History/ Current Plot
They thought they had got it right, finally. Fort, proud First Weyr, could at last raise her head from the twin yokes of paranoia and prejudice under the guiding hands of their moderate leaders. The new dawn wasn’t at hand just yet, but peace had finally calmed the troubled waters of Pern’s best and brightest.
But you just can’t help some people.
Couldn’t they have waited for what was coming? Couldn’t they have just left well enough alone?
A dark plot hatched in a quiet room strove for more and faster. It wasn't enough to win by increments. It wasn't enough to know the day was coming. They wanted it *now*, and while the worst of Fort’s old guard clung even more fiercely to the system slipping away from them, who could really blame them?
It was done so carefully...the occasional deaths, the keens in the night so simple, so untraceable, so easily explained when you heard the whispers of Cavern staff telling chilling tales of a strange new infestation of tunnelsnakes, when you matched that with the innocuous bitemarks, the healer’s evidence and the shocked murmurs of those who’d shared their beds. Fort’s weather is cold and blankets and bodies so warm, after all. Those deaths in the night...sad fallout of an accident of nature. Never enough to worry, save for those with suspicious minds.
It was funny, though, how often those who fell victim to these unfortunate ‘accidents’ were those whose loss few mourned anyway. Funnier still, how the Weyr’s best trappers never seemed to quite find the nest of these new inexplicable southern imports, hunt though they did. But who listens to the paranoid murmurings of the sorest of losers? The worst of Fort’s remaining rankers, bitter dregs of the bad old days everyone wished would just give up with a good grace?
Perhaps it was foolish to dismiss them. Perhaps they should have listened, should have looked closer...should have done something. In a way, they asked for what was coming.
But no one could have seen *how* it would come.
For once, the deaths that would rouse them from their beds were not Fort’s own, the keens in their dragon’s throats not for their comrades. The flits winking in in panic, covered in dust and bringing horrible images of destruction along with desperate pleas for assistance that weren't even from this continent. Southern Weyr was falling, the thorn Fort had never been able to remove from its side succumbing to the unstable ground beneath it.
Some would help. Some would hinder. Some would shelter the victims while others would loot and plunder and exact revenge for turns of deviancy. All would wake, in the dark and the confusion and the terrible keening. And some of Fort’s own would die, miles from the continental devastation, accidental victims of those who could not leave well enough alone.
Fort lost her Weyrwoman in a Bowl full of disbelieving onlookers- who then watched their Weyrleader slip inexplicably away when he rushed to his Weyrwoman’s side. Fort lost another of the golds she could not spare in a corner of the kitchens with not a soul near her. She lost bronze riders, green riders, drudges; healers who reached a hand into the wrong basket and well-wishers with nothing in mind but helping the refugees from the south. In the confusion and dark and panic of another Weyr’s death they were losing their own. And not one soul could fathom why. Why now were the dragon’s mourning those who were in no danger? Had the resistance gone mad? Had those *rankers*? Was someone using Southerns’ pain to further their own petty agendas? Or was this simply the end of the world?
The endless night dragged on, the ‘attack’ however, didn’t.
Who, just who, would kill so randomly, so senselessly?
They found the room later, pieced the story together from fragments and the evidence in front of them. The puncture wounds on both their Weyrleader’s ankles, evidence of heedless, careless, senseless deaths no one could have foreseen, least of all those who had brought the menace into Fort’s halls in the first place
The empty cages in the abandoned storeroom, and the slumped body of a man long suspected of Radical leanings, bitemarks of his own proclaiming him victim of his own weapon of vengeance. The poor soul who’d simply come looking for stores and found oh so much more instead, and the clear signs of the scuffle that had broken open the cage and cost them both their lives- and so many more besides. The carcasses. The body horribly hanging in a quiet corridor, a perpetrator who couldn’t face what he’d unwittingly unleashed and the fact of the daughters of Faranth he’d condemned so accidentally to the cold of between.
And in the vacuum that followed, the dazed disbelief of a hazy morning after, there stands only one gold to lead Pern’s First Weyr. You’ve heard about the wrath of the scorned, haven’t you? Her latest, dangerous import was now the only one left to hold Fort- literally.
What a pity she was one of those who were dismissed. What a shame no one cared when it was the body of her own lover she cradled, lost to this ‘simple’ infestation that was nothing more than a ‘quirk’ of nature the Cavern workers would sort out. Who was called ‘paranoid’ when she dared to ask for an answer and ‘pitiless’ when she tried to demand it?
