Don and Trudy Claymore

Concept: Twisted Love Story  (Blood Bathers)

AKA: Over the course of time, Don and Trudy have gone by a variety of names, But over the years they’ve gotten a little complacent and have gone back to referring to one another by their real names. Although they can easily make up a name or two on the fly. Each knows the other well enough that they pick up the others cues instinctually.

Desc: Don is fit as a fiddle with good muscle and plentiful energy. Springy even. He had warm brown eyes and an easy smile that can turn into an iron-hard line in moments. His grip is particularly strong.  Trudy is a real looker with a musical laugh and long brown hair that she normally keeps ponytailed or in boxer braids. She’s firm in all the right places and is as springy as her hubby. One can easily imagine that these two have AMAZING sex. Don smokes like a chimney.

History:Okay. It’s a little ghoulish actually. But It is undoubtedly a love story.  Don was a Marine Corpsman serving in the pacific theater. Trudy was working for the WAVES in that same theater. They met at a USO dance mixer, and although Don was a poor dancer, he WAS pretty handsome and he was smart.(He’s been to Arthur Murray since and is quite adept on the dance floor now.)  They talked long into the evening and found one another interesting.  Whatever else happened that night, Don and Trudy both went back to their respective barracks thinking of the other.  And it might not have gone all weird if not for a particular mission that Don got sent on.

Naval Intelligence had been tracking some signal traffic and had linked it to some specific naval movement. The naval movement led to an uncharted island somewhere 257 miles south and west of Okinawa. The signals traffic had a designator in code but that NI had broken months ago. It indicated that special weapons were being stored on the island. So it became a legitimate military target. A sortie group was assembled and Don was tasked with a group of hard-core marine bad-asses like himself.  They went to the island, made landfall under cover of a storm, and proceeded towards the target. A large temporary warehouse structure.

   Don saw things that day. Things that haunt him occasionally. The Nipponese troops guarding the place were very elite, but thankfully the Marines had brought enough men to do the job. But once inside the structure, the game changed considerably. The commander attacked the men of the fighting 46th with what Don can only assume was some kind of sorcery. He conjured dragons made of mustard gas and sent them screaming down on the marines.  Only 6 men of the sortie group managed to survive this assault when a stray bullet ricochet took down the commander and silence reigned once again.

   But that wasn’t the weird bit.

  The weird bit is that the place was floor to ceiling with books and assorted weird looking tchotchkes. “Special Weapons”?  What in the ever loving fuck was going on here? They got on the horn to the carrier group, who told them to sit tight. When they turned up they had a number of Science-y and academic-looking types with them. Who quickly loaded the place up and brushed off the Marines questions.  

Now in those days, it wasn’t uncommon in clashes with the Nipponese, for Navy and Marine guys to take swords and Nambu pistols off of the deceased officers.  But Don took something a little beyond.  While they were sitting tight, He looked at a couple of the books. There were some that were a bit stomach turning, The pictures I mean. Don doesn’t read Japanese, but he did notice a book with English letters and a title in Latin.  “Calicem in Fame”  To this day, he still doesn’t know what possessed him to stuff that book in his pack...

Don’t worry. That book will turn up again. The Sortie took place on July3 1945. About a month later Hiroshima and Nagasaki had become radioactive flatness and not long after that, Japan sued for peace and people began to be rotated home. Over the course of some weeks, Don and Trudy’s romance had blossomed and once he determined he wasn’t interested in being a career Marine, he got down on his knee and popped the question to Trudy.  Trudy said yes and they went home and began building a life with one another.

6 kids (Trudy’s Catholic) and about 50 years later, Don was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and he started to deteriorate. Refusing to die in some damn antiseptic hospital, he got himself released AMA and went home. While he was busy getting used to the idea that he was going to die. Trudy began going slightly sideways with desperation and of course, selling off heirlooms and stuff because the hospital bills had been nearly ruinous.  Which is how she ran across that copy of “Calicem in Fame”

Now, unlike Don, Trudy was perfectly capable of reading Latin, and out of curiosity began to read the book. It detailed horrific rites and rituals designed to steal the life out of the veins of others.  In fact, it should be understood that this book, was not just a blood bather ritual. it was a COMPENDIUM of blood bather rituals.

Trudy hatched a desperate plan. One dead hippie hitchhiker later. Don woke up refreshed and reinvigorated. and forty years younger. Both were horrified. The act was horrible all by itself. That Trudy had kept the plan from Don also meant that he was a bit in shock over what had happened to him.  And of course, neither one knew exactly what to do since it was now clear that Don would have to disappear before anyone in the family saw him. No. this had not been thought through.

But while Trudy broke down in tears, it became clear that she had done all this out of her love for him and her desire to see that they weren’t parted.

it took two days to liquidate their assets, buy a Winnebago, find a second hippy that no one would miss, burn down the house with both corpses inside (happily mistaken for their bodies) and hit the open road.

