In the unnatural stirs in the forests. Over the past few months, farmers have found livestock drained of blood, and wild animals like foxes, owls, horese, rodents, deers, and more of them are behaving in unnatural ways: nocturnal, aggressive, eerily intelligent.
The valley’s hunters tell of a legend: a vampire lord, centuries ago, was slain and cursed by forest witches. Instead of dying, his essence fractured and scattered into the wilderness, embedding itself into the local wildlife. Now, his spirit is trying to reassemble or not through vampiric people, but through animals.
Tamianpyre[]
Tamianpyres are unnatural perversion of its woodland kin—recognizable at first glance, yet disturbingly off in every detail. Roughly the size of a small squirrel, it appears swollen with unnatural energy, its frame stretched and warped beyond the bounds of nature. Its fur, once the soft chestnut brown of an ordinary chipmunk, is now darkened—charred-looking and oily, clinging to the body in ragged tufts. Patches are missing entirely, revealing pale, almost sickly skin beneath, marked with fine scars and veins that pulse faintly if one looks too closely.
Its most unsettling feature is the face. From a distance, it still holds the basic shape of a chipmunk’s—rounded cheeks, bright eyes, twitching nose—but the proportions are subtly wrong. The eyes are too large, glassy, and blood-red, glowing softly even in darkness. They do not blink. Instead, they fixate on movement with an unnatural intensity, as if the creature is always listening with its gaze. The mouth, though small when closed, opens far wider than it should, revealing a dense row of needle-like teeth—more suited to a lamprey than a rodent. When it snarls or hisses, the lips peel back in a mockery of a grin, exposing pink gums and a forked tongue that flickers like a serpent’s.
Running along its back and sides are stripes—like those of a normal chipmunk—but inverted in color: dark black streaks cutting through dull gray fur where once there would have been white. These markings pulse faintly under moonlight, as if reacting to some internal current. Its paws are elongated, with fingers too thin and claws too sharp, more like a bat’s than a rodent’s. The digits are adept at climbing, gripping, or even prying—tools made for infiltration as much as survival.
The tail, once a cute, fluffy curl, is now sleek and rat-like, tapering off into a whip of bristled hair. It moves with independent precision, twitching and curling as if sensing danger before the rest of the body reacts. In motion, the Vampire Chipmunk is unnaturally silent—its limbs moving with a spidery grace, and its weight oddly distributed so it makes no sound on leaves or bark.
Despite its diminutive size, the creature radiates an aura of malice. It is not merely a predator—it is a shadow pretending to be small, a parasite in the shape of something once harmless. Looking into its eyes is like gazing into a deep, red well—there is hunger there, and something else… something watching back.
Loonpyre[]
Loonpyres are haunting presence on remote northern lakes—an avian predator cloaked in ghostly beauty, corrupted by blood and shadow. At a glance, it resembles a common loon, but linger too long in its presence and the differences begin to surface—subtle at first, then unmistakable.
Its body is long and sleek, larger than any natural loon, with feathers that shimmer like wet ink beneath moonlight. What should be a rich pattern of white spots across black plumage has instead become chaotic—irregular and shifting, as if the markings breathe. When the bird moves, those pale speckles flicker like faint stars in a black sky, creating the illusion of motion even when the bird is still.
Its head is slender, more streamlined than its mundane kin, with a neck that appears almost boneless in its flexibility—able to coil and twist with a serpentine grace. The feathers around its throat are stained a dull crimson, permanently darkened as though soaked in old blood. This hue deepens with feeding, pulsing with an inner light like banked coals.
Most disturbing of all are the loonpyre’s eyes: not the calm, wine-red irises of the normal species, but deep, glimmering orbs the color of fresh blood—too vivid, too wet. They glow faintly in darkness, catching and holding light like twin garnets. These eyes do not blink when it stares. They fixate. They burn. Some say to look into them is to feel your heartbeat slow, as though your body is preparing to be emptied.
