dragons make useful go-betweens

just a girl geeking over dragonriders of pern. feel free to message me anytime! main: @rokayas

[grirnoires]

a sudden uncontrollable wave of nostalgia is upon me

[blackberrybug55]

Some portraits from the current cast of our Pern campaign, called The Tenth Clutch, which I've been slowly shaving the serial numbers off (it's now more 'Inspired By' atp.) From top left to bottom right; U'lon (First Wingleader) Cogh (Masterharper) Ustav (Masterhealer) T'gaun (Wingmaster; a new position that used to be 'Weyrleader') Amise (Weyrleader, instead of 'Weyrwoman') Lantam (Major Holder)

[shipfishwrites]

i love these !!

also i am intrigued by the mention of a campaign... a pern ttrpg?

[blackberrybug55]

Yes!! Me and my wife have been working on it since early last year. As we've worked on it, we've moved away from it being Pern and it's now our own setting that we're continuing to develop.

BUT, I'd really like to share all of the assets, worldbuilding, etc. that I made while it was still Pern! And maybe run a fun campaign/forum/Weyr in the future if there's interest.

[shipfishwrites]

yessss please show!! i'm always interested in ttrpg stuff

[threadfall]

You know what, I'm beginning to think McCaffrey hated DiTerlizzi's interpretation because he got what she was putting down with Lessa's role in the first book too well...

[neurovarious]

love is in the air? WRONG! dragons

[ranticore]

estibarith & rider (some guy. idk who that is)

she has a typical green dragon conformation. i liked the idea of caterpillar imagery?? so spiracle markings along her side as well as (eventually) large eye spots on the second wingsail when she's in season (i may be taking liberties but in canon dragons do get darker around mating time so i'll call it plausible). the wing lineart was massively complicated and i despaired the whole time 👍

she has a relatively large vertical stabiliser due to her short body and stubby tail. this keeps her stable in the air and prevents uncontrolled yaw. but like most greens the aerodynamic drag is tiring for her, and her flight, while incredibly precise and acrobatic, is highly inefficient.

[ranticore]

I wanted to keep drawing some pern dragon stuff because I'm now writing a full AU set in weyr but I didn't want to put this stuff on my main blog or patreon due to it being basically for my own reference, though i felt others would like it too! so here is My Take On Dragon Wings By Type...

It's no secret I love drawing bird wings and prefer them a lot over traditional dragon wings. Growing up, I read the pern books featuring cover art of dragonfly-like wings with lots of little translucent panels, which I always loved. So I thought I'd try to nail down some wing shapes & structures by blending those two things i like together. I am aware dragons fly by telekinesis but I prefer a more realistic type of creature design so I will be choosing to ignore that fact. I do not care about strict canon compliance but I do like to keep some of that framework there as well, for fun.

The wing is made up of three main sails, as well as a propatagium sail (in front of the elbow). They are relatively polymorphic and can expand or contract to an extent to change the shape of the wing in response to flight demands, like the wing of an airliner. The trailing edge can expand and the slots between the spars of the 1st wingsail can deepen or become shallower (where those are a feature). The main structural matrix is opaque, while the membranous 'sails' are translucent and let light through like stained glass. These are a bilayer of membrane with air sandwiched between, which forms part of the air sac & respiratory system.

It makes sense for the original engineers of dragons to diversify dragon wing types by colour so that when fighting Thread, there's a dragon for every conceivable aerial job.

[individual descriptions under the cut]

Queens have the longest wings, though the largest bronzes can rival them for surface area. Gold wings are high endurance - a queen can fly further than any other dragon in active level flight, leaving even the swiftest bronzes behind if they can't muster up the energy reserves to catch her. She is an effective flier at all elevations and can pass very low over terrain without issue as well; she is an expert at taking advantage of the ground effect, where extra lift is generated within one half of a wingspan above land. This way, she can pass low below the main wings fighting Thread to catch any stragglers without expending too much energy. However, she is not very agile and may need a bit of a run-up or cliff-edge to get airborne.