That was about 50 years ago. They’ve crisscrossed this great nation of ours, murdering lone travelers and couples whenever they can manage it. While they both are on the lookout for additional occult juice and the occasional book to nudge them in the right direction, they still come back to the “Calicem in Fame” over and over.   They think they may have doped out how to do one of the more powerful rituals in the book...the only problem is that it would take slaughtering about 20 people in one orgy of blood-letting. Granted, they’d have ten whole years and unguessed at power if they can pull it off.

Attitude: “Me and the Mrs, We’ve seen a thing or two on our travels. And you know, we just like trading stories with good Americans like yourselves. No. Go ahead. Bring the drinks along with you. We don’t mind at all.”

Skills: Both have decent dots of Athletics and neither one is weak or slow. Don is a seasoned brawler, knows his way around guns and is more than skilled with a KA-Bar in his hand.  Trudy prefers to drug them when she can and has learned a thing or two about concocting such things. Both have racked up some dots of Occult. One night they picked up a Vampire and had a long talk with him. (He was, by that point, chained up.) They ended up sheltering him for the day, but they parted company the next night.  They still exchange Christmas cards when they can get to the mail drop.  The hardest bit will be to see them coming. Both have learned to lie so well, that they can be smiling and laughing with you one second, and sliding an ice pick into your eardrum the next. Don has a dot or two in medicine. Although some of what he knows is out of date. Trudy has a business degrees worth of knowledge without any formal schooling. And she’s a great cook.

Gear: Both tend to prefer methods of killing that make it hard to mount an offense. Don’s KA-Bar has seen a lot of action. Both have pistols and Don has a rifle for the rare time when a target means to actually escape. He’s got a silencer on it that he built himself. In a pinch, either one is willing to whip off their belt and try to strangle you to death with it.

Home: “The Winnie” as they call it, has seen some modifications. Don’s pretty handy and Trudy is very organized and helpful, so they were able to install a trapdoor floor in the center of the Winnie. It’s sealed inside so you can dump a body in there and it won’t leak or smell. (Although a police dog might pick it up still.)  They tend to prefer to dump bodies at bodies of water. Don’s corpsman training comes in handy because he knows enough that he slashes the abdomen in the proper places so that it will sink.  He also usually cuts off the head and hands and dumps them in another place. He takes special care to do a number on their dental work first.

They also have breakdown shovels and plastic tarp in case things get messy.

Circle: Pretty limited. Moving around constantly and living under an alias all this time isn’t conducive to a decent social life. Especially when you’re constantly asking yourself if your new friends will be missed... Trudy has however bought a little laptop computer that she uses to move their money around (They’ve got quite a lot now.) and she’s doing a lively little travel blog which has a few devotees.  

Story Uses:

“Son. I just guess this ain’t your night.”

How dangerous can a human being be? Very. if you’re not seeing them coming. Even dedicated predators like Vampires and Beasts might have trouble with highly motivated and prepared humans. And that’s Don and Trudy all the way around.

“Oh. That’s something I haven’t seen before...Why don’t you come in and I’ll buy you a drink? I think you and I have some things in common.”

Oddly, when it comes to other predators, like other serial killers and monsters of a more supernatural bent, Don and Trudy are downright polite. even a bit chummy and folksy.  Don’t misunderstand. If they HAVE to, they’ll kill you without a moment's hesitation...But if they don’t. They’ll be interested in palaver. After all, gathering 20 people to slaughter might require some help. You know?

Additional Notes: Without getting too much into the mechanics of their particular blood ritual, They have to perform it quarterly at the equinoxes. they only have to coat the skin, and the victim will die from it.  Both Don and Trudy heal twice as fast as normal but can be killed.  Additionally, each of them has derangements But their obsessive/compulsive love for one another helps them keep it together for one another. If one dies, the other will die trying to kill you.

Connections:

*Once, some time ago. Officer Wesley Ullman pulled Don over because of expired tags. They came within a hairsbreadth of killing him. It probably wouldn't have been a good play for either of them.

* Like most students at the academy Special Agent Owen Maccready has been exposed to the legends of the agency. One talks about a serial killer that operates with utter impunity and has killed everywhere in North America and has been doing so for decades. Every once in a while, Don and Trudy's M.O. pops up and the Feds aren't really sure what to do. But usually, the area gets flooded with Specials Agents. This can't be fun the supernaturals who live in town. Norman Cayce might also get into the act here too.

*They've bought documents off of Clavo Hernandez. The only reason they even know about Clavo is because they used to buy off of his mentor.  Clavo has NOT put together that these people are those same people.

* They are "Buried" at Parker Mortuary and Black Creek Cemetery. Once about every five years or so, they like come back to their home city, nose carefully around their old family, and fuck on a blanket on top of their shared grave.

* They occasionally come in a browse at The Grimoire. They seem perfectly pleasant, but Penny gets a bad vibe off of them. And Bear pays attention to that stuff. even if he says he doesn't.