Crystal Skies Weyr

[Kesa]

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

[songunsung]

An Update....

Crystal Skies has changed. First, from a new place where ghosts call from every corner. Now as I lean over my records, I hear children laughing, the weyrs on either side of my own full. To my right, an infertile silver rider houses her family. To my left, a dark silence from someone I do not entirely understand. But perhaps that is a story best explained later. The weyr flourishes, as daily since our arrival, people have trickled in from the ruined north. The fires have finally died over what was home to a nation of people. Now the south slowly grows. The weyrs, while mostly empty, begin to show signs of life, with only a few more than need cleaning before that particular chore is finally finished. The kitchens are like new, under Headwoman Naenia’s care, though I fear she will soon retire, leaving another hole in the many duties that need filling. Summer has dawned, bright and clear on our fields, and we are reminded that our food stores need replenishing, fences need repairing, and our crafts need to be passed on to whomever can learn them. We are beginning to remember, but there is still much to be done.

The grumbling of the riders in regards to their new weyrleader has finally gone silent. Now all the whispers are aimed at the three native southern children that arrived not long ago. Their mere lives are a thing of wonderment, children of a tribe native to the south, and the only living humans in the Southern Continent. Two have impressed at Adayleth’s first clutch, while the third seems content to drift between the open plains of her native land and the weyr itself. But while their existence is extraordinary, the story they have brought to our weyr is far more dangerous, as well as completely terrifying. What we once knew about the eradication of thread has proven not only wrong to the point of nearly ending all life in the north, but has caused the horrific deaths of all those who had lived in the south. Only these strange children and their tribe have escaped, though not entirely unscathed. Being the one to tell a terrifying story must be a heavy burden. I do not envy these people. Of course now we all know why we came to an empty continent, the weyr only whispering with the ghosts of the lives lost there. We have done our best to fill it with life, but the hills that were explained as massive graves serve to remind us.

History failed us. History says that 80 turns ago, when AIVAS told the dragonriders that thread could be eradicated, plans were put into action to make it so. 5 turns later, the people then finally had all they needed, activating the old engines with instructions from AIVAS and pushing the Red Star away from Pern, allowing for what they all thought of as an end to Thread and its threats. For all intents, AIVAS had done what it promised, deactivated, and disappeared, leaving Pern with what we thought was a peaceful end to our old rival. As we all know, dragonkind began to dwindle rapidly then, with golds rarely rising at all, let alone carrying golden daughters, only clutching when they had to, and keeping their bloodlines around when another of the golds grew too old or passed between. This is what everyone knows, the facts of why the numbers have decreased so much. The dragonriders began to become normal men. They married, had children, and moved to the holds to lead normal lives with their partners. Those that were determined to be criminals or had no desire to be within a hold's laws, they used the old weyrs, abandoned by dragonmen, for new homes.

This was common knowledge, what most of us knew as the only truth about what the dragonriders did. Eris’s tale has taught us a new lesson. A lesson of contention when the Red Star was moved, as the numbers dwindled, as more and more men decided to go to holds and become holders. There were a large number of men who fought the change, especially those in the weyrs of the south. They were extremely proud, and unwilling to give up their weyrs to rogues, and there were many who even came from the north to the south in protest of the change. After turns of ignoring the other continent, many riders simply forgot about the others. The South was too proud to acknowledge the North's change to holds, and the dragonriders here kept their homes, and began to use the fields to support themselves. They didn't necessarily believe thread would return, but they thought that if it did, they would be ready for it. Mines were still dug out for firestone, drills still ran. Even though they had as few clutches as the North had, they kept to the old ways.

What happened has changed Pern forever.

The engines that they sent to push the Red Star back had to be in a precise location, and at the time it came close enough, it was nearing the time for thread over the south. So the engines were set off above the southern sky. No one thought anything of it. At least, not until everyone started dying. According to the strange southern tribe, it started with illness. But it wasn't choosy, like most plagues, where it skipped a few here or a few there. Everyone had it. Animals, flitts, dragons, children, whers, crafters, herdbeast. It started with weakness. Some went blind. Others had masses, some lost their hair. Some just went insane, or stopped breathing in the night. All of the weyrs in the south, the holds... Everyone. Babies were born dead, tiny... as though they couldn't grow... That, or they were born disfigured. Herdbeast gave birth to mutations that wouldn't live, and even the runners were foaling creatures with extra limbs, or none at all. The drawings in some of the records that my family has seen, even the ones that might be in your own walls... They are not for the faint of heart, or those that cannot stomach suffering. People were dying in droves. There are mass graves up past the mountains, after the dragons stopped being able to take their dead between because of how weak they became. All as across the sea, the north carried on their new lives without the slightest idea. The small tribe survived as they mined for silver, safe below ground as the strange poison the exploding engine emitted sprinkled down on the rest of the South. The tribe even recovered a piece of the engine, and the symbol they believe warns of the poison that ruined so many.

