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Yes Master!: Master Crafter Contest


Closing date: Sunday 9th March, 23:59 GMT

It takes more to run a Weyr than riders and wher handlers! The Weyr needs experts too, and while you can make a master ranked character at any time this contest gives you the chance to win one with special control over their area of expertise and a bonus, usually fairly hard to acquire, firelizard!

Guidelines & Judging criteria:

- All Masters in this contest must be aged 40 or older.
- They cannot have achieved their current status (i.e. control of their area of expertise) before the age of 39.
- They cannot have gained their Mastery before the age of 30.
- The must have been studying their craft for at least 20 turns before gaining their Mastery.
- Going older/later than all of these is fine of course.
- Masters must be suitable for the positions they hold. Nobody is going to put a wild irresponsible tearaway in charge of the Weyr's kitchen, for example.
- We're looking for interesting characters, not peerless prodigies who were always destined for greatness! A balance of strengths and flaws is important.

- Please post your entries here in this thread.
- Please answer the interview questions 1st person IC, or through an RP snippet, or a mixture! << Edited in 17/02/14

Up for grabs we have:

- One Master of cooking craft, head of the Weyr’s kitchens!
- One Master brewer, supreme ruler of the booze supply!
- One Master beastcrafter, in charge of the Weyr’s resident animals and quality assurance on beast tithes around the territories.
- One Master starcrafter, Thread predictor extraordinaire!
- One Master harper, answerable only to the Weyrharper in harping overall and generally in charge of music, entertainment and education!
- One Master smith, forger of fine weaponry for the warriors of the Weyr and intricate tools for its crafters.
- One Master tanner, making and working with all the leather you need for your armour, harnesses, and more!
- One Master weaver, responsible for keeping everyone clothed from the drudges to the Weyrleader.
- One Master glassmith, making beautiful and useful breakable items including those all important flight goggles!

Not all crafts are represented here, either because there aren’t any at the Weyr (such a farm craft) or because they’re already ruled by an NPC (such as the healers and wherhandling). We don’t expect to get entries or to choose winners for all of these crafts by any means! We will probably choose up to three or four winners but it really depends on the number of entries, we might take more than that and we might take fewer.

For your flitt prize you can choose either up to two chromatics, or a single metallic firelizard. If you want just a single chromatic firelizard or no firelizard at all if you feel your master wouldn’t spend so much money on a pet/messenger that’s fine too!

These Masters are subject to activity requirements to hold onto their ruling post. If you go three months without posting with them their job will go to somebody else (be they PC or NPC) and your character will IC have transferred elsewhere. If you want to play them again they can of course return but they will not automatically be given their special position back.

Entry Form
Edited on 17/02/14 to include a section for the firelizard, if desired.

THE MASTER
Name: Mirelle
Age: 58
Gender: Female
Craft/Rank: Cookingcraft/Master
Appearance: Mirelle looks bigger than she is.

Those who wander into the kitchens without a reason to be there, only to find themselves confronted by the imperious grey-headed woman looming out of the steam with a wooden spoon or a cleaver and demanding to know what they want often mistake her for someone a head taller and twice as broad as she actually is, and that suits Mirelle just fine. If she didn’t have that peculiar reputation, she’d actually be quite average on her own – she stands at only five foot six, and though she’s fairly broad, with large shoulders and muscular arms from hoisting barrels and cauldrons and kettles and sides of beef, she’s certainly not enormous. She’s actually somewhat slender for a near-sixty woman who has spent almost her entire life in kitchens. Her waist is thick, no hourglass figure to speak of, and her lines are soft and slightly doughy, but this in no way hampers her ability to move quickly and brusquely through the kitchens. She looms even without trying.

Perhaps it’s because of her face – old though she is, Mirelle’s bone structure still shows through her wrinkles. She has high, prominent cheekbones, a severe, pointed jaw, and a straight nose that all together conspire to make her heart-shaped face somehow sharp. At some point in her life, she was strikingly beautiful, but those days have long since passed, and now she would likely earn nothing but the word “handsome” – and that only if someone were being extremely generous. Her sharp features are offset by plump lips, round cheeks, and sagging jowls; only Mirelle’s striking brown eyes seem as young and alert as ever. It’s joked that she could glare a hole through a wall if her drudges were acting up on the other side of it. She’s olive-skinned, usually flushed ruddy from the heat of the ovens and the steam, and marked all over with the tiny burns that come with her craft. Her hair, once chestnut brown, is iron-grey now, worn coiled into a severe bun at the nape of her neck.

For the most part, she dresses as plainly as any of her kitchen girls, in undyed cotton shifts that can be easily washed, with skirts that can be kilted up when the heat of the ovens becomes too oppressive. Most often, she’s covered front and sides with a heavy apron, dusted with flour, stained with some sauce or another, and carrying a large wooden spoon, with which she deals impressive justice to slackers and layabouts. The elaborate regalia due her as a Master craftswoman is…not exactly to her taste, and she always looks a little uncomfortable on those occasions when she’s required to leave the kitchens and do something official. Even on those occasions, she eschews velvet and silk in favor of plain cotton; Mirelle saves her marks for more important things than frivolous gowns.

Personality: Mirelle is not a likeable woman, and she likes it that way.

There’s a certain degree of pomp and circumstance inherent in being the crafter who runs the kitchens of a Weyr, and Mirelle essentially wants nothing to do with it. She’d much rather be known as a capable crafter than a pompous Master Crafter – not the least of which because the bakercraft is a Holdcraft to begin with and doesn’t have ranks the way a Hall-craft does – and very much views herself as a kitchen girl first, a master crafter second. Brusque, abrasive, and quick-tempered, she rules her kitchens with an iron fist and is quick to turn her bulldog personality on anyone who crosses her – be they drudge or Wingleader. It hasn’t left her with the best of reputations, but Mirelle is aware that her skill makes her valued, and allows her to get away with things she might otherwise never be granted.

She tries not to milk this for all it’s worth; mostly, she uses her clout to keep from having to leave the kitchens at all. Like most despots, she draws power from her domain, and prefers to leave it only when she absolutely has to. There are rumors that Mirelle never sleeps. These are untrue, of course, but Mirelle’s sleep schedule is purposefully staggered – some days she vanishes for several hours between lunch and dinner and oversees the midnight meals for the wher hunts, others she sleeps through breakfast only to arrive just in time to berate her workers over lunch. She values unpredictability and flexibility in equal measures, preferring to keep her staff on their toes. That’s how you get the best work out of them, after all.

