Weyr Oh Weyr - A Nicer Pern (Planning/OOC)

good idea. maybe something with a similar effect to the morning after pill? or would that be too strong for our purposes? maybe one for preventative birth control would be better.
which is funny, cause we're removing the (albeit stupid) dragon birth control and adding a less permanent human version XD

for the dragon genetics...what if they're like bees but instead of haploid and diploid they're doubled? so the main breeding types would have 4, while the worker types would have 2. would that make browns have 3 or would brows from gold's have 4 while browns from greens would have 2? that could also be why they seem to have better genetics in general. if you only need one working copy but have three back-ups you're less likely to have genetic illnesses.

or we could go full on bee and have them be haploid and diploid and the greens mating works like the asexual reproduction of the all-female species of lizard in that it signals egg-production in the body.

any other suggestions on genetics?

i'd say yes, remove the limit. even if they don't go off fighting in the thick of it all at least they have the option of doing so at all. would also be a place for young queens and their riders to learn how to lead in small steps when there are plenty of breeding-ready queens available.

i could also see them being general overall leaders for fighting Threadfall. like you have the unit leaders and sub-unit leaders (bronzes and browns, respectivly) but you'd also need someone to direct those units. someone who is mostly out of danger but still close enough to see what all is going on. a queen in the lower levels would make the most sense. especially with a protective unit of greens/blues around them. hell the lower levels would be a great place for new riders and their dragons to learn how to fight Thread without being in as much danger or accidentally messing things up for others (like i seem to remember them doing on more than one occasion. i never did get why they just...throw them out there like that.)

oh that could be fun. does anyone remember what all crafthalls there were in canon? or a link to a list?

would make sense to keep it during Threadfall since it would essentially be converting from a subsistence group to a military group at war. but i could totally see them needing shit to do during intervals. you don't have that many people used to high adrenaline action just sitting on their asses for decades at a time after the fact. they need something to do.

you know flight shows? yeah, add dragons. would be perfect for fairs :D
or dragon racing. like betting on racehorses or greyhounds but bigger and faster and smarter. (would also be great for keeping up training)
i'm gonna have to think on this more :/

YES PLEASE

ooo, good question. not sure which i like better

all of this! :D

 

Hey, if you've got good ideas, you've got good ideas! Let the canon nerds worry about shaping the details to fit :3

 

For queens and firestone... rather than destroying fertility, as in greens, or being completely unable to use it, as in golds, it could be a form of birth control for the dragons, instead. Makes them infertile while they're actively using it and a while afterwards, but it's not permanent. Seeing as they, and fire lizards, are mostly chewing it during a pass, it would make sense not to reproduce while egg-eating death is falling from the sky.

 

oh that would be cool. that would solve the problem of population control with the dragons that the firelizards don't have, while also being closer to canon.

would also work for when there are more queens than needed for breeding. just have the ones you need not using firestone and the other (prolly smaller/younger) queens using it to help out at the lower levels.

although i disagree on the breeding while Threadfall is happening. actual mating flights and hatchings? no, not a good idea. but the egglaying bit? prolly still useful. depends on the incubation time of dragons. but you'd want to make sure you are up to full population as much as possible while fighting Thread and loosing members to injury and accident. if the incubation time is such that it fits nicely between periods of Threadfall then that would make sense for giving them enough time to incubate, hatch, grow up, and join the ranks. (unless my memory is bad on how Threadfall works. wasn't it something like long intervals of centuries, shorter intervals of decades, then the super short ones between individual incidents. like a few days or so? i think im miss-remembering something :/ )

*edit* also OHMY EFFING GOD im so sorry for how long my prior post was. i'll try to use spoilers or something to shrink it down from now on.

 

It went in cycles, with thread falling frequently while the red star was close, then disappearing when it traveled back away. So basically there were 'seasons' of thread.

 

yeah that sounds more like it :D

 

I vote for making the entire setting less fucked, and have folks working on unfucking it more! I want to eat my cake and have it!

Hmm... maybe some could be trained as emergency response teams? Like, a raging wildfire is threatening many holds! Dragons off to dig trenches as a firebreak, others to rescue and evacuate people, bringing medics... They wouldn't be able to do much during strong storms, but they'd be good at bringing in supplies and bringing in refuges afterwards. Search teams for lost people... I like the idea of them using the hierarchy and training they use for thread, including search patterns, to be some sort of Pern equivalent of the coast guard.