Its beak, once sharp and elegant, has grown longer and finer, curved slightly downward at the tip like a surgeon’s hook. Along its interior run rows of tiny backward-pointing barbs—not true teeth, but jagged enough to tear flesh from fish, or from something larger. The beak clicks softly when it watches from the reeds, a sound like bones tapping underwater.
Its wings are longer than they should be, the feathers near the tips unusually rigid and blade-like. In flight, its silhouette is monstrous—its wingspan exaggerated, almost batlike in its angle and motion. When it lands, it does so with no splash, gliding across the water’s surface like smoke on glass.
The legs are set far back on the body, perfect for swimming but grotesque when it walks. On land—though it almost never appears there—it moves with an unnatural, dragging limp, its webbed feet twisted as if partially atrophied. The skin beneath its wings and along its legs is pale and mottled, veined with blue-black streaks like frostbite or bruising.
When the Vampire Loon feeds, it submerges silently, swimming just beneath the surface with impossible control. It prefers wounded creatures—those who drift or cry out—but it will take the strong too. Its bite does not kill instantly; instead, it drains slowly, a precision siphoning that leaves little behind but a slack shape floating in the reeds. Victims are often found with neck wounds so fine they are mistaken for insect bites—until the bloodless state of the body is discovered.
Yet most terrifying is its call. The loonpyre retains the wailing cry of its natural cousin, but altered—lower, more drawn out, and somehow sorrowful. It echoes in ways it should not, often seeming to come from inside nearby trees or from beneath the water’s surface. To those who hear it in their dreams, the sound is unmistakable: a dirge sung by something once beautiful, now damned.
Lagomorpyre[]
Lagomorpyres are rabbit or hare-like monsters that defy the innocence so deeply associated with their kind. It retains the shape and general form of the animals it once was, but all softness has been hollowed out, replaced with a lean, coiled menace. These creatures are most often seen under moonlight, when they step from the thickets or gravesoil with a silence that speaks of long watching.
Their fur is patchy and strange, matted in places, too sleek in others—colors darkened and dulled as if stained by soot or blood that never fully washed away. In certain light, the coat seems to shimmer with an oily sheen, catching moonlight in unnatural patterns. What should be warm brown or snowy white has turned into cold charcoal, tarnished silver, and scorched ash. Their bodies are elongated, the limbs slightly too long for comfort. The hind legs are powerful as ever, but when they leap, they do so in total silence—no rustling grass, no thump of earth. Their movements are fluid but wrong, as if guided by instincts not entirely their own. When still, they crouch low, quivering not with fear, but anticipation. Their heads remain largely rabbit-like, yet when viewed up close, the differences become apparent. The ears are too thin and unnaturally upright, twitching constantly even when the wind is still. The inside of each ear glows faintly red in the dark, revealing veins that pulse like distant embers. The eyes are the most chilling of all—round and glassy, but burning with an internal light. In some, they shine red like taillights on a foggy road; in others, pale yellow, like the eyes of a corpse too long under the ice.
Their mouths, rarely seen in ordinary rabbits, are a horror unto themselves. The lagomorpyre possesses the same twin front incisors as any lagomorph, but behind them lies a row of secondary fangs, thin and sharp, adapted for puncturing veins and tearing muscle. When the creature feeds, it does so in quick, frenzied bursts—biting, holding, and drinking, the blood matting its whiskers and running down its pale muzzle. Most grotesque is the shape of the mouth when it opens fully—it pulls back farther than it should, cracking the illusion of an herbivore and revealing its true nature. Some observers report a clicking sound just before it strikes, like tiny bones snapping in warning.