Her lack of tolerance for nonsense is near-mythical; Mirelle does not have time for silliness, and is the first to call out anyone who makes trouble in her domain. Laziness and frivolity and complaints have no place in the kitchens, and while a first offense will earn you a smack from a wooden spoon, a second offense will have you tossed out for the day without supper. Repeated offenses will get you thrown out of the kitchens, and continual repeat offenses might well see an apprentice or journeyman stripped of their knots. Talent doesn’t matter to Mirelle, commitment does, and good luck ever finding another job in the cookingcraft if a Master Crafter has tossed you out of her tutelage. She doesn’t engage in pissing contests; Mirelle is the boss, she’s not here to fight with you for dominance because she’s already dominant, and don’t even think you can undermine her. You’ll be out on your arse for being disruptive.

That said, she is generally quite willing to accept heartfelt apologies, and a well-made case can, for the most part, earn the offending party a second chance. She’s not heartless; her apprentices may be held to exactly the same standards as her journeymen (and any drudge in the kitchen with an interest in learning under her will be held to those standards as well), but the punishment for failure is quite different between all three of those groups. She understands that no one is perfect, and that people with more to learn will make more mistakes. She takes a gentle hand in offering corrections to those who genuinely try to follow her directions, and can be surprisingly soft and sweet to younger learners. The kitchens are a high-stress environment, and she puts pressure on her staff because she wants them to be able to excel. If what someone needs is to be taken aside and spoken to gently, she can do that, but if that someone needs to be taken aside and spoken to gently multiple times a day, maybe cookingcraft is not for them after all.

She has an immense soft spot for children and the underprivileged; as a former drudge’s daughter herself, Mirelle was never expected to amount to anything, and she wants to help others in the same position. She doesn’t consider her Cinderella story particularly inspiring, though; it’s evidence that there’s plenty of talent everywhere if you know how to look, and proof that hard work pays off. She wasn’t, she’s quick to remind those under her, miraculously swept out of the kitchens of her Hold and away to greatness – she worked sharding hard for every ounce of respect she has ever received. However, she does see her rank as a place of responsibility; it’s her job to seek out others like her, and give them the same opportunities she got. She frequently takes on extra students in addition to those she is paid to teach – if she’s giving the lessons anyway, she might as well give them for the benefit of anyone who wants to learn. And little ones and drudges can usually count on a few extra mouthfuls of only-barely-burned food being handed to them to “dispose” of. And everyone knows that the only thing Mirelle hates more than laziness is wastefulness...

Any implication that such an action implies sentimentality will be met with a sharp look and a sharper word, though. Mirelle has a reputation as the unmoving, unmoveable deity of the High Reaches kitchens to uphold. She’s not going to compromise it for anything.

History: Mirelle was the child of a kitchen drudge named Miira and an undisclosed man – a mark of indiscretion on her mother’s part, and one that severely impacted any chance she may have had at a better life. Mirelle was born into poverty at Valley Hold, yet another drudge-child from whom very little was expected. She was raised for her first few turns in the crèche, but as she grew old enough to obey commands and follow instructions, her mother began to bring her into the kitchens with her. It was, perhaps, not the best environment for a little one, but extra pairs of hands were never amiss in the kitchens, and even a little child could easily be set to carry something, or to run a note where it was needed. Mirelle was quite good at that, and so she was kept around.

She was “discovered” by accident – a low-ranked baker who was employing her as a runner and general fetch-and-carry girl saw some glimmer of potential in the eight-turn-old child and took her under her wing. It wasn’t an apprenticeship, by any means – teaching a child to knead dough and sift flour isn’t exactly the pinnacle of a proper craft education, after all. But Mirelle’s mother recognized it for what it was and encouraged her daughter to take a serious interest in what she was learning. Cooking was a Holdcraft – easy enough to learn, and perhaps a good ticket out of the life of a drudge, should one of the Hold’s established cooks catch sight of her skills. And Mirelle wasn’t stupid; she knew she had been offered a way out of her mother’s rough life, and she wasn’t about to let that opportunity pass. She dedicated every ounce of attention she had to the baker who was teaching her, and by the time she was thirteen she was baking the drudges’ rough black bread and mixing finer doughs without any supervision at all.

She didn’t catch the eye of anyone important until she was fifteen, though. Her baker mentor, reluctant to let on that the help she’d been employing was quickly beginning to outgrow her simple recipes, kept her a secret from the rest of the kitchens for as long as possible. It took Mirelle two turns to notice, but when she did, she refused to take the news sitting down. Instead, she marched straight up to the cook in charge of the ovens and demanded further instruction. She was good, she promised. She’d be better with better instruction. She wanted to learn. She wanted to work. She could do it! And perhaps the cook was swayed by her impassioned plea, or perhaps he was just looking for an excuse to reassign Mirelle’s old mentor, but he took her up on the plea. Before long, the oven at which she had been toiling was hers to share with a fellow baker, rather than a teacher. They both learned from a better baker than them.

And so it went, for six turns.

Then, when she was twenty-one, opportunity! The chance to move away and ply her craft in a larger kitchen. Benden Hold had sent word that it was seeking new help in its kitchens, and Mirelle and her oven-partner had been among those invited. Mirelle’s mother was thrilled, exhorting her to take the chance and do everything she could not to screw it up. Mirelle took those words to heart. Inspired by the promise of advancement and a more cosmopolitan environment, both girls packed up and moved to the Hold. It was everything they had dreamed and more – a bustling kitchen with far finer demands than Valley’s somewhat-more-modest setup, and a head cook who sought to ensure that nothing but the finest work came from even the lowliest of his apprentices. He took his new girls under his wing with something of a brusque hand, but he taught well. Mirelle, already quite adept at her work, spent less than a turn in Benden’s kitchens before she was pulled away from breadmaking and set on the path to instruction of more involved and demanding cookery. She was granted the kitchens-equivalent of Journeyman status a few months after she turned twenty-two. It was a proud moment, one she wrote to her mother about.

It was the last thing she wrote to her mother about; a scant six months later, Miira was killed in the Benden quake.

