Bloodfetcher

​

...let us meet,
And question this most bloody piece of work,
To know it further.

Macbeth [II, 3]

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Bloodfetcher
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Evil (Any)
Movement: 150' (50')
Armor Class: 0
Hit Dice: 5
Attacks: 1
Damage: 2d4 (Blood drain)
Save: F5
Morale: 10 [Incur a -1 penalty to Morale per successful blood-drain attack]

Special:
Invulnerable to silver weapons (including enchanted silver).
Take double damage from salt or fire.
Normal weapons only affect a Bloodfetcher for one hour after it successfully feeds on a victim's blood.
All spells affecting blood have some effect on these things.
All forms of healing cause them damage; Cure Disease destroys them if they fail a Save.
There is a base 10% chance of contracting a blood-born infection from the attack of a Bloodfetcher. 
They usually break-off their attack and flee after only a few successful draining-attacks. 
In those rare instances where they've managed to actually kill someone, that person cannot be raised or resurrected by the usual methods.
In moments of great duress (reduced to 2 or fewer hit points), a Bloodfetcher has a 30% chance to use a form of Planar Transition that gives them access to some dark, inverse realm not immediately recognizable to lay-men and lesser scholars.

First noted during the final years of the Great Purge when the last of the vampires were finally executed or assassinated, the Bloodfetchers are malignant creatures formed from unclean residuum such as tainted blood, rotting bandages, and the more atrocious things cast-off or cut-out during war-time battlefield surgeries. Sordid things, they were little better than tulpas or fyljjas or crude synthetic elemental-things when first created, but their masters deliberately mired them in both literal and psychic filth and bought them forth amidst carnage as weapons in a lost war.

The vampires were said to have some sort of arrangement with the Ungezeifers, leading some to speculate that the Bloodfetchers are related in some way to Cacozombies, but this is according to the testimony of tortured Thysanurian collaborators. Others claim there is a connection of sorts to Scabrous Froth or Sanguinovores, but prevailing doctrine leans more in the other direction--that Sanguinovores are more likely to be twisted versions of Bloodfetchers...but this does rather beg the question of how something already so corrupt and defiled could become further tainted or contaminated. One disturbing line of inquiry and investigation conducted originally behind the scenes and that has only recently been revealed claims that Bloodfetchers are actually a contrived form of geist derived from vampiric test-subjects who were part of a clandestine operation overseen by Colonel Vannerwirth of V5Korps, a notorious Red Ops unit that went rogue during the Bitter Winter during which Brischtof, Valzig, and Preshtomin were all completely emptied of all human life. Conspiracies and fantasies are springing up all the time and no one has been able to offer definitive proof to settle the matter, so the rumors, the theories and crack-pot notions proliferate wildly.

Bloodfetchers avoid bright lights as much as possible, preferring to lurk in shadows and to ambush their victims in dark places and especially wherever blood has been spilled in battle or in pain, such as hospitals, sanitariums, the pits, or the less well-warded arenas.

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It is a curious fact that the Bloodfetchers only feed upon their prey for short time and then seek to flee as best they can. This suggests that Karlov and Grampier may well have been correct in their preliminary summary of the findings of the surgical inquisition led by Malthon just after the end of the Great Purge. They surmised that Bloodfetchers were somehow incomplete, transitional things enslaved and employed by the vampires to collect blood from their enemies and return it to them in a useful condition...but alas they are so filthy and corrupt that not even Lesser Nosferatus can gain any real sustenance from the spoiled blood these things carry. In the words of Malthon herself; 'They appear to be so much rubbish, another failed experiment that lingers long after the initial error that brought them into existence has been expunged. These vile things need to be rooted-out and destroyed before they fester and further degrade into something worse or more hurtful.'