Mating Flights

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MATING CYCLES: IC

Greens reach the age of maturity right around eighteen to twenty-four months, depending on the individual green. Likewise, male dragons reach their maturity around this time, so that frequently a male dragon's first chase is of one of the greens from his own clutch. They rise to mate approximately every four to eight months depending on the individual.

Gold dragons reach their maturity at anywhere from two turns to five turns, and rise to mate once every one to six turns thereafter. Unlike their green siblings, golds' cycles are influenced greatly by how many other golds there are in the Weyr, the time of the Pass or Interval, and the ratio of impressions to deaths in the Weyr. That is to say, gold dragons have the ability to regulate the number of dragons in a given Weyr by adjusting their own fertility cycles.

It should be noted that during the time in which Weyrs searched for candidates of very young ages, dragons of neither gender would rise or chase until the rider, too, was physically mature enough to enjoy the flight process.

Igen Weyr is the second-smallest Weyr, containing approximately 250 dragons during a Pass and around 175 in an Interval. Approximately half of these will be greens, and another one to three percent will be golds, making about 90 to 130 female dragons. Ista Weyr has a slightly smaller population, while the other four Weyrs on the Northern Continent contain significantly more dragons. The number of dragons at Igen Weyr means that a green rises approximately once a day; at Weyrs with larger populations, this number may be doubled. Therefore, mating flights are not in the least unusual.

Furthermore, male dragons are not tied to mating cycles. They can, if they wish, chase a different female every single day. The reputation of greenriders as oversexed is, therefore, just a touch on the hypocritical side, from the viewpoint of the maleriders, who surely are at least as buffeted about by the hormonal winds as are greenriders.

MATING CYCLES: OOC

Greenriders may have flights no more than once per RL month. Goldriders should not have NPC flights more than once per RL year, and PC flights for golds are on a schedule. Gold weyrlings, see your Weyrwoman for details.

Maleriders may chase at any flight, and are encouraged to do so if they are online and able to roleplay at the time a flight is scheduled.

SCHEDULING & ADVERTISING FLIGHTS: Green & Gold

If you want your flight to be well attended, you will need to schedule it at a time when several malerider characters will be able to attend. Keep in mind your own time zone, the time zones of people whom you particularly hope will attend, and the demands of work, school, or other obligations upon yourself and others. You will also need to advertise adequately. Try these methods:

+flights (+help flights)
+bbposts (+help bb)
+levent/help (works only at Igen)
@announce (help announce)
+mail (individual invitations)
flight channel (+help dtu)

You may also choose to ask on your knots or on the flight channel if you log in and find a lot of maleriders (riders of male dragons) online and available. Impromptu flights can be wonderful, as can preplanned flights.

Please, however, avoid scheduling your flight on the same day as someone else if at all possible. If you must do so, try to make it in a different time of day. It's just bad manners to try to show up someone else or take away from their flight's attendance by scheduling yours right before or right after theirs.

ATTENDING FLIGHTS (Blue, Brown, & Bronze)

If you receive a +mail invitation to a flight, it is considered polite to respond, even if only to say that you will be unable to attend. Other methods of flight advertisement are up to you to check. We strongly suggest adding to your @aconnect a check for +bboards, +flights, and +levents. Also, unless there is a spammy flight in progress while you're trying to RP or code something else, it might be good to leave the flight channel on at all times so that you can catch invitations to spontaneous flights.

RP BUILDUP

FEMALERIDERS -- Once you've picked a date and time for your flight (femaleriders), plan to spend about two days beforehand on establishing your IC proddiness. Proddiness is sometimes depicted by various femaleriders as something all-consuming which makes them exceptionally violent, difficult, or sensual past the point of good taste. While there are doubtless individuals for which this is perfectly within their natures, the vast majority of femaleriders need not go to these extremes.

Proddiness simply means an increased, receptive awareness of one's own sexuality; a low-grade arousal, if you will. I can't speak for anyone else, but personally I have never killed anyone, abused anyone, mutilated small animals, or volunteered an orgy to remember to the population of an entire coffeehouse, college dorm, religious congregation, or sports team. Please, use your common sense regarding how you roleplay proddiness. Yes, it is undeniably going to change how your character feels. No, you are not weak-willed enough to let it turn your character into an idiot or maniac.

Try instead to go for more subtle behaviors: aggressive, impatient, or cranky instead of violent; cuddly or flirty instead of wantonly "loose" or depraved. You can be proddy and still keep your morals, especially when your character is older and more experienced at dealing with the feelings of proddiness.

