News - Dragons

Genetically engineered from an indigenous species, variously named either fire lizards, the dragonet or the fire dragonet, the dragons of Pern received their name from their resemblance to the mythological beasts of Earth’s past. Capable of flight and carrying passengers, breathing fire and teleportation the dragons provide the means to allow man to survive on this planet during the years of threadfall. Trained along with their human partner they find upon hatching, the dragons learn over the months and years to come together as a cohesive fighting force against the airborne scourge

The following are additional News Files Related to Dragons.

Blue Bronze Brown Candidates Clutches
Gold Green HAD Physical Sizes
Transfers Weyrlings Weyrleader Weyrwoman

Physical

The dragons have a rather large head balanced on a sinuous neck followed by a rather block or stolid body with large haunches and a heavy tail. Shorter forearms necessitate a rather rolling gait when they move on all fours and most dragons prefer to fly once they are capable of it. With a wing spread nearly twice as long as they are, they have an extensive amount of wing to keep folded when not in flight and that contributes to their awkwardness while ground bound. Dragons have five different basic colors, although they do vary considerably in hue in their color spectrum. Gold and green dragons are female and bronze, brown and blue dragons are male.


Sizes

Dragon sizes are a tricky business, since the books give conflicting accounts over time. Generally ignoring the dragonlover's guide on this issue we looked at any size references prior to the fourth pass. At around one year of age, Carenath is noted as about the size of Cricket at the shoulder, or 16 hands which is 5'4". We are assuming the shoulder is the joint of neck and wing, basically, about where the rider's butt ends up. Considering they have a little more growing to do, we're going to say the largest of the original golds ended up about 5'9". By the second pass the dragons were noted to have grown a few hands larger. We'll say this means a few hands taller in the shoulder, or about one foot taller.

We'll further assume the growth rate slows down somewhat over time, so say that between the second and fourth pass they grow about 75% as much as between the first and second. We'll further assume that the direct breeders have tended to grow faster and stay in a narrower band of size ranges due to natural type selection, and that this has expanded the difference in sizes between the smallest and largest considerably.

Through sketches for shoulder height and measuring the resultant length we've come up with the following size ranges for use on this game.

Gold: 29.0-32.0
Bronze: 27.0-30.0
Brown: 24.0-28.0
Blue: 20.0-25.0
Green: 18.0-23.0

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