Extended Weyrlinghood Month 5

Overview

As the last segment of weyrlinghood concludes the dragons reach their full growth and maturity and their riders are hopefully not far behind. As a pair, the focus of these final months of training is on practical experience and reviewing what you have learned to ensure it has taken root, if only just barely.

Your lifemates are basically done growing at the beginning of this OOC month, and some of the greens may even begin to show signs of entering their first proddy cycle, so things may get a bit stressful in the barracks. Throughout these months, the weyrlings generally spend their days running errands around the local area - delivering messages and goods to the cotholds to help them gain first hand experience as to the layout of the region, as well as to begin to interact with the holders themselves.

The physical training has continued, for despite being able to rely on your lifemate for more and more, physical fitness is still a necessity, and you can't be allowed to lose what you've gained right now. One possible means for staying in shape is out of Weyr hunting - after all, while bringing down an animal may be easy when its penned up - its hardly the same when it has open plains to flee across.

Finally, with your dragons coming closer to maturity, you will be need to shadow members of the various wings as well as to ask questions about what their duties are and what can be expected of their members. You will have the opportunity to spend additional time with your mentor, but will be required (IC, not necessarily RPed) to fly or attend an event for each wing to see how they function.

Mating Flight Info

As the greens begin to edge towards proddy, week 17 is time for the mating flights lecture. The weyrlingmaster will be covering flights in full detail - from what to expect as a male rider to how to realize its coming as a rider of a female dragon and what the flight itself entails.

All weyrlings should read over '+help proddy' to become familiar with how the proddy code works as well as '+help flights'. Bronzeriders, be aware that not all goldriders make use of the registration system that is available, so keep an eye out for bbposts as well.

OOCly, if you are the rider of a female dragon you can now '+proddy on' to add your dragon to the Mating Flights knot. While the flight knot does assign a status of Warning/Proddy, it is not necessary to follow this schedule strictly. In fact, it is still possible to set a winner even when not in *Proddy*, however as the knot also keeps track of winners, please do not repeatedly set someone as a winner, as it distorts the statistics.

By all means, RP being proddy, but do your best not to completely disrupt everyone else's regular RP while doing it, or at least give them some warning. You are NEVER, EVER required to TS at any point during or after a flight, and in the interests of keeping the game legal, please don't if you've got any doubts as to the age of your RP partner. If you ride a female, getting folks to participate in your flight can be tough at times. Opinions differ on the best strategy, but you might want to consider either calling for volunteers and then finding a time that suits them (and you) or just having a flight when there's enough people around. Don't forget to let people know if you are willing to have NPCs chase (or catch).
In the interests of not killing off interest in flights, make sure you don't let them drag on forever. As much as you can, keep things moving along so that your handsome suitors (or rather, their typists), don't wander away from the keyboard. If you need advice on how to run a flight, please don't hesitate to speak to the staff, as they do have experience with this.

ICly, if you ride a female dragon, make sure she only bloods her kill - if she eats, she won't fly as high, which can be a problem when she and her gentleman dragon are falling ground-wards. Best to have plenty of time to spread those wings. For a queen, this also allows more time for fertilization, and more eggs. All riders are more or less overtaken by their dragons during a flight, less interested in humans than ever before, except as a way of echoing their dragon's actions.
If you're the female's rider, or the rider of the male dragon, the odds are good you'll end up together. If you don't want this, you'll need to make very firm alternate arrangements beforehand, and the odds are very, very high that they'll involve another person, even if they're not a rider. If you're a winner but the female's rider has alternate arrangements, you'll probably end up finding someone else - and a weyr is full of willing volunteers, since when a dragon's involved, things are generally a lot more fun. For those who don't win, cold baths, alcohol, or friendly partners will be the order of the day.

RP Ideas
- Shadow a rider in a wing you may be interested in joining to find out what they do on a daily basis.

- RP getting the mating flights lecture, or discussing it with your fellow weyrlings after that fact.

- If you are a female rider and your dragon has tipped over to Warning, or even Proddy, feel free to RP that out, and even RP a flight, if you've had your Mating Flights lecture.

- Explore! There are a number of built and semi-built holds that are in the Xanadu area that you would be sent to on various 'errands' - feel free to go and see what's out there.

- Go on a hunting expedition - the Southern Continent is full of free-roaming herds left to breed all those centuries ago by the colonists, and they are the perfect challenge for a growing dragon.

- Betweening! After your initial lessons around Xanadu Weyr, each day you will be taking longer jumps between, and more of them, building up your memory for the different locations. By this month you may go *Between* on your own, as long as a member of the WLM (PC or NPC) is aware and in touch.

- Graduation approaches — try and speak to some riders about what's involved in the different wings, think about where you'd like to be!

- Contemplate your freedom, laze around a bit. You're at that final part of your weyrlinghood where those who are behind are madly catching up, and the majority of the class are relaxing. You know, those final few days of school where there's no real point in starting anything much? That's where you are. This is your last chance to learn anything you're not sure of.

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