It really shouldn’t have caused much harm; the quake itself centered around Benden, not its outlying Holds, but a single aftershock in an unstable environment was enough to knock down a row of heavy shelves. Miira was the only casualty at Valley Hold – and the news came as a shock to Mirelle, who was still young enough to expect her mother to be around indefinitely. The loss was heavy on her, and for a time, her work suffered. She stagnated, unable or perhaps unwilling to put in the effort to further her craft while she mourned. This, however, did not last long. Mirelle was devastated but practical – in order to honor her mother’s memory, the most important thing she could possibly do would be to further herself and her craft. She was determined to learn as much as she could. And for two turns, her work was her life. She wanted nothing more than to someday rule the Benden Hold kitchens. It wasn’t a goal anywhere near her reach, of course, but she could dream – and dream she did, until a handsome Journeyman Vintner arrived to sweep her off her feet.

His name was Kevvy They had met once, several turns before, when he had been working in Benden’s wine-cellars and stores and she had shouted him out of the kitchens and hit him with a broom. Mirelle remembered him as well as Kevvy remembered her, and they hit it off surprisingly well. Mirelle was still single and Kevvy had not yet married, and the pair quietly fell into a tentative courtship. Mirelle was more practical than Kevvy by nature, but there was something to be said about his adoring attention, and she allowed him to court her, expecting nothing to come of it. So when Kevvy asked for her hand, the question was sudden and unexpected. With no father to give a dowry and no mother to give her permission, Mirelle was shocked he would ask at all, but Kevvy was in love with her. She agreed, albeit ever-so-slightly suspicious that it was some kind of a trick, and they were quietly married when Mirelle was twenty-seven. She moved into the small house Kevvy kept, eschewing her work in the kitchens in favor of becoming a homemaker – as the Journeyman Vintner’s salary was plenty to keep them afloat.

The marriage was a happy one, at first, but was quick to sour as the turns went on and it became more and more obvious that Mirelle wasn’t suited to childbearing. Initially, it seemed she might have been barren, but then she conceived, only to deliver a stillborn daughter eight months later. Still, it wasn’t completely uncommon. She tried again – and again, tragedy struck. Perhaps it was her age – she was quite a bit older than most women were by her first child – or perhaps some quirk of her biology, but Mirelle seemed to be a death sentence to little ones. She miscarried twice, and a third child died of fever only months after birth, when Mirelle was thirty-three. She made the decision then not to try anymore – a decision that put her at odds with Kevvy for several months. The emotional wounds healed, though, and though Kevvy still wanted a child of his own, they had begun to talk about taking on fosterlings instead. He bought her a firelizard egg for her thirty-fifth nameday. Things got better.

And then he got sick.

It wasn’t the same fever that took Mirelle’s daughter – it was a different sort of illness, that started with a head cold but settled into his lungs, rendering the vintner bedridden and pathetically weak. Mirelle cared for him, paid the Healers, did everything in her power to help him fight the infection. But pneumonia is a notoriously difficult illness to shake, and when Kevvy caught a fever in addition to his cough, there was nothing more the healers could do. He died at home, and Mirelle was alone again. She spent a turn in mourning, living off the marks that she and Kevvy had saved together. But as the savings began to dwindle and the loneliness of the little house began to get stifling, Mirelle’s thoughts turned from the past to the future. She might be widowed and childless, but she was also her own woman, and she had her own skills. And so she packed up her belongings, sold the little house, and returned to work in the kitchens.

Though it had been turns since she had worked in a large kitchen, it wasn’t like cooking was a skill Mirelle could forget. Before long, she was back in the kitchens, toiling away to replace feelings with tireless work ethic. For some eight turns, she simply moved through the ranks of the kitchens, cooking her way from a journeyman up until she was one of only a few assistants below the head of Benden Hold’s kitchens. It was a feat – her superior was a man, and the other two assistants were as well. But Mirelle did her damnedest to cook better than any of her peers, preparing for the time when the head of the kitchens would step down and appoint a successor. He did so when she was forty-five.

She was not his successor. One of her male counterparts was – and he has no particular interest in giving Mirelle any additional power. Unwilling to continue along those lines, Mirelle up and moved. It was a risky move for a woman, certainly, but Mirelle had her income and her skills – and everyone needed to eat. There were kitchens in every Hold, and Kimmer Hold wasn’t too far from her…

She arrived in Kimmer with a roll of knives and the will to work. Before long, she was once again a kitchen deputy. And then, when she was fifty, the break of a lifetime: her superior was retiring, and he wanted Mirelle to take his place. She stepped into the vacancy like she had been born to, rearranging the kitchen to her taste and settling into the rhythms of superiority. It went well, and whatever her past, Mirelle knew that she had found a calling she was willing to continue for the rest of her life. For five turns, she ruled Kimmer with an iron fist. When Thread started falling, she seemed to barely notice. It didn’t impact her at all, except when she had to make sure she stayed inside. Since she practically lived in her domain to begin with, it didn’t seem to bother her.

And then she met a dragon.

Pure coincidence found her in a position to watch a wing of dragonriders practicing Threadfighting formation over Kimmer, and Mirelle couldn’t help but find herself somehow compelled by the romance of the species. Of course, she had heard plenty of things from those around her about the dragonriders and the culture of the Weyr, but…still. Kimmer was beginning to lose its lustre. Mirelle wanted a challenge – and what better challenge than the responsibility of feeding thousands of mouths every day? She had the credentials, she thought. And word through the grapevine of those who considered themselves Master Cooks was that there were spaces in the dragon world. High Reaches was one of them.

From there, it was a simple matter of hiring a courier – Mirelle had enough saved up to do it, though Benden dragonriders seemed reluctant to deliver a demanding cook to High Reaches. Still, marks were marks, and she was dropped quite practically at High Reaches Hold. She didn’t stay long, though, catching a caravan to the Weyr as soon as one left. Word had spread of her interest in the position as soon as she stepped off of dragonback, and by the time she arrived at the Weyr, the Headwoman was there to meet them. The credentials she presented were impeccable, and her own skills were more than enough to prove her worthy of the position, and before long she had slotted herself into the kitchens like she had always been there, slowly arranging it to suit her.

And so it has been for the past two turns.


THE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

- So, as a Master you could have found work almost anywhere on Pern you fancied. What made you choose High Reaches Weyr?

