door" and while waiting for a new Death of humans to form, Death gets to interact more with the human race while learning what it means to be a part of it. He learns about sleeping and camaraderie, but also about the value of life and even the fear of death. But ultimately, he learns that it is important for a Death to care about the people it takes away, for without care, there is no meaning, there is no point.

It is with this in mind that Death confronts the new Death, a death without personality or care for who it harvests but drama, and destroys it, claiming his rightful place as the principal Death of the Discworld once again.

But Death's story continues as he eventually has to collect the souls of Mort and Ysabel who die in a carriage accident. As he has to take away two from his very small and exclusive family, he of course offers them both the opportunity to come and live with him once again in his domain so that they do not have to die just yet. However, the both of them turn his offer down knowing full well that they would not have any real semblance of life in Death's world and choose instead to move on to the next world. This devastates him and for the first time, Death experiences the feeling of grief made more raw and poignant by the fact that he cannot actually forget anything; from the happiest of memories to the lowest of lows.

Thus, Death takes a third break from The Duty, leaving Mort and Ysabel's daughter Susan, his granddaughter, to take up his mantle and collect souls in his absence. Like father, like daughter, Susan at first resolves to prevent a death that she sees as wrong only to be preempted by magic which extends her target's lifespan artificially. This burdens Susan with three tasks: 1) The Duty, 2) investigate the artificial life extension, and 3) find out what happened to her grandfather.

Throughout the course of Death's holiday, he tries to find ways to make him forget about everything: seeking out the counsel of the Disc's wisest man, finding the Disc's equivalent of the River Lethe, joining the Klatchian Foreign Legion, and getting completely shitfaced at the Mended Drum. But despite everything, there is nothing that can make him forget for long. In the end, Death accepts the fact that he is who he is and that The Duty calls no matter how much he may have grown to not like it. And thus, he fixes the anomaly on the Disc yet again and brings Susan back to her old life.

Life always leaves its mark: from the first taste due to Mort, to the echoes of humanity from Bill Door, to his own choice of going on leave to reconcile himself with what he is and what he has to do. What remains are two constants to be reconciled for Death: The Duty and his pursuit of something close to life.


Personality:

The Death of the Discworld has come a long way from his inception as a mere personified idea. For the majority of his existence, Death had nothing but The Duty to fulfill (that is, collecting the right amount of souls at the right time) and was content with it. Death was not aware of something more and did not with for anything more than a job done quickly and efficiently. All that changed however when he started to develop a certain degree of curiosity and fascination over the subjects of his Duty.

Gradually, by associating himself with humans and life, traits and characteristics of humanity rubbed off on Death in ways even he could not comprehend. Death was supposed to be an impartial and unfeeling entity but the development of curiosity was the first step in setting him on the path to a "semblance" of humanity and life. And thus began Death's hobby of human observation and replication.

At first, Death took the role of the passive observer. Preferring to come early than too late, Death watched as the last ounces of sand poured through life-timers and lives ended on their own accord. He observed last moments and final farewells, struggles to live and struggles to kill. Wondering all the while why people grieved and put flowers on graves when everything would eventually have to end some day in some way. Death would peer into faces filled with sorrow and wonder why people leaked water from their eyes. He had neither the understanding nor the vocabulary for what was happening in front of him. Emotions were things played on faces and were personally felt but not named.

Death then began to not only take away life but also engage in conversations with the people he freed from their mortal coil. Through morphic resonance, newly freed spirits were able to keep most of their personality and form and could stay for a minute or two before rushing off to whatever afterlife awaited them. Some spirits were cheerful in their leaving, others less so. There were even others who accused Death of killing them or taking them too early. These accusations were often met with shock as Death saw that he was only doing The Duty and not taking lives on a mere whim.