Bronzes are suited for command positions during Threadfall, rising highest and maintaining that altitude effortlessly by soaring on thermals. From this vantage point they can easily survey the wings of riders below and make tactical decisions to direct the tide of battle. They have the size and stamina to chase queens, but might find it difficult to keep up on the flat, so they continually select for fitter hatchlings as only the best manage to mate. It takes a very clever and agile bronze to catch a green, if they are so inclined.

Browns are swift, highly agile, and the fastest vertical fliers, ideal for diving through the Thread mass from top to bottom while the other types pass horizontally. During earlier Passes, browns were capable of using their speed to catch queens, but as queen & bronze endurance gradually increased, browns struggle to keep up if they haven't managed to immediately catch their mate in the starting scrum, which is unlikely due to the bulkier bronze dragons being able to shove the browns aside.

Blues are fast on the flat and nicely manoeuvrable, with enough endurance to last a full Threadfall. Good all-rounders with a characteristic vertical take-off, they work best in the horizontal plane in battle but really they can do a little bit of everything. They often beat browns to catch greens, being very precise in flight and almost as manoeuvrable as their green mates.

Greens make up for their low stamina with their extreme manoeuvrability. Their short and elliptical wings let them turn on a dime, hover, and even fly backwards if they are sufficiently skilled. They have the fastest wingbeats, flying with a distinct thrumming sound. Of all the types they are least likely to be hit by a stray Thread, but they tire easily on the flat and have no soaring ability at all, often tapping out midway through battle in favour of replacements. In battle, greens excel at catching odd and skewed clumps of Thread that don't fall as predicted, or ones that are missed by the other riders. Green mating flights are a whole different beast to gold mating flights, where extreme aerial acrobatics are favoured instead of endurance and altitude, and these flights may be over within seconds. You need to be able to withstand a Lot of G-force to be a green rider.

[mzminola]

Dragonflight was published in 1968.

The Environmental Protection Agency, tasked with such things as making rivers in the US stop catching on fire, clearing up smog, and so on, was not formed until 1970, and they had a lot of work ahead of them.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which finally let women open lines of credit in their own name, was passed in 1974.

Roe v. Wade was 1973.

Pern is a fascinating look at how speculative fiction is shaped, both in the constraints and rebellions, of the time it's written.

[kariachi]

Pern has to be so fucking loud. Because we're told that firelizards hum at births. Firelizard hatchings, dragon hatchings, human births, horse births, doesn't fucking matter. And we're given no reason to believe this was engineered out of them, given Sorka was warned of her starting labor by loud humming and dragon hatchlings watching through the window.

If there are dragonkin in the immediate area, you know when someone or thing is giving birth, and may damn well know who or what. Especially in the fucking Weyrs, where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.

Weyrfolk must be able to sleep through anything.

[shipfishwrites]

extremely funny mental image, yes, but i'm pretty sure they only hum for important births. you know, they're main-character detectors.

[quihi]

I read Fourth Wing, and I enjoyed it, and of course I noticed the similarities with the dragons in Dragonriders of Pern.

Is anyone doing more detailed compare/contrast and discussion? I started thinking about the scene where Xaden teaches Violet to block out Tairn's emotions, and how this contrasts with F'lar and Lessa in the most comparable scenes in Dragonflight and how their societies except them to handle the influence of dragons' emotions when mating. As soon as I read it I was 60% sure it was written as a direct response to Pern. (I tend to think of the difference as a 1960s vs. 2020s thing more than an individual author thing.) And that led me to think further, and think about the sorts of power that F'lar and Xaden have, and the relationships they have with the other government bodies in their respective worlds, and with their partners and everyone else. I think the differences are at least as interesting than the similarities and there's so much to think about!

I haven't even read Iron Flame yet and badly need to reread Dragonflight since it's been years and I don't remember the details, nor do I have a copy on hand. I'm only loosely aware of the discussion about either series and haven't been involved with either fandom.

