A Brief History of Our Pern

[Prissy]

The Recent History of our Pern

First Turn of the Dissapearances

Second Turn of the Dissapearances

Third Turn of the Dissapearances

Fourth Turn of the Dissapearances

Fifth Turn of the Dissapearances

First Turn of the New Age

Second Turn of the New Age

[Prissy]

Seven Turns ago, a single dragon disappeared Between, in an apparent accident. But, accidents happen all the time, and the death was ignored. Even now, there is not so much as a name recorded. A few sevendays later, four more dragons Betweened without explanation, this time among them the youngest Gold of Ista Weyr. Now, there was attention, but little concern. Sorrow, but not anxiety.

Following them, a contingent of ten unknown dragons from High Reaches Weyr. And fear began to settle into hearts. Was it disease? Healers were called in, to research. And in Benden Weyr, dragons were forbidden from Betweening at all, in an attempt to save their population. But there was little to be done. Quarantines began, but were ineffective at best. The only headway made was the discovery that, if a clutch was raised in isolation, far away from any contaminated dragons, they seemed equipped to survive. Whatever it was, it could not be inherited from mother or sire.

On and on, great flocks of dragons- sometimes two or three, sometimes half a Wing- simply went Between and never came out. For five Turns, without explanation. Weyrs were abandoned, Weyrfolk and the occasional rider traveling into what handful of Weyr remained. Until finally, only one: the underpopulated, understaffed Benden. The One Weyr of Pern. And even she was ruinous, half destroyed by a tremors that collapsed a massive portion of her once elegant caverns. Restorations began, but there was little headway to be made without the strength of dragonkind to assist them. Still, if nothing else, the dining hall and records rooms were slowly excavated.

One by one, dragons died. Hope grew dim. But, hope is not a prerequisite for Life; with only one bronze to court her, the last of Pern's golden Queens rose to mate. And so she did. Gretlith laid her last clutch, refusing at first to eat, or sleep, or move as all dying Goldmothers. But even a clutch could not overwhelm the strange compulsion to Between. Indeed, she passed away less than three days after the clutching was finished.

And her early death gave an opportunity for change, there, on the Sands of The One Weyr. Experiments were performed, as guided by an ancient record written by some ancient Master with two names: Kitti Ping. From these experimentations, new dragon colors were crafted. And, as their genes were tampered with, the last of Pern's original dragons, the beasts that had saved mankind for countless generations, disappeared Between, never to return.

All hope laid with that strange, mutated clutch. And, thank Faranth, any worries that the experimentation would bring harm or mutilation were finally cast aside when they hatched, whole, hale and hearty.

Of course, with no elder dragons to teach them, the new Weyrlings were dependant upon the carefully crafted sanity of a single Dragonless Man, Zyrran. But he taught them as well as any could hope.

Though the dragons were few in number, their ranks weak and underpopulated, one of the hatchlings, beautiful gold Silirith, rose like her mother before her, and brought into existence still more. There was hope to be had once more that the population of dragons might one day return to it's proper strength. Hope that blossomed more deeply when her sister, gold Ilterilth, clutched strongly as well.

And some would claim that it was these plans for a return to glory that started the hazardous troubles with the Holders, but they would be wrong. No. The problems began only when one Lord did not approve of his daughter's impression to a Blood queen. Did he hate her impression to a new color? Or simply at all? Who can say. But the lord had her dragon slaughtered in the night, and distraught, his daughter took her own life. A tangibly terrifying echo of the rash of suicides that had come to a traumatic end so recently.

D'mian of Brown Hunth led the trial against him, and so began the troubles with the Holds.

It was a mere six months later that the Weyr decided that it was time to move. To abandon fair Benden and all that she had done for them. The Holders tensions were running too high and the dragonriders were prevented from completing their duties, no matter how they tried. And failed. And so, though not made lightly, the decision was made nonetheless, to move to one of the other, empty Weyrs. But not before Lord Silas of Benden was assassinated by D'mian, though few people know the true cause of his passing.

Perhaps it was coincidence. Perhaps retaliation. But whatever the motivation, Weyrwoman Aesta has been killed, and with her one of the scarce few clutching dragons. A leader and a mother have been lost to human hatred. And this murder cemented the decision. The One Weyr was no longer safe.

The entire populace of the One Weyr of Pern disappeared from Benden territory in short order, taking refuge in the spacious caverns of the abandoned High Reaches Weyr, where they were safely distant from Hold politics.

This shift occurred only one Turn past, and now, with caverns in the process of being restored and homes being created and cleaned from the great, stone walls, there is time to wonder, and time to solve.

Who killed Weyrwoman Aesta? How? Why?

And what of the horrid, unexplained disappearance of the dragons, only two Turns prior? All any inquiry turns up is dust and confusion, and so most are forced to assume that the dragons were victim to some unfortunate illness or another, choosing to end their lives between rather than risk the rest of the population. But that is only an assumption, told by Healers yes, but no more trustworthy than any Harper tale...