With the advice of the tribesmen, we were shown the changes that whatever had caused the illness had brought to the south. Some of the results were most helpful... Crops were growing immense fruit, our animals became more resistant to certain illnesses, there were far more multiple births in both animals and women. It also prompted massive felines and wild canines, a major threat to anyone outside of the walls or those that travel. We were told of a level of violence that sometimes shows in animals, or even humans, a ruthless cruelty that we sometimes attribute to the invisible sickness. It also caused strange markings on creatures, including the firelizards that seemed to slowly bounce back from their few numbers. There were colors we witnessed that no one had seen before.

Yes, the colors. They were a shock when the eleven eggs hatched on the sands to reveal shades we had not seen. A black queen, capable of flaming and clutching. Male weyrlingsfrom grey to black, both genders of a brilliant crimson, a brilliantly white professed green, and two pair of twin eggs. All hatched with minimal trouble. All impressed. They are strange, but they are dragons. Who is to say that they are not proper? They are strong as any other, and dragonriders are in great need now. The entire weyr watches with bated breath, in hope that they are truly as strong as their normal colored clutch mates.

My story would stop there, but then there is Leucothea and her men. The only other gold rider on Pern. She seems to be almost my twin… Light hair, blue eyes…. But her eyes are lustful as her and her men take in Crystal Skies and all my weyr has worked to become. My weyr. Perineaeth, her gold, glimmers as though on the verge of rising. And Leucothea’s eyes glimmer with want. She seems ruthless, as though she will do anything to get what she wants. Does the rogue queen covet the weyr I have built? She bides her time, I bide mine. But at the clouds gather over the walls of our weyr, I await whatever these strangers have to offer. I am still afraid of failing. We all are.

But will I fail at another queen’s hands?

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Welcome to Crystal Skies Weyr! If you haven’t been to visit us, please stop by! If you have… Stop back in! We now have a whole new look, with plenty of friendly faces to wish you an awesome day!

What we offer:

*~*A great welcoming community! All our members will definitely point you in the direction you need if you have any questions, and our mod and admin team are almost always around to answer anything that isn’t covered in out information. *~*

*~* Activity! As we gear up for our newest plot, we have plenty of space for players! Varied backgrounds for members include being a Rogue rider, an Original Rider, or being a member of the Southern Tribe! Want to write with or meet new people? Hit the Classifieds forum with a request, and you‘ll be using your muse in no time!*~*

*~* An upcoming flight and hatching! Our new Rogue queen has arrived, and her time is near! Candidate slots are needed to be filled for the clutch sure to come! *~*

*~* Plenty of plot action! With the trouble between the Rogue Riders, and the Hold riders of the north, along with the strange change to Pern’s environment because of the mysterious poison from seventy turns ago, there’s plenty to discover. Will you be the first to see the massive fruits in the South’s wide fields, or cross paths with the mutated felines in the dark forests? Or will you challenge the tradition of the old riders? You decide! *~*

*~* Open positions! Crafters of all trades, weyrfolk, riders, candidates, wherhandlers… There‘s space for all! Other positions of interest are open, including the new headwoman, Weylingmaster for our new clutch, Masters of several crafts, and the list goes on!*~*

*~* Contests and member participation! We love hearing from our members, and the several polls and contests, along with constant updates to keep everyone informed! Our site always has new features, posting incentives, and other fun stuff going on! Listen to a song inspired by a character in the forums, or just enjoy conversation in our updated cbox. Show off your art, open a shop, buy a character slot, or submit your plot ideas or essays on Pern to us for fun and reward. *~*

*~* Come and participate, or even earn your way to being a teacher in our upcoming Mentoring Project! Never played Pern before and want to learn? Need help learning new styles of writing, or how to code? Want to get a few pointers on how to length your posts, or decrease the number of spelling errors? This soon to come feature will offer mentors for you to work with, that will privately write with you to help in areas that you want to improve! Earn spendable points for learning and making new friends, or if offered a spot as a tutor, earn points for helping a new player! Win-win, right? *~*

And so much more! Come say hi to our ever chatty members, and let their awesome welcome and encourage you! Or get swept into a contest or new plot we offer. Either way, we’re sure you’ll love Crystal Skies, as a member or a guest alike!

Can’t wait to see you Here!

Song - Main Administrator, on behalf of our Crystal Skies members!