[shipfishwrites]

rebageling to ask the crowd. i know at least one of you read fourth wing

[ewna-art]

Dragonrider things

[clementine-kesh]

like literally if i didn’t want to see some weird nonsense i wouldn’t be consuming scifi

[clementine-kesh]

“ohh this episode is about meeting a bunch of dinosaurs who developed space travel and left earth to go live on the other side of the galaxy isn’t that crazy?! isn’t that silly?!” sure yeah maybe a little but by focusing on that but you’re missing the narrative reason for it which is to provide a starting point to explore religious authoritarianism and the production of scientific knowledge

[mylittleredgirl]

just a spoonful of [nonsense] helps the [critical thinking about uncomfortable social and structural problems that are such a fundamental part of the background radiation of our lives that we can't see them] go down

[shipfishwrites]

put some dragons in there and i'm like sweet. gender politics let's gooooo

[abigailspinach]

FB just reminded me of this tweet from March 2021

[ranticore]

while I was doing the wings lineup I wanted to draw the dragons attached to them, so i did. while giving my take on body types for each colour..

keel depth depends largely on how active the flight pattern is (i.e how frequently do the wings beat). the books always emphasised that the hindlegs are disproportionately long, so here I have them especially big on blues and greens because these dragons are small enough to get airborne from a simple leap into the air from the ground. whereas the larger types need a takeoff roll to generate lift over their wings so their legs are more suitable for running, and their flight types compensate well for the extra weight & drag of long legs. given that the canon build is 'horselike' i tried to fit that in, with wrists halfway up the foreleg.

i gave them a little vertical stabiliser on the tail just for spice hehe. this should decrease in size as the dragon's length increases but w/e i forgot to reflect that in the drawing. completely halfassed the metallic colouring too but u get the idea. i also drew saddles and forgot to colour them lol

head shapes can vary within dragon colour rank, here are just some examples of facial diversity, though neck length is largely constrained by flight type. longer, leaner, and more flexible bodies are less stable in the air and less able to withstand the forces of really agile flight, so the most agile greens tend to be short and stocky, with short stiff tails and thick necks. by comparison, the bronzes and queens have long tails, long bodies, and very long necks (useful for grabbing your mate in flight).

if anyone would be interested in the lineart for these to use as bases?? idk let me know. yes u can redraw the blue's tail.

[ranticore]

i decided to be smart about it and put the bases (plus dragon wings as well) in my ko-fi shop for free so that you can just download them from there

[kariachi]

"Dragon skins vary in color, based on the amounts of nickel, cobalt, and iron in their makeup. The golds range from pale yellow to dark, antique gold. Bronzes all have a golden-green sheen, but occasionally a few can be found that are nearly as dark as a brown. The shimmering hides of the blues and greens show nearly the whole spectrum of those shades, while browns go from tan through to chocolate."

~The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, pg 29

[shipfishwrites]

hell yeah validation

[auntieoneandauntietwo]

When a Pern fan procrastinates…

8th/9th pass Weyr leadership

Between the red lines every cell is one year, otherwise they’re just roughly proportional. I have no clue who this helps, but I had fun with it!

[shipfishwrites]

fascinating... this is very interesting information. looking at igen like hmm did your leadership actually stay consistent like that or did anne firget about you?

[auntieoneandauntietwo]

I think she probably forgot… Igen Weyr barely exists on page tbh. More remarkable to me is Telgar, apparently both of them managed to hang on all the way through atwop despite the fact that they’re the ones with the ridiculous numbweed overdose situation in dq and really don’t seem all that smart

[shipfishwrites]

off the top of your head do you remember if flights are mentioned for non-benden weyrleadership? like, maybe i'm thinking all wrong here, but i thought it was remarked as *unusual* that lessa and f'lar had such a continuous and stable reign as weyrleadership. i don't know, i suppose i left the series with the impression that weyrleaders typically turned over every handful of years.

aside from carola and jora, it's mainly stable pairs. (margatta gets a mulligan after one year with p'zar, and pilgra trades t'bor for m'rand.)

[firecoloredwater]

I doubt much thought went into it really, but it could be that Lessa specifically is the unusual factor. Not many senior weyrwomen were senior from the moment they impressed; if age is considered when choosing a new senior weyrwoman (either "we have three roughly equally good candidates; we'll go with the oldest of them" or "well, the senior weyrwoman died without naming a successor, we'll default to the oldest gold") it could be that most senior goldriders become senior well past their prime, and only have ten/fifteen/twenty years left before they have to retire themselves.

