Work Text:
Tenth Pass Pern
It's been two hundred years since Jaxom unearthed AIVAS at landing and much of that machine's advances were primarily felt in medicine and engineering. Its power source lasted only a handful of years and its information was intended for another time. Much of the science was impenetrable after 2500 years and no new halls were able to sustain themselves so they were subsumed back into the existing power structures.
The complete lack of resources on Pern stymied the rest of the advances -- there were small skirmishes put down by dragons in the following turns for mines and land rights -- but an attempt was made to alter the Red Star's passing and many bets were made about whether another pass would come around.
Even as the AIVAS screens went dark, the Southern Continent was resettled by men and women armed with the AIVAS colonial maps.
The northern Weyrs retained small populations and integrated more or less into their own exploding holder populations -- but not so openly and warmly as in the south, for the colonists in the south desperately found themselves in need of dragon power. Facing irrelevancy, the riders answered the call for high-speed travel, heavy lifting, aerial search and rescue, and occasional policing.
The ancient holdings were reclaimed. Cibola, Dorado, Delta, Macedonia, Cathay, Araby, Kahrain, and Jordan were all settled with a single major Weyrhold and surrounding minor holds. Instead of coming together into one cohesive Pern, each region became its own city-state. The riders took as many people as they could to AIVAS to hear the stories themselves, at least a handful from every hold, and the harpers passed new teaching songs far and wide.
The influx of stories from AIVAS telling the intent of their ancestors for an idyllic, pastoral, egalitarian life -- not to mention the enormous power of the stories of women being awesome -- a feminist movement began to move through Pern. Too, the presence of the riders in close proximity to holders began to break down the social rules. As women came to see themselves as potential riders (and as dragonriding became domesticized) they began to Impress so that it became another craft just like any other.
Two hundred turns later, the red star swings close. Too close. The world nervously turns skyward and the dragonriding leadership begins to ask: what is our rightful role on Pern?
The map used for this series is the map of the Southern Continent showing original holdings from the 1989 edition of Dragonsdawn.