#pern analysis

Seriously. The bond between a riderpair is supposed to be the deepest, most profound thing. Losing each other destroys you, no other love could ever compare, you are the most important thing to each other. We're told this sort of thing over and over, how deep and important and special this connection is.

But where do we see it?

Because, we don't, really. At least not in Anne's stuff. What we get from dragons is generally communication that could be between any two fuckers and empty claims of love. What we get from the riders is physical tending- an improvement- and empty claims of love. And the thing is, they are empty. There's nothing in there. There can't be, because dragons aren't allowed to be... anybody, really.

I love my cat. I love her because she is near-desperately social. Because of how she mreeps instead of meows. Her endless curiosity and the fact that she's notably smarter than her sister, though she's also far more timid.

And in just that paragraph, you've seen more personality and individuality for my cat than we get for any dragon in the stories focused on their lifemates.

For the most part dragons are allowed three things- 'likes this', 'doesn't like this', 'I love you'. That's it. On occasion you might get a hint of something more, but trust that will be dropped quickly. And that's if they get even that. There's nothing we're shown to give us any idea what a rider loves about their dragon. And the dragons just have the same platitudes over and over like they're all playing the same pre-recorded message.

It's a doll-like love, one that exists only because a higher being is mashing fuckers together for the sake of doing so, with no depth or basis than 'this is how things are supposed to be'.

And it's not just in the saying how fuckers feel, the words that have no depth because there's nothing behind them, but in how fuckers interact. Dragons have no valuable opinions, or even opinions worth asking after as a general rule. You'll occasionally hear about what the dragons think, but rarely if ever any indication that they were asked. As if said in the fandom, they're flying couches. They exist to be in the background, to confer status, to move people around. There's rarely if ever anything but the same platitudes to give weight to the idea that the dragons are an important part of every minute of every day of their riders' lives.

A single page in DragonsDawn gives more weight to the bond between Sorka and Sean than the whole ass-end of the book does the bond between Sean and Carenath.

For up, we can assume large molars for the size of the dragonkin. This is a common trait in species that often are using their teeth to crack or chew hard materials. We can also assume the enamel is probably very thick and hard itself. There's a few more adaptations that are possible alongside thing- such as possibly ever-growing teeth like in rodents, or shedding and replacing teeth multiple times in their lifetime such as elephants do- but assuming their teeth aren't ever-growing (which would be it's own whole thing) we can probably safely assume that molars wearing down is probably a big deal as dragonkin age. In wild firelizards especially it's probably tied to mortality rate- due to things like malnutrition or a higher susceptibility to predators and Thread since they lack one of their methods of protection.

Another thing to consider is the bite-force needed to crack stone, leaving open the potential for very notable sagittal crests in dragonkin. Basically large attachment points on the top of their heads on which their jaw muscles can anchor to allow for greater jaw strength, they're why especially male gorillas have those domed heads- because there's a bone crest and a load of muscle there letting them bite like a complete son of a bitch.

According to the wiki newly hatched dragons "were the size of very large dogs or small ponies"

Great Dane- 28-35 inches (71-89 cm) at shoulder [w/ large mastiffs seemingly averaging a few inches smaller in comparison (~22-30 inches (56-76 cm))]

Small ponies classed as 50 inches (127 cm) or lower at the shoulder

Assuming the size range is maintained through hatchlinghood as well as adulthood then 25-45 (64-114) works for averages...

So by this estimate greens would be about 22% their adult height at hatching and golds would be about 23% of their adult height at hatching. An average hatchling green would be about 13% of their mama's height.

For some comparison, komodo dragons seem to hatch at somewhere between 12 and 18 inches (30-46 cm) long, with adult females reaching average lengths of about 7.5 feet (2.3 m), giving us an average of babies being 16% of their mama's length. They also seem to clutch an average of about 20 eggs at a time (I'm seeing some estimates as high as 30 but, going with the 20...)

So, in theory the math can work. Mostly due to the sheer number advantage of greens and blues. Potentially browns as well... quick math we can expect on average 18% mama's height, so pushing it a little... Still, in action, feels a bit wibbly, but in theory the math can math.

Of course one can also go with a smaller size range. After all, looking at ponies, a small shetland can be the size of a large great dane. So in theory you could lower the high end. Technically you could do the same with the low end, but I personally wouldn't drop it below that 22 inch (56 cm) mark.

Or, if you wanted to play more with the whole mess with gold eggs being larger than the rest of the clutch by a notable amount, you could always have all the hatchlings be about the same size with the exception of the gold, but to go with the gold being 20% larger than the others then we'd be talking a range of something like 29-37 inches for the non-golds and 35-45 inches for the golds, which could potentially muck up our percentages based on height comparisons.

