Post by Zen on Jan 26, 2012 10:11:20 GMT -5
A basic introduction to Anne McCaffrey's Pern, as it has been adapted for RP at Mavros.
Dragons, both Pern’s most hallowed defenders and its greatest economic and social burden, weren’t created simply to defend people from Thread. The Pernese have long since learned to shelter themselves in large complexes of natural caverns and stone outbuildings, often built into cliffs and rocky hillsides, which they call Holds. The chief purpose of dragons is to defend land – land for growing crops on, for keeping livestock on, even land which has no value whatsoever but which is adjacent to land which does – because Thread which burrows spreads, and if you let it infest your neighbor’s field it will not hesitate to move on and make a wasteland of yours, too.
Without fertile land preserved for farming, starvation is the only thing the Pernese will have to look forward to after a Fall is over. Dragonriders must thus protect as much of the planet’s surface as they can in order to ensure a future for its inhabitants.
Because their ancestors, interstellar colonists, chose to create and pass on only traditions related to surviving Threadfall, the Pernese have never been much concerned with their eternal souls, or the prospect of the afterlife, or with any kind of great and overarching idealism or philosophy. While music is highly valued and plays a vital role in education, Pernese culture is very stable, rooted firmly in the traditions of the Teaching Songs, and has undergone almost no cultural innovation over the course of more than a thousand years.
Carefully preserved traditions are what enable the Pernese to survive from one Pass of the Red Star to another. Their old songs, rules, and social structures are almost universally accepted. This is because, as they grow up in isolated Holds, people are taught them from birth by the Harpers, a planet-wide organization of musician-teachers dedicated to the preservation of knowledge - and to the planet-wide indoctrination of said knowledge.
The Northern Harper Hall stations its harpers at every hold and weyr on Pern, determined to see that all Pernese children learn and remember their Teaching Songs. These simple rhymes, set to music, have helped ensure cultural unity for hundreds of years. They tell the Pernese to honor dragons and their riders, accept their place in life, and take a wide variety of precautions to protect themselves and their community during Passes and prepare for future ones during Intervals. Letting greenery grow up on the exterior walls of a Hold, for example, is cautioned against in such songs, because greenery attracts Thread during Falls.
War does not happen on Pern, at least not on any significant scale. This is most likely because the Pernese Lord Holders cannot afford to waste material resources on squabbling over territory when they need to be working to support not only their own people, but also all the dragons of the weyr. Even during Intervals when Thread is not falling, dragonriders retain a great deal of authority, and can step in to prevent the Lord Holders from coming to arms. And though military aggression between Lord Holders (the noble rulers of the Holds) has been known to occur during times of civil unrest when respect for the weyrs and for old tradition was at an all-time low (see the Lord Holder Fax in Dragonflight for one example) making war on one's neighbor has never ceased to be a cultural taboo.
Neither does Pern appear to have known severe violent revolution in its history. Most of the violence on the planet is committed by the Holdless, who have been expelled from formal society.
For the most part, the Holdless are the Pernese equivalent of outlaws, criminals banished into the wilderness who lack anything but the poorest of shelters from Threadfall. Some Holdless, however, are innocent of any crime except being too old or too sick to work or play a purposeful role in their place of origin: at the beginning of a Pass, some poorer holds who feel they cannot support all their members will choose to cast out the disabled and the weak.
While it remains a more sanitized place to live than, say, medieval Europe, Pern is thus not and has never been a paradise. Until the social advancements that took place during the Ninth Pass, women were forbidden to Impress fighting dragons or earn rank in the vast majority of Crafts for centuries. Marriages were often political, and concubinage seems to have been practiced well into the 9th Interval.
