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Dragonriders of Pern Shop Captain
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 Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 7:32 am
Introduction NOTE: This RP is based on loose canon, meaning some of the information below, while accurate to this RP, may not be accurate to canon.
Life on Pern resembles a pre-industrial society with lords, holds, harpers (musicians, entertainers, and teachers), and dragons, with the occasional examples of higher technology (like flamethrowers, telegraph, chemical fertilizers, and powerful microscopes and telescopes).
Pernese people are described as belonging to four basic groups: Weyrfolk (including Dragonriders) who live in the Weyrs, the Holders who live in the Holds (cities, towns and farms), the crafters who live in Crafthalls (or are assigned to work their crafts in certain Holds or Weyrs), and the Holdless who have no permanent home (including traders, displaced Holders, and brigands).
One of the main threats to Pernese civilization in the series is Thread, which is described as a mycorrhizoid spore that periodically rains down on the planet due to the orbit of the Red Star. The Red Star is set out to be a rogue planet in the Rukbat system. The Red Star, characterized as a "Sedna-class inner Oort cloud object", has a 250 Turn (or Pernese year) elliptic orbit around its sun. Thread can reach the planet Pern for about 50 Turns while the Red Star is at perihelion. Thread is described in this series as an agent that consumes organic material at a voracious rate, including crops, animals, and any humans in its path.
The Pernese use intelligent firebreathing dragons and their riders to fight Thread (along with the occasional wher and firelizard who are capable of eating it). The riders have a telepathic bond with their dragons, formed by Impression at the dragon's hatching.
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 7:49 am
Social Structure "Weyrfolk, Holders, Crafters, and those without a permanent home, the Holdless and Traders. The Weyr, Hold, and Craft Hall are all separate from one another and the leaders of each are equal in rank. But in the same way, they are interdependent, and no one group could exist without the other two."
Weyrs
The Weyrs are the home of the dragonriders of Pern. They are expansive structures, often situated in a cave-riddled extinct volcano, or along a mountain face, where there is enough space for the dragons, their riders, and the people of the "lower caverns", i.e. the staff which maintain the Weyr. Due to the unsuitable terrain of Weyr locations (volcanoes, cliff faces), Weyrfolk are generally unable to grow food. They depend on tithes of goods from the holds in order to survive, and in exchange, the Dragonriders have pledged to protect those holds from Threadfall.
Holds
The Holds of Pern are where the majority of people on Pern live. Holds are literally castles, just not quite like the castles from the Middle Ages. There are three sizes of Hold: Major, Minor, and Cothold. Major Holds are ruled by a Lord and Lady Holder, and their family. The remainder of the residents are staff and workers who run the hold, and professional crafters; all told, they usually number around one thousand. The Headwoman is in charge of the inner hold, and looks after all of the workings inside, while the Steward runs the outdoor parts of the hold. Major Holds tithe a portion of their produce to the nearest Weyr in return for protection from Thread.
Minor Holds are always beholden to a Major Hold, and tithe to them in return for protection from Thread and other dangers. They are run by a person who bears the title of Holder, and are home to smaller numbers of people than Major Holds.
Cotholds are small, family-run holds, and usually all those who live there are family or close friends. 'Family' on Pern generally means an extended family of several generations and branches, as opposed to the nuclear family common in Western societies on our own world.
Each hold is responsible for the discipline of its wrongdoers. Most times the Lord Holder will make the wrongdoer pay restitution and service to the wronged party. The next level of punishment is incarceration. Death penalty can also be used in response to heinous crimes. One of the greatest punishments is to be named holdless. This is where a person is stripped of all rank and status and thrown out of the hold. The most severe punishment of all is exile, usually to the island archipelago known as the Eastern Ring Islands. The reason this is the most severe punishment is because the holdless have nowhere to go during Threadfall and have no other human contact. This punishment is usually followed by a Shunning, which, in effect, causes the Shunned to be ignored completely by all humans. It is established in Dragon's Fire that the holdless are marked on their foreheads with an indelible dye for identification.
