Mal

Malcolm Dirge is an eccentric gravedigger who cares more about the dead than the living. He funds many historic graves, attends many grave digger conventions (those exist? really?) and insists that one never speak ill of the dead.

Background
When he was High School, Malcolm dated a girl named Jennifer Davis for several months until she died in a car wreck. Struck with grief, he sought out spiritualists in hopes of finding a way to bring her back (afterall, who hasn't heard of men like Constantine and Jonah Hex?) and discovered a ritual that would allow him to summon a Reaper. It required that someone be brought to the brink of death, and young Malcolm was not willing to do this to another, so he pushed himself to the edge of starvation. When the Reaper came to him, a beautiful woman if her appearance could be trusted, he attempted to force her to bring Jenn back to him. When she said that she could not, he killed the Reaper in a fit of rage.

Over the years, he discovered that through killing the Reaper, he gained her ability to detect and communicate with the deceased. Eventually, this grew into the more prominant forms of Necromancy that he practices. For a while, he fought the Undead, even facing against a terrifying Vampire that puts most bed time story vampires to shame. It was a costly battle, and he wasn't able to defeat the bloodsucker, but he subdued it for the time. It is currently buried under the headstone of Lorelei Sayer. Since then, he's just worked as a grave digger.

Of course, section one is how Malcolm remembers it. He is really an experiment and curiosity for Death, the REAL Death. Derath of the Endless. The "Reaper" he killed was a servant to a false Death God, "The Grim", and when she arrived to take the reaper's soul, she gave Malcolm his first taste of power, the ability to see ghosts. From then on, she's been keeping an eye on him (not too difficult for an omniscient being), to see how he is learning to adapt to his new life.

Personality

 * Dismissive of conventional morality


 * Lies, just to keep the skill in practice


 * Casual about death


 * Manipulative but caring