Susan Sto Helit

Susan Sto Helit is the daughter of Mort and Ysabell. Ysabell was the adopted daughter of Death and Mort was, briefly, Death's apprentice. They left Death's domain and become Duke and Duchess of Sto Helit. Susan is their only child.

Despite her lack of a genetic link with Death, she has inherited certain of his abilities: she can walk through walls, live outside time and be a little bit immortal.

Her most obvious character trait is being sensible, an attribute carefully cultivated by her parents as a counterbalance to the influence of her grandfather. Initially, this manifested itself as a refusal to admit the supernatural side of the world even existed. Latterly, however, she accepted she is part of the same world as the Hogfather and the Tooth fairy. She just wishes she wasn't. She can be relied upon to keep her head in a crisis, something she tends to view as a character flaw.

Susan was a sixteen year old pupil at the "Quirm College for Young Ladies" when her parents died in a coach crash. After graduating -- and despite being technically the current Duchess of Sto Helit -- she began a teaching career, first as a governess and then as a school teacher. She proved to be quite good at handling small children, a skill that is attributed to her sensible and practical nature.

This could also be due to her approach to children's problems. When a child complains about a monster in the cupboard or under the bed, most parents would go to great lengths to carefully explain to the child that there is no monster. Susan, on the other hand, simply hands the child a suitable weapon, such as an axe or broadsword, with which to assault the monster, or goes and does it herself. Monsters from a wide area have come to dread the fireplace poker she uses for this task, although as word of Susan has quickly spread among the city's resident monsters, she has only needed to deal with newcomers of late.

As a schoolteacher she is sufficiently successful to have parents clamouring to have their child included in her class. Her approach to history and geography, often subjects which children find rather dull, has particularly captured her class's attention. The occasional need to remove from their children's clothing dried-in bloodstains or ground-in swamp mud is generally seen by parents as more than compensated for by the broad education being received - a child's description of one of the classic battles from Ankh-Morpork's long history, for example, might be sufficiently vivid and detailed to make the parent think that the description could not have been improved upon if the child had actually seen the battle at first hand.