DragonForce Ch. 00 - Intro

This is the first installment in a series of two novels and a short story that I wrote at the request of my late wife. She was an ardent fan of Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonriders of Pern" series and asked that I write a story inserting four of my original characters into Anne's universe. Obviously, the resulting novels could not be published. Besides, that was never my intent.

Fans of the Pern series will note that I have taken a few liberties with the canonical scenario. First, I have turned Eastern Weyr into a volcanic rather than a forest weyr. Second, I have made the Pernese dragons slightly more aggressive than the originals, and considerably more capable in the areas of memory and reasoning. I have also given the dragon-riders slightly more conventional morals.

This will be a series of roughly 15 documents, including an introduction and a bibliography which may help the reader keep up with the characters. In roughly 500 total pages of text, there are a lot of dragons and riders to keep up with. Many of them are Ms McCaffrey's original characters, a substantial number of them are my characters.

I hope the reader will bear in mind that I was not trying to copy the original Pernese structure, but to integrate it into a somewhat different fantasy scenario. Hopefully, the reader will find this an enjoyable if rather lengthy experience.

One item of major importance: Much of the communication between these characters is telepathic in nature. To indicate thought communication, I will use the ' symbol rather than standard quotation marks. I apologize if this is inconvenient, as I haven't yet learned how to insert italicized text on Literotica.

Thank you for your interest. I'll be looking forward to the comments.

Rogue

INTRODUCTION

Rukbat, in the Sagittarian Sector, is a Golden G-type star. It has five planets, two asteroid belts and a stray planet that it attracted and held through recent millennia. When men first settled on Rukbat's third world and named it Pern, they took little notice of the strange planet swinging around its adopted primary in a wildly erratic elliptical orbit. For two generations, the colonists gave the bright Red Star little thought, until the path of the wanderer brought it close to its stepsister. At that time, the indigenous life form of the wandering planet, a simple spore of incredible size and destructive ability, sought to bridge the space gap between its home and the more temperate and hospitable planet. At this time, silver Threads dropped through Pern's skies, destroying anything they touched. The initial losses of the colonists were staggering. As a result, during the subsequent struggle to survive and combat this menace, Pern's tenuous contact with the mother planet was broken.

To control the incursions of the dreadful Thread, the Pernese genetically manipulated a native life form, a small flying lizard capable of breathing flame and destroying Thread in mid-air. These creatures, barely a handbreadth in body length, were bred into massive versions of the original "fire-lizards". The colonists called them dragons, after the fearsome beasts of Terran legend. The wonderful animals had two useful characteristics; they could travel from place to place instantaneously, and they could breathe fire by chewing a phosphine-rich ore called firestone.

Those Pernese with telepathic leanings formed life-time bonds with the dragons at the creatures' hatching. The team of dragon and rider became Pern's first line of defense against the falling spores.

The Thread fell for fifty years, or turns, as the Pernese call them, until the Red Star moved away on its wild orbit. Then came a wonderful interval of two hundred turns free of the bane of Threadfall. Pern prospered, and dragons continued to breed, growing in number and size. Soon, there were dragon settlements, called Weyrs, at six locations across the planet's Northern Continent. By the time the Red Star returned, Pern was ready.

After each fourth Pass came a time when the Red Star did not pass close enough to drop its deadly cargo of parasites on Pern. Then, there were four-hundred years between Passes. These were named "Long Intervals". The first Long Interval had little or no effect, but the second resulted in a loss of credibility of the legends and teaching songs that warned the prosperous planet of its ancient enemy. By the time the rogue planet closed for its Ninth Pass in Pern's inhabited history, the legends of Threadfall had fallen into disrepute, and dragons and dragonriders had lessened greatly in esteem.

As the Red Star again loomed in the Eastern skies, Pern had been reduced to one Weyr of dragons, Benden Weyr, named after Admiral Paul Benden, the commander of the original colonizing mission. But Benden Weyr had less than two-hundred dragons, and its only queen, Nemorth, had become lazy and unproductive. As old age crept up on the golden beast, she had yet to produce a queen dragon. Dragonkind stood in imminent danger of extinction and, with it, all life on Pern.

Then, with time running out, Nemorth participated in one last mating flight. All riders waited with bated breath as she laid her clutch. There, among a small and unremarkable laying, gleamed a single golden egg. A young queen would be born.

When the gleaming golden dragon hatched, she was impressed by the indomitable Lessa of Ruatha. Nemorth died shortly thereafter, making the golden hatchling's rider Weyrwoman of Benden Weyr. Less than two turns later, Ramoth the Golden rose to mate, seven mighty bronze males in pursuit.

The huge Mnementh, largest of the Benden dragons and in his prime, caught the queen, making his rider, F'lar, Weyrleader of Benden. The combination of F'lar and Lessa, and Mnementh and Ramoth, gave Pern a fighting chance for survival.

Still, there were fewer than two-hundred adult dragons ready when Thread began to fall. After the first Fall, F'lar counted his casualties, reaching the inescapable conclusion that he did not have sufficient numbers of dragons to withstand the assault of the voracious spores. With drifting death darkening the Pernese skies, disaster struck. Less than three days after the first Threadfall, Lessa and Ramoth disappeared. The loss of the golden dragon was the final blow in sealing Pern's terrible fate.

Lessa, however, had different ideas. As aware as F'lar of her planet's deadly peril, she remembered a haunting teaching song that told of five entire Weyrs of dragons simply disappearing. Overnight, Pern had been reduced from six Weyrs to one. The only remaining citadel of dragonkind had been Benden. Using the dragon's ability to move through time as well as space, she travelled backwards, back through the seemingly endless Long Interval, back to the end of the previous Pass. Upon her arrival, both she and her dragon were terribly ill, drained of strength by the four-hundred turn journey. When she finally regained her health, she and Ramoth learned the secret to the mystery of the missing Weyrs.

Spurred by her planet's desperate need, strengthened and guided by Ramoth, Lessa provided the answer to the ancient riddle. Using their ancient enemy, the Red Star, as a guide, she led five full Weyrs, nearly two-thousand dragons, including seventeen queens, back to the present Turn, back to reinforce a beleaguered Benden Weyr, back to provide solace to a terrified, hopeless planet.

In the Turns that followed, F'lar and Lessa became legends, providing the leadership and vision that guided Pern through the first twenty years of the fifty-year siege. With the help of the Harper Hall, the Healer Hall, the Smith Hall and several other crafthalls, along with several of the major lord holders, the Bendenites overcame a bewildering series of problems, some more insidious and more dangerous than Thread itself.

In time, two more Weyrs were established, Southern and Eastern Weyrs, on the great Southern Continent. Eastern was the newest of the Weyrs, filled with younger dragons and riders. It performed its duties with the enthusiasm and determination of youth. However, the Weyrleader, T'gellan, also faced the problems inherent with directing the efforts of more than three hundred young men and women. One of these young men, a junior wingsecond, committed a serious breach of Weyr discipline which resulted in his assignment to an onerous detail. It also set the stage for an incident that would change the history of Pern.