Post by Diamonds and Rust on Dec 31, 2008 22:35:14 GMT -5
When AIVAS came alive under the hands of my predecessors so long ago, all of Pern celebrated. The deed was done, the planet moved, and no more thread fell. Life changed, and the dragonrider population dwindled, as was expected. Men that would have normally been trained thread fighters slipped into new comfortable lives. Weyrs were silent as exiled folk took them over, dragonriders often living in adjusted holds with their partners to attend to their new duties, their new roles on Pern. It was different, but everyone knew that life was only changing. Pern was still Pern, but only with a new focus.
Holds grew, and when flights did happen, rarely were there more than just a few chasers. Every so often eggs were laid, just enough to keep the dragon populace from disappearing. Holds turned into full fledged cities, lush and green as they had never been allowed to be before. No more mines for firestone were dug, and whers lived in the wild, or protected the holds as their duties had been before. Firelizards grew rarer and rarer, until they seemed almost myth again, but for the few that might have sought them out.
Pern was changed. Who could have truly foreseen the terrors that were to rise and meet them just 75 turns after AIVAS self-quieted, to leave the Pernfolk to their new existences? The engines did knock the Red star away, so the threads could not reach us… Blind trust leaves us bitterly endangered. The Old Timers had been right. My grandmother and mother both were not lucky to survive that day, and I watched my friend and one of the last goldriders disappear screaming in a whirling mass of silver when the sky turned into a burning hell.
It was ten turns before that when we should have known something was coming. Whers acting restless, the greens and the last two golds on Pern rising and laying clutches that numbered into the teens when the last fifty turns had only given up five or so eggs per rising. For these rare occasions, the golds would return to the nearly abandoned weyrs, these the few times that any civilized person would approach them again now that the condemned, shunned, and exiled lived in them since Thread was destroyed. The others dismissed it as a fluke, few sending their children to these hatchings, allowing many of the little ones to impress to criminals and the slight sprinkling of good hearted hold children. There were no queen eggs to speak of, not in that first six years that the numbers increased. But one turn ago, we got our first taste of panic, when the rider of one of our recently flown queens sent word that there was a queen egg.
Whispers, gossip, worry… No one could understand it. Neither of the queens were sick, or even old… Why would Pern need another queen? Thread was all but forgotten. The Lord Holders waved it off as just another fluke. It would be the last time they’d get to wave off another of dragon kinds cryptic warnings. This clutch was watched carefully, and the Lord Holders arranged a small grouping of their daughters to stand for the golden egg. I was no different. A seventeen year old, standing in the bitter Northern cold of the crumbling remains of what had been Benden weyr… I watched half of the dragonets hatch and toddle to a hodgepodge of Holdless, and the other half to the children of the Holds. And then I watched the other half of my heart hatch and bumble her way into my terrified embrace. Adayleth was a perfect platinum gold harbinger of doom. We returned back to Benden’s old namesake hold, and back to our old lives.
Six months later, the sky burnt our whole planet down.
Just a day before, Adayleth and I tried her fledgling wings in a trip to Ista Hold. Spring was warming, and the hold was alight with activity. Children screamed and laughed and waved goodbye as we took off to congratulate Lymanth and her rider Carmen on their hatching where they rested in the old stones, just before preparing to return back to her own home hold. We stayed with the pair among the old weyr, sleeping in the same room that we’d spent a late night talking in.
It was screaming that awoke us. Lymanth had left her weyr to catch her meal, while my weyrling Adayleth slept. It was Carmen’s horrifying note of loss that woke me, casting my eyes out of the weyr cavern’s mouth. Silver poured like a molten waterfall, sizzling around the stone. Thread… I remember that moment all too well. When Carmen slipped out of her bed to stumble like I could only imagine dead to walk, and Adayleth let out a creeling desperate cry that I’d never heard from her before… It became all to clear what had happened. Thread had come. And Pern’s oldest queen had been killed by it. I couldn’t move, and when Carmen turned those pain maddened eyes on me, I could feel my heart give way to her hopeless fear and loss. I only looked away when she screamed and flung herself into the writhing silver mass that had claimed her queen. That scream is burned into me, the last thing I remember before the world went dark.
