Mary is a Penanggalan from The Fiend Folio. In the real world they are part of Malaysian myth, and are female vampire types whose head can pop off the body, leaving to fly off for a feeding with the guts of the girl coming out also and dangling hideously from the neck.
Sometime in the 80’s I was of a mind to use the creature, but was sort of stuck as to how to go about it. At the time I was very into special wilderness encounters; things like the regenerating Black Knight from Monty Python guarding a crossing or other weird encounter.
I decided to have my Penanggalan be one of these encounters, and decided she would be “Mary Bloodyguts,” the sort of urban myth creature that children would chant at the mirror in a darkened from to scare each other (much like Bloody Mary that we had as kids). Of course, the player characters travelling out in the forest or fields would not remember the story of Mary from childhood (until it was too late), even though the lovely young girl they meet out on the crossroads might be named Mary.
The party would always invite Mary to join them (those horny male players always happy to have another girl around, PC or NPC), and it was not until late at night around the campfire, when one lone character is on watch, that Mary will detach her head and go on the attack (the PC who was awake to witness it generally going bonkers). Whether she escapes or is killed, Mary is never really gone. She’ll appear again on a lonely road or trail sometime time in the future, asking unwitting adventurers to escort her to the nearest town. Then that night *pop* the head comes off again.
To mix it up, you could have Mary in another circumstance. Classically she would have dark or red hair, but make her a blond and put her in a village tavern (maybe the pickings on the road are poor that month) getting harassed by thugs. When Mr. High Charisma PC saves her and gets her upstairs, you can imagine some great moments for that head to come off there alone in a small inn room.
As Mary is only good for a one shot for any particular group of players, I’ve only used her two or three times in the past. Around once per decade. As some of my players will likely see this post, I won’t be using her any time soon (I’m too busy with “the campaign that would not end” anyway to use her). But Mary Bloodyguts is always out there, hungry and waiting.
