~History~

After 15 years in a cold sleep, the brave people who had volunteered to become the colonists of Pern had finally reached their destination. With their spirits high and their dreams bright, the colonists looked down in awe at their carefully chosen landing sight. Those who had made the journey in the safety of the ship Bahrain, however, were destined for a different location than planned.

When it came time for the eager colonists to begin their descent to the planet’s surface, an electrical storm separated the shuttles from the three larger spaceships. The communication systems and navigational systems were interrupted, and the shuttles from the Bahrain flew off course. Crash landing on a large barren island, the surviving colonists from the Bahrain found that they were all alone. They could not locate any survivors from any of the others ships, their navigational systems and communications systems have been irrevocably damaged in the crash, and they could only assume that they were the only survivors on the entire surface of Pern.

With the determined stubbornness that had gotten the colonists chosen for the expedition in the first place, the survivors settled into the task of surviving with Jim Tillek, Ezra Keroon, and Wind Blossom as their leaders. Using caves for shelter in the winter months, setting up hydroponics systems for food, and using every piece of the shuttles that they could, the colonists began to make a simple way of life. Fishing became a primary source of food and, as their lives settled into routine, the sailors among the colonists began to go farther and farther out to sea in an attempt to find more land.

Their search yielded the discovery of several very fertile islands not far away and colonists began to branch out, eager to expand their population and natural resources. It was during exploration of these much smaller islands that the first firelizards were found. Once the colonists realized what they were, it quickly became obvious that they were an important messenger resource and every family soon had at least one.

Eight years after the colonists crashed onto the islands, a deadly organism began falling from the sky. It quickly became known as Thread and the colonists quickly began searching for a solution to this problem. The answer showed itself in the form of their now numerous firelizards. One of the fore most scientists of the colony, Wind Blossom, used genetic manipulation to enlarge the firelizards in an effort to provide a larger protection system for the colonists.

Her first attempt provided whers: creatures that were obviously related to the firelizards, but were not big enough to provide quite as much protection as they’d hoped for. Wind Blossom went back to the drawing board and almost two years after the hatching of the final batch of manipulated whers, Wind Blossom’s newest attempts hatched and revealed the first true dragons. Although the whers and their bondmates had quickly become a prestigious portion of the society, they were quickly eclipsed by the dragons and their riders and the almost mystical bond between the two.

Now, 763 years after the passengers of the Bahrain crashed to Pern, Tillek Sea Weyr is five turns into it’s fourth pass. Dragons have grown slightly larger, whers slightly less prestigious, and the pastoral society the colonists came to Pern to set up is firmly entrenched. However, the need for survival and the limited resources have also created a society that is very much centered around rank, gender, and bloodlines. Men have more power than women, the Weyrleader is the most powerful man on the islands, and marriages and births are arranged by a council of “scientific” and “objective” men.

In the weyr, women are trained and housed separately from the men. Girls are only Searched if there is a queen egg on the sands and the entire weyr society is highly political. Even during an interval the weyr holds an important place in the Bahrain Island Chain. They have the whercraft and the rescue teams that actively take part in the transporting of people and supplies to and from the more fertile, but actively volcanic, Southern Islands. Because of this, and the fact that gender and sexuality lines in the weyr are more blurred than in the holds, makes it so every child—even those who have no hopes of becoming a dragonrider—dreams of moving to the weyr. The Weyrleader, with the Weyrleader’s Second and the Weyrwoman directly behind him, are the most powerful people on Pern.

Rules

*This club has been approved*