To play with those ones, our golds in that case would be 17-22% mom's height at hatching, while the rest of the clutch would be 14-18% mom's height at hatching. Which is, again, theoretically mathing. Shit can, in theory, be done.

So why the fuck wouldn't she have been flying? To the point that folks are looking at Ramoth and going 'silly weyrling, golds only fly to mate'?

The way I see it the options are-

Her own lack of interest (which, honestly could be part of why she bonded Jora- 'you're not impressed with heights, I'm not impressed with flying, this could work')

Her own phobia (learned from Jora? result of an incident? had a bad dream and it stuck? but then you'd think it'd be notable if the queen herself was scared of heights or flying, even moreso than her rider being so)

Solidarity with her rider ('Jora is scared of flying, so I will also walk everywhere so she's not alone in it')

Disability (given *gestures at the bastards in Late-8th Interval Benden* it's clear that golds' health and wellbeing doesn't matter so long as they can still rise to mate, so Nemorth ending up with a bad wing or something isn't unreasonable, possibly not even unlikely, though again you would think it would be noteworthy)

Spite (once again *gestures at the bastards in Late-8th Interval Benden*)

This is amazingly important.

Really, it is, trust me.

About half of those would be greenpairs, we go with 49% on this blog. So that's 245 greenpairs estimated per Weyr.

For ease and maximum impact we're going to assume all of these greens are bonded to cis women. For the same reason we'll assume they all are at minimum 20 and that our age spread is 54% under the general max breeding age in medieval times of 40 years and 49% past that. That puts our fertile greenrider estimate at 133.

Now, records seem to suggest that the medieval period on which the setting draws so much had a steady rate of about 13% of women not having children at all, with those who did seemingly having an average of about six. Now our greenriders have a much higher risk of miscarriage due to the whole Between thing and theoretically less pressure to have more children given the whole 'a fucking dragonrider flying Fall' thing. So, we'll halve that number down to three children each for 116 women.

Assuming an even spread of births among that, that means we can estimate an average of about 18 women out on maternity per year. So on average, assuming only cis women on greens and only on greens, we can expect 3.6% of a dragonpair population to be out on maternity leave each year, or about 7.1% of greenpairs.

We know thanks to the short story 'The Second Weyr' that women can and have in numbers participated in Fall throughout pregnancy, so the very ass end and for a period after childbirth really are when we're losing them, though we don't know how long after childbirth maternity leave lasts. For the sake of this post we assume all combined totals a year, keep the numbers nice and even. If you would like to expand this to two or three years than adjust the maternity leave percentage accordingly.

According to the Pern boardgame a Weyr requires about 270 riderpairs to properly manage Fall. Assuming 14% of our riderpairs are disabled or passed retirement age, the remaining fighting population would be an estimated 430 individuals. Or 59% again the number needed to manage Fall. Should we remove our maternity leave ladies, then that number falls to 53% again the number needed to manage Fall.

Assuming a spread even matching that of the population as far as rank make-up, using the percentages we typically do on this blog (49:30:15:5:1), and leaving the golds out of the numbers, we're looking at

135 greens

81 blues

40 browns

14 bronzes

-necessary to fly Fall.

Assuming our removal of 14% for age and disability is evenly spread, we get capable numbers of

211 greens

129 blues

65 browns

22 bronzes

We already decided on this blog that we're having dragon-feeding numbers of an average of one cow a week (to account for rankers eating several cows and chromatics, especially small ones, eating many smaller-than-cow livestock) so we're going to use that for our 'how much space/care do you need to feed a derg' number.

We're also going with an estimated riderpair population of 500, based on the numbers we can work out from the Atlas of Pern, and we determined a minimum Weyr population of 4756 here, which we'll round up to 4800.

So, we need a minimum just to feed the Weyr of enough space to provide the equivalent of 26k cattle and food for 4800 a year.

We're going to work out cattle space required using this calculator, figuring a fair pasture quality and low-to-middling rainfall , to account for the range of pasture options across a territory. Since a lot of what the dragons will be eating is non-cattle that produce larger numbers of offspring (such as goats, sheep, pigs, and presumably wherries produce larger numbers) we'll be nice and assume we need the space that 3/4 of the above number would take up (since providing that in just cattle would likely require nearly double the number to start with, and the other options have numbers ranging from twice to eight times as high for the fuckers we know this info for). So we're looking at finding the amount of pasture needed for 19,500 cattle, assuming a forage yield of 550 and a utilization rate of 35%. Since these are the numbers offered, we'll assume keeping that number is our monthly goal and see if we can get the cow-calf pair and yearling numbers to have an average of about that. Again, to account for higher offspring number opportunities.

So, we're looking at, I'm gonna say about 80k acres of pasture to keep the critters to feed the dragons for the year.

