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All references to worlds and characters based on Anne McCaffrey's fiction are copyright© Anne McCaffrey 1967, 2000, all rights reserved, and used by permission of the author. The Dragonriders of Pern® is registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, by Anne McCaffrey. Use or reproduction without a license is strictly prohibited. The following is information recorded for the interest of members of Star Stones MOO (starstones.net: 9999). Any violation of copyright by me is entirely unintended; please contact me about it.
Family
Dallaney's family are permanent fixtures of the background climate, present but invisible NPCs. They are interesting enough as characters, though, and I've had a good time exploring D'aad's psyche.
D'aad
Dark-skinned, small, this brownrider combines wry elegance with a lank-limbed stride.
Unusually long legs and arms give him the look of a primate, and umber hair, well groomed,
has plastered itself limp on his pate, brushing past his forehead. His gait varies from
slink to seacrafter's roll, and often with his hallmark grin as well.
His leathers are basic, worn with an easy flamboyance shrugged into the tawny tans.
D'aad is 32 Turns, 6 Months, and 24 Days old.
Linna
Frazzled auburn fritters, long, to her shoulders, rounding a face at once small and
angular. Hands are calloused, crinkled, fingers: brittle, outward signs of their owner's
difficult background to her thirty or so turns. Eyes are walnut, underlain by mahogany
complexity, marked by their habitual shifting-- once dark, then light on overlarge irises.
The same brittle prettiness informs the rest of her petite, reed-thin self and dyes her
tanned complexion into faded mundanity.
Her dress is worn but neatly patched in places, the mauve apron wrapped around her waist
cheers the picture up by slight degrees, and the delicate leather shoes underscore her
concession to weyr-hood.
Linna is 30 Turns, 3 Months, and 5 Days old.
D'aad and Linna's Story
Theoretically, he's always been there, Dallaney's father. He's the Duneraider Wingrider who's switched Wingleaders and Wingseconds without a care, the perpetual cowardly underdog who found his daughter irritating from the first day on.
Who Dallan is, is inextricably linked to who her parents are. Her mother
is Linna, a once-promiscuous holder girl from Igen Hold. Dallaney's never been close to
her, and now that Linna's found a permanent paramour in her bluerider, the gap has
widened. Linna's too much of a 'softie', a dimglow, for Dallan -- she insists that the
teenager wear girl's clothing -- that is, things totally unsuited to the weyr's
rough-and-tumble. But D'aad insisted on bringing Dallan to see her mother, in hopes that
she would change her mind and leave him.
Nevertheless, a prickly kind of affection does exist between Dallan and her D'aad. It's
non-existent, according to the two of them. Dallan and Linna, however, cannot communicate;
never could. Dallan's ironically like her in that sense -- the stubborn streak, the desire
to control and dominate, even if Linna controls in feminine, motherly wiles -- Dallan in
the spiritual. They clash, and loudly. But Linna can be pitied too, as Dallan will find if
she looks hard enough. She was a young mother at Dallan's conception: confused, uncertain
of what she wanted. Now her daughter's evolved into something beyond her understanding,
and she's found her watchrider to satisfy her cravings for contentment, security, and the
warm hearth and hold she's always wanted. Who can blame her for not wanting
reconciliation, or for not being able to accept the rebel daughter who's suddenly been
forced into her hands by the irrepressible D'aad?
She's never been able to resist D'aad's demands, has Linna. His is the primeval, primitive
kind of psyche; alike hers and yet unlike, for hers has been tampered with by society and
its rules, while his has gone untamed, unfettered, in the darkness of the Weyr. Thus the
attempt to make peace with Dallaney, which failed of course, partly because of her own
half-heartedness. Dallan blamed her for it, but blamed herself as well.
Then came the expected -- or was it? -- Impression, leaving a proud Dad, a gaping D'ney
and a bumbling Nhaeth in Igen Weyr. The additional duties of weyrlinghood, then
wingriderhood claimed D'ney, and she hasn't seen her birth mother since.
D'aad's Logs
Greenflight (March 25, 2000)
Goldflight (April 2, 2000)
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