Dr. Stubbins

pered through unmoving lips: “We are surrounded by a dozen halflings who do not smoke. Do you realise how unlikely that is? Ask for some tobacco when the serving wench returns.” This I did and was told that smoking was unhealthy and thus was forbidden on the premises. Ray smiled and said to the young halfling: “Sadly, my friend here is incorrigible, it would be good if whoever has talked sense into your heads might have a word with him too.” She offered enthusiastically, “That would be Dr. Stubbins.” Ray inquired: “A no nonsense military man who cut his teeth tending to the victims of Drakov’s two, or was it three, invasions? Perhaps you are better at history than I am.” She replied: “No, a young halfling from out east. Comes in most evenings, though probably not tonight unless the weather clears. And it was four invasions, I witnessed each of the horrors with my very eyes.” The moment she left us Ray breathed just above the threshold of my hearing: “She is not the only person who looks two decades younger than nature should allow. The same is true of the scarred veterans. The same is true, I would venture, of every halfling in the place.”

-“The Wrethfetin’s Blood” from The Casebook of Alanik Ray, Dr. Arthur Sedgewick

Descriptive text contributed by cure to John W. Mangrum's Teeny Tiny Tales of Terror project (posted on the Fraternity of Shadows message board). [edit] Details

Dr. Stubbins was a halfling easily identifiably by the missing fingertips of his index fingers. He was also a wrethfetin, which is to say halfling vampire, albeit not a full-fledged vampire but rather only a vampire spawn. His maker directed him the seizure of a small halfling village in western Darkon where he was to masquerade as a medical doctor. She taught him in particular how to reduce the population to vampiric thralls by compelling each resident to drink a drop of his vampiric blood.

The enslavement of the village by a wrethfetin was guessed by Alanik Ray when he identified a pair of oddities as he and Dr. Arthur Sedgewich dined at the local tavern: there was not a single smoker among the halflings; and all the halfling looked far younger than their actual age. Ray and Sedgewick were able to corner and destroy Dr. stubbins, learning from him of female wrethfetin who was his maker and master.

d made him and that

As a consequence of this and of the rules that he layed down, the villagers aged far more slowly than they ought to have and ceased entirely to smoke. Alanik Ray recognised the clues and identified det

She was a member of a band of adventurers from Darkon who fell afoul of the authorities of Nova Vaasa and fled into the Dommark from which only one would return. For her part, Roya became seperated from the others and was slain by a head hunter, which made for a most unpleasant scene when the others at last managed to find "her". The misadventure has been set down on paper by Jacqueline Montarri in the Beheaded: Collected Tales, a book that she is writing.

Authorship

Dr. Stubbins was created by cure as part of a contribution to John W. Mangrum's Teeny Tiny Tales of Terror project (posted on the Fraternity of Shadows message board).