Now, in medieval times it apparently took about 12-16 acres to for a peasant to feed his family, average number of children for landed peasantry seems to have been, we'll call it 2.5, add a pair of grandparents to account for, ya know, the family structure of the time... Average out our acreage to 14, divide by 6.5, get 2.15 acres of land per person. So we're looking at 10,320 acres to support to humans of the Weyr.

But, we also have to support the people supporting the Weyr.

Numbers to work with-

I'm seeing 78% of adult men involved in farming in medieval Europe, so we'll go with that

Also seeing about 25 acres being farmed per farmer in the period? At least the early end, which it's Pern these fuckers don't have their shit together

And we'll bump that up to 30 to account for livestock space, since I don't think those numbers were accounting for that

With that number we can assume one farmer can feed 13.9 people. We'll round that down to 13, leave the rest to account for trade and such

Supposedly 300 head of cattle is doable per person so far as management, so we'll use that for our livestock numbers just in general

So, just to raise the livestock going to the dragons we're looking at about 87 people. We're also looking at 344 people to support the humans of the Weyr. So, total of 431 people needed to support just the Weyr.

We would need another 15 people to support them, and it just sort of carries on like that. So instead we look at full populations and what they need in total.

We're gonna roll with the numbers we have in the linked post, just for the sake of ease, and say that abled, working-age adults make up about 56.5% of the population. Half of those would be women, so our working-age men account for 28.25%, and with 78% of them being farmers, that's about 22% of the population feeding the other 78%.

(Note, these are just 'official' numbers, women and children were also helping out, but bear with me I've only got so much to work with and, it is Pern.)

So, we're gonna leave the Weyr and the people feeding them out of these numbers and just try to figure how many folks we would be talking, at minimum, to support themselves, the rest of the pop, and the fuckers feeding the Weyr. So, using ((((X*3.54)+X)+431)*2.15) as our equation to figure out how many acres we would need given any singular number of farmers, where the given number of farmers is denoted as X, alongside a simple (X*30) to denote how many acres these farmers would be able to work...

We get 46 'civilian' farmers working 1376 acres to support a population of 640, and the Weyr by extension.

Of course that's a pure minimum, which pretty much exactly fits our 'one farmer can feed 13.9 people' estimate from before. If we adjust our numbers to reach our goal of each 'civilian' farmer feeding 13 people...

We get 51 farmers working 1425 acres to support a population of 663, plus the Weyr.

But that's just looking at food, let's consider it from the perspective of everything a riderpair is gonna need. The best number I can find (that isn't just 'this is how many fuckers worked under them') for how many people were actually directly needed to support a knight places it at about 17, so we'll assume it takes 17 adult civilians to ensure a riderpair in kitted out. We'll just say the lack of metalwork gets rolled into the need to supply firestone.

Assuming 500 riderpairs, that's a total of 8500 people to support them. We'll remove the fuckers feeding the dragons and 39 folks feeding specifically them, because we already account for that in our math, for a total of 8374 people. We've got about 2160 workers in the Weyrs, not including fuckers specifically tending to children, so we can remove that from our total for 6214 civilians needed to support the riderpairs of a Weyr.

But then if we're considering the riderpairs, we need to consider the rest of the Weyr. For the sake of that, we'll add a third again to our number there, running with the assumption that the folks are supporting each other so most of the support from outside is in the form of goods, often communal. We won't remove anything for farmers here, just to keep my numbers erring on the side of caution. So, with this, we're looking at a minimum outside folks needed to support the Weyrs of 8079. If we include all the fuckers feeding people, then we're talking 8205.

To work out this, we're going to add another equation ((((X*1.28)-X))+431). This should give us the abled, working-age male population (again, bear with me) plus the folks directly feeding the Weyr. We're aiming to get that number to 8205 at minimum. Gonna be quite the thing.

At minimum, using these numbers, we instead get a total of 27,765 farmers, working ~272k acres, to support a population of 126,484, plus the Weyr.

The good news is, at that point there are enough civilian farmers that each one is only really feeding about nine people.

Those people would require an estimated 298 acres of space all on their own, just to live and work, but that could likely be mitigated with the whole 'living in caves' thing, you'd lose a good chunk of needed land space to that.

Now, if we remove the 'abled men' part of things (change the '1.28' to a '2.56'), that changes things dramatically.

We instead get a minimum number of 4984 'civilian' farmers, working 49,576 acres, supporting a population of 23,059 (plus the Weyr) who would need an estimated 55 acres of land to live and work on.

Of course the most accurate number is likely between these two, especially with most people's work likely only partially going towards the Weyr. Afterall, there are Weyrfolk to handle their daily things. So, let's get an average there. '1.92' to slip into that equation.

With that change, we get a low-end population of 38,794 being supported by 8450 farmers working 83,408 acres. You would need an estimated 92 acres to house them all.