Experiences like these are what has made Death aware that he and his services are not entirely welcome which at some level upsets him because taking lives is what he is supposed to do. It is his job to fulfill The Duty and follow The Rules (not interfere with human affairs). Still, he does his best and is patient and courteous with all the spirits he meets like the exemplary public servant that he is as not all who pass on shun him. However, this may have been the start of when Death starts to develop the idea of loneliness, furthering his drive to want to understand humans.

Thus, Death started to resort to copying humans, trying to reconstruct what he thinks is normal for them in his own parasite dimension which exists outside of the Disc's time and space. However, most of what he has copied comes from incomplete observation and experience leaving his creations flawed or not functioning at all. For example: Mon Repos, Death's house, looks on the outside like a quaint little black cottage with a skull and bone motif. Inside however, the house is huge with the laws of perspective and scale discarded to the side. He also has trouble with recreating texture as beds and towels at first glance look normal but under closer inspection turn out to be as hard as rock. Undeterred by (but more likely unaware of) his failures however, little by little, Death has added more trinkets of the human world into his home, constantly in the pursuit of a normal mirror of life.

The latest item on Death's agenda on his development as a personality is the adoption of a family and lengthy personal interaction with living humans. Death, trying to complete his "human experience" adopts a 16 year old Ysabel into his household with crabby old Alberto Malich as his contracted manservant. Not knowing how to deal with Ysabel however, he eventually (after 35 years) adopts a boy named Mort to keep her company and to try out the idea of apprenticeship: training a companion to accompany him on The Duty. The former intention succeeds, the latter fails miserably. Later on, Mort and Ysabel eventually move out of his domain and marry, adding another addition to his household: his granddaughter Susan. Finally to complete his list of cherished people, Death has had to work for Miss Renata Flitworth for a while, becoming friends with her in the process.

Not even Death is sure of what he wanted to happen with the inclusion of real live humans in his daily existence. One thing is for sure, the humans in his life have pushed his growth as a personality and have made it possible for him to experience even more human emotions. To date, he's experienced happiness, sadness, embarrassment, anger, and intoxication. It is also because of them that he was able to experience attachment, friendship, familial love, and the depths of grief. They are also the reason why he comes to finally develop an understanding of why people fear the reaper and why they cherish and clutch on to life. Death sincerely values the handful of humans that he has really gotten to know and cherish. Thus by extension, this love of a few has become a love of humanity in general.

Nevertheless, these events do not mean that Death fully understands how humans tick due to his experiences. All he ever gets at a time is a mere taste of humanity as he continues to blunder in understanding humans by taking everything literally and logically. The main thing to remember is that he is first and foremost Death despite his recently adopted quirks and this is evident in how he faithfully and unflinchingly continues the day to day execution of his Duty and his adherence to The Rules: the primary reasons for his existence.


ABILITIES, WEAKNESSES AND POWER LIMITATIONS:

The Death of the Discworld has a plethora of abilities which allow him to do The Duty. For the purposes of Death's stay in Ax, most of these are nerfed or completely taken away.

Abilities kept intact:
- Immortality: Death cannot die or appear to himself. This is self-explanatory.

- Breathing optional: Death, having no lungs (or vital organs for that matter) has no need to breathe or sustain other vital functions. Thus, lack of oxygen and fatigue pose no problem to Death. As for speaking, Death's voice drops like lead slabs upon marble in the mind of his listener instead of going through the usual channel of the ears. This is signified by his speech being in all caps.

- The Voice (command): Death's voice has the side effect of forcing people to do his will if he insists enough. It's a good thing he is too much of a good sport to use this ability most of the time and will not tap into this ability unless absolutely needed.

- Release spirits from their bodies: In fulfillment of The Duty, Death does this in order for spirits to move on into the afterlife and keep the universe in balance.

- Able to see and communicate with spirits: Also needed in the fulfillment of The Duty. A little chitchat with quickly departing spirits has become a favorite pastime of his.

- Handy with a scythe: Comes with the job description. Also, he's had a lot of practice.


