A Tabloid Article by Linden Dunham

An isolated stretch of road passes close to an area of woodland. In the evenings, as dusk falls,  two women can often be seen standing in the trees.  They are both young and attractive if dressed rather eccentrically in long black cloaks and dresses that seem to hark back to the Victorian era. They seem to be waiting for something, or someone. Eventually one, or both of them steps out of the woods and flags down a passing car and asks the driver, usually a lone male, for a lift to their home nearby. The driver usually agrees and takes them to their destination – a mouldering Victorian mansion situated in its own grounds on the other side of the woods down a narrow lane leading off the main road. On arrival at the house the driver is invited inside, with the implied promise of being shown a good time. If they accept, and they generally do, they are never heard from again.

The women are:

  1. Bloodkin Vampires: Once inside the house they drop their empathic disguises and attack their victim to satiate their bloodlust. The victim’s body is disposed of by being fed to a Bloodkin Troll that lives in the cellar of the house. Victim’s cars are pushed into a lake in the mansion’s grounds, although it is starting to get a little full by now. Eagle eyed minion hunters may see one or two half-submerged vehicles when reconnoitering the vampires’ estate. The occasional Lesser Vampire may be encountered in the house, or in the grounds after dark, wandering around in a daze, mumbling incoherently about “gothic beauties” and being unable to leave the estate. These are victims that the Bloodkin have allowed to live a little longer, partially drained of blood, to tide the darklings over until their next kill.
  2. Dark Elves: A pair of sadistic killers who fall on their victims in a mad frenzy, stabbing them over and over again with ornately decorated knives. The bodies are burned in a furnace in the mansion’s cellar. The cars are sold to an unscrupulous second hand dealer in a nearby town who “rings” them and sells them on. He believes “the Twocker Twins” as he refers to them are just car thieves.(Ed. Twocker: British slang for car thief/joyrider – from the legal phrase “taking without the owner’s consent”. The Dark Elves have kept a couple of vehicles for themselves and have converted them into animators to keep guard, prowling the grounds of the estate at night.
  3. Ravagers: Humanoid ETs have established an experimentation lab in the mansion. They are using a pair of Ravagers to lure in suitable test subjects. The creatures are rewarded with organic “leftovers” from their masters’ experiments. Flying saucers periodically visit the estate at night to deliver supplies, as well as removing victims’ vehicles and other detritus.  The Ravagers are chafing under ET control and are not happy with what they see as a starvation diet. They may start doing some freelance hunting away from the estate in the daytime. Abandoned vehicles containing gory human remains will then start turning up in the local countryside.
Author’s Note

Inspired by Vampyres (1974) – superior piece of erotic horror filmed in the UK, writtten and directed by Spanish ex-pat director Jose Larraz. He describes his blood drinking protagonists as being like Tigers because of the violence with which they attack.  I was tempted to make one of the options Were-Tigers in homage but preferred the three already given which I felt better suited the default setting of the English countryside. Option 2 could probably be modified to feature Weres rather than Dark Elves without too much difficulty for more exotic locales.  Were-Tigers would make suitable enemies if the adventure takes place somewhere in Asia or parts of Russia.