Exsilium App

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» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Lily R
Current AGE: 21
Personal JOURNAL: andromedafirethought
IM & SERVICE: LysandraBerenice (AIM)
Player PLURK: LilyRex
Current CHARACTERS: N/A

» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Susan Sto Helit
Canon & MEDIUM: Discworld Book Series (Soul Music / Hogfather). There is also a movie length TV adaptation which is used for iconing purposes.
Canon PULL-POINT: Before entering the Tooth Fairies Castle
Character AGE: 19/20
Character ABILITIES:

Like her appearance, there are certain things that Susan has inherited from her grandfather to the point she is defined as ‘mostly human’. She is able to do Death’s job in the event he is not able to / has buggered off again, which has a varied skill set but a lot of it comes by instinct. Some of her powers are subject to other people’s belief and ability, such as the sort of invisibility, and in certain circumstances she has been stripped of them but it’s uncommon. They also aren't so much things she uses in a fight, as just who and what she is.

• She can exist ‘outside’ of time. This is largely undefined, but she can freeze time for periods at the click of the fingers, and recommence it in the same moment after doing whatever it is she needs to, like Death does for his work, so he can be at multiple ‘deaths’ at similar times. Existing and interacting within the world without exactly being in the same time frame as everyone else.
• Walk through walls / solid objects at will, to the point she’s forgotten how doorknobs work.
• Her mind is more like her grandfather’s than a normal humans, and she shares part of it with him. This is in several ways:
• Her memory is perfect, she does not forget anything, in that she remembers tomorrow. However the human part of her cannot process this, so it suppress a large amount of it to stop her going insane, enough that she finds the ‘forethought’ to be mostly useless because of how fractured it is.
• Along with this memory is a ability to perceive outside of normal human’s ability. This is the more standard things that usually only children, wizards and other supernatural beings can see, like monsters under the bed / Toothfairies / the Hogfather, so on so forth. This includes the ability to perceive infinity and vastness of her Grandfather’s house like normal humans can’t, usually they just don’t see it and make it do what they like instead of dealing with the reality of it.
• She can tell when something is human or not, on top of this she has a hyper-awareness of everything. 'Every star in the sky, every blade of grass'. This also links into her ability to be able to find everyone at any place, as Death can for his work.
• When she doesn’t want to be seen, she can will herself to not be. Not through magic, just wills herself to not be seen, and unless a person is really concentrating on her, she will seem to fade in and out of their vision when she wants to go unnoticed.
• She’s adept at wielding long weapons, such as hockey sticks, fire pokers and when the occasion calls for it, her Grandfather’s sword/scythe.
• She can understand what is meant rather than what is said, as in with the Death of Rats, who only ever says SQUEAK, but holds it like normal conversation, which once Susan begins to embrace her powers, she’s able to hold conversation with him and understand him fully.
• She’s described as being ‘a little bit immortal’. The specifics of this are here and there, but she doesn’t necessarily need to sleep, and sometimes forgets how to, and she doesn’t always need to eat as often as regular people, if at all.
• She can shape and create things out of thin air. This especially applies to her clothes, which she will just change the reality there of to suit her needs, without ever physically taking them on and off. It also works in summoning things like her Grandfather's sword.
• Her strength is above average, but not super human. She is able to lift a grown man over her shoulder and carry him off at certain points.
• … Though it’s more of an personality quirk / appearance thing than an ability she gets what is described as The Look, which is credited to her Grandfather, this is also happens with ”ᴛʜᴇ ᴠᴏɪᴄᴇ” when she becomes annoyed. The voice is like Death’s, and doesn’t seem to be spoken as much as heard, and is said to be something like the sound of nails in a coffin and two slabs of stone ground together. The movie depiction of The Look is this:

Character HISTORY:

".. Where to finish?..."

Death comes to us all, when he came to Susan’s father, Mort, he offered him a job. He took him on as a apprentice, which lead him to meet Death’s adoptive daughter, Ysabell. Long story involving misaimed, confused and not really intended feelings, a general mucking about of time and history and a slap in the face cut short, the two fell in love, and Susan was born.