Nothing particularly romantic about it; there was an opening in the kitchens here, the weather was good (Faranth, have you ever been to Ista? Hotter than a firestone-sick weyrling’s tummy in those kitchens!) and it’s not Benden. As for the Weyr rather than a Hold? I’m not exactly the public spectacle sort. If I had taken up with some Lord Holder’s kitchens, no doubt I’d be covered in special requests and entertaining the guests – Faranth, let someone who likes cakes make cakes all day. I just don’t have the patience for that sort of thing.

- Did you always know you wanted to follow a craft? Specifically the one you have? If so why, and if not how did you come to apprentice in it?

Well, Mother was kitchen help, and I was helping Mother as soon as I was old enough. Didn’t know I was going to follow a craft until one of the kitchen women whisked me right away from Mother and started properly teaching me things. Even if I had wanted to be something else – ha, well, can you imagine? b*****d daughter of a drudge at Benden? Oh, no, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere. When I was told I had talent, I went with it. And Mother was proud, of course. I didn’t know then that I’d push so far, but she wasn’t shy about telling me it was my only ticket out of drudge work. She wanted me to have a better life, so I suppose I owed it to her to actually do that.

- Becoming a Master is very hard work, time consuming and expensive! What made you want to make that push rather than remaining a journeyman as most crafters do?

Suppose it was in part because I’d little enough of my own left at that point. Mother was dead, of course, and Kevvy was dead, and none of my little ones had even seen their first birthday. I think I gave myself a turn to grieve. Yes, a turn sounds right, because I…was thirty-seven when I decided to push on. Far too old to remarry, and not exactly a catch. It was either languish as a widow or find something else to do with my time, and dearie, I’ve never felt moping was an appropriate course of action. And anyways, so many of the Master cooks are men, and that just seems ridiculous – women spend more time in the kitchens than they do, how is it that so many men run the big kitchens? I guess I was trying to prove something to someone.

- What's your opinion on the large dragonkin of the Weyr; dragons and whers. Like them? Loathe them? Did you ever want one yourself?

What in the name of little green dragons would I do with a sharding great lizard? I certainly wouldn’t be able to fit one in the kitchens! Faranth, could you imagine a wher in here, hanging about, scaring the spit dogs and the drudge girls? Dragons and whers are for people as can waste their youths mooning about attached to some older fool’s apron strings and hoping the caprice of an egg will grant their wildest dreams. I’ve no patience for that sort of thing.

- What's your opinion on riders and on wherhandlers?

Ha! They eat like pigs, and they keep me in business! Can’t say I’ve got much more of a thought than that. Don’t take me the wrong way, of course – I respect them! They keep Pern safe, fight Thread, honor those the dragons heed and all that! I’m not a barbarian; I give them their due. But I don’t want them in my kitchens mucking up my system, if you understand me. They stay on their side of the Weyr, and I stay on mine.

- You have a lot of responsibility for and control over your area of expertise, do you enjoy that?

Can’t say I’m sunshine and buttercups about it – have you ever tried whipping half-trained kitchen girls into shape for a Hatching feast? – but I’m certainly the best option for the job. I’ve lived in the kitchens all my life; I know what goes on here. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes of getting the job done and done well, and no doubt I’d be going crazy and pulling my hair out if it were someone other than me running these kitchens. So I suppose in that respect, I do enjoy it. But I don’t wake up giddy to boss people. That’s ridiculous.

- Describe a crisis you had in your work recently (large or small!) and how you dealt with it.

My dear, it’s the Weyr kitchens; we can’t go half a minute without some little crisis or other. Though there was an incident not too long ago where the spit dogs got into it with one another and one of my apprentices didn’t re-harness the relief pair properly, and we had a herdbeast that was practically black on one side and only half-done on the other – and can you imagine sending that out to the Weyrleaders? Well, there was just no fixing it, so in half went to the stew – I hope Fourth Wing liked its surprise – and then the other half we just had to cut up and finish in the ovens with tubers and herbs and hope that no one at the High Table kicked up a fuss. They didn’t, in case you were wondering, so I like to think we handled it all right.

- What do you do with a subordinate who - when faced with an unpleasant task - puts their underwear on their head, sticks two pieces of chalk up their nose and says 'wibble'?

What kind of nonsense is a question like that? They’d be out right sharpish, no two ways about it. No time for silliness around fire and sharp knives and boiling water and little spit dogs with sharp teeth – if I think you’re a danger to yourself or others, you’re out on your ear! My kitchens might be chaos, but they’re safe.

- What two things could you not live without? One of these should be meaningful, and one frivolous!

Well, food, I suppose. If you didn’t quite want me to be that literal, I’m not sure I could go a day in the kitchens without the wooden spoon. People respect that spoon, you know! As for the other...probably Pie. That stupid fat thing keeps me from having to send drudges with messages on the daily. I’d be devastated if he vanished.

- Did we come from the stars? Provide evidence for or against.

If I cared about that sort of a thing, I’d either be a Harper or a Starcrafter – it’s hard to tell nowadays which of those crafts’ folk has their head more in the clouds. Stars or no stars, we need to eat, and my stew is overboiling, so if you’ll kindly just step out of the way and let me work...

- Would you prefer to be able to fly, flame, or between, and why?

Ha. Well, I don’t see much of a need for flight, and I have Pie to between places for me, so I’ve not much of a need for that, either. I can’t imagine flaming would be particularly convenient – would I have to chew firestone to do it? That just seems so unhygienic – but at the same time, if ever there was a need in the kitchens, it’d be for fire. And just think how quickly it would put the fear of Faranth into the new recruits...

FIRELIZARD? Yes pls!

Name: Pie
Age: 23
Colour: Brown
Appearance: Pie is fat. In fact, he’s too fat to fly very far without overexerting himself. It seems his sweet tooth has gotten him into trouble over the turns. His hide is the warm golden-brown of a well-baked pastry crust, dappled faintly lighter on his shoulders and darkening on his limbs, tail, and wingtips to rich chocolate-brown.

Personality: Irrationally sweet-natured and obedient, he serves as Mirelle’s messenger. His propensity to between places so as not to waste all his energy makes him remarkably adept at getting just about everywhere in the Weyr quickly and efficiently – though he generally expects to be rewarded with food when he gets there. Notably, he is not technically exempt from Mirelle’s “no flits in the kitchen” policy, and spends most of his time in her office betweening to her only when needed to take a message and leaving immediately thereafter.