Abilities with imposed limitations upon entry into Ax:
- Death's memory: Death has such a good memory that, not only can he remember everything that has happened to him in detail, he can even remember the future. For RP purposes and anti-fourth wall breakage, Death only has a photographic memory.

- Copying things: Death cannot create anything new but he can "copy" what he has observed. Thus he can "make" food, objects, and even entire environments. This does not mean however that he understands what he copies or that his copies are close to the real thing. In Ax, all of his copied consumables are for all intents and purposes artificial and have no therapeutic or nutritional value. Likewise, if someone asks him to copy something complicated (like say: plumbing), they would have to carefully explain all the workings and details involved to him for him to copy it to specifications. Death will however not be able to create environments or separate domains anymore. ETA as per mod request: Death also needs the same quantity of matter on hand to form into a copy. This matter must be a solid but does not have to have the same composition as the to-be-copy in question (ex: turning a wooden coffee table into a ceramic toilet). Of course, there is still no assurance that the copy will actually work.

- Locating people: In fulfillment of The Duty, Death has a knack for finding people, especially those who do not want to be found. In Ax however, he will only be able to sense life source(s) nearby but won't be able to tell who or what it is. Minor ETA for clarification: Death can sense life by actually listening to the sound of life pouring through lifetimers. He has pretty good hearing in this regard and the sound is pretty distinct in its own way.


Abilities that have been taken away upon entry into Ax:
- Walk through walls: Being more real than anything else, Death can choose to walk through walls (and other objects) and regularly forgets to use the door or even remember that a contraption such as a door exists.

- Teleportation: Death has the ability to be anywhere at any time due to the fact that people are not particularly picky about where they choose to kick the bucket, provided they even have a chance at choosing at all. This he does in several ways: opening up doorways to the locations he needs to go to, snapping his fingers, or by travelling outside space and/or time with his steed, Binky.

- Step out of time and suspend life: Death can choose to step out of time, enter a separate space where no time flows, and even go back in time. He can also bring other living things outside time to extend their existence.

- Reverse time/Reset reality: Death, to fix blunders in space-time and other irregularities, can use this ability to "set things right". He only ever uses this though when the universe is in danger of falling apart due to the anomaly.

- Invisibility: The human mind is an amazing piece of machinery, regularly making sure that its owner does not wake up in the morning screaming by actively suppressing the perception of certain things about reality. In short, the mind decides what should and should not exist by perceiving the former and denying the latter. Due to this failsafe, the perception of Death (being a 7ft tall skeleton that should by all means not walk and talk) is replaced by a lot of made up fuzz (read: whatever else the mind can conjure up that is more easily digestible) which gives him some kind of invisibility, sometimes leading to people forgetting he is even there in the first place.

- Immunity to chance and certain games: Death more often than not wins in gambling having a thorough understanding of the workings of chance. In fact, Death often has to exert effort to not win every time and the playing field only levels when he does not know the rules of the game. Whatever his insane luck is, things will not be as easy in Ax as they were on the Disc.


Weaknesses:
- All around, Death's greatest weaknesses remain his curiosity and inability to completely understand humans and how they feel. Their unpredictability and tenancy to live on with a smile in the face of logic and a universe with a bajillion things out to get them is what makes them both unfathomable and fascinating to him. The lack of understanding makes for an opportunity for people to reach out to him but at the same time gives people an upper hand in certain areas (mostly day to day living). His gradual adoption of human emotions and habits also put Death off guard as he does not really know what to do with them. All in all, in the affairs of the living, even with centuries to study the human race, Death still pretty much feels like a fish out of water when among people.

- The Duty and The Rules: Death is not allowed to take any life that has not run its full course nor is he supposed to interfere in human affairs. This means he is not allowed to kill or interfere when someone is getting killed. Thus if someone is dying in front of him, he will keep glancing at their life-timer while patiently waiting for him or her to die and so that he can do his job.