When I awoke, I was still where I’d fallen before, a near grey and trembling weyrling queen beside me. Adayleth began to explain all she could from where she was. There were those that had been trying to reach her, but she’d chased them away… She had wanted to protect me. There had been no more thread since the day that Pern had gone dark. It was safe. I found out later that it was three days that I’d been unconscious. A blessing really. When we left the cavern, we realized the cost of AIVAS, the price of comfort. Dragonriders were mostly of the shunned and exiled, still among the weyrs, and a fair number escaped. The holds were decimated, with such high casualties that no man was left untouched. The northern continent had been showered so heavily with thread that there were stories of patched being dragon sized… Fear among those few left was almost rabid. Those guilty of the worst transgressions of Pern society outnumbered us all, the weyrs having been one of the most safe. Rogue dragonriders, criminals, and only a handful of people from holds that had once been massive remained.
There was only one answer. We had to find the old ways again, and fast.
The north was destroyed. Adayleth and I focused on gathering as many hold born and trustworthy dragonriders we could for our scouting. It was one of our eight, our steadfast brown rider that had ever been across the seas betweened to check the southern continent for any sign of life that returned wide eyed. Southern was untouched. But empty, as though all the inhabitants of the old times had simply vanished. No signs of a fight or struggle, nor thread… just empty weyrs that had not seen life in fifty turns or more. But weyrs nonetheless, away from the destruction of the north. We arranged a detail of a blue and greenrider to stay behind to transfer those that wished to build a new life in the south, and we began to bring all we had with us to the empty weyr.
Crystal Skies Weyr…
Our families are dead, and the eight and I have called the other dragons to the weyr as best we can, trying to keep those that would uprise and ruin what dragon kind once stood for controlled in our fold. New riders arrive every day, and some are as personable as any of the hold riders… But there are others with hate in their eyes, and it is them I fear. Adayleth is growing under the eyes of all that is left of Pern, and they wait for her to rise, to establish a new world order for Pern. They wait for me to guide them back into what our world once was. She is nearing her time. I can feel it, young as she is.
We are so few, and we are so many.
What am I going to do?
Crystal Skies Weyr is a new semi-cannon weyr in the post destruction and disappearance of almost all of Pern. Come live our story!
Currently we are seeking bronze, brown, blue, and green riders and wherhandlers, along with candidates and crafters to rebuild Pern! The last queen on Pern, still yet very young, has just sent out the call to rally the last dragonriders in order to make the jump to the south, which has been discovered as mysteriously empty. An abandoned weyr awaits them, their last effort to recreate the Pern that was. With dangerous rogue riders and so many dead, what can the last of a dying planet do to change the world around them?
We only need have a limited space for bronzes, but Adayleth is soon to rise, so please get those apps infor our potential next Weyrleader! We also have a staff position open and many other weyr spots to be filled, including a Headwoman, Candidate Master, and the future Weyrlingmaster!
Join us here!
Our Button
Holds grew, and when flights did happen, rarely were there more than just a few chasers. Every so often eggs were laid, just enough to keep the dragon populace from disappearing. Holds turned into full fledged cities, lush and green as they had never been allowed to be before. No more mines for firestone were dug, and whers lived in the wild, or protected the holds as their duties had been before. Firelizards grew rarer and rarer, until they seemed almost myth again, but for the few that might have sought them out.
Pern was changed. Who could have truly foreseen the terrors that were to rise and meet them just 75 turns after AIVAS self-quieted, to leave the Pernfolk to their new existences? The engines did knock the Red star away, so the threads could not reach us… Blind trust leaves us bitterly endangered. The Old Timers had been right. My grandmother and mother both were not lucky to survive that day, and I watched my friend and one of the last goldriders disappear screaming in a whirling mass of silver when the sky turned into a burning hell.
It was ten turns before that when we should have known something was coming. Whers acting restless, the greens and the last two golds on Pern rising and laying clutches that numbered into the teens when the last fifty turns had only given up five or so eggs per rising. For these rare occasions, the golds would return to the nearly abandoned weyrs, these the few times that any civilized person would approach them again now that the condemned, shunned, and exiled lived in them since Thread was destroyed. The others dismissed it as a fluke, few sending their children to these hatchings, allowing many of the little ones to impress to criminals and the slight sprinkling of good hearted hold children. There were no queen eggs to speak of, not in that first six years that the numbers increased. But one turn ago, we got our first taste of panic, when the rider of one of our recently flown queens sent word that there was a queen egg.
Whispers, gossip, worry… No one could understand it. Neither of the queens were sick, or even old… Why would Pern need another queen? Thread was all but forgotten. The Lord Holders waved it off as just another fluke. It would be the last time they’d get to wave off another of dragon kinds cryptic warnings. This clutch was watched carefully, and the Lord Holders arranged a small grouping of their daughters to stand for the golden egg. I was no different. A seventeen year old, standing in the bitter Northern cold of the crumbling remains of what had been Benden weyr… I watched half of the dragonets hatch and toddle to a hodgepodge of Holdless, and the other half to the children of the Holds. And then I watched the other half of my heart hatch and bumble her way into my terrified embrace. Adayleth was a perfect platinum gold harbinger of doom. We returned back to Benden’s old namesake hold, and back to our old lives.
