Pern: A Dragonrider's Tale [lé sign-ups]

[Weasel Overlord]

Pern

A Dragonrider’s Tale
An RPG by Weasel Overlord
(Based on the Pern Universe, by Anne McCaffrey)

Seas boil and mountains move,

Sands heat, dragons prove;

Red Star passes.

Stones pile and fires burn

Green wither, arm Pern.

Guard all passes.

Star Stone watch, scan sky.

Ready the weyrs, all riders fly;

Red Star passes.

But the Red Star has not passed in over two hundred turns, and common opinion is that Thread is no more. But if Thread is no more, then why is it that for turns now, dragon clutches have been growing steadily larger? What are the Star Stones for, if not to watch for the presence of the Red Star in the sky?

The answers to these many questions are not easily found, and we can but wait; outlast these dissenting Holds who scorn their dragonriders openly.

But can we stand against Weyr, at the same time? When Thread is in the sky, dragonmen must fly.

But there is no Thread.

Only fighting amongst ourselves, dragonrider pitted against dragonrider in war that should never have come to pass.

But it is to the glory of Impression that we turn our eyes and hearts today, for golden Nemath has clutched at Benden once more, and there are fourteen mighty eggs on the hatching ground. Candidates from all over Pern gather, hope lighting their eyes at the thought of riding one of our mighty dragons.

The humming reverberates through every silent watcher, growing intense in pitch until, to a gasp of awe, the first egg begins to crack.

It begins.

-----*-----

Okay! The back-story is this. Set in the First Long Interval between Passes, war is rife between Holder and Weyrleader. No Thread has fallen for over two hundred years, and not many still believe that it will ever fall again.

Benden Weyr stands firm in its belief, however, and it is here that our story begins. With fourteen brand new dragonriders and their dragons, lead by the first golden queen to be clutched in twenty years.

A Weyr is where the dragons and their riders live. They are huge structures made of stone, with chambers large enough to fit a fully grown dragon.

Rooms for riders are called weyrs and have a stone couch for the dragons to sleep on, and a separate sleeping chamber for the rider, who sleeps on a simple cotbed.

Most other inhabitants of Pern live in Holds, smaller cotholds or Crafthalls. The main Holds are all labelled on the map and cotholds are scattered in between them.

The Crafthalls are where each craft of Pern is perfected and taught. Since crafts form the basis of Pern’s economy, they are extremely important in everyday life.

Ranks in the crafts go from Apprentice to Journeyman and finally to Master.

Some examples of major crafts are the Harpers (who are responsible for teaching children, and providing entertainment), Healers (self-explanatory), Beastcraft, Mining and Smithcraft.

Dragons have the ability to teleport through space instantaneously, through a method called going Between. Between is pitch black and deadly cold, and nothing can survive there. However, each dragon-jump takes about three heartbeats to complete.

Before a dragon can go Between, their rider must visualise their destination clearly, for fear of mis-jumping and ending up inside a mountain or somewhere equally grisly.

So there are fourteen dragonrider places to be taken, and five types of dragon overall.

Important Note: Pernese dragons are smooth-skinned. So no scales please. ^_^
See included pictures for details. (although for some colours it’s stupidly hard to get pics for. re: green/brown)

Also, they have multifaceted eyes which alter colour depending on the dragon’s mood. Green or blue is contentment, yellow is alarm and red is anger.

Gold: The gold dragon is the queen, and the only fertile female. Golden-skinned, her colouring can vary from a pale, almost yellow-gold to a darker, almost burnished colour.

She grows to a size of 38 to 45 metres long from tail-tip to snout, and is mated by the dragon who can catch her in her mating flight. This is usually a Bronze, although a fast Brown has been known to catch her upon occasion.

The golden queen’s rider is always female.

Bronze: The bronze dragons are always male, and most often the mates of the golden queen. Their colouring is a golden-green shimmer, but can often vary to a darkness which is almost brown.

The bronze grows to a size of 35 to 38 metres, and their riders are always male.

Brown: The brown dragons are always male, and have been known on occasion to be fast enough to fly a golden queen. Their colouring ranges from a pale tan to a deep chocolate brown shade.

