Béla Kiss
Béla Kiss was a
tinsmith who had lived in Czinkota (then a town near Budapest, now a neighbourhood
within the city itself) since 1900. He was an amateur astrologer and allegedly
fond of occult practices. In 1912 Kiss hired a housekeeper, Mrs. Jakubec, and began
to correspond with a number of women and sometimes took them to his home in
Czinkota. However, his housekeeper never really got to know any of them and
Kiss was never on intimate terms with his neighbours even though he was
well-liked.
Townsfolk also
noticed that Kiss had collected a number of metal drums. He had told the town
police who questioned him that he filled them with gasoline in order to prepare
for the rationing of the oncoming war. When World War I began in 1914, he was
conscripted and left his house in Jakubec's care.
When Béla Kiss'
landlord poked a little hole in one of his tenant's barrels, he was overwhelmed
by the "smell of death".
In July 1916,
Budapest police received a call from a Czinkota landlord who had found seven
large metal drums. The town constable had remembered Kiss' stockpile of
gasoline, and led needy soldiers to them. Upon attempting to open the drums, a
suspicious odour was noted. Detective Chief Károly Nagy took over the
investigation and opened one of the drums, against the protests of Mrs.
Jakubec. There they discovered the body of a strangled woman. The other drums
yielded similarly gruesome content. A search of Kiss' house resulted in a total
of 24 bodies.
Nagy informed the
military that they should arrest Béla Kiss immediately, if he was still alive -
there was also a possibility that he was a prisoner of war. The name,
unfortunately, was very common. Nagy also arrested the housekeeper, Mrs Jakubec
and asked the postal service to hold any possible letters to Kiss, in case he
had an accomplice that could warn him. Nagy initially suspected that Jakubec
might have had something to do with the murders, especially when Kiss had left
her money in his will.
Jakubec assured
police that she knew absolutely nothing about the murders. She showed them a
secret room Kiss had told her never to enter. The room was filled with
bookcases but also had a desk that held a number of letters, Kiss'
correspondence with 74 women and a photo album. Many of the books were about the
occult and dark magic.
From the letters
Nagy discerned several things. The oldest of the letters were from 1903 and it
became clear that Kiss was defrauding the women who had been looking for
marriage. He had placed ads in the
marriage columns of several newspapers and had selected mainly women who had no
relatives living nearby and knew no one who would quickly notice their disappearance.
He wooed them and convinced them to send him money. Police also found old court
records that indicated that two of his victims had initiated court proceedings
because he had taken money from them. Both women had disappeared and the case
had been dismissed.
Each woman that
came to the house was strangled. Kiss then pickled their bodies in alcohol and
sealed them in the metal drums. Police found that the bodies had puncture marks
on their necks and their bodies were drained of blood.
On October 4, 1916
Nagy received a letter that stated that Kiss was recuperating in a Serbian
hospital. Nagy arrived too late — Kiss had fled and substituted a dead body of
another soldier in his bed. Nagy alerted all the Hungarian police. However, all
the sightings police could check proved to be wrong.
On several later
occasions, speculation arose that Kiss had perhaps faked his death by
exchanging identities with a dead soldier during the war. He was supposedly
sighted numerous times in the following years and there were various rumours
about his fate, including that he had been imprisoned for burglary in Romania
or he had died of yellow fever in Turkey.
The botched arcane
ritual Kiss first performed in 1912 gave him the tremendous powers of the
vampire, and a resistance to sunlight.
Unfortunately, his bloodlust was multiplied, leading him to murder the
24 women before he was able to partially control his feral nature. Kiss can appear anywhere across the battlefields of the Eastern front, finding the casualties of war very appealing to his unnatural
appetites.
Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength
d12+1, Vigor d10
Skills: Fighting d8, Intimidation d8, Notice d6,
Shooting d6, Swimming d8, Throwing d6
Pace: 6; Parry: 6; Toughness: 9
Special
Abilities
• Claws: Str+d4.
• Frenzy: Vampires
can make two attacks per round with a –2 penalty to each attack.
• Level Headed: Vampires
act on the best of two cards.
• Invulnerability:
Vampires can only be harmed by their Weaknesses. They may be Shaken by
other attacks, but never wounded.
• Undead: +2
Toughness; +2 to recover from being Shaken; called shots do no extra damage
(except to the heart—see below).
• Weakness (Holy
Symbol): A character with a holy symbol may keep a vampire at bay by
displaying a holy symbol. A vampire who wants to directly attack the victim must
beat her in an opposed test of Spirit.
• Weakness (Holy
Water): A vampire sprinkled with holy water is Fatigued.
• Weakness
(Stake Through the Heart): A vampire hit with a called shot to the heart
(–4) must make a Vigor roll versus the damage. If successful, it takes damage normally.
If it fails, it disintegrates to dust.
No comments:
Post a Comment