Espur Weyr

[Xi]

Dragonmen must Fly
When Threads are in the Sky.

It's been about four-thousand Turns since the AIVAS machine, with the help of Ruth and the Dragonriders of Pern, partook of the perilous journeys to stop the Red Star from passing in the orbit of the third planet from Rukbat and devastating it's green continents with the silver rain of thread. Four-thousand Turns since the dragons last rose against their ancient menace and breathed the flames of life to char the plague into harmless ash above the helpless people of Pern, and ever such a long time since the dragonmen and women had any use on Pern but to take care of the descendants of the great beasts that at one time protected the planet from certain destruction.

Little did they know

After being in a self-imposed exile on the Southern Continent of the planet for nearly as long as Thread has no longer been a threat, the force has diminished significantly, and they were happy and content in the torpid life that they had created for themselves. However, with the rise of their newest Queen and the fall of the old, the planet seemed to be falling apart. Weather patterns changed, turning areas where plenty of rain had fallen for crops into dry, barren lands and flooding the marshlands of fishing holds and the ever important harper and healer halls, causing famine and sickness. Earthquakes plagued the mountainous terrain of both Weyr and mining halls, but no one took much note of it.

Except for one. The Weyrwoman took all these signs for what they were worth, and pleaded with the people of her home to believe her when she said that Thread was returning. Even as her great Golden lifemate Rose again and again to try to build up the forces of the diminished Weyr, very few believed the Weyrwoman when she said that Thread would be returning.

One brave soul went to the North to try to warn and determine the forces of their brethren there, and was greeted with torture and hatred, returning to the south with barely his and his dragons' lives spared.

Then, more disaster as the mountain that had been home to the dragons erupted and with it destroyed their ancestral home. It’s now, in the midst of dissent, and rebuilding, as the Dragonriders of Pern work at re-establishing for themselves a home, during Turn 4466, that things at Espur Weyr finally began to settle down, and return to the life they’d lived for the past two thousand years:

Waiting for their nightmares to come true.