Episode 44: Samurai Vampire

Newly born as a Vampire, Renmaru the samurai, could feel a different pulse to the world. Strength flooded back to him, his senses flared like lanterns in a storm. Thoughts around him brushed his mind, voices he could mute or overhear at will. And in that mind’s-eye, a river of memory, thought not his own. Keiko’s long life. Her scars, her rage, the violence done to her and by her. A tragic figure, yes...but calcified into scorn and hate.

She would have kept him as a chained blade, a slave whose only wish, death, would be the one gift she’d deny. She despised Ren for the face he wore, a samurai, a man, power once honored by a world that failed her.  

Her whole life, Keiko suffered greatly at the hands of men. The man who attacked and raped her as a young woman, impregnating her with Suzu. Those who judged her, looked down upon her, held her in poverty, forcing her employ as a laundry maiden. And of course there was Anu, her maker, responsible for turning her into something evil, and rejecting her after she tracked him down.  

Ren saw those memories of hers too...Anu. Older. Darker. Violence personified. Much like Keiko, taking her frustrations out on others. Both were stains on humankind. Both had to be stopped.

The dark specter of Anu in Keiko’s thoughts - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

At sundown, Ren returned to the woods where he’d fallen. He drew his katana. The cedars hummed a half-forgotten prayer. Moonlight combed the needles. Wind carried the scent of bark. Power moved through him, sharper, steadier than before. He wondered what good might be forged from such gifts. But his thoughts were interrupted...

KEIKO: You’ve made a terrible mistake, samurai. You’ve betrayed us. 

REN: Just you. Prepare to die.

KEIKO: You think you can defeat me? You are mine for eternity.

REN: I am not a thing to be owned.

KEIKO: Lay down your blade. I’ll forgive your...indiscretion.

Showdown in the woods - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Ren bowed, but refused. A battle ensued. Keiko, an Underling of Anu, was far older and more potent than any newborn vampire. But Ren was a master of the sword. He read her angles as she moved, stole the rhythm, then broke the cadence -- and with a decisive cut, split the night itself. Keiko collapsed, in two halves. Crimson mist drifting like breath. The forest fell silent once again. A bitter and tragic end to Keiko...a tortured soul.

Finding Aya in the hush, Ren “read” her creation, forged by hunger and survival, not cruelty. Years of tutelage as bait, a life built in the dark on Keiko’s rules. He spared her. And he chose family instead of servitude. The previous morning, at the cottage, right after Ren’s transformation into a vampire, Ichiro was still bleeding out on the floor. To save him, Ren gave the only thing he had, his newly potent blood. By moonlight, three stood where one had staggered. Ren, Aya, and Ichiro, a brood born of loss, remade as purpose.

Though Ren had chased death, he found a different ending. Through eyes changed by night, he recovered what grief had taken... strength, purpose, and hope. Following the samurai’s bushidō, he and the others became another kind of shadow, the ones who kept order when the sun went down.

Samurai Vampire - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

But the world was changing. By the early 1800s, vampires multiplied across continents, Ezath and Rah’s lines branched like roots. Victor Monfret and Royce contributed as well. Parasites flowed wherever humanity gathered. Even if unseen by day, they were felt when night arrived.

Ren’s small Brood answered with a creed cut in black and white: Protect the good. Kill the wicked. He hunted and killed their own kind and other things that clawed the dark. To Ren, vampirism wasted sacred potential on feeding alone. He called it what he believed it was, a deviation, a plague, a cancer. Even as one of them, he’d be their cure.

He, Aya, and Ichiro did feed, but mostly on criminals. And Ren would partake in satiating on the occasional vampire. Being young in blood-sucker terms, Ren would do it to help level the playing field during battle, as it would weaken his foe. And while it was known feeding on their own kind, especially one more powerful, would give the feeder a temporary boost in abilities. It would eventually cause a crash. A painful side effect that would take Ren days, even weeks to recover from. But privately, Ren needed to keep pain close, as it was something vampires rarely felt. He accepted the agony as penance for being one of them. But also to remember his human side, reconnecting with the pain of losing his wife and daughter. 