Yes, thank you, thank you very much I love those flits so much.

I like the idea of birth control. Why couldn't someone have genetically engineered a birth control plant before the colony? Morning after... hmm I don't know enough of the actual biochemistry behind that so hmm.

I don't know wanything about bee genetics, so I will have to research it and think the logistics of dragon demographics through.

I like this idea. At least they also get to soar through the sky searing thread with actual dragon fire!

This... makes a LOT of sense.

Beascrafthall, Harper Hall, Smithcrafthall, Minecrafthall, Fishercrafthall, Woodsmith Hall, Glass-smith Hall, Healer Hall, Weavercrafthall, Tannercrafthall, Farmer Hall, Vintner Hall. Post-AIVAS we get the Paper, Printer, Plastic-smith, Technician, and Dolphin Halls. Of these, paper arose independently before AIVAS' discovery, and thus could easily be included. Wikipedia also provides the following interesting paragraph:

I think weaving and tanning, in part, would form part of Hold-crafts, but the more elaborate and quality weavings and the like would be the purvey of the Hall.

Hmm, this is actually counterproductive! Dragons need to breed more right before and during a Pass, to provide the numbers required to protect Pern! Since it takes about three month after a flight for the queen to clutch and the eggs to hatch (I'm not exactly clear, but there is a Teaching Song that seems to refer to gestation time after a flight), and they are active for quite some part of gestation before settling to lay and protect their clutch until it hatches. There are some really interesting thoughts here that could serve us well.

As such, I don't think that firestone works as dragon birth control :/

The page I linked that considers dragon demographics suggests a few controls to reproduction:

1. Since dragons live in communities, if too many queens live in one weyr/in proximity of one another, their presence inhibits the laying of more gold eggs.
2. The approach of the Red Star somehow triggers increased reproduction, as dragons naturally produce larger clutches and more queens as a pass approaches.

I have a suggestion for how one might inhibit mating in queens. I noticed that dragons don't quite bleed like humans do. Their blood is green and called ichor. Now, in Dragonsdawn it was mentioned that several creatures in Pern have a six limbed body plan, and probably evolved from a common ancestor, making fire lizards, wherries, and tunnel snakes related. Logically, they will probably bleed ichor as well.

What if eating proportionally more red-blooded animals inhibits some of a gold dragon's reproduction system? Dragons need a lot of copper the way humans need iron (dragon ichor is copper based instead of iron based), and women need more iron for pregnancy. If a gold dragon is not receiving much copper in her diet, her body might not be as prone to rising to mate as it would on a more normal diet.

We also know that heat can quicken the mating cycle, or limit her sunning more, that would also help to naturally inhibit reproduction.

Intervals were generally about two centuries, with a Pass lasting around fifty years, with variation between each year. The long Intervals were closer to four centuries. In average, thread fell every three days during a Pass, but during the beginning and end of a Pass more time elapsed between falls.

Questions:
Are we going to involve dolphins?
What range size do you want for dragons? Their sizes changed a lot over the years, so going for 8 interval size versus 9 could make a difference.
What do you think are good conflicts to keep in mind in our probably nicer but still problematic Pern to drive some plots forward?

 

oh hey I was reading the linked post and -

so there IS a suggested reason for thread being daytime only!

#i'm contributing

 

door 3! sounds good :D

ooo i really like this idea. i mean they kind of already are a specialized form of emergency services like firefighters. just with Thread instead. would make the most sense for them to be well suited to help in other ways along the same lines.

yeah birth control sounds like a better idea than something...harsher O__O
a genetically engineered plant for that would be amazing
questions: who all would have access to it (weyrs only or everyone? if everyone how would that affect the social structure of the holds? im all for everyone who wants/needs it)? where would it grow? what does the tea taste like? how often would you take it?