Throw in the occasional weyrleader death by thread, and death for either by heart attack/flu/whatever, and Lessa and F'lar's 60ish years could be very unusual even if gold-bronze pairs are mostly stable.

[shipfishwrites]

isn't senior decided by who fucks first after the last one dies? or did fandom invent that

[the-feels-assassin]

A Pern/Avengers Crossover (That No One Asked for)

So I was reading a recent popular book involving dragons and dragonriders, and thinking how much I like the Dragonriders of Pern better (lol), and of course my brain did it's thing. So here you have it. My definitive opinion on what sorts of people the Avengers would be in the world of Pern.

We're gonna start with Steve/Peggy/Bucky because I HAVE THOUGHTS:

Of course this is during a Pass, because Steve/Peggy/Bucky have to be during a time of War and a Pass is the closet we have to War in the Dragonrider sof Pern.

Steve Rogers: oh, Steve. Poor, tiny, sickly Steve. He and Bucky are fosters at a Weyr, but no one expects/wants Steve to bond a dragon because no one is confident this sickly kid is going to live through the night at any given time. So either they keep him off the sands during a hatching or he's up in the bleachers. But Steve, being Steve, we get a Jaxom or Keevan scenario. No one means Steve to Impress a dragon, but of course you can't communicate that to freshly hatched dragons. And so of course between the sheer determination of Steve pulling himself out of the infirmary (ala Keevan in The Smallest Dragon Boy) and the stubbornness of the dragon refusing everyone on the sands (ala Ruth looking for Jaxom), we get tiny Steve Rogers bonded to what will be the biggest, most powerful Bronze Dragon the Weyr has ever seen. Steve becomes a Wingleader and everyone expect he'll be Weyrleader one day when Peggy becomes head Weyrwoman. Which leads us to Peggy Carter

Peggy Carter: Peggy is a rider of a gold dragon, of course she is. She was fostered in a different Weyr from Steve and Bucky (hence the different accent), but due to injuries and deaths during the passes, she gets redistributed to another Weyr that is lean on Golds and their leading Gold and Weyrwoman are aging. Peggy will be the next Weyrwoman. She is Peggy Carter in every way, fierce and determined, and like Lessa she fights the leadership of her time to enable Gold dragons to fight. Because Peggy Carter is all about sticking it to the patriarchy.

Bucky Barnes: Bucky Barnes is solid and reliable and dependable. He Impressed one of those Brown dragons that's as big as a Bronze (ala F'nor and Canth). He is Steve's Wing-Second. And then something happens while they are fighting Thread. Bucky is hit. Thread takes his left arm and sears most of his dragon on the left side. His dragon jumps Between and never comes back. Everyone assumes Bucky went with him, dead.

Everyone, of course, assumes wrong.

So what happens to Steve?

Steve just fought Thread, the battle is over and he's beat, and he's just doing a sweep to make sure nothing got through. It's time to go home; he goes to jump Between. He accidentally jumps time. He envisioned something off--something in the stars, maybe it was a night jump?--and suddenly he's in the future. He has no idea how to get back. Steve Rogers is a bit of a legend. His arrival sends both the Weyr into chaos, but also no one really believes it's him. They need the Harpers to verify, since the Harpers hold the history of Pern.

Which of course...brings us to SHIELD.

Because we all know the Harpers are the Spies of Pern, and the Masterharper of Pern is the most powerful man on Pern (search your feelings, you know it to be true) so of course I'm saying that:

Nick Fury: Nick Fury is the mother-loving Masterharper of Pern. Look, I don't care if he doesn't sing or play an instrument that we know of in the Marvel movies. In the Pern novels, Robinton has his fingers in EVERYTHING. He is the puppet master. Nick Fury is the Masterharper of Pern. I will brook no argument on this. Which of course means all of our SHIELD agents are harpers. Yes. It's wonderful.