Its paws are subtly altered as well. Though they retain the general shape of rabbit feet, the claws have sharpened into horn-like points, used to grip struggling prey or burrow into soft flesh. On the front limbs, the claws are finer, almost needle-like, and capable of flensing skin from bone in a matter of seconds. The lagomorpyre is mostly nocturnal, hiding in underground warrens twisted into nests of bone, moss, and shed fur. Their tunnels are said to “bleed” with fog, and faint sounds of scratching can be heard beneath the earth in the dead hours of night. When they move above ground, they do so in erratic bursts and is sitting motionless for hours, then darting across open fields like shadows caught mid-flicker.
Most terrifying is their silence. They make no sound—no thump, no chatter, no scream—unless cornered. And then, it is said, they shriek in a pitch so high and raw it makes the teeth ache and the stomach turn.
- To see a rabbit is to feel peace.
- To see a Vampire Lagomorph is to feel preyed upon by something that should never have been.
Ochotopyre[]
Ochotopyres are a species of creatures of silence and shadow. These small, secretive, and dreadful vampires are in its stillness. Their dwell in high alpine regions, hidden among talus slopes, scree, and rocky ledges where the wind never quite stops and the sun sets faster than expected. Unlike its cheerful, herbivorous kin, this pika does not chirp. It waits.
At first glance, the creature resembles a common pika: round-bodied, no tail to speak of, with wide eyes and short, rounded ears. But upon closer inspection, the familiarity fades. Its fur is uneven—clumped and coarse, no longer the soft gray or tan of the mountain pika but a darker hue, mottled with stains of iron brown and yellowed white. The hair around its mouth and chest often appears crusted or damp, and the pale fur on its belly is tinged a muted pink, as if perpetually soaked in old blood.
The ears, while still rounded, have thinned and lengthened slightly, curving at the tips like horn buds. The skin inside them is nearly translucent, laced with fine blue veins and pulsing ever so faintly. They flick toward sound with unnatural speed, swiveling in perfect synchronization, like antennae sensing prey. When the pika lowers its ears, they flatten tight against the skull—not from fear, but from focus. Its eyes are too large for its head, dark and wet like polished obsidian. In moonlight, they catch a red sheen that burns with a slow intensity, like coals in the heart of a cave. Unlike the bright, intelligent gaze of a normal pika, these eyes seem fixed, empty, and heavy with hunger.
Its face retains the rounded softness of its species, but that illusion shatters when the mouth opens. The incisors—still wide and yellow—now rest atop a hidden arsenal of fanglike dentition. Thin, curved, translucent teeth line the inside of its jaws, angling inward like hooks designed not just to puncture, but to hold. When it bites, it does not let go. The lips peel back farther than they should, revealing bloodied gums and a tongue far longer than expected, forked at the tip and capable of flicking in and out with a snake-like motion.
The forepaws are slightly lengthened, with narrow digits tipped in dark claws better suited to clutching and tearing than gathering grasses. Its hind legs remain compact but impossibly strong, able to launch the creature into fast, darting movements across rock. It doesn’t hop—it lunges, striking quick and low before retreating into shadowed crevices where few predators dare follow.
Unlike its daylight-dwelling cousins, the ochotopyre is active only under cloud cover or moonlight. It does not store hay piles or call to its kind. It lives alone, nesting in abandoned dens, and decorates its hollows with bones—not artfully, but practically, using them to brace walls, block entrances, or gnaw on between meals. The scent of a Vampire Pika den is rank and metallic, thick with the musk of fur, blood, and mineral earth. When it feeds, it prefers small birds, mice, or weakened prey. Its bite delivers a numbing agent that causes drowsiness and slow bleeding, allowing the creature to feed at its leisure. Victims are often found curled up in the rocks, eyes glassy, blood drained cleanly through precise wounds at the neck or thigh.
Its presence is marked not by sound, but absence. In areas where Vampire Pikas dwell, the mountain becomes unnaturally still. Marmots vanish. Birds fall silent. Wind tunnels between stones with a low whine, and somewhere in the gloom, two burning red eyes watch from a crack no wider than a small hand of patient, and ancient. The ochotopyre is not a predator of strength, but of stillness. It waits, and the mountain listens.