Eventually, Ren’s quest against his kind, would lead them to seek out Anu, who was still a devastating plague terrorizing the people of Japan. Aya would speak of the savagery of Anu as Keiko had experienced all of it in her mind. The group also witnessed, firsthand a trail of corpses left in his wake. 

To Anu, aside from his Underling Keiko, he was truly unaware of how far the original 3’s bloodlines had spread. And even though Ren, Aya, and Ichiro were Minions of his own blood, the ancient one had no idea he was being hunted.

By 1853, Anu had taken refuge in the mountain city of Hakuba. He’d been in a slow retreat for some time, feeling society becoming more connected. He preferred to stay on the fringes, no longer going from village to village to kill.  Crimes were being investigated, especially murders, personal safety was a growing concern, that threatened his very way of life. So, Anu holed himself up in the attic of a monastery, forcing the silent monks who lived there to supply him with victims.

Monastery in Hakuba, during the blizzard of 1853 - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Ren and his partners tracked Anu on a tip from Edwin Hawkes...more on him to come...Hawkes heard rumors of an ancient one sheltering in the mountains. Ren, Aya, and Ichiro watched the monastery for days, unsure if a Brood lurked. Aya could feel Anu. The same mind that had attacked her all those years ago. And if all they knew about him were true, they couldn’t just go in and kill him, they’d have to have a flawless plan to take him down.

As a heavy snowstorm hit, the sun was blacked out, providing adequate cover. Everyone moved into position. 

Ren knocked upon the monastery door. A monk answered, and without words, knew what the samurai vampire was there for. Up the tower stairs, Ren would find Anu, surrounded by the rotting bodies of those he’d recently fed on. Living like a recluse, a vampire who hadn’t a place in the world, a hermit who’s relevance and time had passed.  

ANU: I knew not of another Vampire in this area. 

REN: I’ve traveled far to find you.

ANU: You’ve heard of the great and powerful Anu and have come to pledge your allegiance? Or you want to reclaim some territory you think I’ve taken?

REN: You’re the Bloodletter. For centuries you’ve dealt in death and terror. I’ve come to end you.

ANU: If you know so well of my legend, you should kneel, rat. 

REN: I have a destiny to fulfill. Keiko was my maker. You were hers. The end is coming for one of us. It’s how this black circle completes itself.

Ren and Anu battle in the snow - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

The vampires would violently clash. Their fight spilling from the monastery, destroying the upper floors. And under a darkened, cloudy, and snowy sky, a three-headed attack against Anu ensued. For days they battled, the entire city nearly reduced to rubble. Aya and Ichiro were tragically killed in the melee. 

And although Ren was of lesser strength than Anu, he was able to keep up because of his superior fighting skills. But near the end of the skirmish, Anu gained the upper hand. He climbed atop Ren and pressed him into the broken snow, the weight like a mountain. Fangs bared ready to end the samurai...but Ren, in desperation, struck for Anu’s throat.

Sinking his teeth in Anu’s neck, he drank from the ancient one. Power thrummed through Ren, iron-hot and endless. Anu faltered, strength ripped from him by the samurai. Ren tore free and cut Anu down with his katana. To ensure victory, Ren did what hunters of hunters must, he beheaded and burned Anu, in a ritual that’s still commemorated in the small mountain town, a festival known as “The Fire in the Snowstorm”.

“Fire in the Snowstorm” by Hawk Hewitt - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

After the battle, after gaining Anu’s strength, Ren waited for the crash, believing he might even die from feeding on one so powerful...but he didn’t. He kept the power, the only such story of that happening in all vampire-kind.

From then on, Renmaru Okayama became the storm he once endured, an unstoppable force sworn to end his own species. He would go on to train with the Eternal Monk, Heng Shao at the Shaolin Temple in the Himalayas, knowing that an even greater battle was coming. 

Anu’s death ended the story of one of the most vicious hunters mankind has ever known. And though he sired but one by accident, what echoed from his violence would have a profound impact on the entirety of his kind. And somewhere in the vast machinery of fate, another piece of the Processions would inch ever closer. 

TO BE CONTINUED…