Clint Barton: I mean how could Clint Barton NOT be a harper? He grew up Holdless. He picked up his acrobatic, juggling, and archery skills as a Holdless kid. But a Harper (probably Fury) saw his talent and potential and recruited him to be a Harper. Sure the kid is partially deaf, but he's a natural with an instrument and a born-entertainer. He's also so darn personable. Everyone immediately likes him and trusts him and tells him things. So of course, of course he's a perfect Harper, a perfect person to collect information and brook trust with the Holdless, Holds, and Weyrs alike.

Natasha Romanoff: There isn't really an equivalent of the Soviet Union in Pern. Natasha grows up in the Southern Continent, maybe the child of an Oldtimer exiled there. I think like Menolly, Natasha naturally Impressed a whole little flight of fire lizards, because she is like that. While Natasha is raised in an environment where all those in the Northern Continent are the enemy, eventually she meets Clint Barton and is recruited to Harper Hall and to the cause of ridding Pern of thread forever (the Ultimate Goal).

Phil Coulson: Look he makes Harper Hall run. He mostly stays in Harper Hall while Fury is out doing God knows what, and it's Coulson who is keeping tabs and getting reports from Barton and Romanoff.

Okay but what about Tony and Bruce? They are the last two Main Avengers left.

Tony Stark: Obviously the youngest Master ever at Smithcraft Hall. Could be on track to be the next Mastersmith BUT you know Tony. He likes to work on what he wants to work on. He's a genius and we love him, but staying within an authority matrix or running one isn't his strong suit. Eventually he becomes the head of Computer craft, when he meets....

JARVIS: Obviously the AIVAS analog. Tony is just bitter he didn't invent JARVIS himself. In this AU, I think it's Natasha who discovers AIVAS, while messing around on the Southern continent, doing her undercover recon thing. She sends her queen firelizard (the only one with two brain cells, obviously) to report back to Fury, who immediately gets Tony down there via Dragon. And of course that Dragonrider is none other than Tony's best friend.

James Rhodes: Rhodey was raised in Smithcraft Hall, went to be fostered at a Weyr for a short period of time, mainly to learn more about the Weyr's needs and how Smithcraft Hall could better plug in and whoops, impressed a dragon. Tony is still mad his best friend "abandoned him" for a "giant lizard" (which really Tony is just incredibly jealous. Who doesn't want to be a dragonrider?).

Bruce Banner: Bruce is basically the opposite of Rhodey. He was a dragonrider and he lost his dragon fighting Thread. This has left Bruce teetering between suicidal depression and complete rage. He's found new purpose in Smithcraft Hall and has become friends with Tony, but there is just a pain in him that is indescribable and everyone who interacts with him can feel it. In this AU, General Ross is the Weyrleader of the Weyr that Bruce was in--Betty is still his daughter and a gold rider. But since Bruce's bronze dragon is dead, well, there is just really no future for him and Betty.

Okay that's it for now. I have no idea what happened to Bucky (how does he come back? What is a Winter Soldier equivalent in Pern??), and I have no intention of writing a story in this AU, but inexplicably this keeps coming to me.

[auntieoneandauntietwo]

How I would pace a pern tv show

Season one : dragonflight

Season two: dragonquest, dragonsong + dragonsinger. The events are pretty tightly aligned and it eases us into the more broad focus style of the later series

Season 3: a (potentially awkward) bridge covering dragondrums, the first section of the white dragon when Jaxom is younger, renegades of pern, and a couple of the short stories. The main arcs here are Piemur’s story in dragondrums, the beginning of exploring the southern continent and conflicts with Toric (scenes from drums, renegades, and twd), everything with Aramina, Jayge, and K’van starting with K’van impressing and ending with Aramina and Jayge moving south, Jaxom in his early years with Ruth (all the stuff from twd from before he’s ~18), and Mirrim and her experiences (dragondrums scenes + a lot more expansion because Mirrim deserves it)

Season 4 - the part of twd after that little timeskip where Jaxom grows up + the tail end of renegades + a lot more focus on non Jaxom characters leading up to the discovery of Landing