Saturday, December 31, 2011

Tale of the Vampire Moose

"I'm-a gonna suck yer blood, hur hur hur."



With 'Auld Lang Syne' stuck in my head for New Year's, thought I'd share a humorous (to me, anyway) anecdote from a campaign from years back.

One of the PCs had been turned into a vampire.  In the interest of not succumbing to his new, monstrous nature, he told his fellows he was heading off into the forest to feed on an animal.  Upon returning, he informed the rest of the party that he had drained a moose dry and should be 'okay' blood-wise for several days. 

"Did you kill the moose?"
"Well, I presume so.  I drank a helluva lot of its blood."
"Sure, but did you snap the neck or anything?  Stick around while the heart stopped?"
"No."
"Shit."
"What?"
"Dude, you're the worst goddamn vampire ever."

The PCs immediately began teasing the vampire about the possibility that the moose had either survived, or...become a vampire moose, transformed by the bite of the PC vampire.  Twenty minutes of teasing that session; and a further mention in every subsequent session of that game.  Melodramatic mock-paranoia about the vampire-moose returning to wreak revenge upon its creator, that sort of thing.  And then it got brought up regularly in other campaigns, any time that player - or another - did something that could be construed as careless.

There was even a 'vampire moose' call:  "mmmmMMMMMMMM-BAH."  I have no idea why that was the noise a vampire moose makes - a long, throaty 'moo' ending something like a stereotypical vampire "blah" - but it stuck.  To this day.

Frankly, I look forward to inflicting a vampire moose on my current batch of players.  The vampire moose, of course, has all the abilities of a human vampire, including turning into mist or a bat -- but it must take moose form to feed.  I can't wait to see the player reaction when one of 'em wakes up in the middle of the night to see a gigantic hulking red-eyed moose lapping lifeblood from their henchman's neck.  Caught in the act, the vampire moose flees, dissolving into mist, leaving only its haunting call echoing through the trees --

mmmmMMMMMMMMMMM-BAH.

4 comments:

  1. Ran into a vampire Buff a good pace back. Good thing I had my trusty tamed savage Teotocuka-Cackack [He-who-trods-the-prairie-and-never-runs-afoul-of-fresh-buffalo-chips] with me to assist with skinning and gun handling. Might have been in a hard way were it not for his bow and arrow. That big gray buffalo (the pelt color is what attracted me to it) soaked up 50 one-ounce lead balls before an arrow to the heart settled matters. Not before it had treed us both for an entire afternoon in a short little mesquite scrub that was inadequate for the task. A close run thing. And the pelt was ruined, naturally. I would have saved it as a curiosity but I never could get the stink out.

    -Thunderbolt

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  2. @T-Bolt - Thank the heavens you're able to share your wisdom with all of us. You are a true frontier legend, and I for one believe all those rumors about syphilis are dirty lies spread by your contemptible detractors and business rivals.

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  3. I just laughed so hard I cried.

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  4. Of course you did! You were THERE!

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