I've seen that in Legends mode. There were two eras in that world, the Age of the Hydra and Mountain Titan and the Age of the Mountain Titan. The Hydra was killed in Year 57 by a giant tick. Not a named giant tick, just a single, random giant tick. Plus the Hydra was rampaging at the time, so just imagine a tick sitting in an alleyway, the city in flames, watching one half of the major powers in the world eat five swordsmen at once, and thinking "yup, that looks good to eat".
Never happened to me personally, but it'll be interesting to see what'll happen to my main vampire adventurer when I retire him. I know all sorts of tricks that mean the fact that he can only use one arm doesn't matter in combat. Break arm, strangle, suck blood, stab like a maniac, rinse and repeat when necessary. But as an NPC he'll probably try to fight like a normal person; if someone hits his left arm he could be screwed. No weapons and no strangling. Doesn't help that he's seen as a potential murderer in the peninsula he 'liberated'. He is a necromancer, so I might just drag a bunch of corpses into the throne room before retiring, let him summon a zombie army when threatened. There's also a zombie elephant that may or may not be tracking him down with revenge in mind for completely unrelated reasons, so he might get squished before someone more competent comes after him.