What a tragedy that one radical group’s ridiculous plotting is going to drag a whole Weyr back into the dark.
Because the dark *is* rising again.... do you dare to face it?
But you just can’t help some people.
Couldn’t they have waited for what was coming? Couldn’t they have just left well enough alone?
A dark plot hatched in a quiet room strove for more and faster. It wasn't enough to win by increments. It wasn't enough to know the day was coming. They wanted it *now*, and while the worst of Fort’s old guard clung even more fiercely to the system slipping away from them, who could really blame them?
It was done so carefully...the occasional deaths, the keens in the night so simple, so untraceable, so easily explained when you heard the whispers of Cavern staff telling chilling tales of a strange new infestation of tunnelsnakes, when you matched that with the innocuous bitemarks, the healer’s evidence and the shocked murmurs of those who’d shared their beds. Fort’s weather is cold and blankets and bodies so warm, after all. Those deaths in the night...sad fallout of an accident of nature. Never enough to worry, save for those with suspicious minds.
It was funny, though, how often those who fell victim to these unfortunate ‘accidents’ were those whose loss few mourned anyway. Funnier still, how the Weyr’s best trappers never seemed to quite find the nest of these new inexplicable southern imports, hunt though they did. But who listens to the paranoid murmurings of the sorest of losers? The worst of Fort’s remaining rankers, bitter dregs of the bad old days everyone wished would just give up with a good grace?
Perhaps it was foolish to dismiss them. Perhaps they should have listened, should have looked closer...should have done something. In a way, they asked for what was coming.
But no one could have seen *how* it would come.
For once, the deaths that would rouse them from their beds were not Fort’s own, the keens in their dragon’s throats not for their comrades. The flits winking in in panic, covered in dust and bringing horrible images of destruction along with desperate pleas for assistance that weren't even from this continent. Southern Weyr was falling, the thorn Fort had never been able to remove from its side succumbing to the unstable ground beneath it.
Some would help. Some would hinder. Some would shelter the victims while others would loot and plunder and exact revenge for turns of deviancy. All would wake, in the dark and the confusion and the terrible keening. And some of Fort’s own would die, miles from the continental devastation, accidental victims of those who could not leave well enough alone.
Fort lost her Weyrwoman in a Bowl full of disbelieving onlookers- who then watched their Weyrleader slip inexplicably away when he rushed to his Weyrwoman’s side. Fort lost another of the golds she could not spare in a corner of the kitchens with not a soul near her. She lost bronze riders, green riders, drudges; healers who reached a hand into the wrong basket and well-wishers with nothing in mind but helping the refugees from the south. In the confusion and dark and panic of another Weyr’s death they were losing their own. And not one soul could fathom why. Why now were the dragon’s mourning those who were in no danger? Had the resistance gone mad? Had those *rankers*? Was someone using Southerns’ pain to further their own petty agendas? Or was this simply the end of the world?
The endless night dragged on, the ‘attack’ however, didn’t.
Who, just who, would kill so randomly, so senselessly?
They found the room later, pieced the story together from fragments and the evidence in front of them. The puncture wounds on both their Weyrleader’s ankles, evidence of heedless, careless, senseless deaths no one could have foreseen, least of all those who had brought the menace into Fort’s halls in the first place
The empty cages in the abandoned storeroom, and the slumped body of a man long suspected of Radical leanings, bitemarks of his own proclaiming him victim of his own weapon of vengeance. The poor soul who’d simply come looking for stores and found oh so much more instead, and the clear signs of the scuffle that had broken open the cage and cost them both their lives- and so many more besides. The carcasses. The body horribly hanging in a quiet corridor, a perpetrator who couldn’t face what he’d unwittingly unleashed and the fact of the daughters of Faranth he’d condemned so accidentally to the cold of between.
And in the vacuum that followed, the dazed disbelief of a hazy morning after, there stands only one gold to lead Pern’s First Weyr. You’ve heard about the wrath of the scorned, haven’t you? Her latest, dangerous import was now the only one left to hold Fort- literally.
What a pity she was one of those who were dismissed. What a shame no one cared when it was the body of her own lover she cradled, lost to this ‘simple’ infestation that was nothing more than a ‘quirk’ of nature the Cavern workers would sort out. Who was called ‘paranoid’ when she dared to ask for an answer and ‘pitiless’ when she tried to demand it?
What a tragedy that one radical group’s ridiculous plotting is going to drag a whole Weyr back into the dark.
Because the dark *is* rising again.... do you dare to face it?