THE MASTER
Name: Anthon
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Craft/Rank: Smith/Master
Appearance: Anthon is a little guy who moves and acts like a much bigger guy. He’s honestly only somewhere around five foot eight in height, on the smaller end for a Pernese man, though he struts in such a way that his personality seems to fill a room. He’s reasonably broad in the shoulder, however, with the kind of arm muscles you get when you swing a hammer on a regular basis as part of your job. It wouldn’t be right to call him handsome – he’s a little too scuffed up around the edges for that, with the slightly haggard look of someone who in his youth was intent on living fast and dying in a blaze of glory. Still, when he chooses to put on a smile, that smile is brilliant and infectious, and it’s carried him a long way towards his current position.

The former Bendenite is fair-skinned, with dark eyes, and equally dark hair which he keeps short and slightly rumpled in what he obviously thinks is an attractively roguish manner. (Jury’s out on whether he’s successful.) He maintains a neatly trimmed beard, because at least in Anthon’s eyes if a guy can grow a beard that’s neither patchy nor scary mountain man, then he has an obligation to do it as an example to the world. When he opts to dress up for an occasion, he strongly favors flawlessly tailored and form-flattering pieces in black and crimson, with occasional accents in gold embroidery. The rest of the time, however, he maintains an overall baseline of ‘barely presentable’. Anthon seems to be physically incapable of being near a workshop for more than ten minutes at a time without getting his hands (and sometimes face) smeared with ash, oil, metal polish, and other general grunge. It’s old habit: he just can’t resist touching literally everything.

Personality: Anthon is a builder. He doesn’t adapt to suit his environment. He adapts his environment to suit him.

Intelligence and curiosity have always been his strongest assets. He naturally possesses a remarkably astute spatial intelligence, with the capacity to visualize and mentally construct complex projects in his head. His longstanding knowledge of metallurgy means he can almost always choose the right alloy for the job. But the Smithcraft is more than just metalworking. It is technology – it is the tools that every other craft requires to function, and if Anthon doesn’t have the right tool for the job at hand, then he’ll build a new one. In a system that encourages tight specialization and isolation between the various Crafthalls, Anthon is a stubborn polymath who’s pursued the necessary resources and connections to make it work. On top of being a swift learner with an excellent memory, he actively seeks out (some would say “collects”) experts in aspects other than his own specialty to consult with as needed.

Professionally speaking, Anthon is comfortable – confident, even – dealing with others. A consummate showman (someone would say borderline narcissist) he draws the spotlight onto himself, and he moves in it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for every eye in the room to be on him. The mastersmith is at his most charming when he’s speaking in front of a crowd, whether that crowd is a gaggle of students or a table of Lord Holders and their consorts. The flipside of the equation is that he can turn on someone with equal ease: if Anthon’s ire is earned, he’s as petty as a spurned Harper, and he’s not above retaliating in kind if someone attempts to challenge his professional prowess. Call him an a**, call him a spoiled Holder’s son, but don’t call him stupid.

He’s earned a certain infamy for irresponsible conduct, but in a purely social sense, a boys-will-be-boys kind of cheerful obnoxiousness that doesn’t carry over into the quality of his work. Still, there’s a very fine line of what will and will not be tolerated, even out of a rich eccentric genius, and he tends to dance back and forth across it more often than is strictly advisable. The truth is that Anthon enjoys advertising some of his more obvious and garish character flaws – his arrogance, for instance, his occasional womanizing, his inadvisably sharp tongue – because they ultimately don’t have the power to hurt him, and they distract from the weaknesses that he’s genuinely ashamed of. Secretly, he’s terrified of letting himself have a real emotional connection with someone else. Hence why he surrounds himself with acquaintances, students, subordinates, and the like: he can get his fill of social interaction without ever needing to drop his guard and let anyone get close enough to hurt him. Where there’s no vulnerability, there can be no betrayal.

Still, he’s a surprisingly generous friend, and he’s working on being thoughtful as well. He’s the kind of person who grew up in financial security, always having enough of everything he needed, and now that he’s securely landed as a mastercrafter he enjoys sharing some of that security with those who haven’t always had it. It might occasionally come across as trying to bribe companionship out of people, but that’s not how he sees it; Anthon enjoys giving small gifts, especially surprises, because he enjoys watching the reactions of the recipients. Most important is that he tries. There is a surprisingly sweet and earnest, almost childlike streak running beneath his layers of swagger and bravado. It’s rarely seen, but it emerges sometimes when he’s interacting with close companions or with his pair of firelizards.

History: Anthon was born the second son of a Holder, Hawthon, in charge of a minor Hold in Benden’s territory. It wasn’t a tremendously populous place, housing perhaps several hundred souls, but a reasonably prosperous mining industry kept them supplied with precious ore and kept the marks flowing in. His mother Anmira was chronically frail of health but every inch a proper Benden lady, soft-spoken and polite, and the eldest son Amaran was a vibrant and confident child, every inch a Holder’s heir. It was the kind of life that, to an outsider, would look idyllic.

When Anthon was four, he was playing with his elder brother when he collapsed suddenly and took a bad tumble. He broke his arm in the fall, which the healers set promptly, but more important was the reason for his abrupt collapse: a heart defect, undetected until it showed its first symptoms. Structural defects were not unknown to the healers, and they were quick to reassure the worried family; the longer Anthon lived, the better his prognosis, and should he survive childhood (never a thing a parent wants to hear) then he would likely go on to live a normal and healthy life. There was little the healers could do to correct it, save to recommend a healthy diet, exercise in moderation to keep his heart as strong as it could be, and minimal stress. In short, he would make a fine crafter, but he would never pass muster as a dragon Candidate.

This revelation… well, it rocked the foundations of the family in unpleasant ways, or perhaps it just prematurely surfaced problems that would have been there to begin with. See, Hawthon in his youth had desperately wanted to be a dragonrider, had dreamed of the honor and prestige, and yet had been passed over time and time again by Searchdragons. He’d dreamed that one of his sons would be Searched to the Weyr; having a rider in the family would lend him the connection to Benden Weyr that he desired so strongly, and it would give him an opportunity to live the old dream vicariously. And Amaran… he wanted to ride, too. Naturally bold and selfless where his brother was clever and wayward, Amaran would have made a fine rider. But as the eldest, he was bound to become the heir, and no one would pin their hopes on the sickly younger child as anything other than a crafter. Perhaps if there had been a third son, some kind of balance could be reached, but Anmira was growing older, and with every passing turn it would be riskier for her to conceive again.