Spoiler: Under cut for length

the first one seems like what i read about bees (why am i all about the bees right now? i have no idea) so very plausible. no idea how the second one would work but hell, thats what handwavium is for ;]

the only concern i have for the copper/ichor thing is causing the equivalent of anemia in the dragons

it could be that dragons have an auto-abort function in their body like some animals have (i think kangaroos?) so if there is too much competition for weyr resources (ie. too many queens) then they just abort any eggs that would have been laid before that point. so maybe mating flights still happen but not the eggs. would also make it easier to suddenly have more eggs if one of the mating queens suddenly dies or they need to immediately branch out into a new weyr. the mating would have already happened, just needed the right circumstances to get the eggs out of the deal. kind of a combo of the first one suggested by the site with more explanation/other similar systems

 

reading the site raire linked
found this cool bit that got me thinking:

we've been talking all this time about a the genetic engineering of the dragons but what about the humans? are the humans of pern genetically engineered a little bit too? if so, we have the possibility of solving some of our problems here with that information.

stuff like birth control or STI resistance. with known creatures having ways of controlling their own fertility and enough genetic engineering technology and knowledge to invent a whole new tailor-made species i HIGHLY doubt that humans would have went very long without doing something to make the Shark Week less terrible. maybe not all humans, but enough that its possible the trait is super common if not the norm in humans at the time of colonization

hell, what if the colonist were also screened for STIs before being sent off? what if there were no STIs in their population when they took off to pern? how long would it take for new ones to show up?

 

Given the lack of related-to-humans species, probably a while to create anything as nasty as the STDs we're used to.

 

Which would also explain why the particular spates of plague-- Moreta's Ride and one of Todd's books come to mind-- were so brutal to the Pernese population. If the people have been genetically engineered a little to be more resistant to disease, it stands to reason that they wouldn't have as many protocols in place to reduce the spread of it; almost all Healercraft that we see in the series revolves around injury or stress-related failures.

Also, iirc, there are herbal teas that exist as abortifacients, right? So a birth control tea wouldn't be a far stretch. And it would probably be the purview of Healers and midwives, which would be in Halls and Holds as well as Weyrs. While I'm inclined to say that Weyrs are more sexually liberal than Holds (with Halls varying depending on trade and gender spread within the trade) I'd imagine that population control is well accepted in all three.

(Ideas for taste, etc: probably something that is spicy or malted in flavor, probably something that you should drink every week or so, but no more than once a day. If it's engineered, that would mean that it would be designed for easy growth so-- hardy plant, reasonably sized, can grow in both rich soil and very rocky soil as well. Healers probably have a fair amount in their gardens, but it would be easy enough to grow in a windowsill or courtyard of any Hold that allows it. Cotholds probably have it more easily available since, y'know, farmers, than most of the buried-in-stone Holds.)

God I haven't read Dolphins of Pern in so long, I genuinely cannot remember what they're like. Consider this an incredibly helpful shrug of ambivalence towards including them, though if we're going to be sticking with one Weyr/Hall/Hold to begin with, it would have to be a seaport to really get much use out of them.

I'm nnnnot really sure about size range? I think that it'd be easier to sustain dragons closer to Kitty Ping's original size endpoint, which I think was supposed to be about two-thirds as big as Ramoth ended up.

And if we're interested in the unfucking-- rare dragon morphs popping up at a new weyr forcing the Weyrs to confront certain biases they'd been displaying re: genders, a new Crafthall growing out of an existing one because of the invention of [train noises] causing some fallout from other Halls freaking out over the progress of time, a Hold with a line of succession abruptly in question when the Lord Holder Impresses (or one of their heirs), a Hold with a female Lord Holder which might be either 'never done before' or 'done before but rarely leading to conflict over Tradition', gold riders or bronze riders becoming the Weyrleaders when they're not typically of the gender that rides golds/bronzes... I guess it would depend on just how far we want to unfuck the situation, and whether we want to unfuck it mostly but still leave room for IC unfucking.

 

more ideas from site raire linked:

what size pern are we dealing? with cause that will change the distances to different places. i'd suggest using one roughly earth sized so its easier to figure out relative distances and so we don't have to get into planet density and the like.

apparently in canon they knew absolutely jack and shit about contraceptives at the healer hall (wtf?) even though there were known ones to others, had numerous issues with disease from the get-go (how? you fuckers were screened for this shit), never figured out ways to aid the soil in regaining fertility after a threadfall (again, HOW, at least the colonist would have known about shit like terra preta. and when did the grubs that eat thread evolve anyway? you'd think if they were there at Landing then someone would have had some to transfer to the northern continent). (apparently the grubs were genetically engineered but not documented). so we're already changing a lot.

the good thing is if we are going to use a roughly earth-sized pern then that would make population issues the site talks about less of a problem.

