Manananggal

Manananggals are wicked monsters that live as humanoids during the day but feed upon them at night. To hide their depravities, these beings disguise themselves as everyday people—typically recluses or eccentrics—and use their proximity to a community to pick out their next targets before striking under cover of night. Manananggals use their long, hollow tongues to drain victims’ blood from vital organs such as the liver, and the resulting odd drainage marks make it difficult to determine the exact nature of a victim’s death. This typically leads to confusion, terror, and mistrust among communities, which most manananggals savor. While they fly, manananggals make a distinctive ticking sound, leading some to refer to the creatures as “tik-tiks,” and badly affected communities descend into fearful chaos at the first reports of this telltale noise.

Manananggals share their cannibalistic, body-separating traits with other types of tanngals, such as penanggalans, though a number of characteristics set them apart. For instance, whereas penanggalans relish vinegar and even bathe in the substance, manananggals abhor the merest scent of it.

Grim Blades

Minatan folktales have it that a forgotten demigod created the first manananggals by bisecting the torso of a human with a divine knife. The demigod then cut into the human’s shoulders and drove a pair of bat wings into their back, birthing the first manananggal. The divine power of the demigod’s knife still resonates in every manananggal and makes each of the aberrations susceptible to cuts from similar weapons. Communities dealing with a manananggal’s terror train with light blades and other slashing weapons to cut the monsters from the sky.