Sodden thought.

[gridlore]

Decades ago, when typewriters still roamed the Earth, isomeme wrote a really good story about a space flight to Wolf 359 and a brief conversation between two passengers. Once at the spaceport, the passenger that the POV character had been speaking with looks up and wails in anguish "The Moons!" The planet had several moons, some of which were full that night. The story ends with "Then the howling began."

He really should have sent that into Analog. It was a good story.

But anyway, I was reading about Gilese 581g, and thought "this would be a great place to exile Earth's vampires! They could live over the edge of the twilight zone in the dark area. Humans would live on the edge of the sunward side, where vampires dare not go. Vampires get paid in whole blood. And obviously, death penalty offenses are handled by given to offender to the vampires.

I continued thinking, and realized that any Earth-like planet lacking a moon would be the perfect "leper colony" for weres of all shapes and sizes. Obviously they would be free to travel, but not any world with a moon that goes through phases! Based on an extensive viewing of Universal horror films on Saturdays when I was kid, the transformation is linked to an actual line of sight to the full moon, so weres could also safely work in any space that is completely sealed with no view ports.

Comments

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I did a game in which the master vampire retired to his estate on Mars, where the dimmer sunlight is sublethal and the night-daily full moons make it very hard for weres to remain concealed.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Phobos and Deimos are so small that neither would show disks (never mind that neither is large enough to have been pulled into a sphere.)

Mars might well be a non-transformation zone.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I didn't have the line-of-sight restriction, since I watched films where the guy still turns even if he is chained in the basement. I checked with Celestia, and I believe Phobos' intermediate phases could at least be distinguished as being elongated in a particular direction by people of average vision, and the full stage overall brightness is still exceptional even if the moon is to small and distant to show an accurate shape.

The non-transformation idea has some merit; maybe the weak moonlight only makes lupines irritable and brings on a case of monobrow for a couple of hours.

[kengr]

A former housemate had a similar idea. Only the were that had moved to the moonless world ran into trouble when the *huge* new colony ship assumed orbit.

Not only did it turn him into his were-form, but because it was an artificial moon, the fur her sprouted was artificial. Polyester to be specific.

The end line was "And I'm allergic to polyester!"

[claidheamhmor]

Love the ideas - especially the vampire one.

[seawasp]

This would be a problem if you had any Saiyajin aboard, too.