It was clear that her strange family had a obvious effect on her, from her strange hair, to her strange abilities. Though technically her mother was adopted and her father was just an apprentice, she was the first to be born into the family, and somethings are just... in the bones. Something which her parents sought to stamp out as much as possible, as they wanted Susan to have as normal a life as they could manage. To the point it is said they named her Susan specifically because nothing ever happens to ‘Susans’. This doesn’t work as well as they like, because though Susan definitely wasn’t raised with a romantic bone in her body, declaring it all to be ‘fluff’, her strange abilities begin to surface, especially in her classes at school where the classes she doesn’t want to learn, she simply wills herself not be seen so she could read about what she really wanted to in peace. She holds dead fast that there is no such thing as Tooth Fairies, the Hogfather or the Soul Cake Duck like her parents told her. Growing up to be a very sensible, brilliant young girl, if generally unliked for her arrogance about it.

This however all came to mean very little when Susan’s parents die in a freak carriage accident. For the first time, Death came to experience personal loss and began to question why we do the things we do, I mean really, when you get down to it, what does it all mean? Which probably a very reasonable thing to ask... if it was anyone else but the anthropomorphic personification of Death, who really shouldn’t be asking these things. So unfortunately, Death decides to do what the normal humans do when he suffers a deep personal loss, and go and try and forget about it, taking some leave off work. Which is as horrifying as you think it is when Death leaves his job, and immediately, the universe tries to find someone to fill his place, because a position like his must be filled for humanity continue as it always has.

That person is Susan. Susan in all of her non-believing in all that ‘fluff’ state of mind takes it as well as one can imagine. She refuses it, especially the part where her grandfather is Death. Though parts of her childhood start to come back to her, and eventually she remembers fully who and what she is, and begins to assume the role of Death whilst he is away. This is fine... for a little while, but then fate and the games of Gods coincide, when Susan has to kill Imp Y Celyn. Who is Discworld’s first rising Rock Star, who has been taken over by the Soul of the Music With Rocks In, but who hasn’t become famous enough, and his timer is taken over by the spirit of the music and he lives on when he should of died from a axe to the face. On top of this, Susan finds she has romantic feelings for for Imp, like only teenage girls can have for a pretty haired rock stars.

After this she goes back in time on Death’s horse, Binky, to find Death. She arrives to see the fateful battle between Mort and Death, in which her Grandfather sees her, and ultimately changes the fate of her mother and father, so she could come into being. After which, Death sends them on their way, and calls Susan out. They talk, and Susan begins to understand what it means to be Death, and the inevitability of it all. (Also that he’d much rather be called Grandfather, not Granddad). Something which she doesn’t like, and instead seeks to play judge and jury, and muck about with fate, her arrogance showing itself in spades in how much she thinks it is just because her father was a soppy diplomat, instead of strong like Susan thinks herself to be, and because Death had never technically lived, he doesn't understand how wrong it is to have all this power and not change it. This functions in as much as she takes it on herself to defend Imp, now call Buddy (of the Holly).

… Whose life has literally been given to music (and music is very possessive apparently). He doesn’t play the music, the music plays him and his band. Burns them up, so to speak. The music is like everything else in the Disc, after so long of existing, it had become alive, and it is in everything, even the beginning of time. It has also decided, that Buddy must give his life to music, completely. Live Fast, Die Young. They’re going to die for it, in another freak carriage accident (there are some conventions in tragedy), for the glory of songs never sung, so they continue in people’s hearts and minds. Susan tries to warn Buddy that the music is alive, and is taking over his life, but he refuses to listen, and before she can inform him, she’s summoned by Archchancellor of the Unseen University who after a conversation with Susan previously at the rock concert, has become to realise that there is something strange about the music that has... started to affect his fellow wizards. Meanwhile, Death is still missing, and this is distressing the Death of Rats and Alfred, his loyal servant, because Susan isn’t doing a very good job of it. Death had gone and done everything he could to forget about everything, including joining the Klatchian Foreign Legion, getting extremely drunk, and becoming a beggar.

All these matters come to a finale when Buddy and his band put on their last huge show in Ankh Morpork. The music is determined to have them all die, Susan doesn’t want him too, and Death has finally come back to himself, er, well not that he was even remotely successful in losing himself, but he knows his Duty again, after hearing one of Buddy’s songs about home. Death speeds on a motorcycle built by the Librarian, crashes it spectacularly as Susan manages to just save Buddy and the others from an untimely meeting with the bottom of a cliff. Susan screams for her grandfather to save them. Which he does, by playing the only thing he is capable of playing: the empty chord, the zero, the beginning of everything, thus he is able to reset the universe and change events so that all that Buddy and the other members of the band do not fall to a terrible fate.