The browns grow to a size of between 30 and 35 metres, and their riders are most often male, but have been known to be female on occasion.

Blue: Blue dragons are always male, and have been known to have female riders as well as male. Their hide colouring ranges through the whole spectrum of blues, from a pale, sky blue to a dark, stormy shade.

They grow to a size of between 25 and 30 metres, and their mating is kept strictly to the greens.

Green: A green dragon is always female, but as she has to chew firestone to fight Thread, they are also infertile. The greens are the smallest dragons, growing to between a size of 20 to 25 metres, and they mate only with blues.

A green rider can be either male or female.

Now, as for what dragons are available, this is the list of the colours I figured out to be in Nemath’s clutch. ^_^

Gold: Tamanth, played by Weasel Overlord

-

Bronze: Larsith, played by Bulbasaur4

Bronze: Reserved by Inferno_Dragon

-

Brown: Lahlileth the Forgotten, played by Plantae

Brown: Myrreth, played by Emotional Faun Chiko-sai

Brown: Zorenth, played by Kuro Espeon

-

Blue: Kanaleth, played by River

Blue: Burganth, played by Mystic_Clown

Blue: Joseth, played by Zcade0

Blue:

-

Green: Kraellath, played by Hyperness is a Good Thing

Green: Volath, played by Crystal Tears

Green: Kilnth, played by Crazy Elf Boy

Green: Kirenth, played by Dark-San

-

Reuxus Arienifh the Alchemist, played by EngiMatikul
Inigo Enrique Falzon the Bandit, played by Prof. JB Wolf

Feel free to reserve any colour you like, and if places fill up too quickly, I will allow some non-dragonrider characters too, so pm me if you’re interested in one of those roles.

If you aren’t familiar with any of the terms I’ve used, or are completely oblivious about the Pern universe in general, see this handy guide I’ve compiled. (in progress) And if that doesn’t work, feel free to prod me on either messy_hair_welcome@msn.com (msn) or Astarielle15 (AIM) where your questions will be answered as in-depthly as I can possibly manage. ^_^

Here are the sign-up forms. Top is Rider, bottom is Dragon.

Name: Pernese often don’t have surnames, so those aren’t necessary.
Gender: Male or female please. See dragon colours.
Age: Between 15 and 20.
Dragon: Choose from Bronze, Brown, Blue or Green.
Searched From: See the included map and world-details. This is basically your home, or where you lived before you were Searched and brought to the Weyr.
If you want to, you can be Weyrbred, or from Benden Weyr itself.
Heritage: Your parents, and any other important things about your family.
Appearance: Duuh. Don’t want any unnatural hair colours or anything like that though.
Personality: I repeat. Duuh. Although I’d like to note that Pernese children are most often fostered to other mothers, so orphans with tragic backgrounds will not be welcomed. ^_~
History:
Other: Maim at will.

Name: Of your dragon. They all have some sort of “th” in them. Like Tamanth, Nemath, Filenth, &c. &c.
Gender: See dragon colours.
Colour: Bronze, Brown, Blue or Green.
Appearance: Colouring, size as a hatchling and you can include size at full-growth if you like. It’s gonna be a fast-moving RPG.
Personality: Always compliments that of their rider.

