Welcome to Gaia! ::

It had taken a few hours for everyone to get organized while the venue was set up. Arranged on the heights of Malvren's cliffs, the Council was an impressive array of men, women, and children come to listen, or gawk.

A Dais had been hastily crafted from wood felled in the old forests and assembled to allow the Weyrleaders and Weyrwomen to see their whole audience and the audience to all see their leaders. The children, aware of the importance of the meeting, nevertheless found it hard to concentrate... not with a little over two dozen golds and their attendant bronzes arranged behind their riders. The might of Pern rested on these few individuals, Weyrwomen, and Junior Weyrwomen, alike. Most of the Juniors were absent, left to tend their home Weyrs while their Weyrwomen saw to the Council.

Even with the more open communications of late, the Old Weyrs clustered to one side and the New Weyrs to the other.

Eventually, Eirlyn clanged her mallet against a small gong and called the meeting to order. As hosting Weyr, she'd been selected to act as chairman for the Speeches from the delegations. It was both an honour and a snub for if she failed to maintain order, her ability as a Weyrwoman would be called into question.

"I call this Council to order! As you all know there many challenges facing us and, at last, opportunity seems to have arrived. We have choices to make but they are not to be made lightly. They will effect all of the Weyrs and so all of the Weyrs should have their say. We have compiled a list of names of Speakers from the delegations and would like to hear from each. A vote will then be held among all those present and the Council will retire for discussion. Everyone who steps forward to Speak is fully authorized to speak their mind as honestly as possible. No one's single opinion will be viewed as dissenting, so please... tell us what you truly think." She smiled, waited a moment, then sat down.

To the side, the selected Harper unfurled a scroll and cleared his throat. "Will Y'lar of Green Vanith, rider for Ista Weyr please step forward!?" A young man stepped forward and somewhere behind, where the dragons were clustered in gossiping ground, came the triumphant bugle of a loving green.

The Speeches had begun.

Instructions
1. Group B Metaplot Sign-up People get 1 post. In that post, your character is invited to speak their opinion on the matter.
2. Keep the post to a maximum of 2 pages in Word - it's a speech, not an RP post.
3. There is no RP in this thread - yet.
4. You have 1 week to post your speech - November 1 through November 8.

(F'itz is called forward; Brumath gives a deep rumble as his lifemate moves to stand before the crowd)

I am not given to making long speeches, good people, and I don't mean to start now. The long and the short of it is, I do not believe that we should use the ancientcraft technology. The lessons of the past cannot be forgotten; can we really afford for the AIVAS technology to get out of hand? No. We cannot. Things have looked bleak up until now because we didn't know what the problem was. Now that we know that it is mystweed our dragons need, we can move forward. Trust in the farmcraft; their results will not be as instantaneous as the Master Ancientcrafter promises his would be, but I prefer slow and sure to swift and uncertain. Ladies, gentlemen, riders, thank you for hearing me.

(Brumath gives another deep rumble and addresses the dragons)

The wind blows change into our lives, blows whispers uncertain into our ears. Fear closes in, and the world races toward a shining hope. Does the Thread itself not shine? Ugly beauty, glimmering danger. Stop. Sit back. Think. Flame back the Thread that longs to draw you in. Do we ask ancientcraft to grow our weed of myst? Do we ask a tunnel snake to soar in the sky, to battle our silver foe? No. Cannot, should not. Please my kin. My gold, my bronze, my blue and green. My silver, my red, my black. Listen. Think. Speak to Yours and let them know. Danger lies ahead, but we have time to wheel away. Dodge the Thread, dragons. Leave the AIVAS to rot.

(Their pieces spoken, F'itz bows to the crowd and the occupants of the dais and goes back to his seat)

“Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you at a time most dire. We are faced with challenges that many of us believed to be almost beyond our means. Challenges, Weyrwomen, Weyrleaders, riders all, that have united Pern in a time of crisis. The diminishing population of Queens can no longer be ignored, and a proposal has been made to end the blight that has left us scrambling for answers.” S’raid paused, and held the eyes of the council, each in turn. “Can we ignore it, when our own methods have failed us? Can we hold our hands over our eyes and ears and pretend that the problem will vanish simply because we will it so? Our methods have failed us. What is vanishing now is a viable breeding population of Queens, Golden eggs for our Sands.”

A terrifying thought, one which he thought the Tradionalists in the audience and council could not ignore. “We have two options before us, and though I am loath to trust in the Ancientcraft as a rule, given how bitterly we have been disappointed by the vaunted AIVAS, I am even more reluctant to throw away our chances with the tried and true approach that has proven itself less than useless. Would you, Weyrwomen, Weyrleaders of the North, place the very fate of Pern’s draconic populations in the very claws of the Atypicals that for so long our proud Weyrs have ignored? That is providing, of course, that Crimsons do not require the very mystweed that has lent fertility to our own Queens.”

