Post by Omnia Munda on Sept 15, 2008 10:15:14 GMT -8
Early in the Interval, Conclave met to officially declare the end of Pass - and to discuss long-growing plans to land sailors, riders and eventually colonists on the mysterious Southern Continent. Long a goal of Pern's leaders, the plan had the support of most of the Conclave - but not all. It was surprising to everyone when gruff and stubborn M'tani, after days of warning his peers against the very idea of exploring the south, volunteered riders from his own weyr to accompany the two ships that would sail for lands unknown.
The expedition weighed anchors in spring of the third turn. The ships were the largest the shipwrights could provide, laden with all the supplies such an ambitious project could wish for and built with broad flat foredecks for the landing of the four Telgari dragons - two greens, two blues - that traveled with them. Their sailing and landing was uneventful, and though the dragons could barely manage contact with those they knew back on the mainland, from even such fuzzy communications it was clear that the project was on track to return with a wealth of information and new promise for the future of Pern.
Until, that is, the sickness hit them.
In any ambitious expedition to a new land, a few losses are to be expected - so it wasn't until the first of the riders died that the continent really understood the full impact of what was happening 'down south.' The wails of the three dragons that survived were loud and clear even across the narrow sea. It was not long after, as hazy reports of the dead and dying came through those distressed beasts, that M'tani approached Conclave to demand that the expedition be abandoned - and the two hundred people who'd been sent on it considered a loss. Neither of the ships, nor the three dragonrider pairs that remained, would be permitted to return north.
Pressured by the other five Weyrleaders, who'd seen and felt via dragons the blurry but horrified accounts of those down south, and perhaps motivated by their own fear, the craftmasters and Lords Holder agreed. The consensus of the common folk of Pern was not achieved until the last keen was heard - and then, according to all reports, silence. The expedition had been wiped out.
How did M'tani know? The question - which the gruff old man refused through the rest of his life to acknowledge with even a snort of an answer - has been passed from person to person and generation to generation, and even been canonized in Harper songs. Of course, common sense is that the famously bitter weyrleader didn't know at all; he just didn't want to explore the South, and sent his riders with the expedition in order to maintain some control over the project. Nevertheless, his actions likely saved the people of Pern from deadly infection carried via dragonback, and earned him a rank among Pern's storied heroes. His portrait hangs huge in Telgar Weyr's council chamber, a reminder to all who wear the knot he wore of M'tani's celebrated wisdom.
The expedition weighed anchors in spring of the third turn. The ships were the largest the shipwrights could provide, laden with all the supplies such an ambitious project could wish for and built with broad flat foredecks for the landing of the four Telgari dragons - two greens, two blues - that traveled with them. Their sailing and landing was uneventful, and though the dragons could barely manage contact with those they knew back on the mainland, from even such fuzzy communications it was clear that the project was on track to return with a wealth of information and new promise for the future of Pern.
Until, that is, the sickness hit them.
In any ambitious expedition to a new land, a few losses are to be expected - so it wasn't until the first of the riders died that the continent really understood the full impact of what was happening 'down south.' The wails of the three dragons that survived were loud and clear even across the narrow sea. It was not long after, as hazy reports of the dead and dying came through those distressed beasts, that M'tani approached Conclave to demand that the expedition be abandoned - and the two hundred people who'd been sent on it considered a loss. Neither of the ships, nor the three dragonrider pairs that remained, would be permitted to return north.
Pressured by the other five Weyrleaders, who'd seen and felt via dragons the blurry but horrified accounts of those down south, and perhaps motivated by their own fear, the craftmasters and Lords Holder agreed. The consensus of the common folk of Pern was not achieved until the last keen was heard - and then, according to all reports, silence. The expedition had been wiped out.
How did M'tani know? The question - which the gruff old man refused through the rest of his life to acknowledge with even a snort of an answer - has been passed from person to person and generation to generation, and even been canonized in Harper songs. Of course, common sense is that the famously bitter weyrleader didn't know at all; he just didn't want to explore the South, and sent his riders with the expedition in order to maintain some control over the project. Nevertheless, his actions likely saved the people of Pern from deadly infection carried via dragonback, and earned him a rank among Pern's storied heroes. His portrait hangs huge in Telgar Weyr's council chamber, a reminder to all who wear the knot he wore of M'tani's celebrated wisdom.