It was a dark and stormy night. It would always be a dark and stormy night.
There are dimensions where Evil has not prevailed. This isn’t one of them. But there are benefits.
Every World is divided into the haves and have-nots. (Or perhaps not. Perhaps there are worlds which are utopian for all of them. But we haven’t found such a place in the last few centuries.)
This is a good World to be a Vampire.
Wooden stakes are not banned. Holy water is mass-produced. Churches and crosses abound. The Villagers are tough and strong; Vampires raid them infrequently, and once in a while, in doing so, they die, the permanent unlife-to-dust death to which Vampires are prone.
The Have Nots are amply provided for by the Haves; the wealthy vampires make sure the Villagers are as happy and comfortable as possible. There is a simple incentive—aside from the obvious, that one would rather dine on a well-fattened peasant than one who is sickly and lean—happier peasants don’t revolt.
And armed peasants don’t feel helpless.
And weak Vampires die. Those without class, those who kill indiscriminately, the youngest and most foolish, THEY get their un-blood removed with rapidity by the ancient ones.
The ancient Vampires are reasonably corrupt and evil, but all you need, really, is to carry off one plump villager about once a month. And all you need THEN is plenty of villages, so that no one village gets outraged. It’s difficult to be really, really angry at the Vampires taking twelve people a year when something like a hundred people in the region die every year because of drunken cart-driving.
And the Villagers have the aforementioned access to armaments which protect or even destroy the Undead scourge. It’s at a point where, in general, if a healthy twenty-five-year-old is carried off without a struggle, the Villagers blame the parents for being idiotic enough to let their just-barely-adult child run around without at LEAST a big garlic dinner when they KNOW the Vampires come out at night.
It’s a great world to be a Vampire.
It’s a great world to be a Peasant.
It’s a terrible world to be stupid. And that makes it a utopia for ME; I hate stupidity far more than Evil. I can understand Evil. I don’t get stupidity.
I was a blood doll for years before I was Turned. My swain would drain me three-quarters dry, then carefully nurse me back to health. Some of us are masochists; some people don’t like that, but many of those people are stupid, and I don’t have to put up with them for long.
I was Turned at about forty. It’s a good age to be forever, and rather than suffer the infirmities of a Human’s later years, I have Vampiric strength.
I remember this, as I lie here in the coffin, a very painful stake through my stomach. I’m not dead, but this REALLY HURTS. And it’s NOT a hurt I enjoy.
But it IS a reasonable hurt, and I WILL heal.
And that will sustain me through the hungry week when I’m too tired to…
…there’s a Peasant at the door!
She’s painted two red marks on her throat!
She’s holding up a white flag, which means this is unlikely to be a trick. If it IS a trick, I might die, but… I should have died two hundred years ago.
Some excitement to comfort me in my pain!
Whichever way this goes:
It’s a good life.
________
Hey! “A Goblincore Guide To Life” is free online!
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~Jeff Mach
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