MALERIDERS -- Much of what applies to femaleriders also applies to you. Remember, you will become innured to response to female dragons' and femaleriders' proddiness much more quickly than they will learn to control their own impulses, simply by virtue of the fact that rather than feeling it once every few months, you'll be feeling it once every few days. Though your character may enjoy or dislike this innate response, you are free to either acknowledge it or suppress your reactions. Think of yourself as being a great deal like a 15-year-old boy -- you've got impulses, but for the most part you probably won't want to blatantly announce them, or what you do about them, to the whole world.

FLIGHT DAY

OOC -- Femaleriders will want to make certain the flight goes smoothly for themselves and their participants. Do just a little advance preparation. Start by putting your flight rules (more about that later) on a macro so that you can @pemit them to anyone who participates in your flight, without spamming yourself. Approach a staffer or a fairly good coder if you need assistants with this.

You will probably want to begin your roleplay leading up to the flight for as much time as you can before the pre-flight blooding begins. Half an hour should be about right. The blooding should begin about half an hour before the flight itself. Therefore, you'll want to be out in public about one hour before the flight begins: half an hour for general proddiness, another half hour for blooding.

IC (half an hour) -- The day of your flight, you'll want to slightly intensify your proddiness roleplay. On this day, it's actually appropriate to go SLIGHTLY beyond rationality, since the character will be in the grip of a medium-grade arousal. Again, though it can be less subtle than the previous day or two of proddiness RP, go for the subtle rather than the blatant. Even in Anne's books, when a proddy Oldtimer greenrider got into a duel with F'nor at a Minecraft Outpost, it began with just a slight bit of irritability rather than with full-blown violent aggression. Use your common sense.

Femaleriders, you can use this day, especially in the hour or two preceding the flight, to demonstrate what kind of mood you want to foster in your flight. If you want your flight to be comedic, low-key, intensely dramatic, scary -- you'll want to establish that mood before the flight actually begins. Gear your poses towards the mood you want to establish, and take mental notes of which maleriders respond to that mood.

Maleriders, this is where you get your first chance to impress the rising femalerider. Respond to the mood she tries to set, whether funny, romantic, or whatever she seems to have in mind. It'll earn you brownie points as well as getting your mind into the right feel for the flight. Aim your poses, not just at the femalerider herself, but at other people as well; but construct them to fit the mood that the femalerider establishes. Be flexible. Remember, though you're here to have fun for yourself, you're also here to support the femalerider.

Both maleriders and femaleriders need to be aware that excessive displays of extreme behaviors due to proddiness (femaleriders) or responsiveness to proddiness (maleriders) will mark them as players of a one-upsmanship game. Femaleriders, in large part you'll be responsible for this. You're the cap -- no one should be proddier than you, it's your day! But don't try to outdo a malerider. Instead, they should try to keep their responses slightly below your level of outward display. Maleriders, it's generally considered poor flight etiquette to try to show up the greenrider or goldrider. Treat it like ballroom dancing: the male's objective should be to display the female to best advantage.

BLOODING (2-3 pose rounds, i.e. each dragon gets to pose two to three times)

Blooding usually takes fifteen minutes to one-half hour, so begin it an appropriate length of time before the flight is scheduled to begin. It doesn't really matter whether the rising female or the chasing males go into the feeding grounds first or begin blooding first. Keep in mind that once one dragon goes, the rest will surely follow, not wanting to fall behind the others. Blooding is when dragons kill animals and drink their blood only, not eating the flesh of the animal. Depending on the size of the dragon, and whether it habitually eats one large animal rarely or one small animal more frequently, the dragon will want to blood anywhere from one to three animals.

Blooding can begin with any dragon, but it ends when the rising female drops her last animal and takes to the skies, energized by the quick rush of blood-protein.

RISING (3-8 pose rounds)

Once the rising female has launched from the ground, the chasing males will abandon their own meals and give chase. This usually takes place in the lowest sky room ('up' once), so that those on the ground can see the full flight take place. Higher sky rooms don't emit to the ground, so those who would normally want to watch the flight wouldn't be able to see it if you go higher than the lowest sky room at Igen Weyr. Don't sky-pose until every participating dragon has made it into the sky.