The constant need to preserve the human population as well as the draconic one – even during Intervals – meant that a woman’s womb became her most valuable asset early on in Pernese history, second only in importance to her domestic abilities and her looks. Impressing gold eventually seems to have become one of the only reliable ways for a girl to rise to a position of influence on her own. Even then, over the centuries, goldriders eventually lost the right to fly against Thread with agenothree sprayers, and Weyrwomen became more and more eclipsed by the bronzeriders who surrounded them. While the title of Weyrleader could only be gained if a rider's bronze was chosen as a mate by the Weyrwoman's gold, the Weyrwoman herself did not always have a say in who her dragon chose. Weyrwomen like Benden's Jora were often less educated and competent than their bronzerider counterparts, and for good reason: it had become politically convenient for ambitious bronzers to pick gold candidates for looks rather than good sense, since they could then be more easily distracted, led around or shut out entirely when it came to the actual governance of the weyr.
By the Ninth Interval, the only female riders were gold-riders, and the only time many queens ever flew was when it came time for them to be chased. Some weyrleaders, like Dragonflight's R'gul, even began to insist that golds were incapable of flying and betweening under other circumstances!
In Mavros’ “Alternate Universe” extrapolation of Pernese history, however, even though AIVAS was never discovered, the social progress set in motion by Lessa, F’lar, Mirrim, Robinton and other key heroes of the Ninth Pass continued during the Tenth Interval. A massive population explosion, enabled by the establishment of the new holds and weyrholds on the Southern Continent, as well as by moderate medical and technological advancements in the various crafting halls, helped lessen the practical need for litters of Pernese children and gradually reduced the intense social pressure on women to serve as mothers only.
While discrimination is still present, and many small holds or even larger, influential settlements like the weyrhold at Mirran proudly impose reinvented “traditions” which cannot be described as anything but regressive, significant progress has been made. Menolly of Half-Circle was not the last of her sex to attain mastery and the leadership of a crafthall, while less than a century after Mirrim’s Impression of Path female candidates were seen leading green dragons off the sands more frequently than their male counterparts.
Later blue Impressions by young girls, however occasional, met with significantly more controversy, and it was a long time before they gained even grudging acceptance in the eyes of the more conservative holdfolk. On the whole, though, women in the wings now receive respect and relatively equal treatment from all: their right to Impress fighting dragons is no longer a matter of fierce contention.
Dragons, both Pern’s most hallowed defenders and its greatest economic and social burden, weren’t created simply to defend people from Thread. The Pernese have long since learned to shelter themselves in large complexes of natural caverns and stone outbuildings, often built into cliffs and rocky hillsides, which they call Holds. The chief purpose of dragons is to defend land – land for growing crops on, for keeping livestock on, even land which has no value whatsoever but which is adjacent to land which does – because Thread which burrows spreads, and if you let it infest your neighbor’s field it will not hesitate to move on and make a wasteland of yours, too.
Without fertile land preserved for farming, starvation is the only thing the Pernese will have to look forward to after a Fall is over. Dragonriders must thus protect as much of the planet’s surface as they can in order to ensure a future for its inhabitants.
Because their ancestors, interstellar colonists, chose to create and pass on only traditions related to surviving Threadfall, the Pernese have never been much concerned with their eternal souls, or the prospect of the afterlife, or with any kind of great and overarching idealism or philosophy. While music is highly valued and plays a vital role in education, Pernese culture is very stable, rooted firmly in the traditions of the Teaching Songs, and has undergone almost no cultural innovation over the course of more than a thousand years.
Carefully preserved traditions are what enable the Pernese to survive from one Pass of the Red Star to another. Their old songs, rules, and social structures are almost universally accepted. This is because, as they grow up in isolated Holds, people are taught them from birth by the Harpers, a planet-wide organization of musician-teachers dedicated to the preservation of knowledge - and to the planet-wide indoctrination of said knowledge.
The Northern Harper Hall stations its harpers at every hold and weyr on Pern, determined to see that all Pernese children learn and remember their Teaching Songs. These simple rhymes, set to music, have helped ensure cultural unity for hundreds of years. They tell the Pernese to honor dragons and their riders, accept their place in life, and take a wide variety of precautions to protect themselves and their community during Passes and prepare for future ones during Intervals. Letting greenery grow up on the exterior walls of a Hold, for example, is cautioned against in such songs, because greenery attracts Thread during Falls.