- May be easily befuddled by wit, play on words and metaphors: Death takes things very literal indeed. He may get confused and pause when encountering something he does not understand.

- Not invulnerable: Like any reasonable being, he can get blown up, his bones cut and broken, and get hurt (physically and mentally). Death just can't "die".

- Cats: He loves dem cats.


Inventory: Scythe, sword, small tool kit of different sized scythes, dark cloak and the Death of Rats
Appearance: A 7ft tall male skeleton in a jump suit and cloak with bones cleaned of flesh and bleached white with a slight yellow-of-age finish. His eyes, rather than being mere vacant sockets, are filled twin blue stars that seem to be looking out from the depths of infinite space. Other than that, he is nothing remarkable.
Age: As old as the concept of becoming a non-living thing AKA pretty damn old.


SAMPLES

Log Sample:

The doors of the tube opened with a hiss, spilling an assemblage of bones onto the floor. They clattered on the pristine white tiles of the medical bay. Spreading. Echoing. Punctuating the silence and emptiness of the room.

For a minute, two minutes... They rested unmoving on the ground.

Then, they stirred.

Faint but manyfold, creating a sound not unlike shifting sand, each bone vibrated in place. Without so much as a glow of magic, the smallest bones started tumbling towards slightly larger ones, seeking old connections and niches. On their own, the bones gradually moved towards the center, connecting, building, and rising up and constructing; right up until a skeletal figure stood up tall, unclothed and unfleshed in the center of the bay.

Death straightened up, looked around and clutched his head. Reassembly was never a pleasant experience.

When the pain subsided, Death's eyes brightened again to take in his whereabouts. Sterile, cold, and void of life, the room resembled a tidied up futuristic version of an Igor's lab. Death did not recognize the place nor had he any recollection of ever leaving his study to go somewhere. Odd, the only time Death ever forgot anything was when he was...

Death looked himself over and summoned his robe. He rifled through its non-existent pockets in search of what he feared was another ruse of the Auditors to get rid of him once again. His hands eventually coming up with nothing.

No golden life-timer. Death was not mortal again.

Death almost sagged in relief when something else caught his eye. In his search, his left sleeve rode up his arm, exposing black markings in constant flux on his forearm. With no flesh to attach themselves to but the idea of a human body, the lines eventually stopped moving and slowly etched themselves right into his arm bones, forming the numbers: 080.

Death stared.

Death tentatively picked on the bone, tracing the markings with his finger. He rubbed, it did not go away. He scratched, nothing.

Death knew the Auditors were crafty but none of what was happening made sense. And the Auditors valued sense, and logic, and order... If this was not the work of the Auditors, then who?

Death snapped his fingers.

He snapped them again.

And again.

Death's eyes brighten in shock, staring at his fingers as they snapped away.

No change of room. No stoppage of time. No Binky.

What was going on?

To the side was an open door. Death ran.


Comms Sample:

[The first thing that breaks through the communications mainframe is static. Static and scratching and the sound of plastic on plastic. Teeth on plastic.]

[There is no video at first. Or at least, what seems to be no video. There are three thin uneven lines stretched across a black background, moving back and forth while the noise continues. Revealing more white as the black gets dragged off the screen more often than once.]

[There is a paw on the camera.]

Squeek!

[The scratching sound and blackout stop abruptly and light fills the screen. A white ceiling comes into view just before the camera is blocked by what seems like a rat skull in a hood.]

Squeek! [The rat skull exclaims, looking up and at a figure off screen.]

There are? Are you sure?

[The words drop in out of nowhere. The rat skull leaves the screen and the camera gets lifted up towards the ceiling only to be pointed at a worried grin. A grin belonging to a much bigger skull: a human skull with two blue stars for eyes.]

[The camera gets pulled back to make it easier for it to catch Tranquility's first ever live feed of Death.]

Hello.

[Death pauses a while, letting each lead filled letter fall into place. Not quite sure how this demon device works.]

Can anyone tell me where I am?