Spenser Brothers Hope to Re-Establish Ancient Dynasty
CLUJ-NAPOCA, Transylvania - A long-forgotten darkness fell over Eastern Europe last night with the escape of the mythic vampire Armand Spenser from the Abyss of the Damned after more than a millenium of banishment. With assistance from his legendary brother Raphael, who has himself been in hiding since the Silver Massacre of 1883, Mr. Spenser succeeded in overcoming the forces that held him captive on the Abyssal Plain and arrived back in the Mortal Realm shortly after one o'clock this morning. A local shortage of virgins prevented the brothers from celebrating their reunion in true vampiric style, but nevertheless they managed to make do. Please read our coverage of their impromptu party in the Society section and in the Obituary column.
Armand Spenser was the scion of the Spenser clan, a family that held the top seat of vampire royalty from time immemorial until state-sanctioned hunting drove vampires to the edge of extinction near the end of the 19th Century. Mr. Spenser had a grand future ahead of him as chief executive of his own blood farm until he unwisely refused to yield to a mediaeval priest in the year 986. Despite his great strength - he singlehandedly subjugated his farmland, which stretched from the Black Sea in the East to the Germanic forests in the West - the garlic and the silver prevailed, and Mr. Spenser was banished to the Abyss in the prime of life.
Armand's younger brother equalled his strength, but the scope of Raphael Spenser's ambition was never equal to the task of running the European blood farm, which never realized its vermillion potential; Raphael was more interested in sampling his wares than in concerning himself with their production. The lustre of the Spenser dynasty truly began to fade with the Mortal Realm's Enlightenment, and the arrival of Van Helsing and his ilk in the 19th Century sounded their death knell. Raphael was involved in a one-sided fight with Van Helsing in 1883 which came to be known as the Silver Massacre due to Van Helsing's massive expenditure of silver bullets and the severe losses that were sustained by the vampire community. He was never seen afterwards, and has been listed as missing, presumed staked until today.
Details about how Raphael managed to break Armand out are sketchy, but it is clear that some sort of bridge has been constructed between the Abyss and the Mortal Realm. Sources close to the brothers say that it is only a matter of time before the thousands of other vampires who shared Armand's fate are similarly unleashed, and the brothers restore the glory of their family name and usher vampiracy into a new age.
The local Werewolf Association had no comment about today's events.