After all is done, and the world is once again righted and the timelines reset, Death goes to take Susan back to her boarding school in Quirm for Young Ladies, and they come to a peace with each other. Death understands more about how and why humans do things, and Susan comes to realise that he is the loneliest being in the universe who is just going to stretch on and on, and never truly expects different, because he is the Law. With that in mind, he asks for a kiss for her grandfather, and comprehending all that, she gives him one, even though he never really expects to get one. After all that’s happened, Susan manages to grieve properly for her parents, and generally able to appreciate other human beings for what they are, even if sometimes they’re not that bright or smart, they still deserve to be appreciated for what they are.

"... but it was much earlier even than that when most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood..."

Fast forward a few years, and it’s the night before Hogswatch (Christmas). Susan is now a governess, despite also being Duchess of Sto Helit, to two children of the Gaiter family. But, she’s good at it. Her unique abilities help her deal with children, namely she sees the thing only children can and parents don’t believe in. This is particularly true of Tooth fairies and Bogarts, which instead of insisting to children aren’t real, she tells them they should just get angry instead, and hit them over the head with a fire poker. Except this Hogswatch, all is not well. No, not at all. Because the Auditors of Reality really dislike how human beings just make things up, it messes with their running of the universe. So they have hired an assassin from the assassin’s guild to kill the Hogfather. Which is horrifying as it sounds, because the Hogfather is the soul of human belief, in a manner of thinking. The little lie that children must believe to believe the bigger ones of truth, justice and mercy as they grow older.

The assassin’s send Mr Jonathan Teatime (pronounced Te-ah-tim-eh), who understands that to kill the personification of something, you’ve got to kill where the belief stems from. To do this, he goes to the Tooth Fairies castle, to do a old kind of magic. He collects all the teeth and casts a spell on them to control them, and so control them into not believing any longer. The only way to combat this is to generate belief in the Hogfather, a task which Death takes on himself by impersonating the Hogfather and going around to all the houses and doing his job, learning of the ins and outs of human belief while he is doing it. It is while he is doing this, that he runs into Susan again, who notices something is off.

She doesn’t particularly appreciate her Grandfather coming down the Gaiter household chimney in a false beard and cushion shoved up his red suit. But he explains in very vague terms what is happening, though this is mostly in an effort to make Susan curious enough to go looking for herself, as he knows she will because he knows how headstrong she is. He has realised what is happening in the Tooth Fairies castle, the one place he has no power, as children have no concept of Death. As predicted, she has to go and investigate for herself, and goes to her Grandfather’s house first, only to find the shattered glass timer of the Hogfather, as well as does some reading where she learns that the very oldest stories have nasty beginning that have to do with some act of cruelty. In this case, the Hogfather used to be able blood sacrifice to make the sun come up.

After taking her grandfather’s sword with her, she heads for the Castle of Bones where the Hogfather lives to see what is happening, and find out what Death is up to. Where she finds Billious, the “Oh God” of Hangovers, who has been created because there is so much spare belief now that the belief in the Hogfather is fading. Also because of this fading belief, the Castle of Bones is destroying itself, which she saves herself and Billious from. With no questions answered, she picks him up and takes him with her to visit the head of the Unseen University in the hopes that the wizards there can wake Billious up. When they do manage rouse him, he gives them clues as to what was happening with the Hogfather, and it comes to light through some dead guards that have fallen on the roof of the Unseen University from the Tooth Fairies castle (because they can’t die there, they get killed and go somewhere else).

It is from this point that she is taken from, just before she enters the Tooth Fairies castle herself with Billious, and confronts Teatime.

Character PERSONALITY:

"...but that was just it; she was brilliant in the same way that a diamond is brilliant, all edges and chilliness..."

Both at her best and at her worst, Susan is sensible. Something which sees her through almost everything. Part of this is because in her younger days, her parents told her there was no such thing as fairy tales or anything of that kind, thus she didn’t grow up with any sense of romanticism. At first this manifest in sheer disbelief, but as events unfold and she comes to accept who and what she is, she simply comes to compartmentalise the two worlds, despite existing in both of them, another way in which this sensibility shows itself. Especially after the death of the parents and she learns that some things are inevitable, but there isn’t much you can do to change them. Even if she wishes she could, and that her stranger half would just go away and leave her in peace. She also considers this sensibility to be a curse, as it forces her to face the uncomfortable truths of Discworld reality.

