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The Death of Rats is not, strictly speaking, a personification in his own right but rather an aspect of Death allowed an independent existence. His purpose is to usher on the souls of dead rodents, and occasionally rodent-like humans, as well as assisting Death in other ways (he drew Death's attention to interference by the Auditors, demonstrating improbable statistics by using a machine that measured how often a piece of toast dropped butter-side-down). He was one of a disparate multitude of Deaths (down to the Death of Microorganisms) created during Death's absence in Reaper Man. Upon Death's resumption of his duties, he reabsorbed the identities of all the millions of Deaths into himself. The Death of Rats, however, refused to be reabsorbed and, even though Death initially said he would not let the Death of Rats remain separate, Death nevertheless kept him around as company. The Death of Rats resembles a rodentine skeleton on its hind legs, wearing a black robe and carrying a tiny scythe.

The Death of Rats more easily finds ways around the Rules than Death does, and has assisted Susan in Soul Music, Hogfather and Thief of Time. He sometimes travels with a talking raven named Quoth (as in 'Quoth the Raven' from the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. The 'N' word he doesn't like to say is Nevermore, also from the poem) who also acts as his translator (and says he's "in it for the eyeballs"). The Death of Fleas also escaped reabsorption, but has not been seen since Reaper Man.

The Death of Rats' jurisdiction also seems to cover certain kinds of 'ratty' humans, such as Mr Clete in Soul Music. In Maskerade the Death of Rats took the soul of the Opera House's ratcatcher, who then got reincarnated as a rodent. The ratcatcher protested that he did not believe in reincarnation, and got the answer "reincarnation believes in you".

In the mythology of the Clan (from The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents) the Death of Rats is known as the Bone Rat. He appears in the book for Dangerous Beans, but is stopped by Maurice, who trades one of his many own lives with Death in exchange of Dangerous Beans's.

[The Death of Rats is from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - he has no PB, because as far as I know, there are currently no animate rodent skeletons employed in Hollywood. I still don't own him, or the Discworld books]

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