So in the end Anthon was left for his mother to coddle, while his elder brother and his father both drew away from him. It was not a conscious malice, nothing done with cruelty aforethought. But Hawthon and Amaran had a natural bond between them, one of shared dreams and expectations… and as much as the Holder tried to be a good father, he truly had no idea how to relate to his younger son. So Anthon was alternately stifled by his mother and held at arm’s length by his father, with the ever-present knowledge that he wasn’t what he was supposed to be by no fault of his own. Little wonder that he grew up quiet and awkward and more than a little resentful.

Still, his mechanical aptitude showed itself early and strongly, and by the time he was nine he was needling insistently for an apprenticeship with a smith. It took the word of a healer assuring them that the conditions of the forge would not exacerbate his condition, and indeed regular exercise could strengthen the heart, to get them to agree. Then he was packed up and shipped off to the Smithcraft Hall, not to see home again for many long turns.

Life at the Hall was Anthon’s first taste of freedom, and it was a heady taste indeed. He was held in check, of course, by his teachers – nothing too wild could occur under their watchful eye. But no one could make him act like a Holder’s son, or write home once a sevenday as his mother instructed, or to be a credit to his family as his father admonished. He was simply one of the boys – or at least he tried to be. Such a sheltered upbringing could not help but shine through in his behavior; Anthon had never had much opportunity to learn how to simply make friends. So he was quiet and withdrawn, and when he was not withdrawn he acted out, and when he was neither he was busy in the workshops. Anthon found it so much easier to relate to his teachers; they were adults, he knew how to speak to adults, and furthermore they were there for a clear and obvious purpose. When he didn’t know what else to say to them, he could simply ask them questions about the lessons. Needless to say, he wasn’t terribly popular.

The apprenticeship accomplished its intended purpose: his health grew stronger every day, as did his newfound sense of independence. He had found something he was good at, and who cared what anyone else thought? After a particularly disastrous home visit ended in a screaming row with his father, his mother (perhaps despairing of her baby boy’s ability to make friends) sent him a firelizard egg. Half apology, half futile attempt to give him something other than himself to care for, little brown Dummy became one of the most constant friends in Anthon’s life. And slowly, Anthon adapted to life with his fellow apprentices. He learned how to put on his trademark show of cockiness to cover for the insecurities, and how to deflect with a joke or a challenge instead of withdrawing. Especially as he and his peers grew older, talent at the craft was more and more important, and he could gain a friend (or at least a temporary alliance) simply by offering to help a classmate with a difficult project. It was… possibly not the healthiest kind of social interaction… but it helped.

When he walked the tables at the age of eighteen, it was deep in midwinter and he hadn’t been home for nearly three turns. He sent a letter proclaiming his accomplishments, waited impatiently and eagerly for a response… only to hear back that his mother had passed away after a bad bout of fever. That news opened a rift in Anthon’s heart that was never entirely healed; decades later, Amaran runs the Hold of his birth, and Anthon has not been back. Neither did he return before Hawthon passed away, much later, of natural causes. He claims he regrets nothing.

As a journeyman, Anthon was theoretically free to take a post anywhere on Pern that he pleased. In practice, he opted for Benden, where his family’s name would have a little clout and where the politics were not too alien to him. Truthfully he would have been a better fit elsewhere, with more liberal views and practical attitudes, but a young Journeyman on his first posting can be forgiven for not straying too far afield. It was at Benden that Anthon entered into a partnership with an older smith, by the name of Obiren, who offered to coach him on the finer points of life as a crafter out in the big wide world.

It was, at least initially, a perfect partnership. For all Anthon’s newfound bravado, he was young, and not especially business-savvy. His talent could carry him far, but he had a far weaker grasp on how to do things like pricing his own work, negotiating business deals, and navigating the complex politics of his fellow crafters. Obiren had connections, and a good head for numbers, but as a smith he was simply no great shakes: the kind of fellow who walked the tables because there was no good reason to deny him, rather than because of remarkable achievement. Between the two of them, they were a fine team for many turns, and it was thanks to Obiren’s business acumen that Anthon earned a name for himself. Slowly, Anthon began to see Obiren as a kind of surrogate father figure, someone who truly appreciated and respected his talents as they ought to be respected. Anthon had never really experienced a fully unstructured life: he’d been under his parents’ and Harper’s tutelage, then at the Hall, and now Obiren provided the authority figure in his life that he didn’t fully know how to live without.

It wasn’t until Anthon was twenty-two that the truth came out: Obiren was angling for a mastery. When his own work didn’t live up to the standards, Obiren began stealing Anthon’s work – his designs, his blueprints, his new techniques and ideas – and presenting them to the Smithcraft Hall as his own. The fallout from that little revelation, on a scale of magnitude, was probably felt somewhere in Telgar. Everyone in Benden knew, because Anthon was not quiet about the ensuing falling-out. It was the social equivalent of nuking their former business partnership from orbit. And while it might have been entirely justified, given the nature of Obiren’s betrayal, it was… not conducive to other smiths stepping forward to work with Anthon as his new partner.

He stuck around anyway, for nearly five turns past that. He made a lot of less than advisable decisions in those five turns. Most of the decisions involved charming young Benden ladies and all the fine Benden wine he could afford, because Anthon plus a lack of any control on his behavior equals reckless excess. Granted, he also made quite a few leaps and bounds in terms of his professional accomplishments in those turns… It turns out that “to between with it, let’s try it and see if it works” will end in either disaster or wild success, and it ended in wild success often enough in Anthon’s case to be a viable strategy. He was willing to take on literally any job that was offered to him (with appropriately high fees) even under demanding customers and absurdly tight deadlines. And when he wasn’t out carousing or mollifying patrons, he was continuing his studies of metallurgy, experimenting with more precise and fiddly alloys intended for specific purposes.

At twenty-seven he’d more or less worn out his welcome at Benden. He returned to the Hall, claiming it was for the sake of his research and the better quality and range of equipment to be found there, though in reality it was to get away from a few irate husbands. Upon arrival at the Hall, he was called up before the Master Crafter… and that was a much-needed wake up call. Frankly, Anthon needed a smack in the face long before he actually got one, but better late than never. The ensuing row laid out for him exactly what was expected of him as a representative of his craft, and laid out for him explicitly that if he didn’t shape up, he could never expect to be granted a Mastery, regardless of raw talent. It was quite possibly the first time that he was stunned into complete silence. And it worked.