 

i feel like i've gotten off topic a bit, or at least went a vastly different direction than everyone else was going. so imma try to reign it in (and feel free to let me know if im overstepping my bounds or treading too close to godmodding. i am still very new to cooperative RP and learning how it works).

a couple of more on-topic thoughts:

• if we can't decide on a singular unified set of changes we could just have individual subthreads for the main ones with like a AU Setting Guide at the top or something (i don't know if we'll need to do this but it's there as an option at least)
• prolly best we ignore the possible causes for dragon color genetics for now and just figure out out what size dice to roll for similar percentages of colors and use that as a sort of dragon randomizer for cases where manually picking would be less effective (ie. what all colors are hatched from a clutch, or what kind of set up a weyr has, or what color fire-lizard you got, etc.)
• since we're planning on having it set after the colonist and setting-up phase but before Thread is eliminated we'll need to figure out what Pass we want to set it in. prolly sometime between 3rd and 7th but a more specific date would prolly help.

 

OH SHIT
read a post on tumblr and it gave me all sorts of ideas for how dragon colors work
what if its less about genetics and more a combination of influences like in birds and reptiles of earth?

something like the physical sex development of crocodiles combined with the gender-types of the birds in this post.

like what if the process goes something like this:

• some eggs come out bigger that others
• the bigger the egg the more "golden" the color
• the bigger the egg the closer it is to the warmest spot on the hatching grounds
• the bigger the egg the closer it is to the mother dragon
• relative temperature influences physical sex
• physical sex influences color

so then the gold eggs (if any) are right up next to the mom, then the bronzes, then browns, then blues, then greens. not like concentric rings or anything so predictable, but still a noticeable pattern if you know to look (most people don't). heck it even makes biological sense considering that a bigger egg would be a bigger investment of resources so it would make sense to protect those more.

this would also explain Ruth: he wasn't off to the side and basically forgotten because he was gonna come out white, but because his egg was so small/thick shelled. and BECAUSE his egg was off to the side he didn't get the same sex hormone thing going on during development and thus came out as an individual outside of the normal system.

as for the sexes thing, the birds have a territorial male, a satellite male, and a faeder male that mimics the female. which is REALLY EFFING CLOSE to the bronze, brown, blue thing we got going on in Pern. just add in two types of females instead of one, a territorial female and a satellite female, and you've got all five types of dragons neatly explained using a known system!

*edit* OOO OOO! and then @OtherCat did this and it fits perfectly with greens as satellite females! :D

*edit 2* found a bit on crocodile egg temperatures and how that affects the physical sex of the babies:

which would fit the dragon theory above perfectly: females, then males, then females again from coolest to warmest

 

RE: [train noises] - In Dragonquest a major subplot was Fandarel inventing the galvanic cell battery, the telegraph, and working out the kinks in protecting the wires from Thread. If we lift this invention from that time to whatever time we set this in, I bet you anything that the ability to communicate and transmit data more completely and privately than by relaying through the Dragon Mass Subconcious, and faster than by traveling between, would absolutely result in a science/tech boom like we experienced on Earth in the very early 1800s. We discovered eight or ten elements in eight years and started up the wonderful world of portable electricity. Basically, the Telegraph Hall/Thundersmith Hall was knocking on Pern's doorstep years before AIVAS.

Tesla Tech? in MY Pern?

It's more likely than you'd think!

 

THUNDERSMITTH HALL. That is the best name ever. I need this in my life now.

 

I have a gift for naming things :D

 

If we do end up adding the Thundersmith Hall, can the Mastercrastsperson be Nikola Tesla? Just Nikola Tesla, lifted wholesale from Earth history, with a more Pernese sounding name.

 

I mean Nikola Tesla seems like a guy who would have a fantastic time in Pern to begin with. I feel like he'd fit in just fine.