“Jonas closed his eyes and smiled up at the the sky, feeling the warm sunshine caress his face. The rest of the Damned seemed to also be in a jovial mood, laughing with one another. They looked like any merry group out having a picnic in the morning sunshine, had it not been for the fact that they were standing in the middle of the blood bowl pitch, moments away from the start of a match. Kirk McKirk, one of the sports reporters covering today's match happened to witness this scene as he made his way to the press box, and puzzled, shouted out to Jonas, "What has you and your team in such high spirits?" Jonas opened his eyes, and turned to look at McKirk,
still with a smile on his face, and replied, "The sunshine. Vampires hate playing in the sunlight."

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The ball came in high, but the thrall in the backfield failed to catch it; so the vampires on the line of scrimmage set about knocking some humans around. The vamp on a blitz was overcome by bloodlust, feasting on a thrall, and knocking said thrall unconscious. One down, five to go. Their vamp in the back succeeded in picking up the ball dashing behind the linevamps, as three of the remaining thralls formed a cage around the ball carrier. Thanks to a vampire block gone wrong we were able to start putting some pressure on the cage containing the ball, causing the vampire to shift towards the sideline, where the rest of the Damned were waiting, causing their progress to come to a halt. As the vampire ball carrier attempted to decide what to do next, blitzer [Trent Lynch came up from behind and answered that question for him: he was going to lay down and drop the ball. In the resulting jumble that occurred surrounding the loose ball, Briggs Dunnum came through big time, single handedly smiting a vampire(so what if the vamp had already been niggled?), calling for the use of the apothecary. The hole left vacant by that vampire allowed catcher Simon Evans to dodge in, retrieve the ball, and retreat to a "safe" location. With bloodlust knocking another thrall unconscious, and another poor blitz leaving a downed vamp, Simon took off towards the goal line, attempting to put enough distance between himself and the vampires, barely succeeding. And in yet another situation of a block gone horribly wrong, vampire Teresa de Arcena was killed while attempting to knocking over linemen Collin Fitzpatrick. The whole crowd watched as Teresa's body took on the appearance of blackened, charred paper in the noon day sun, before turning into dust, and being blown away on a pleasant breeze. The vamps made a last attempt, getting a hand on Simon, and pushing him back ever so slightly from the goal line. Simon retaliated by handing the ball off to Yesac, who ran it in for the score. 1-0, us. A few more hits, and a well aimed rock, and the first half came to a close.

Outnumbering the vampires 11 to 9, and set the receive the kick-off, and another rock this time hitting a thrall, we wasted no time getting the ball up the midfield, but the vamps were a little upset with us about the first half, and quickly knocked a linemen out, and took up a defensive position. Trent answered our need for some room by fracturing the arm of one of the vampires beginning to press in, removing him from the pitch for some time, as another vamp tripped over his own feet while attempting the blitz Simon who was holding the ball. Remy recovered from hypnotic gaze to blitz down the sole vamp remaining in his way, taking up point, as Simon raced after him to hand off the ball. Enraged, the thralls swung at any one they could, but it was too late, for Remy was already handing the ball over for to the ref for the next kick-off. Score now 2-0.

With the ball kicked just outside of the endzone, the vamps and thralls came out for one last attempt. With a vamp-to-vamp completion, the ball carrier made a daring blitz, and for a moment their was a opening, but the moment came to a crashing end, just like that vamp, as he failed to dodge away. The ball bounced into the hands of a very surprised thrall who was all ready covered, and was about to have the entire team converge upon him. After the ball was freed and recovered by us, a quick momentum shift, as well as shifting to the other sideline, and we were looking to potentially score for a third time. A crazed vampire blitz ended that notion, but we answered back with a blitz of our own on the thrall who had foolishly picked up the ball. The vamps made one last effort to make it into the endzone, but there was simply too much coverage on the loose ball, as well as four players surrounding the lone downed vamp that was in possible scoring position. Final score: 2-0. The Damned make it happen again.

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Jonas made his way towards the sideline from the pitch as the deafening roars of the fans echoed through the stadium. He continually scanned the crowd until his eyes finally landed on the person he was looking for, as he emerged from the press box. "McKirk!", Jonas called, getting the attention of the reporter whose turn it now was to turn in surprise. The captain and namesake of the Damned rushed forward and placed something in McKirk's hand, and in hushed tones said, "Vampires lose all of their powers in sunlight." With a quick smile, Jonas turned and rushed away from the gathering crowd of reporters hungry to interview him after the match, leaving McKirk standing there, again puzzled. It was only then that McKirk remembered the strangely warm feeling in his hand. Opened his hand to see a small glass vile, filled with what appeared to be ashes, that were still warm to the touch. The last remains of the vampire slain during the match. It was now McKirk's turn to smile.


As I have said before, I have played against a lot of vampire teams, and in doing so, feel that I have come up with a pretty good strategy on how to exploit their weaknesses. That being said, Darklord_Nix seriously took a horrible dicing on this one. Even I wanted the pain to end. But, he kept with it and was able to laugh it off. A true sportsmen. Thank you for the match.”