Halls
The Crafthalls are the home to craftsmen; those Pernese skilled in a particular industry. The Crafts of Pern are: Harper, Smith, Healer, Miner, Weaver, Farmer, Fisher, Tanner, Baker, Vintner, and Herder. For example, the Harper Hall is responsible for the arts (specifically music) and teaching young children the Teaching Ballads, which provide them with basic knowledge. When a child is ten or twelve, they can be sent to be an apprentice at a Crafthall if they show a flair for that particular craft. The Crafthalls train the crafters and send them out all over Pern to provide their skills to even the remotest hold. Note that it is not necessary for someone to be (for example) a trained farmcrafter in order to grow food; holders have a wide variety of skills, but it is the crafters who are the experts.
The crafts all use the same hierarchy. Everyone in each craft begins as an apprentice, usually from age twelve to eighteen, then becomes a journeyman (eighteen to thirty) with a great deal of hard work and dedication, attainment to the status of Master (thirty+) is possible. Not everyone makes it to Master, and some leave before even the rank of Journeyman is reached. Such a step from apprentice to journeyman is called 'walking the tables', based on the custom that apprentices and journeymen eat at different tables at a crafthall. The craft rank and hold they are beholden to are indicated by complicated knots which are worn on the shoulder.
The crafthalls are located near or in the Major Holds. For example, the Harper Hall and Healer Hall of the Northern Continent are both located in Fort Hold. At least some crafts have local crafthalls at other Major Holds; for example, there is a small Weavercraft Hall at High Reaches Hold, as well as a branch of the Healer Hall in South Telgar Hold.
The leaders of the Halls are called Mastercrafters, for example, the Masterharper is the head of the entire Harper Hall, and is not to be confused with a Master Harper, of which there may be several.
Holdless
People who do not live in an established hold — either by choice, or due to punishment, make up the Holdless. They have no guaranteed protection from Thread, and the life of a Holdless is often dangerous.
Several nomadic groups were part of the initial colonization of Pern. Similar to European Gypsies and Irish Tinkers, they disdain hold life, choosing instead to live on the road, traveling from place to place. They tend to live in tightly-knit family groups and are fiercely loyal to their group and way of life. They are extremely distrustful of outsiders and do not often take in strangers, especially ex-holders, without some proof of trust. Many are Traders (see below) and help organize trading caravans which travel from hold to weyr.
Traders
These are the people who take goods to trade to less well-off holds, and to those people who often cannot reach a Gather. It is these isolated holders who need the traders and their trains of goods to keep them equipped with flamethrowers and farming equipment from the Crafthalls. Traders usually visit those holds that have few to no Marks, and so take produce instead of currency. It is very rare that a trader will carry perishable goods that can be found somewhere else such as grain or culled animals. The only way this will happen is if the good in question is local and/or exotic and will be highly valued by those with more marks in the larger holds.
Another way the traders serve the rest of Pern is by allowing Craft Journeymen or Masters to travel with them so that these talented men and women do not have to take the long and sometimes dangerous journey by themselves.
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Dragonriders of Pern Shop Captain
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Dragonriders of Pern Shop Captain
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 7:52 am
Currency Pern's currency is known as the Mark. Marks are circulated in the form of coins made of wood, apparently as a fiat currency (though, due to Thread, wood has traditionally been a scare resource during most of Pern's history), whose value is set by a meeting of the political and economic leaders of the planet, apparently as a command economy. The coins occur in the denominations 1⁄32, 1⁄16, 1⁄8, ¼, ½, 1, 2, 5, and 10 marks, with a few 100-mark coins for very large transactions. All the coins are the same size, denominations being indicated by a stamped number. They also have some sort of picture marking representing the type of hold or craft mark they are. If the number has a line above it, then it represents a unit fraction (that is, 32 with a line above would be 1⁄32), whereas a line below the number indicates an integer. The ½ and 2 Mark coins are the only ones that could be potentially confused.
Every craft produces its own marks, and the supply is kept constant, new marks only being produced to replace old ones.
The Mark is a moderately large amount of money. An exact exchange rate is impossible to determine due to the differences between our economy and theirs.
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