WEEK 4: Begins Monday August 15

What's happening with your dragon this week:
In terms of growth, not too much - the staff will be stressing that it's just as important to keep oiling now that they're now growing as visibly.

What's happening in class this week: 1. 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!

2. First mounted flight: Those straps you made are coming in handy, and for the first time we're into manned spaceflight! There'll be sessions on how to make sure you're buckled in right, and then with a
rider at each end, your first mounted flight lesson!

3. Mating flights talk: You get this now, and we'll be doing our best to RP it out, but because it's an important subjects, here's the main info down in writing. After this week your dragons can rise, although our queen probably won't rise until she's up to 2 turns old.
IC:
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 or friendly partners will be the order of the day.

OOC:
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 along to 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 general people around.
In the interests of not killing off interest in flights, make sure you don't let them drag on forever. In as much as you can, keep things snapping 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 S'ver, who rides various female dragons elsem* and has experience in this area.

4. Formations continue, I paste from last week:
Even though Pern is Thread-free, formations are still practiced, for two reasons. The first is simply to preserve the knowledge - the more people know it, the harder it is to lose. The second is that thread
fighting formations are also useful at times when conducting search and rescue. Lessons will be taking place in two forms:
- Unmounted: weyrlings complete the drills on foot, taking it in turns to play at wingleader - the wingleader will call out formation names, and the weyrlings will jog into position for that formation.
- Mounted: on your dragons, on the ground - no flying yet! Again, formations called out, and the dragons will walk (not jog, can you imagine it?) into position for each formation.

Your dragons aren't up to flying formations yet, but you're being refreshed to make sure you're right on top of it for when you try them out.

RP ideas for this week:
1. Catch us for solo flight practice.

2. Again, from last week: 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...

3. Exercise! Just because your dragons get to lounge around between flights doesn't mean you've stopped running those circuits.

Homework:
One weyrling-related log to xaweyrlings@yahoogroups.com