It was an assumption that they could not afford to make. “That seems an improbable scenario, ladies and gentlemen of the North, but one that is no longer outside of the realm of possibility. To that I say that we have another option. What is stopping us from testing out our ancestors’ technology? We have already thrown away enough mystweed in our efforts to transplant and grow it the old fashioned way. How many times must we fail before we will face the inevitable? This is an enemy as implacable and as potentially devastating as Thread; for the first time in centuries, we are faced with a crisis so huge that we may very well see the upset of our very way of life. This enemy is even more unknowable than Thread, and we must face it together.”

“We have,” he said with a long, dramatic pause, “a solution. You have all heard it said that AIVAS is treacherous, that the Ancientcraft is outdated, and no longer of use to us. But I say that it is. Perhaps we should not replace every facet of our lives with the ways of our ancestors, who themselves threw off their old ways and gave way to our own, but here in this moment we must take action. We must overcome this hurdle, and we must do so together. Would you, any of you, see our clutches dwindle until there were no Golds present? No Bronzes? Until, perhaps, there were no clutches at all?”

Another pause. “Of course not. Step forward, dragonriders of Pern, in unity and brotherhood, and show the world that even now we are dragonmen, and we know how to take risks to do what is right, even at the potential for great costs. In what ballad, what record, are dragonmen, dragonkind craven, afraid to take the right action? We, more than anyone in our World, know what it means to be devoted to a cause. It is our charge to look after our dragons, riders. It is our right, it is our creed, it is what makes us who we are. It is what shapes us into the protective force that has saved Pern time and time again.”

“I ask that you consider my words, truly consider them, and make the bold step that is needed for the betterment of our society. I ask that you cast aside any aversions you may have based on old feelings and old grudges. We have waited, we have hoped, and we have searched for an answer, only to have one fall into our very laps. I suspect that mine is an unpopular opinion, for I would have us unite behind this decision, but this has never been about doing what is comfortable. This is not about comfort ladies and gentlemen. This is not about old ways or new ways. It is about our dragons and the future of our very world. Should we not at least seek to prove, one way or another, whether this technology will work?”

Clasping his hands before him, the Bronzerider surveyed his audience. “I submit to you that the benefits of such an effort greatly outweigh the potential costs. What Queen does not wish to see a golden egg on her Sands? What Bronze does not wish to be sire to that very egg? We have been told that these methods will work, and work well. I say that we prove it. Let this Ancientcrafter show us how it is done. Let us put the theory to the test, and reap the rewards if rewards there are to be had. We cannot rely solely on a system that has failed us. Ladies and gentlemen, let us take our fate into our own hands, and bring life to a new generation. Thank you.”

With a solemn bow, he stepped back, but not before Galvanth added his voice to his rider’s. I am not as certain of this technology as S’raid, he put in, striving to master his discomfort with the very idea of relying on something so untried. However, I too believe that it is a risk that we must take, if we wish to achieve great success. The costs are unknown as of yet, beyond the potential loss of mystweed. But we already know what we will lose by utilizing our old, traditional approach. How many plants must we waste before we face the reality that a different answer must be sought? And sought it has been.

Yet now there seems to be some question as to what we should do. Why throw away an answer that we have not pursued to its conclusion? Can we afford to ignore it? Can we afford not to utilize it? These are questions we must all ask ourselves before we make our decisions. With those words, he fell silent, certain of the validity of his claims if not of the approach itself. It was somewhat his habit to share his thoughts with others not his own rider, so that at least was not foreign. When he spoke again, it was deliberate and to the point. I want to see the day that every Queen is capable of clutching a Gold, every Bronze and Brown capable of siring one. I was privileged to witness the hatching of a fledgling Queen on Trine’s Sands. Will we allow more of her color to go unshelled?

“He's a deadglow,” Moira murmured, her fingers resting on the leathery skin of Serlaith's leg. The once tiny gold had grown quickly, and while youth made her smaller than most of the queens, she held her own proudly. Wings folded neatly at her sides, her head lifted as she listened to the speeches. She felt a personal connection to the problem, being among what people seemed to fear could be the last generation of new queens. It had been not only because of Abigail's request that Moira had come along, but also because of her own curiosity. Her own need to have her voice heard in a matter that would soon impact all of Pern. These were important matters, and though Moira still clung somewhat to her immature and childish ways, Abigail's lessons had been successful in slowly shaping her into an ambitious young leader.

