Editing Vampire: The Requiem (section)

===[[Penanggalan]]=== 
A Malaysian variety of vampire that can exist as a relatively normal human during the day. At night, its head lifts up from its body, dragging along its internal organs and leaving its hollowed-out body behind as it goes hunting. To keep the body from rotting whilst the head and guts are away, it has to pickle it, and so even in human form it tends to stink of vinegar (or sometimes booze). It loves the blood of pregnant women and children, and so it prefers to go after these prey. It can be killed by burning it, exposing its head-and-guts form to sunlight, or stuffing its hollowed torso full of blades, broken glass, thorns, etc. so that it tears its entrails apart when it squeezes inside at dawn. 

A sadistic end, perhaps, but unfortunately perhaps the best; the bite of the Penanggalan contains a vicious wasting illness that often kills people the vampire would much rather leave alive (and in particularly bad cases, even Embraces them spontaneously as new Penanggalan). The only known cure is the initial vector's liver-something they are understandably reluctant to part with, even given their power to regenerate.