Strange Dream: Fictional Mandela

I woke up at 3:30 this morning from a strange, detailed dream. The setting was a fictional middle-income country severely divided by race. This may be the first time I dreamed I was black. I saw several scenes from the main character's life, in early childhood living on the streets and as a senior politician who sometimes seemed to have lost connection with his people and sometimes seemed to really be part of them. I don't know the names of any of the people, so in my lack of imagination I'm calling him Nelson even though the only resemblance is a vague similarity of setting.

I wrote down the last scene I saw before I woke up. I'll put it below the fold in case you're interested in it - just over 2 pages long. I should warn you that the scene includes references to fecal matter and refers to it with words I don't use. If that makes you squeamish, you are so advised. This is no way an attempt at social commentary about any person or people.

Nelson had just finished giving yet another speech at a five star hotel before a large group of influential people on the social inequalities and politics of the country. If it were a movie, this would be somewhere in the late middle when the protagonist is starting to feel worn down by the many pressures on him, doubting if any good will come of all his efforts, and getting cynical about the whole thing. Right now, he is so tired that the people around him are blurring and he's not entirely cognizant of what is going on, but is fighting on regardless.

Lawful Good Vampires

While getting ready for bed, I thought about the poor, cliched 'good' vampire. There is exactly one way to identify a good vampire: he or she struggles to control the urge for human blood. Good vampires eat animals. Cutesy vampires eat chocolate or are vegans.

Blekh.

Can't we come up with any arrangement for a vampire to be good and still get a daily dose of vitamin A-postive? Oh sure, vampires can also rob blood banks, but that isn't lawful. With all the nice, decent people being turned into vampires by the chaotic and lawful evil vampires out there, how about a Lawful Good abomination for a change?

Well, Derrill, says I, how could it work? I came up with a half-dozen good ideas before drifting off. If you would like to use any of these vampires which I have never seen in print, please stick in an acknowledgment and send me a free copy of the book. My five best ideas in my order of preference:

1 -  Drac Locke (named after this guy, not this one) arrives in a poverty-stricken community with severe social tensions where the national government is completely ineffective. Transylvania, Somalia, California, take your pick. He offers protection, social order, and prosperity in exchange for feeding rights with the rotating "host" family. He keeps away predators, establishes justice, secures property rights, sets up local councils, teaches them new technologies and production methods, serves as international intermediary, and with his hypnotic powers prevents corporations' use of market power against them. The town prospers and they protect him against would-be vampire hunters.

2 - Dracscalante (this guy) becomes the local sorcerer/alchemist/scholar. He takes in children of willing parents and gives them an education compiled over his thousands of years of life, enabling them to escape from poverty. The price of tuition: a pint a day.

3 - Drac Grandin (this gal) domesticated a group of humans centuries ago for feeding stock. The conditions are as humane as possible, but c'mon, they're livestock. That's what they were born and raised for. The hero's debates on what constitutes "humane" treatment of livestock probably occupies a central part of the book. [By the by, I chose Ms. Grandin only in respect: "I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect." Now just think of a vampire with that attitude.]

4 - DracMan, caped crusader, makes criminals pay for their crimes in blood. [Granted, the lawful part is in question here.]
4b - Drac Norris fights the Taliban against the evil vampire bin Dracula.

5 - Dracenerny (this guy) is a grad student who lives in the basement of his university so he never sees the light of day whether he works or not. His hypnotic powers would explain how he's gotten funding for research for so long without ever producing a paper and why grad students feel like all the life has been sucked out of them. It's not grad school: it's Dracenerny!  [This is the least lawful good one of the group, but probably the easiest to turn into a comedy. Dracbert, anyone?]