Six months later, the sky burnt our whole planet down.
Just a day before, Adayleth and I tried her fledgling wings in a trip to Ista Hold. Spring was warming, and the hold was alight with activity. Children screamed and laughed and waved goodbye as we took off to congratulate Lymanth and her rider Carmen on their hatching where they rested in the old stones, just before preparing to return back to her own home hold. We stayed with the pair among the old weyr, sleeping in the same room that we’d spent a late night talking in.
It was screaming that awoke us. Lymanth had left her weyr to catch her meal, while my weyrling Adayleth slept. It was Carmen’s horrifying note of loss that woke me, casting my eyes out of the weyr cavern’s mouth. Silver poured like a molten waterfall, sizzling around the stone. Thread… I remember that moment all too well. When Carmen slipped out of her bed to stumble like I could only imagine dead to walk, and Adayleth let out a creeling desperate cry that I’d never heard from her before… It became all to clear what had happened. Thread had come. And Pern’s oldest queen had been killed by it. I couldn’t move, and when Carmen turned those pain maddened eyes on me, I could feel my heart give way to her hopeless fear and loss. I only looked away when she screamed and flung herself into the writhing silver mass that had claimed her queen. That scream is burned into me, the last thing I remember before the world went dark.
When I awoke, I was still where I’d fallen before, a near grey and trembling weyrling queen beside me. Adayleth began to explain all she could from where she was. There were those that had been trying to reach her, but she’d chased them away… She had wanted to protect me. There had been no more thread since the day that Pern had gone dark. It was safe. I found out later that it was three days that I’d been unconscious. A blessing really. When we left the cavern, we realized the cost of AIVAS, the price of comfort. Dragonriders were mostly of the shunned and exiled, still among the weyrs, and a fair number escaped. The holds were decimated, with such high casualties that no man was left untouched. The northern continent had been showered so heavily with thread that there were stories of patched being dragon sized… Fear among those few left was almost rabid. Those guilty of the worst transgressions of Pern society outnumbered us all, the weyrs having been one of the most safe. Rogue dragonriders, criminals, and only a handful of people from holds that had once been massive remained.
There was only one answer. We had to find the old ways again, and fast.
The north was destroyed. Adayleth and I focused on gathering as many hold born and trustworthy dragonriders we could for our scouting. It was one of our eight, our steadfast brown rider that had ever been across the seas betweened to check the southern continent for any sign of life that returned wide eyed. Southern was untouched. But empty, as though all the inhabitants of the old times had simply vanished. No signs of a fight or struggle, nor thread… just empty weyrs that had not seen life in fifty turns or more. But weyrs nonetheless, away from the destruction of the north. We arranged a detail of a blue and greenrider to stay behind to transfer those that wished to build a new life in the south, and we began to bring all we had with us to the empty weyr.
Crystal Skies Weyr…
Our families are dead, and the eight and I have called the other dragons to the weyr as best we can, trying to keep those that would uprise and ruin what dragon kind once stood for controlled in our fold. New riders arrive every day, and some are as personable as any of the hold riders… But there are others with hate in their eyes, and it is them I fear. Adayleth is growing under the eyes of all that is left of Pern, and they wait for her to rise, to establish a new world order for Pern. They wait for me to guide them back into what our world once was. She is nearing her time. I can feel it, young as she is.
We are so few, and we are so many.
What am I going to do?
Crystal Skies Weyr is a new semi-cannon weyr in the post destruction and disappearance of almost all of Pern. Come live our story!
Currently we are seeking bronze, brown, blue, and green riders and wherhandlers, along with candidates and crafters to rebuild Pern! The last queen on Pern, still yet very young, has just sent out the call to rally the last dragonriders in order to make the jump to the south, which has been discovered as mysteriously empty. An abandoned weyr awaits them, their last effort to recreate the Pern that was. With dangerous rogue riders and so many dead, what can the last of a dying planet do to change the world around them?
We only need have a limited space for bronzes, but Adayleth is soon to rise, so please get those apps infor our potential next Weyrleader! We also have a staff position open and many other weyr spots to be filled, including a Headwoman, Candidate Master, and the future Weyrlingmaster!
Join us here!
Our Button
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