At the same time that the dragons rise, the riders should go into the Guest Weyr (at Igen, this is exit 'GW' from the Main Entrance Field). Don't weyr-pose until every participating rider is here. Please remember that although it is ICly a private location, OOCly the Guest Weyr is a publicly owned room, and therefore the roleplay there should keep to the PG-13 rating of PernMUSH. If other types of RP are wanted, take those to an individual's weyr, and make sure all the PLAYERS participating are at least 18 years of age.

While all this movement is taking place, take a few OOC minutes. During this time, the rising female will either emit her flight rules on the flight channel, multipage them to all participants, or set them as a visual attribute on herself so that those participating can examine and read them at their leisure. Maleriders should read the rules thoroughly, ask questions by multipage or on the flight channel if they're unclear, and then follow those rules for the duration of the flight. The femalerider will probably not hate you if you forget once, but a continuous disregard for her rules and boundaries may inspire her to ban you from her future flights.

FLIGHT RULES

These are up to the rising female's rider to decide and to communicate with her chasers. A few of the more common ones follow, but this is not an exhaustive list.

POSE LENGTH -- Depending on the number of chasers, her own reading and typing speed, and the length of time she wants the flight to last, the femalerider may allow poses of up to 15 or so lines long, or as short as 5 lines.

POSE ORDER -- Either a strict pose order of Femalerider, Malerider1, Malerider2, Malerider3; Female, Male1, Male2, Male3... or a more general order, like Female, Male Male Male Male. Typically, male dragons should expect to pose ONCE per pose of the female, and maleriders should pose ONCE per pose of the femalerider. Typically, a strict pose order can be disregarded if one of the maleriders' players is lagging or disconnects; however, it's good manners to multipage or say on the flight channel that R'der and Dragonth have been idle for a long time so you're going ahead. That way, people know that you're not just forgetting about that person or trying to step over them. Femaleriders may elect to move ahead as well, if a malerider seems to be idle for a long period of time.

NO POWERPOSING -- This rule is ALWAYS in effect, even if the femalerider doesn't say so. Pose your own dragon. It's all right to say that your dragon is at the rear of the pack of chasers, at the front, somewhere in the middle. But don't say that your dragon is right beside another specific PC dragon unless you have paged that dragon's player and gotten their permission first. Don't pose touching another dragon without obtaining the other player's permission to touch her or his dragon. Don't pose catching the female, or attempting to catch the female, until the femalerider says it's time to do so.

Likewise, don't pose your rider character touching other rider characters without obtaining the player's permission first. Failure to observe the No Powerposing rule is the fastest way to get yourself banned from participating in flights, because it's forcing another player to react to you in ways they might not want to react.

PROJECTIONS -- Dragons can project to one another. Typically, the flight channel is used entirely for OOC communication, but personal projections are usually taken as IC. If the femalerider enjoys dragon projections, she might encourage those. If she feels too spammed to be able to react to those, she may put a moratorium on dragon projections during the flight. If she asks this, honor her wishes.

IC/OOC COMMUNICATION -- As stated before, dragon poses and projections are usually IC; flight channel projections are taken as OOC for the most part; guest weyr poses are IC interactions between the riders. Alternatively, the femalerider can suggest that only dragon poses are IC, and guest weyr poses are for OOC communication. Honor the femalerider's wishes. If she's saying that the guest weyr should be OOC only, it's probably because she's not confident that she can keep up with RP in the guest weyr as well as the sky, and is trying to cut down on the spam that she has to keep up with.

DETERMINING A WINNER -- There are several ways of determining which male will catch the rising female. Some femaleriders like to decide beforehand who'll catch (called a predetermined flight), or are obligated to decide beforehand (senior goldriders' flights are always predetermined). Some prefer to decide by other factors: quality of roleplay, style of roleplay, casting lots or rolling dice, asking the other chasers to vote, whoever makes her snort Coca-Cola out her nose first... The possibilities are endless. Whatever the criteria, the femalerider should be clear at the beginning of the flight about what they are. Don't keep anyone in the dark about how the winner will be decided, and don't tell half-truths or untruths about your decision-making process. If a lot of your chasers feel that they were offered a chance to win, then later feel that the flight was predetermined, you may find yourself with very few chasers next time.

TS EXPECTATIONS -- For players over 18 years only, TS is sometimes an option. Let your chasers know, along with all your other flight rules, whether TS (tiny-sex, cyber sex, roleplayed sex on camera) is expected, optional, or not within the realm of possibility at all. If you expect TS afterward, and your winner wants to avoid it, neither of you will be happy with the outcome. Likewise, if you want to avoid it, but your winner was hoping for it, neither of you will be happy with the outcome. Be clear about whether TS is wanted, unwanted, or optional.