War does not happen on Pern, at least not on any significant scale. This is most likely because the Pernese Lord Holders cannot afford to waste material resources on squabbling over territory when they need to be working to support not only their own people, but also all the dragons of the weyr. Even during Intervals when Thread is not falling, dragonriders retain a great deal of authority, and can step in to prevent the Lord Holders from coming to arms. And though military aggression between Lord Holders (the noble rulers of the Holds) has been known to occur during times of civil unrest when respect for the weyrs and for old tradition was at an all-time low (see the Lord Holder Fax in Dragonflight for one example) making war on one's neighbor has never ceased to be a cultural taboo.
Neither does Pern appear to have known severe violent revolution in its history. Most of the violence on the planet is committed by the Holdless, who have been expelled from formal society.
For the most part, the Holdless are the Pernese equivalent of outlaws, criminals banished into the wilderness who lack anything but the poorest of shelters from Threadfall. Some Holdless, however, are innocent of any crime except being too old or too sick to work or play a purposeful role in their place of origin: at the beginning of a Pass, some poorer holds who feel they cannot support all their members will choose to cast out the disabled and the weak.
While it remains a more sanitized place to live than, say, medieval Europe, Pern is thus not and has never been a paradise. Until the social advancements that took place during the Ninth Pass, women were forbidden to Impress fighting dragons or earn rank in the vast majority of Crafts for centuries. Marriages were often political, and concubinage seems to have been practiced well into the 9th Interval.
The constant need to preserve the human population as well as the draconic one – even during Intervals – meant that a woman’s womb became her most valuable asset early on in Pernese history, second only in importance to her domestic abilities and her looks. Impressing gold eventually seems to have become one of the only reliable ways for a girl to rise to a position of influence on her own. Even then, over the centuries, goldriders eventually lost the right to fly against Thread with agenothree sprayers, and Weyrwomen became more and more eclipsed by the bronzeriders who surrounded them. While the title of Weyrleader could only be gained if a rider's bronze was chosen as a mate by the Weyrwoman's gold, the Weyrwoman herself did not always have a say in who her dragon chose. Weyrwomen like Benden's Jora were often less educated and competent than their bronzerider counterparts, and for good reason: it had become politically convenient for ambitious bronzers to pick gold candidates for looks rather than good sense, since they could then be more easily distracted, led around or shut out entirely when it came to the actual governance of the weyr.
By the Ninth Interval, the only female riders were gold-riders, and the only time many queens ever flew was when it came time for them to be chased. Some weyrleaders, like Dragonflight's R'gul, even began to insist that golds were incapable of flying and betweening under other circumstances!
In Mavros’ “Alternate Universe” extrapolation of Pernese history, however, even though AIVAS was never discovered, the social progress set in motion by Lessa, F’lar, Mirrim, Robinton and other key heroes of the Ninth Pass continued during the Tenth Interval. A massive population explosion, enabled by the establishment of the new holds and weyrholds on the Southern Continent, as well as by moderate medical and technological advancements in the various crafting halls, helped lessen the practical need for litters of Pernese children and gradually reduced the intense social pressure on women to serve as mothers only.
While discrimination is still present, and many small holds or even larger, influential settlements like the weyrhold at Mirran proudly impose reinvented “traditions” which cannot be described as anything but regressive, significant progress has been made. Menolly of Half-Circle was not the last of her sex to attain mastery and the leadership of a crafthall, while less than a century after Mirrim’s Impression of Path female candidates were seen leading green dragons off the sands more frequently than their male counterparts.
Later blue Impressions by young girls, however occasional, met with significantly more controversy, and it was a long time before they gained even grudging acceptance in the eyes of the more conservative holdfolk. On the whole, though, women in the wings now receive respect and relatively equal treatment from all: their right to Impress fighting dragons is no longer a matter of fierce contention.