He took a few apprentices, lingered around the Hall that had become home to him more than his place of birth, and generally just… settled down. There’s plenty of whershit you can get away with in your twenties, Anthon would explain, that you can’t get away with in your thirties. He didn’t stop being Anthon – he was still arrogant and occasionally obnoxious and prone to flirting with a pretty face – but he at least stopped spiraling out of control. He gradually learned to synthesize what Obiren had taught him that was still valuable, mostly the lessons on business acumen and how to work a crowd, with the showmanship he’d learned at the Hall to keep up a mask of confidence in front of his peers. One might have expected Anthon to apply for Mastery the instant he turned 30… but he didn’t. It took him six turns of working to create, re-create, refine, and finally perfect a better alloy for healers’ tools, one that resisted rust and held an edge better than the old one. Only once he felt that his work was mastercraft to his standards did he present it before the Hall and receive his Mastery.

That was, of course, the same turn that the dragonplague and the war both struck. It was a dangerous, rocky situation for all of Pern. When asked about it, Anthon tends to brush off his decision with false nonchalance… but in reality, he saw something of himself in beleaguered High Reaches. For all the bitter feelings with his family, he’d never borne any resentment against dragonriders, and to see Pern’s protectors in such a state, so close to a Pass… it was concerning. As for why High Reaches – well, it was mostly to spite Benden, whom he still saw as a bunch of arrogant whersons with sticks up their –

Never mind. Anthon, still Anthon. Continuing onwards.

High Reaches was a far better fit for him than Benden ever was. And honestly, despite everything, Anthon’s relative lack of romanticism about dragonkin was more of an advantage than a disadvantage. His staunch refusal to give obeisance to Weyr leadership was a major asset in his eventual rise to Master Crafter of the Weyr: he treated them the same as he would any other customer, with charm but without letting himself be intimidated or dazzled by a shiny dragon. He rose to his current position three turns ago, when he was forty-three, right at the dawning of a Pass: he had a couple really exciting improvements to flamethrower design that were apparently enough to impress his predecessor. The increased responsibility has been alternately exciting and terrifying for him, and there’s no denying that his leadership is unorthodox, but… The apprentices love him, the paperwork gets done – usually – the important paperwork, anyway – and the quality of work that the smiths turn out is uniformly up to Anthon’s incredibly demanding standards. It’s enough to grant him a pass for the occasional inadvisable remark to the wrong bronzerider.


THE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

- So, as a Master you could have found work almost anywhere on Pern you fancied. What made you choose High Reaches Weyr?
I… well, I didn’t start at the Weyr. More like I moved to High Reaches Hold because they hate Benden Hold, and I hate everything that’s got to do with Benden or my home Hold, and I wanted out. I’m… not exactly welcome in those territories anymore. In my youth may have accidentally – on purpose – seduced a couple of very eligible young women who I definitely was not supposed to. Mostly out of spite. That’s a scandalous, pernicious, underhanded rumor and it also happens to be absolutely true. As for the move from Hold to Weyr… mm, that’s politics. I have this chronic illness, you see, I can’t seem to keep my mouth from running away with me, and so I went to where I was less likely to be forcibly parted from my tongue. Weyrs need smiths. As long as I keep producing top quality weaponry, they keep forgiving me.

- Did you always know you wanted to follow a craft? Specifically the one you have? If so why, and if not how did you come to apprentice in it?
A lot of people ask me that! I’m a second son, not a third son. Strictly speaking I should have gone to the dragonriders, or the wherhandlers. But I – wasn’t the healthiest of children, let’s put it that way. They would’ve found it a real pity to throw a dragon at me only to lose it in weyrlinghood when I kicked the proverbial bucket. No chance of Search. I got better, of course, but in the meantime I got used to the idea that I was being shipped off to a craft while they waited for me to die. I think that’s part of why I went with smithcraft, you know, to prove I could. After that… I discovered that I liked it. I enjoy watching a chunk of metal turn into something beautiful and useful. I enjoy it even more when it’s my own hands doing the shaping. Harper songs might last for generations, but a great sword will have songs sung about it.

- Becoming a Master is very hard work, time consuming and expensive! What made you want to make that push rather than remaining a journeyman as most crafters do?
…because I am literally one of the smartest people on Pern? Seriously, I’m in the top… less than one percent. Top zero-point-one percent. That’s mathematics. You can’t argue with mathematics. Find me a peer, a legitimate peer, who isn’t a Mastercrafter in their chosen field – Masterhealers, Masterharpers, those are the people who talk to me on my level.

- What's your opinion on the large dragonkin of the Weyr; dragons and whers. Like them? Loathe them? Did you ever want one yourself?
No. They're inefficient. Big, flying, firebreathing biological weapons that require the constant attention of a human rider - if our ancestors had just concentrated on flamethrower tech instead of throwing everything they had down the gullet of flying lizards, imagine what kind of society we could have built! But too late for that now, I guess. I've got no particular problem with dragons – they’re polite, they’re quiet, they stay outdoors and away from my work, and they keep me from getting eaten alive by Thread, all of which I appreciate. The whole can’t-hurt-people thing is a little whimsical. Whers seem more practical overall, being smaller and deadlier, but I still wouldn’t want one. I’ve got nowhere to put it and I’m hopeless at taking care of baby things.

- What's your opinion on riders and on wherhandlers?
Arrogant, nosy, they can't keep their hands out of my work and they expect me to be impressed by the relative size and shininess of their lizard partner. I know that sounds rich coming out of the mouth of a man who makes expensive phallic status symbols for rich nobles, but at least I’m honest about the way I make a living. I’ve met a few handlers I can tolerate – I expect it helps that they keep their feet on the ground, physically and metaphorically. But let’s be honest here, my ego doesn’t fit in the same room as a bronze dragon.

- You have a lot of responsibility for and control over your area of expertise, do you enjoy that?
Ha! Now that’s a question to ask. You know there’s a lot of people who were ticked off when I took over as Mastersmith for exactly this reason, right? Can’t handle the responsibility, they said. But those people don’t know me. Smithing is the only thing that I do take responsibility for. If I make trouble with someone, that’s on me personally, that’s on my own time. When it’s me and the forge… Hot metal doesn’t care about your attitude. Polite apologies don’t fix broken fingers from a bad hammer-blow. You take control, you get it right, or you don’t do it to begin with. That’s what I teach my students. I’m not the Masterharper. I’m here to make things, and to pass on my knowledge so that it doesn’t die with me when my heart finally gives out. So yes, I take my job seriously. And yes, I enjoy it. Every day.