This can and has been interpreted as unfeeling, which is untrue, Susan cares deeply, she’s just slow at times to accept those feelings, or does have a difficulty expressing deeper ones. Such in the case of her parents death, it takes her a great deal of time to grieve over them properly. She’s also described as being incredibly helpful, despite her off putting demeanour and flat out snark, and uses her ability to help those around her, especially in her work as a governess. At her worst however, she is very arrogant, especially growing up, and likes to think her way is the best or only way, which gives her very few friends. This is another aspect in which she inherits from her Grandfather, as she becomes like him at certain times, she does see the sheer triviality of humans, like grains of sand on a beach. Also in that she doesn’t always care what people tell her to do or what the rules are, she will do as she thinks is best, just like Death does frequently. Even if outwardly, she’ll agree with people, she tends to do what she likes, being a very headstrong girl and then woman, at times she will just flat out ignore others wishes to do what she thinks has to be done, even when it’s wrong, though that kind of arrogance is slowly getting less the older she gets. Or at least changes.

Susan’s caring nature is best shown in her work with children, for which she has a deep fondness, even if she does not care for having any herself, she does care other peoples, and this works for more or less everything. She can and will indulge them at will, and does her very best to protect and look after them. She does have a short temper, and she doesn’t like to suffer fools, but in the end she understands why and how we do things, even if she finds it irritating and stupid, she will in the end try to help those around her. Not just understands, but forces herself. In the end, she's afraid of the darkness in her heart and in her bones, so she must continually strive to be one over the other. The darker half of her at times scares her, sometimes confuses her.

She’ll just be doing it very sarcastically the whole way. No one is spared from that, not even her Grandfather.

» EXSILIUM INFORMATION

Chosen WEAPON: Death’s sword, which as well as being able to sever people from their souls, it also has the ability to cut through anything, from bodies to doors, time, shadows and light. It never dulls, even when it has been stripped of its other powers, nor does it ever need to be sharpened. It's blade is clear with a blue edge of light to those that can comprehend it, but otherwise it seems more metal like with a blue edge.

A more comprehensive summary is here.

Chosen SKILLSET: Susan is both capable as a fighter, but she'd also be excellent as a mentor due to her ability to never lose her cool, about anything at all.

Character INVENTORY: Susan's being pulled in with her 'Death clothing' and her sword, as that is all she has on her.

» SAMPLES
First PERSON:

[She’s frowning at the strange device, no she had never seen anything like this on the Disc, but Susan was apt at taking on new skills and learning on the spot. So after some basic poking, she’d worked it out. It worked remarkably like those devices run by imps.

So here she was, frowning at it, like it was the cause of all her frustration. Which as of right now, was as good as anything.] Look, I was told this thing allows me to speak to others over great distances. Convenient, yes, because I’m looking to talk to someone that can give me answers about what exactly I am doing here? [a pause for a moment] And where on the Disc ‘here’ is?

If we're even on the Disc any more. [She was clearly getting fed up with all this nonsense.]

Third PERSON:

All was not right in the world of Susan Sto-Helit. Which there were many worlds, and Susan was aware of more than the average person, this was in particular odd to her. This certainly wasn’t the Tooth Fairies Castle, and the God of Hangovers wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Nor could she see Binky, either, which was even more distressing, because Binky was actually useful, where the God of Hangovers just seem rather terrified of everything.

In fact Susan had no idea where she was, this wasn't useful. Was it some trick of the auditors? This was a damned good and irritating trick when it came down to it. She had expected something kind of diversion from her path, she had been starting to piece it together after all. So she took a step forward carefully, trying to work out her surroundings. No, this wasn't where she wanted to be at all, that meant something happened, because Binky was too smart of a horse for that. Right. New plan, figure out how to get back to where she needed to be to fix the bigger problems.

» ADDITIONAL NOTES
... Nothing, have some gifs!

"Between every rational moment were a billion irrational ones. Somewhere behind the hours there was a place where the Hogfather rode, the tooth fairies climbed their ladders, Jack Frost drew his pictures, the Soul Cake Duck laid her chocolate eggs. In the endless spaces between the clumsy seconds Death moved like a witch dancing through raindrops, never getting wet.”