Reaper Man characters

Also known as Bill Door

Appears from the start

The anthropomorphic personification of death, forced into retirement by the Auditors of Reality when they decide that, having acquired a personality, he has become an individual, which the rules forbid. Given a life-timer counting down his own remaining days, he is made mortal and must, for the first time, face an ending of his own. He later takes the name Bill Door and looks for a way to fill the time he has been given.

Also known as Renata Flitworth

First appears in chapter 3

Renata Flitworth, an elderly, sharp-tongued spinster who farms alone in a country district and takes on a mysterious tall stranger, Bill Door, as a hired hand. Long ago she lost the man she was to marry, and she carries that grief privately. She comes to value her strange, courteous worker without knowing what he really is.

First appears in chapter 2

The oldest wizard at Unseen University, ancient and nearly worn out, who has been looking forward to a comfortable death and reincarnation. When his time comes, however, there is no Death to collect him, so he does not move on; instead he rises again as a walking dead man, more vigorous and clear-headed than he has been in years, and must work out how to exist as one of the undead.

First appears in chapter 2

The Archchancellor of Unseen University, a large, loud, forthright wizard with a fondness for the outdoors and little patience for subtlety. He leads the University's baffled response as the strange effects of surplus life-force spread through the city.

First appears in chapter 4

A zombie and tireless campaigner for the rights of the undead, who runs a support group, the Fresh Start Club, for the city's newly risen dead. He welcomes Windle Poons and rallies his fellow undead when the crisis begins to threaten them.

Appears from the start

Faceless powers who oversee the orderly running of the universe and detest life for its messiness and unpredictability. Regarding the personification of death's newfound individuality as a fault to be corrected, they strip him of his office and set in motion a replacement.

First appears in chapter 9

The replacement created to take over the collecting of human souls after the old Death is retired. Unlike his predecessor it feels no sympathy for the living, and it comes crowned, embodying death as a cold ruler rather than a servant, a harvester without mercy.

First appears in chapter 5

A bogeyman who becomes attached to Windle Poons and the Fresh Start Club, far more comfortable behind a door than out in the open. Anxious and unusual among the undead, he lends his peculiar talents to the group's efforts.