Pride, Prejudice and Dragons

Disclaimer – I don't own Pride & Prejudice or Dragonriders of Pern, but I would like a brown dragon!

This is highly experimental so may go completely wrong. The first chapter is a description of the Dragonriders of Pern for those who have never read them (you should... they're amazing!).

Introduction: Dragonriders of Pern Synopsis

The Dragonriders of Pern are a series of science-fiction/fantasy books written by the amazing Anne McCaffrey. They centre on a planet millions of light-years from Earth and isolated from contact with the rest of the universe, and sometime in the future. A group of about 6,000 colonists arrived on Pern to escape a galaxy-wide war in three giant ships. They quickly settled in and two kids discovered a new group of animals that became known as firelizards. They were small dragon-like creatures that could teleport, communicate telepathically and breathe fire after chewing a phosphine-bearing rock called "firestone". Eight years after the people first arrived disaster struck and hundreds were killed. A ribbon-like organism that consumed anything carbon-based fell from the sky. This "Thread" could not pass through rock and was killed by fire and water. This Thread was brought to Pern by an erratic planet known as the Red Star which passed close to Pern every 200 years, pulling with it a cometary tail that showered down thread for 50 years. The humans fought back with aerial vehicles and flame-throwers but they were running out of resources. A team of geneticists created a solution by genetically engineering the firelizards to create huge, intelligent dragons that were bonded to human riders. And so the Dragonriders of Pern were born.

The colonists moved to the northern continent when a volcano erupted near their main settlement, and the dragonriders settled into a nearby extinct volcanic crater which became known as a weyr. Throughout the next two thousand years the population increased to settle the entire continent, and the dragonriders split into six weyrs to protect them all. However, almost all technology was lost along the way, reducing the humans to a feudal society which revered the dragonriders, Lords of the Holds (Holds –areas of land owned by certain families. Only major holders are called lords) and Craftmasters (experts at certain crafts like healing and fishing).

There are five different types of dragon. The golden queen dragons are the biggest and most important because they lay the eggs and control the weyrs. There are only a maximum of four queens per weyr and their riders known as Weyrwomen. The bronzes are next in size. They lead the fighting groups (wings- contain 33 dragons) and the rider whose bronze mates with the senior queen leads the entire weyr as Weyrleader. The next biggest are the browns, whose riders act as deputies to the Wingleaders and are known as Wingseconds. The blues are a bit smaller but have a lot of stamina. The smallest are the greens which are very agile. The queens and greens are female, although the greens are made sterile by chewing firestone. Queens are ridden but females, bronzes, browns and blues by males and greens by both males and females. The golds and greens both mate by being caught in the air by the male dragons; queens by bronzes and greens by the others. The process will be further described in the story.

The queens lay anywhere between 10 and 50 eggs which have to be incubated on roasting hot sands for about three months. As the eggs develop and harden, dragons (most often blue) are sent out to "Search" for suitable boys and girls between about 12 and 25 to become candidates. When the eggs hatch the teenagers stand around the eggs and wait for a dragonet to choose them. When a person bonds telepathically with a dragon it is known as Impression, but not everyone impresses. The lucky ones, known as weyrlings, are trained for 2-3 years until they can fly and travel between, a freezing blackness that the dragon enters for 3 seconds while teleporting. Once fully trained, the dragons and their riders can finally fight Thread.

More terms and other information will be explained at the bottom of each chapter. The ages of the characters are:

Eliza – 18

Jane – 25

Darcy – 21

Bingley – 21

Charlotte – 16

Caroline – 19

Lydia – 14

Please Read & Review. Feel free to ask me to explain anything you don't understand.