He has heart, Serlaith said proudly, Now it is time to show our own.

“So it is,” Moira murmured as her name was called, before stepping out of the crowd and onto the dais. Serlaith spread her wings as though to signify that this was her rider who spoke, and thus all in attendance would be foolish not to listen. Though short even by Pern standards, the young goldrider carried herself with all of the confidence in the world.

“We have already failed Pern once,” she began, her gaze deliberately falling on the visiting delegations from the Old Weyrs, “With ignorance. With apathy. With our inability to embrace new ideas, our stubborn resistance to change. Some would sooner see our numbers dwindle – perhaps die out entirely – before they would relinquish their stubborn hold on old ways.” Moira's stare was given entirely to Benden's delegation, to the cold-hearted goldrider who had let a murderer live. “Those who fear change, those who would go down on a sinking ship because they fear the possibilities of the open sea, have no place here today.

If we fail to make the right decision, the decision to pursue every possible solution without allowing fear and bias to cloud our judgement, then we continue to fail her. If we fall to our own ignorance, dragonriders, do not forget that it is not only the Weyrs that will be barren. It is not only our halls, our caverns, our cliffs that will see all life dwindle, but all of Pern. Without us, only time stands between Pern and the death of every living thing we know. We choose today whether to let this Ancientcrafter show us how we might save ourselves, how we might save Pern. We choose whether to fight for our way of life, or whether we hide behind what is comfortable. What is easy. When have we, as dragonfolk, ever taken the easy way? When a long pass comes and doubt fills the minds of holders, have we allowed the flame of the dragonriders to be snuffed out by ignorance and fear? No. We have fought tooth and nail for our existence, and we must do so now! Let us take a risk not only for ourselves, but for Pern. This is not a fight for the future of Mystweed, or even for the future of dragonkind. This is a fight for every species, every plant, every living thing on Pern. Only dragonriders can save this planet, but we must let Ancientcrafter show us how.”

My mother, Serlaith spoke to the dragons present as Moira returned to her side, had the honor of seeing a golden egg on her sands. Would we have her be among the last to feel such distinction? Mine has spoken her heart plainly, as I speak my own now. I do so not only as a defender of Pern, but as a future mother. As a dragon who will rise and clutch. I speak as one who would feel sorrow should I never be able to clutch a gold to carry on our line. Should I accept this out of fear? Should I never hope to see my own daughter rise and clutch? I will not resign myself to such a fate, no more than I shall resign Pern to her death.

This Ancientcrafter has brought us hope. We would be foolish to dismiss it.

"I have been a trader for all my life until recently. When I attended the Hatching at Trine, I never suspected what would happen. Now I stand before you, Weyrleaders, Weyrfolk, and everyone else to proffer my insights.

As a trader I’ve seen the ebb and flow of many items. My specialty is in spices. In short, plants. While most of the time I’ve dealt with the dried versions, I also spent some time studying the living specimen. There is no one magical way to ensure a plant to grow. Each one needs something different. Something special.

Clearly the normal methods that we use to cultivate plants are not working for this most valuable Mystweed. When all of our contemporary efforts are in vain, then it is time to turn to the unusual. By all means let us continue with traditional farming methods, but also give several to Archimonde. Let us see if his claims have any merit.

We may even give him some plants that are not doing well to truly test his claims. If they work, he should be able bring them back to health. If his claims are to be false, then we have risked nothing more than several plants already not doing well.”

(Kleos approaches the dais with Ice perched on her shoulder; Moriath bugles encouragement)

As so many before me have said, today shall be recalled for many turns after all of us have passed. Just how many turns it is recalled, I believe, depends on what we decide here today, for if we make the wrong decision, all of Pern is doomed to fade and die. I do not claim great wisdom, good people, I have lived only seventeen turns, and been a rider barely one turn, but I know in my heart what is right. Change. There was a time, my friends, when I would not have stood before you as a rider; there was a time when eggs that could not hatch alone were left to die. There was a time when I could not even have stood upon the sands if there was not a golden egg amongst the clutch. Change can be frightening, and change for the sake of change is foolishness, but I believe that this is a change we must make, a chance we must take.

I do not have much more to say to you, other than that I do have concerns about this technology. I do not make this suggestion lightly, and I have not come to this conclusion easily; the ancient technologies have done us much harm in the past and this fact cannot be ignored. Despite this, in the end I came to realize that there can be only one way forward; we must revive the mystweed or we are doomed. Certainly here at Malvren, and at Trine, crimsons are capable of laying strong clutches, but our Queens currently lay strong clutches too. We cannot be sure that the fertility of crimsons is not dependant upon mystweed too, and as such we cannot shrug our shoulders and say that we shall look to them to populate our Weyrs.

