Islands of Pern

Watchrider H'ahn

Name: H'ahn
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Rank/Craft: Green Rider / Watchrider
Residence: Ithaca Hold

Description: Always the smallest child of his age at the hold where he grew up, H'ahn struggled to reach the not-so-lofty height of five feet, five inches, and after two turns of regular checks against the mark he had scratched on a door in the beasthold with no difference in his height, he finally resigned himself to being one of the shortest adult males in the hold. Even now, in his 37th Turn, he is often mistaken for a younger man.

A crippling threadscore in his first Turns as a dragon rider led to a life minus his lower right arm and a daily routine without the physical or mental strain of a fully functioning dragon rider. A long thread scar, thin where it starts at the tip of his shoulder, gradually widens into a ridged and knotted mess over the stump of his right arm just below his elbow.

His nose is pointy and slightly crooked; the result of a long forgotten childhood battle. The laugh lines which crinkle the corners of his sea-blue eyes are the only visible lines on his face. On the whole he has a pleasant face, fair and slim and framed by an unruly mass of shoulder length, brown, wavy hair, the unruliness kept in check with a braid and a black leather tie.

Personality: A cheeky, dimpled smile and a mischievous glint in his eyes forewarned H'ahn's parents to the exuberant, adventurous lad he was to become. Discipline and numerous jobs did little to dampen his sense of fun or his capacity to find trouble, though he would always insist that trouble found him first.

It was his sense of adventure, coupled with a youthful tendency to think of himself as invulnerable to harm which led him to newer and greater heights of recklessness. A trend that did not stop until a near fatal threadscore took him to the brink of desperation and depression.

There is still a little of the exuberant youngster residing inside the man, but it has been tempered by reality and dulled by personal loss.

Once the life of every gather H'ahn is now a private man and his dragon, Elseyth, the only confidante to his innermost thoughts and feelings.

Background: Born one month premature, the last child of beastholder parents, H'ahn, then named Halarahn, showed his fighting spirit right from the moment he drew his first breath. He struggled through his first month of life in a fur-lined drawer taken from a chest of drawers, kept warm by a soft woollen blanket and by smooth rocks his parents heated by the hearth and placed under the drawer.

By the time he reached his first birthingday he was still scrawny and somewhat undersized, yet sturdy enough to be extremely mobile and active, crawling by his eighth month and walking by his tenth. Walking soon led to climbing and the frequent complaint from his mother that she would need to hang everything from the ceiling as that was the only place he could not reach.

During the summer of his third turn he joined forces with another adventurer, a lad called Fylomin. Together they became the terrible twosome, inseparable; high adventure was always the game of the day.

As they grew older their imagination held no bounds. One day their hardy, shaggy-hoofed runners might be dragons and they their riders, flying to save some poor unfortunate from the ravage of thread. The next day they would be galloping to save a fair lady holder from the clutches of a cruel usurper, or race-runner riders racing for the pride and honour of their hold - all of this when they were supposed to be rounding up herdbeasts or checking for thread burrows.

Their happy, carefree friendship had to be put aside when dragons landed at their hold during the last days of summer in Halarahn's fourteenth turn. They left taking Fylomin with them. Halarahn was stunned. How could the dragons choose only one of them? He immediately resolved to run away to the Weyr - a 15-20 day trek on foot depending on the weather.

On his first attempt he made it only as far as the beasthold before he was brought back. Each subsequent bid for freedom took him a little further from the hold until on his final attempt, it took his father almost six days to find him, and his parents were forced to conclude that continued punishment had done nothing to dampen Halarahn's determination.

A deal was struck between father and son, if Halarahn stayed at the hold, worked hard and paid attention in his lessons with the harper then they would have no objection to him leaving if the dragons ever returned on search.

That moment came almost five turns later. F'ylo, now a fully fledged dragon rider returned on his blue Luciath and searched Halarahn for a clutch on the sand at Fort Weyr. For the rest of his days Luciath never searched another single candidate.

Instead of the joyful recommencement of reckless adventuring and whirlwind fun, Halarahn was dismayed to find much of F'ylo's time was now taken up with dragon rider duties. But being a naturally friendly and approachable young lad Halarahn quickly made friends with the other people in his candidate group to fill the time, including a journeywoman harper who frequently gave in to his pestering and entertained him with stories of her life as a harper.

But when the hatching came both Halarahn and his harper friend were left standing, both bitterly disappointed and unsure of what they should do next. As is customary in a Weyr the failed candidates were invited to stay. After a couple of hours and several mugs of ale later, and with much cajoling on F'ylo's part (who had been just as disappointed to see Halarahn left standing), both Halarahn and the harper decided to stay; another Gold was egg heavy and they would not have a long wait before they could try again.

Halarahn celebrated his nineteenth birthingday a sevenday before the eggs were due to hatch, and in grand style. He fell foul of the weyrlingmaster and won the favours of several pretty girls from the lower cavern. By the time the clutch hatched he had a host of female supporters cheering him from the stands, all of whom experienced the greatest surprise when he was chosen by a large and very insistent green hatchling.

Not that H'ahn cared a wit about the colour of his dragon. As he walked from the sand with Elseyth at his side he was so happy he felt he could have leaped high enough to touch the moons - one of his childhood dreams had come true, he was now a dragon rider of Pern. His joy increased twofold when his harper friend impressed the gold.

Elseyth's first mating flight was an event H'ahn approached with much trepidation. He was a lad, he bedded women, any other coupling was beyond his comprehension. F'ylo did his best to reassure him, explaining that it would all come naturally once Elseyth took to the skies.

When she did eventually rise, totally overwhelmed by the experience, H'ahn did not realise who the flight winner had been until he came back to his senses in F'ylo's caring embrace, and so their friendship shifted to another level. No other dragon flew Elseyth until after F'ylo's untimely demise nearly sixteen turns later.

Devastated by the loss of his lifelong friend, weyrmate and lover, H'ahn was forced to face reality the next time Elseyth rose to mate. The flight was won by a young blue, his rider a strapping man barely out of weyrlinghood, eager and inexperienced. Aching, shaken and utterly gutted, the very next day Hahn made the decision to seek a transfer away from the Weyr. He accepted the position of watchrider at Ithaca Hold not long afterwards.

Dragon's Name: Elseyth
Color: Green
Age: 17
Age of Rider at Impression: 17

Description: Elseyth is a large green with barely a mark on her bright grass-green hide. She is well proportioned but not as well muscled as other active dragons of her age.

Personality: Keen and alert, Elseyth has a buoyant personality and a well developed sense of humour. Her sharp eyes miss little of what goes on around her, making her a highly effective watch dragon.

Last Updated: 1/11/2006