-

My sign-up. Follow my lead. ^_^

Name: Rinna
Gender: Female
Age: 19
Dragon: Gold Tamanth
Searched From: Harperhall, Fort Hold
Heritage: Daughter of Journeyman Rin and Copyist Talanna
Appearance: Rinna stands at about five foot six inches, and she has hair of a sort of, rusty brown colour tinged with red in places, like a horse chestnut. ^_^
Her hair is clipped short to keep it out of her eyes when she plays and it has tight little curls.
She has particularly long and slender fingers which delighted her parents, as they ensured that she was particularly dextrous in the playing of most instruments, although she excels most at the flute.
Her eyes are a steely grey, framed by dark lashes, and she has a lengthy scar which crosses over her right eye, and traces down her cheek until it tapers out. She got this scar when she over-tuned a guitar when she was younger, and the string snapped and tore into her face. Luckily her vision wasn’t impaired, but it left a deep and lasting scar that makes Rinna look somewhat roguish. She likes to tell people more exciting stories about her scar, so it’s probably for the best if you automatically disbelieve her if you ask how she got it.
She prefers to wear simple clothes in the harper blue favoured by her parents and the entire crafthall, and most often she can be seen wearing a simple tunic in this blue over trousers in a soft grey. Even after she’s Searched, she continues to wear harper blue, though lately she’s taken to wearing more gold than grey or silver, as a sort of unconscious tribute to Tamanth.
Personality: Often known as a bit of a compulsive liar, it’s more that Rinna has a Harper’s natural wit and she particularly relishes embellishing a tale so much that it no longer resembles the one it started out as. For people who don’t know her, this can be extremely irritating, as it’s often very hard to get the truth of a situation out of her. Especially if she finds it particularly exciting or dramatic.
She loves music with all her heart, as can only be expected from a Harper’s child, and she is most often heard humming some tune or another, or singing some tawdry song. She has a love of all things dramatic, and although her singing voice is nothing to write home about (ie: it’s terrible) she adores singing lengthy ballads about lost loves and epic battles for freedom against evil oppressors.
Although she has quite a pleasing soprano, she simply cannot hold a note, and as a result of this, she threw herself into instrument-playing. Her favourite is the drums, even though she’s better at the flute. The deep tones of a well-made drum and the steady, solid beats appeal to her more than the light, almost insubstantial sound of a flute.
She has a loud and generally enthusiastic nature, inspired by being a girl among drummers, who also tend to be loud and, well, very loud, really. It’s all that drumming.
She really likes food, too. She’ll often have at least two or three helpings of anything that’s being served; once again, a product of living in the drum dorms among loud, hungry, food-grabbing drummer-boys.
History: She grew up in the normal way for a child in the Harperhall. As soon as she was old enough, she started to learn all things musical. Music is in her blood, Rinna has Harper heritage from as far back as any records say, so it was only natural that she excelled as she did. Despite her natural talent for instruments, however, she never got the hang of singing, no matter how many lessons she took, much to the chagrin of her voice tutor.
She was passable at crafting instruments, but after the guitar-incident, decided that she wanted nothing more to do with strings, and as soon as she was of a suitable age, she moved into the drum-tower, to focus her attentions on the complex drumrolls and sequences. There was general surprise at her decision, as boys generally prefer the drum-tower over anything else, but since Rinna’s father specialised in lengthy, drum-accompanied ballads, she’d grown up around them and their constant, steady beat. She ignored the teasing of other girls her age who’d chosen to take up more ladylike instruments, such as harp or flute, and threw herself into her drumming; fitting in extremely well with the rowdy group of boys she lived with.
Although her mother would have loved for Rinna to take up copying, her hand was only passable, and far too untidy to be of any real use.
Other: Always carries around a pair of ornately carved drumsticks. They were a gift from her father once she became a drum-apprentice.

Name: Tamanth
Gender: Female
Colour: Gold
Appearance: Tamanth is just over a metre in length, from tail-tip to snout. Her skin is a dark, burnished gold, which is almost antique in colour. This colouring is somewhat reminiscent of the gold you get on ancient Egyptian burial masks, heavy-looking with a perfect sheen.
As she is an extremely relaxed dragon, Tamanth’s eyes tend towards staying the calm blue and green of a happy and contented dragon, although she is extremely protective of Rinna, and so if anyone even slightly threatens her, she is swift to jump to anger.
Personality: Tamanth is the epitome of relaxed dragon. She perfectly counters Rinna’s loudness with her quiet but purposeful personality. She is soft-spoken, and prefers a simple and direct way of speaking; unlike Rinna who embellishes and flourishes and is generally over-the-top.
She carries an intense amusement for Rinna’s Harpering habits and she loves to listen to the elaborate tales her rider comes up with.
While it could be said that Tamanth is lazy, she has a real love of flying, but she is a deep believer in only being active when it is absolutely necessary, and lounging around in the sun at any other time.