It is a hard decision to revive the old technologies friends, but I believe that it is the right one. Thank you.

(Moriath addresses the dragons)

I agree with Mine on all points; it is our duty to look to the future of our world. If we cannot overcome our mistrust of the ancientcraft, we risk the end of all things as we know them. Be bold my fellows, stand up and be counted amongst those who set fear aside and did what was right.

(Kleos bows deeply and returns to her place)

Sanza stood when her name was called and stepped up onto the dais. She didn't cringe, she didn't stutter. She met and returned every gaze evenly. They'd asked for opinions and as anyone who'd spent half an hour in her company knew, she had plenty and no fear about sharing them.

Straight-backed and even-shouldered, she projected, making certain that everyone in the room could hear her. More than a few people had probably already braced themselves for what might come out of her mouth. "I'm Sanza," she began. "Crimson Maomith's, and Trine's, and despite the fact that neither of us call the Old Weyrs home, I'm more than aware of northern sensibilities, fears and beliefs. I also understand that a great deal hangs in the balance here today. The survival of every Weyr, every Hold within their territories, every crafter and farmer and trader that travels throughout Pern. Therefore, there's little point in comparing Weyr clutch sizes or the number of golds, bronzes or blacks that might hatch. What's gone before is just that, gone, and bringing it up, again and again, does nothing but drive wedges deeper into the rifts between us. We were brought here for a reason, together, to discuss our shared future, so with all due respect," she added with just the faintest wry twist of her mouth, "it behooves us to focus on what's to come.

"Ironic, I know, given that our choices are all rooted in familiar, comfortable practices that have, we thought, kept us in good stead for Turns, or resorting to even older strategies that none of us can speak of with any sort of certainty. Not even our good guest, Master Archimonde, no matter how much time and research and restoration of those practices he has personally performed.

"We know that our efforts to find mystweed have been frustrating. We know that our efforts to transplant the stuff some might call futile, but, I suggest, that is no reason to simply throw up our hands, wash our hands of all responsibility for our own fates, and trust our futures to ancient knowledge. I don't argue that there is merit in learning from the records and experiences of older days. Certainly, let us use them if we can build and judge and learn their worths for ourselves. If Master Archimonde suggests that building houses to protect and isolate these plants might help them flourish, then riders, holders, Weyrleaders, let's put our backs and shoulders to it and build a few. But let us also continue our searches, let us continue to encourage and support our farmers in their efforts to transplant and fertilize and cultivate new growth in the fields they've tended and trusted and kept strong enough to feed and clothe and heal us for generations.

"None of us, no rider, no dragon, no Weyr or Hold, survives in isolation. In fact, we know the opposite to be true. So let us work together, blending north and south, old and new, ancient and forward-thinking so that we might all survive."

Maomith added her voice to the hum among the dragons. Too much talk of gold, gold gold. Yes, you golds, you bronzes, are important, but so are greens, browns, crimson. Of course there's a not-so-subtle emphasis on that last. We all survive or none survive. Thread burns gold and silver hide too. Eggs, enough dragons and Theirs to fill wings, fill the skies, are more important than how many queens. More eggs and more of those will come, but you do us all dishonor to seek only for a way to lay more of those.

When called forward, Crystal held herself tall and confidently, emanating all of the grace and dignity that one might expect of a silverrider. "My fellow citizens of Pern," she began, "the matter which we discuss today is one of utmost importance, and is something that should be decided on with careful consideration. As many have already mentioned, it is due to failed Ancientcraft devices that have lead to our current troubles with the Red Star. However, long ago, was it not this same Ancientcraft which has gifted Pern with its saviors, dragonkind?" She had read up on the history a bit in her Harper training. "I have thought long and hard on this matter, but in a time where normal methods are failing us we must seek new ones in order to ensure survival. Let us turn, then, and see if our ancestors cannot redeem their name by continuing to ensure our future. Even if not copying their methods completely, let us learn what we can and develop our own methods from there. Pern must move forward to ensure the safety of those to whom we owe our lives. Let us not risk our future for fear of the past."

The silver's eyes whirled with pride and affection for His before he turned gracefully to address the dragons present. As the world changes from season to season, let us also pass through this bleak and barren winter into a rejuvenated and prosperous spring. In the face of despair we are given a bright and shining hope. Let us take that hope and revive the prosperity of dragonkind. If we are to remain the protectors of Pern, we must ensure that there are enough of us present to fight Thread when it comes.