CATCH-ATTEMPT POSES (1 pose round)

The femalerider will typically announce these at least one pose in advance, such as, "Okay, one more pose from me, one more from each of you, another from me, THEN each of you will do a catch-attempt." That means that everybody gets one more normal pose, geared towards wrap-up; then the female gets to make another pose; then all the chasers get to pose TRYING to catch her.

TRYING -- Do not pose succeeding, maleriders. That choice is not yours to make. It is the rising female's choice to make. This hearkens back to the No Powerposing rule above. Pose an attempt, a try, a reach, a yearning... but do not pose actually touching the female, or any of the other males either. Usually, what you pose here is what will clinch the win, because this is where the femalerider will wait for all the poses to appear, read them all thoroughly at least once, and then pick the one that impresses her most.

Once she has decided, the femalerider will typically take a moment to either page up the person she's chosen, or announce the name of the winning male on the flight channel or by multipage. Those who don't get notified of a win will pose getting tired, getting knocked out of the way, getting tricked into chasing in the wrong direction, or losing for some other reason. The one who does win usually gets the honor of posing the catch, though sometimes a femalerider will want to make the catch-pose herself -- often as a way of notifying the winner of his win, for the surprise of it.

AFTERMATH: Non-Catchers

Maleriders should be gracious to one another and to the femalerider, whether they catch or don't catch. Remember, a flight is a Lady's Choice dance, and sometimes the most fun roleplay comes not from catching, but from failing to catch the female. 'Losing' is an opportunity to get drunk, go for a cold swim, get in a fist fight, oil your own dragon, or find a willing partner for consolation. Keep in mind that if you're going to find a partner to help you get over the loss, it must be a willing partner. Igen Weyr does not permit sexual coercion roleplay, whether of PCs or of NPCs. Furthermore, if we find that an Igen rider has coerced a PC or NPC somewhere besides at Igen Weyr, you will come back to Igen and find your weyr reassigned to someone else, your belongings out in the bowl, and your Igen knot removed. We are very, very serious about this.

AFTERMATH: Catcher and Femalerider

You've read the Pern books by now, so you should know that after a flight, the femalerider and the rider of the winning male will in all probability be having sexual relations of some kind, usually with one another. There are certain (somewhat rare) cases in which this will not take place:

The two riders involved are related to one another;
One or both riders are injured or pregnant;
One or both riders are physically exhausted, from before the flight;
Both riders can find surrogates to be with in the few moments between the flight catch and the time that the sexual urge becomes do-or-die;
The riders have taken care to lock themselves apart from one another before the flight.

Other than these instances, the femalerider and the catching malerider will be having some variety of sex. However, it is very important to remember that this is not always, not even usually, done on camera. TS (tinysex, cybersex, roleplayed-out sex, typed-out sex) IS NEVER REQUIRED OF ANYONE. Though the riders do have sex in character, this can be done off camera by the simple expedient of fade-to-black, such as: "And as the dragons couple high overhead, the riders remain secluded in the guest weyr." That's all that really has to be said or done.

TS should NEVER, EVER be done when either of the players is younger than 18 years of age in real life.

TS should NEVER, EVER be done in the guest weyr itself. The guest weyr is a private room in character, but out of character is owned by the Weyr builder character, and therefore qualifies as a public room. If TS is desired by both players, AND if both players are 18 years of age or older, that roleplay needs to be done within the confines of a privately owned weyr.

If either rider does not want to participate in TS, or is under the age of 18, that's it: NO TS. If you have made it clear that you are underage, or not comfortable roleplaying the sexual act, that should be the end of it. If the other rider (or anyone else on the game) tries to force, coerce, or guilt you into TS, LOG THE INCIDENT and send the log to the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman of your own Weyr as well as the other rider's Weyr (if they're from somewhere else). Then log out, leave the room, pagelock the other person -- whatever it takes to get out of the situation.

Please don't worry or feel guilty about logging such an incident and getting the other person in trouble. Think about this: If you have a hard time with that person at your age, imagine what a twelve or thirteen year old player would feel. We have players that young on PernMUSH, and they don't always realize that they can say no to people like this. If you don't log the incident and get that person in trouble today, tomorrow they could be forcing cybersex on a child. Protect our MUSHing children by protecting yourself.