Mawgrim

They are really finding their feet at the Weyr. It's good they can make other friends after living at Pinnacle and not really being able to trust anyone else.

FYI Bruganith is a brown dragon. I thought I’d mentioned that, but maybe not. It's definitely made clear in the next chapter.

He never really had time to think about it, with everything else going on at the time.

You'd need to separate the emotional commitment of being a weyrmate with someone from the purely dragon driven sexual experience of a mating flight. Some people are going to find this easier to deal with than others.

I’m sure once they have dragons and can fly well enough, a visit is in order. Kadin will want to know how his mother and sisters are getting on, at the very least.

Once the eggs are laid, the candidates training will begin, so they'll have plenty of time to get to know D'gar.

It's mine. In her books they were always called Oldtimers.

Thank you for not spoiling it for others. It's really hard not to sometimes when I reply to comments. Not everyone has read the older stories and for some, 'To the Weyr' is their first venture into the world of Pern.

Jevikel is definitely coming out of his shell and Kadin is probably closer now to how he was when he lived in Bitra.

Talking to J'rud, as well as the other Five Weyrs riders they've met, is going to give them a more balanced view than some others have. Talking to H'rek has given Jevikel another point od view about D'gar.

Not directly, although H'rek is D'gar's weyrmate and already knows he's been offered the job!

Another sevenday passed. Jevikel was able to discard his crutch and found it much easier getting around the Weyr, even though he still had to be careful. ‘You know, I can’t see your ribs any more,’ Kadin said, as they got out of the baths one morning. It was true. He felt as if he had a lot more energy these days. ‘We’ll look like proper weyrfolk soon.’ ‘I’d forgotten what it was like not to be hungry.’ Kadin dried between his toes. ‘I haven’t felt this good since we lived in Bitr

In her later books, Anne made it clear there was a taboo against surgery (presumably because techniques are so primitive and anaesthetic non existent. Jaxom was only delivered by Caesarean because his mother was already dead. I've read about Carrington Events before. Luckily, in 1859, there wasn't much to disrupt, but if the same thing happened today the results would be devastating. The need to breed and keep population levels high is definitely an imperative on Pern, particularly as with the decline of modern medicine there would be higher child mortality, not to mention various plagues killing off adults. That was one of the main reasons girls were stopped from standing to Impress green dragons as going between often leads to miscarriages. Kitti Ping's original intention was for female dragons to bond with women, but when they were denied this, the green dragons began to Impress to boys, rather than die.

Exile is mentioned as a punishment is a few of the books. I doubt many people survive for long on them. if you grow up in a Weyr you'll soon realise that all dragons have to mate and even the bronzes have to chase greens on a regular basis as gold flights don’t happen that often. So even if a dragonrider has a preference for women, if his dragon wins a flight with a green, he doesn’t have much choice in the matter. But it happens to everyone now and then. It's more likely this will cause problems with a Hold or Craftbred rider, who may already have preconceived notions of homosexuality being wrong. Plus the fact that at the Weyrs women can also be sexually active and have several children with different fathers. Anne was quite ahead of her times the way she set up Weyr society, although she did have some weird views also. At one fan convention she was asked the question of what happened if a heterosexual man Impressed a green and she came out with a theory that once someone has anal sex they turn gay! She also believed that the hatching dragons could sense who was gay and the green dragons tended to go for those lads. Considering the young age of some candidates (F'nor was only ten when he Impressed Canth) that's a bit of a long shot too. Plus she never addressed what would happen if a transgender candidate stood. Would a gold dragon Impress a trans woman, for example.

Not that I’ve heard of. It would be cruel to the dragon as they are social creatures. Criminals on Pern sometimes get banished to the Western Isles, but that wouldn't make much sense for a dragon and rider as they could just fly away rather than stay stranded.

Most people carry belt knives to cut up food etc, so dueling is definitely a thing. F'lar kills Fax in a duel, then in later books T'ron tries to kill him (and so does T'kul later.) Disputes in the Weyr are usually settled by closely monitored wrestling bouts due to the dangers of a rider getting killed and therefore losing the dragon, too. There are also mentions in the books of slings being used when hunting small prey.

Particularly as he incinerated all the ground crew who fell into a Thread burrow.

It's a sad fact that when a rider dies, the dragon goes between.

The comments just add to each chapter. I love it when readers guess at motivations and plot or even come up with suggestions for how to get rid of an unpopular character!

It's mentioned in canon that some dragonriders are homophobic. It's certainly less likely for someone who is Weyrbred, but F'drun has all sorts of hang ups due to his ambition being thwarted as Ryth can't catch a queen, so it's easier to take it out on other folk.

Their story is told in 'To the Weyr', still in progress at this moment in time.

F'drun isn't unintelligent and he knows how to use words and actions to maximum effect when he wants to bully or rattle a person. He can also be friendly and charming when necessary, to get people to tell him things they might not otherwise have done.

Gossip and rumours make issues like this escalate so fast!

It's mentioned in one of the books (possibly Renegades of Pern) that ground crew find it hard to understand one of the riders who has come forward. Of course, Pern is a large continent and would probably have regional accents, particularly in some of the isolated holds, so it might be he just came from another part.

M'rell was never that bothered about being Wingsecond before, but there are other issues he's dealing with. Right now he's just seeing that D'gar is having more success at Benden than he is.