Death's messengers

I have been looking into The Grimm Brother's fairy tales and I came across a story called Death's messengers.

 The story is basically about a man who helps death after he is beaten by a giant. The story mentions "death's messengers" these are such as sickness and fever. If Death was used as the character of my game these could lead to some very interesting mechanics such as spells or powers used through the game as the character develops. Death is also a good concept for a character as it creates a broad appearance and fairly blank character so I can develop both appearance and personality myself. I could link the character into many of the Grimm Brothers other stories/fables to develop a setting and open world. I will now start to research what certain stories mean and the objective with them.

Looking further into this small story Death never gets to claim the giant. This would make a good story for my game. Maybe changing this story a little to make the main the "giant" and have Death seeking to claim the giants soul. To link the main story into other fables I came up with the idea that the bad guy could be a demon of kinds and release his minions into the other parts of the game to change the more famous stories from The Grimm Brothers fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Repunzel and Death then has to fix the stories and search for the bad guy to claim his soul.

The messengers mention within this story could also be powers which death get throughout the game, their for gaining more power and helping to defeat the demon in the end. These idea's were inspired by the game Kingdom Hearts.

As the game is based off a book of fairy tales a main Hub were the play can progress from world to world or story to story would be helpful to add a linear working to the games story. This could be something similar to the book of pooh part of Kingdom Hearts. The first level of my game could also be the start of the Death's messengers story were the villain defeats death and gets away. This first initial level would be basically boss fight were the player must lose in order for the story to progress, simply facing an enemy a lot more powerful than the player will create this effect.