Mawgrim

Candidates and Hatching Once a gold dragon lays her eggs, they harden on the warm Hatching Sands for five weeks. A queen egg always has a golden shell, but all the other eggs are randomly coloured and patterned, making it impossible to guess which colour hatchling will emerge. Not every clutch contains a queen egg. A Weyr is large enough and has sufficient inhabitants that a good number of prospective candidates for Impression can be found internally. However, there always need to be more

Sorry you feel like this. Maybe skip the rest of this story, as I'm afraid there is a fair amount of angst in store.

Dragons Dragons, being an engineered species, have some similarities - and many differences - to the wild fire lizards. Unlike fire lizards, who can choose to leave their human companions at any time, dragons bond for life when they hatch in an unbreakable partnership, termed Impression. The first dragons were around the height of a medium sized horse (sixteen hands) and around ten to twelve feet in length but over subsequent generations, eventually reached their full design size. A full

Wonder what Rita ws up to? Maybe it was just a dodgy deal; something that she wanted to keep away from home, or maybe she has some secrets and chatting up Rick is just a front to divert attention. Can't wait for the next instalment.

Summer afternoon heat made the Weyr Bowl shimmer. Suderoth shone bright as the sun as she blooded her kill on the feeding grounds. Bronzes perched on weyr ledges and on the rim, waiting for the chase to begin. Even the young dragons of Kadoth’s clutch looked interested and gathered in a huddle to watch the spectacle. Kadoth herself, along with Loranth had left the Weyr earlier, Valli struggling to reach her usual spot between the neck ridges, despite T’ron, the Weyrleader, giving her a boost

Fire Lizards Both fire lizards and dragons come in five colours; gold, bronze, brown, blue and green. They have a hierarchical society structure, with the golden queens at the top. The greens and golds are female, the others male. In fire lizards, green and golds both lay eggs, although green clutches are less likely to survive long enough to hatch as the greens tend their nests less diligently, making the eggs vulnerable to predators. In the wild, fire lizards live in 'fairs' - social grou

Very funny chapter. Good to see the family interacting so well. What on earth is in the envelope?

Pern is a planet orbiting the star Rukbat. It is earth-like and when first surveyed by human beings, seems like an ideal place to colonise (little do they know...) It's well off the beaten track as far as planets go, so a group of humans, fleeing the aftermath of a brutal space war and hoping to recover the idyllic agrarian dream of their long-ago ancestors on good old Earth, send three spaceships full of colonists to settle there. Part of their plan is to keep only as much technology as they

You may already be familiar with the world of Pern, as created by Anne McCaffrey, but if you need a quick refresher, here it is.

F’drun resents the fact that his dragon (a bronze) has never managed to catch a gold and can only mate with greens as a sort of second best. Being ambitious, he’d love to become Weyrleader (you’d have to feel sorry for everyone at that Weyr if he succeeded) and the only way to do that is if your dragon mates with the senior queen. He’s also slightly homophobic, as much as anyone who grew up in the Weyr can be. He likes women, but his dragon's preferences and ability means that in a mating flight, he’ll always end up with a male partner.

Yes, both in this story and in canon. If you have already read ‘Dragonquest’ and ‘The White Dragon’ you will already know how bad the situation will get between Benden and the other five Weyrs who came forward. If you haven’t read any of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books, then I definitely recommend them!

Thank you. Glad you are enjoying reading this. Shouldn’t be long before you catch up!

In an ideal world, that's exactly what would happen, but based on canon, things just get worse over the next few Turns, leading to the events at the beginning of ‘Dragonquest’ where F’nor is knifed, Mardra and Lessa hate each other's guts, huge areas of land are being burned because Thread has got through and some of the Weyrleaders who came from the past are behaving extremely badly and encouraging their riders to do the same. From the point of view of the modern riders (and Holders) they have landed up with all these strange people who think differently than they do and although they need their help, they don’t see why they should change their way of doing things.

Thank you. It was a difficult scene to write but I’m glad it worked.

Damn! All this timing has got me confused. You're right. Thanks for pointing that out. Corrected now!

The dragons that hatched from Ramoth's first clutch were sent ten Turns back in time so that they would have time to mature enough to come back and fight Thread. They could stay in the past for as long as they needed, then return just three days after they'd left in the present time. (Before Lessa went back to fetch the other five Weyrs, this was the only way F'lar could think of to breed enough dragons to give them a fighting chance of keeping Pern Thread free.) So, from N'bras's point of view, he Impressed Genlorth, then spent four Turns in training. Meanwhile Prideth, who also came from the same clutch, grew up sufficiently to mate and lay her own clutch, also in the south. This happened around two and a half Turns after they all went south and is when H'rek Impressed Rioth. They stayed there for another Turn and a half before coming back to Benden in the present Turn, but only three days later in real time. Hence all the messing with people's heads and N'bras finding out his mother had been dead for three Turns. In 'Dragonflight' it's mentioned that the only rider who was allowed to come back (to report) during that time was F'nor. The experiment was abandoned because living in two times at once left everyone permanently exhausted. it confuses me just writing about it!

Glad they are finding some reason to celebrate in the middle of lockdown ( and finding a use for all those loo rolls). I reckon some people will still be getting through their stockpiled provisions in a few years from now.

Been there, done that. A very uncomfortable and slow to heal injury.

They aren't quite ready to accept yet that things have changed, but I agree, they need to try and adapt.

The infirmary was never a pleasant place to begin, especially directly after Threadfall. D’gar went back to his weyr first and soaked in the hot water, hoping it might make his shoulder feel better. It helped a little, although as he dressed, he realised he was still going to need some treatment. Oh well, at least some time had passed, so they’d have finished with the minor scores. Besides, he needed to check on J’rud, so he could get it seen to while he was there. Herebeth flew him across a

Did Kevin borrow Christine's hairdryer to dry out poor Maude's fur? He should definitely delete the video footage, in case someone sees it. It was a tragic accident, but Christine's not going to believe that, especially as Kevin wasn't fond of the cat.

Jason might have been a bit naive there. Joanna was obviously after his body!

‘So, now you’ve taken it apart and cleaned everything - plus checked for any corrosion - what do we do next?’ S’brin was evidently enjoying his stint as instructor during this practical session in flamethrower maintenance. He’d been taking them apart since he was around twelve Turns old, so he had been the obvious choice to lead the lesson. The Weyrlingmaster tried to give each of his charges a chance to shine and since S’brin hadn’t been in any trouble for a good sevenday, he’d decided that tod

Lovely chapter. Here in the UK during lockdown, everyone went out into the street at 8pm each Thursday to show our appreciation for the NHS (National Health Service) by clapping, cheering and bashing pans. It really brought people together (in a socially distanced way) and it was quite sad when it stopped.

I've only ever seen them sold in cinemas or at fairs in the UK.