- Describe a crisis you had in your work recently (large or small!) and how you dealt with it.
…ah. This is about the fire, isn’t it? Let me say, first and foremost: nothing of value was damaged, it wasn’t the kid’s fault, and I handled it. It’s handled.

So every craft has punishment chores, right? Sweeping up, hauling fuel, refilling quench buckets… There was an apprentice a couple sevendays back who got assigned to cleaning out the forges to keep the clinker-ash from building up, right? Young kid. Got punishment duty for a week because he accidentally ruined a half-finished piece. Only he hadn’t been instructed to check first and make sure that the forge was completely cooled before he raked it out, and a piece of hot ash started a fire. Long story short, I smelled the smoke, rushed in to find the kid and a rapidly growing fire. Little-known fact: I keep two buckets of sand outside every workshop for precisely this eventuality. Sand’s easy to get in a weyr, it smothers a fire as well or better than water, and you’re not going to have to fish a sword out of it first like you will with a quench bucket. So I put the fire out, explain the sand buckets to the kid, and get his side of the story. His teacher turns up ready to howl at him for starting a fire in front of the Mastersmith… and I tell him that next time he intends to dish out punishment chores, he will first demonstrate the correct method. By example. There’s no excuse for punishing a kid who doesn’t know any better.

- What do you do with a subordinate who - when faced with an unpleasant task - puts their underwear on their head, sticks two pieces of chalk up their nose and says 'wibble'?
Laugh, commend him for his commitment to the insanity ruse, and then have him reassigned to someone I don’t like very much. There’s rarely a shortage of those.

- What two things could you not live without? One of these should be meaningful, and one frivolous!
Klah and alcohol. I have a system, it’s a very intricate system and it works for me, and don’t listen to the idiots who tell you that I’m not allowed to touch the harder stuff the vintners make, I’ll build my own fardling still if I have to. But don’t come to see me before I’ve had my klah in the morning, and don’t send me off to talk to idiots unless I’ve got a wineskin in my hand. Otherwise I refuse to be held responsible for the consequences.

What – no, I’m not telling you which one of those is serious and which one is frivolous! They’re both serious – oh, meaningful. Fine. Okay. Meaningful. …If anyone hurt Jay, there’d be nowhere on Pern far enough for them to run. Does that count?

- Did we come from the stars? Provide evidence for or against.
((WRITER’S NOTE: Please imagine the following answer in this guy’s voice. Thank you.))

Absolutely. There’s no other explanation, and dragons are the critical evidence. There’s other pieces of evidence too, but nothing else quite so conclusive. Bear with me here: there are wild whers, and there are wild firelizards, right? In the case of wild whers, handlers can breed selectively for qualities they want: size, speed, intelligence, whatever you want in a wher. But it’s slow. It’s subtle. It’s a process, and you can’t breed in something that wasn’t ever there to begin with. Now take dragons. There are no wild dragons. Why? They’re completely dependent on humans to live. An infant dragon would rather kill itself than live without a human. Literally, they kill themselves. Morbid, isn’t it? That’s not a trait that a wild animal could have. That’s not a trait that’s within the power of our beastcrafters to breed into the species. Somewhere in the past, someone designed that. Our ancestors, with the kind of power we can’t even imagine. It got lost somewhere along the way – it’s easy for knowledge to get lost, especially in Threadfall, the wrong person dies at the wrong time before they write something down and everything’s crackdust and shells.

But if you – hey, don’t look at me like I’m crazy, I’m explaining a theory to you, you asked! I… wow, my brain kind of ran away with my mouth there. Next question. Please.

- Would you prefer to be able to fly, flame, or between, and why?
I take that back. Is this a serious question? Why are you wasting my time with – yes, okay, fine. I’m going to need a lot more clarification on the criteria if you want a serious answer out of me. My first instinct is to say flight, but that depends on what kind of flight. If it means I can go buzz the weyr whenever I want by breaking the laws of natural science, yes, I’ll take it, take it apart to see how it works, and then become a professional terror. If it means I sprout wings like a dragon’s, the surface area needed to support the weight of an adult human’s going to make it fardling difficult to fit through doors. So flight yes, but if wings come as part of the flight bundle, then no. Second choice betweening, because really – can you imagine how much I could get done if I could be anywhere on Pern with a thought? It would be beautiful. No one would ever be safe again.

FIRELIZARD?

Anthon has two firelizards, because he’s sufficiently ostentatious that he can’t resist having not just one ridiculously expensive shoulder pet, he has to have two.

Well, that’s not exactly fair. The first firelizard wasn’t his fault. It was a gift from Anthon’s mother, just before she passed. She was worried about her shy, awkward teenaged son and his seeming inability to bond with any of his fellow apprentices at the Crafthall. She bought him the egg in hopes that having something to love, some living thing other than himself to look after, would bring out some essential part of himself that had been lacking. The resulting brown was a sturdy, healthy creature that was nonetheless stupid as a sack of bricks. He got named Dummy more or less by accident: Anthon’s constant cries of no, you dummy and stop chewing on that, dummy, that’s not food and dummy, put it down ultimately ensured that Dummy was the only name that the brown would respond to. Everyone’s just lucky that it’s not Deadglow.

Jay, on the other hand, is entirely Anthon’s. He bought the egg in celebration after the first piece of genuine masterwork he sold: a truly beautiful, ornate knife commissioned by a young Lord Holder’s heir. The marks he garnered from the piece, combined with his other income, were sufficient to buy him a tiny egg expected to contain a green, and Anthon had idle thoughts of inventing a method to better track and locate where green nests were laid. Those plans were derailed when the egg hatched. Not a green after all, but a tiny, delicate blue, silvery-pale with intricate markings like filigree. Jay is, quite possibly, the only creature that Anthon loves absolutely and unconditionally. He is also possessed of all the brains that Dummy lacks, accompanied by a breathtaking willingness to please his human. Jay responds not only to Anthon’s commands, but also to his emotional state, and days when the blue coils close and protective are not days to trouble the moody Mastersmith.