Extended Weyrlinghood: Month 4

Detailed Summary

This month falls between your first mounted flight and the acquisition of weyrs, and mating flights and between training which are coming up. Because of this, there are not quite as many suggestions. Take some time to evaluate the growth of your character and their dragon, how they have changed and how they have changed each other. Explore new freedoms and new responsibilities and think about how being out of the barracks and in with the main Weyr population will affect them. It is important through all of Weyrlinghood, but as we pass our halfway mark, think about character development!

Now that you are in your own weyrs and you are flying with your dragon, a lot of life begins to shift. Both you and your dragons are making the adjustment from children who need constant supervision to adults with increasing rights and responsibilities. Many of the restrictions are lifted and you do have a lot more free time, but that doesn't mean your training is at an end. You will continue to learn new things but more time is spent practicing and refining the skills you have already begun to acquire. You should have a good handle on both your dragon and yourself, and you should be disciplining yourself.

In the air, communication shifts, since it is not practical to shout from dragon to dragon and rather silly for the dragons to pass along the more basic commands… hand signals come into play. What might have seemed a game before now becomes a rigorous drill and those who misread the hand signals given in practice will find themselves with extra chores in the evenings.

Of a more practical nature, weyrlings will learn how to safely load and secure gear and various items to their dragon, more advanced straps and with a night session every fourth night, astronomy and navigating by the stars will be squished into your crowded brains.

Your Life This Month

Your dragon's growth will be slowing dramatically over these months as they reach full growth - the staff will be stressing that it's just as important to keep oiling now that they're not growing as visibly.

Exams are finished, so there's a certain amount of kicking back and relaxing going on. Choose your own results - good or bad - but if you've chosen to fail, your character will be studying for the make-up exams for the next little while!

At some point there will be a surprise inspection (or several) to make sure that all you newly released weyrlings aren't living in utter squalor. Even though it's not the Barracks you are still under the eyes of the weyrlingmaster staff and you will be expected to keep your weyrs neat and livable if not all the way up to "military precision". If you fail this, expect more!

We are also planning a Survival Camp trip to the Caspian Sea Islands which will be RPed through the majority of week 15.

Betweening! All of you should now be comfortable with manned flights, and will have been doing elevator duty for a while. This means it's time for the next step - learning to between. It's at this point that the class is most likely to lose a member, so the weyrlingmaster, the assistants, and anyone involved in the class will be pretty solemn and serious about the whole thing, and after the talks about all the weyrlings who've been lost, you will be, too. They will be telling you detailed stories about the names, ages, personalities, likes, dislikes and families of some of the weyrlings who've been lost, in an attempt to hammer into every brain, human and draconic, that it could happen to YOU if you don't concentrate very hard during these lessons.

For info on the code side of *Between*, see this page.

RP Ideas

- Solo flight practice
- Continue practicing formations - this can be done in a group. Obviously more fun if someone's constantly messing it up and marching in the wrong - direction, and someone's trying to read it out of their manual and colliding with people…
- Exercise! Just because your dragons get to lounge around between flights doesn't mean you've stopped running those circuits.
- Weyr inspection
- Preparing for, enduring and recovering from Survival Camp
- The solemn preparation for *Between*, and preliminary training
- That first hop - how does your character feel before, during and after? What about your dragon?
- During week 16, hops to other areas, which would be supervised IC, but you can take an NPC AWLM along.

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