And I think that's about as into this as I wanna get, I've been 2-odd hours on it already. But, our basic results here-

Minimum Space/Population to Support a Weyr Options

All Non-Farmer Abled Adult Men- Pop: 126,484; Space: ~350k acres

All Non-Farmer Abled Adults- Pop: 23,509; Space: ~140k acres

About Half Non-Farmer Abled Adults- Pop: 38,794; Space: ~173k acres

Like, we've got the basic 'greens Rise a lot and don't tend their nests while golds Rise more rarely and fiercely tend their nests'. That's great, we love us some behavioral morphs in species. But then you also have to consider what would lead to such a thing, namely that both of these behaviors have to be successful, and successful in comparison to each other, in order for one to not completely take over from the other. Meaning that each option has benefits over the other.

For instance, in years or seasons where there's a large predator population, gold clutches are probably the most successful as they're the best guarded. But if you're dealing with horrible weather, or gods forbid a Pass, the fact green clutches are spread out far and wide means it's more likely one or more will survive, while a gold needs just one bad storm or Fall to wipe her whole year's breeding opportunities off the map.

But like, the most obvious one is a pure numbers game. If you don't invest in your eggs post-laying, that frees you up to get back into laying condition sooner and make more eggs. For instance in emus you'll see a female lay 5+ eggs in a single nest, but then she leaves that business to the male and runs off to eat well and find another guy to foist eggs on, ending up with sometimes even five nests in a season. But if you do invest in your eggs post-laying, you get more security in-so-far as assuring your eggs hatch. In emus the males do that, they get the best of both worlds there, but even more effective is to have multiple individuals looking out for the eggs.

Which is where their eusocial-style behavior comes in! By having the rest of the group dedicated to supporting the gold as she guards and tends her nest, the cost of nest tending is spread out, reducing the load on any one member of the group. The same thing happens with youngcare, which seems to be wholly communal, again reducing the cost for any individual member of the group. But eusocial behaviors are most efficient when members of a group are related, you don't want to waste your life raising young that don't share your genes.

Then you remember that firelizards form mental bonds at birth, bonds that they can break with no issue but that they can and do maintain throughout their lives. Taking this and the last paragraph into account, most likely collections of wild firelizards are mostly formed of sibling groups. Even if your bronze brother didn't catch the gold this year, helping with the clutch improves the odds he'll catch next year, and in the meantime you have plenty of opportunity with the greens.

This also probably plays into the fact they hum for all allied births. A green's nest doesn't get tended, but the young still need feeding at hatching. If you're a male then coming when you get the psychic 'birth here now' signals is an easy choice because there's the real chance these are your brother's offspring and his reproductive success is second only to your own. If you're a female, this nest is likely a sister's, in which case same deal, their success is only second to yours. On either side, having more babies around means a higher chance of any individual baby not being eaten by a predator, increasing the survival odds of your own children.

And then all this likely plays into the various male morphs and the color and size differences between ranks. I've mentioned elsewhere- the various male morphs are likely optimized to chase different female morphs. Blues can keep up with the quicker, more agile greens, bronzes with the slower, longer flying golds, and browns are a 'jack-of-all-trades' rank that doesn't specialize but instead can successfully chase either female morph, just with lower odds than the specialized males.

As far as size differences go, it's again all on the females to start. Golds lay larger clutches and defend them from things like wherries, they need to be larger to fit more eggs, to better defend their nests, and to drive off rival golds. Bronzes have to be large to keep up with the golds when they Rise. Greens specialize in laying more clutches and so likely smaller clutches, so they don't need to get as big and can instead focus on evading predators and even being able to lure predators from a freshly laid clutch without getting snatched up, small size is useful there. Blues are also small because it allows them the speed and maneuverability to chase greens. Presumably the reason they're larger than greens are is due for some reason to their being male, likely related to the complex genetics likely tied to rank*. Browns are in the middle because it allows them enough speed and maneuverability to go for greens, but also enough stamina to try for golds.

Color, meanwhile, is likely a camouflage thing. Blues, greens, and browns are all natural colors, perfect for making it harder for predators to notice you. According to the DLG firelizards come in a variety of shades, I wouldn't be surprised if there was even a degree of midtones between the various ranks. Golds and bronzes, meanwhile, I think are more likely a matter of reflective camouflage. A gold on a nest may be hard to look at in bright light, or at a glance appear to just be a patch of wet sand. If a gold has to leave the nest, more likely the sire would be left to guard it, and similar camouflage would fill a similar role. It might even, for some bronzes, give the impression that the larger gold is still on the nest, deterring predators that don't want to tangle with one. Since the smaller ranks are far less likely to be on a nest, more matte tones to mack dirt, wood, sky, foliage would be most effective.