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The Dragonriders of PernŽ is a trademark, Registered U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, of Anne McCaffrey.

I'm no artist myself, but I do doodle from time to time, and one day, while bored, this face appeared on my paper so I added the hair and tweaked it a bit. There are several things wrong with it, but this is pretty close to how I envision Pyrene as she is now.

    Pyrene was my first character so she's fairly standard, a character that I could easily identify with and get right into playing. I started her two years ago at twelve (which, amazingly enough, just happened to be the lower age limit to apply for Search, not that I really had the time back then) and unconsciously modeled her on myself at that age, bar a couple of largely superficial differences. She's worked out beautifully, getting me through the newbie stage and six months of painfully restricted net access, plus she's been the character on which I've learned just about all I know of MOOing, on both the IC and OOC sides. In return, I love her to death, but she tends to suffer at my hands since I enjoy exercising my sadistic side with her, though usually not with angst, I much prefer humiliation. Along the way, she's picked up all sorts of quirks, most of which I had no intention of giving her when I started, but they're there now, and that's what makes her Pyrene.

   I had about three months to figure Pyrene out before I could create her, which included her (not particularly original) background and of course the name. The original Pyrene was a princess in an obscure Greek myth: she was raped by Heracles, was kicked out by her father, gave birth to a snake and was eaten by a bear, but Heracles did name the Pyrenees after her to make up for it so I suppose that's alright then. Angst in character histories goes way back before M*ing. Anyway, my Pyrene hasn't suffered half as much as her namesake, no matter what she may tell you.

    I was smugly proud of having thought up a distinctive name right up until she became a resident at High Reaches Weyr where there was a certain greenrider by the name of Cyrene. Sigh. Fortunately for me, if Cyrene (who had had her distinctive name years before I had even heard of online gaming) minded a newbie turning up with a name almost identical to hers, she was good enough not to show it and it's since become a standing joke. In fact, numerous Reaches' denizens now have *yrene aliases. Oh, and since she's Pernese not Greek, I say her name 'Pie-reen' instead of some classically accepted pronunciation.

   So now that I've got her pretty much worked out, who is Pyrene? Well, to put it bluntly, she's a stubborn, self-centred woman who doesn't look further than her own opinion all too often, but she means well. Really. She can be nice to people and sometimes it's not even for selfish reasons. After all, she does have friends, some loyal ex-brats left over from her nannying days and she's also been known to be viewed in a romantic (or at least sensual) light. She's a mother now after all, even if she is a disappointment to her sister, Treneere. She's in her early twenties now and a junior weyrwoman, and I'll continue to develop her as she gets older, trade old faults for new, but she'll never be perfect. She gets bored too easily, you see, and a bored Pyrene is a dangerous Pyrene. She's a troublemaker and gossip at heart as certain Weyr residents know all too well, although fortunately she tends to restrict this to dear friends and longstanding enemies and occasionally she's even shown signs of knowing where to draw the line. Is she anything like me? Probably more than I care to admit, although she's definitely smarter than I am... don't ask me how that happened.

    All the details are in her history, but since I've been asked this question several times, I lay the blame for the whole Blue-Dragons-are-the-Enemy Thing squarely at Ethree and Wiranth's feet, bless their cotton socks (and S'phen and Trebinth get the credit for the lesser-known Browns-are-Perfect Thing). To be fair to Eth though, Annalee and Erranth, Thesy and Sardrinth, D'renn and... well, just about all of the Reaches blues haven't exactly helped matters, and there's background history between her grandmother and a bluerider that didn't incline her towards blues anyway. Besides, Pyrene holds grudges, this one's lasted for nine turns and is still going strong. At least, she's grown out of being afraid of blues now, she sees them more as naughty children, albeit dangerously big, naughty children. This colour bias was not something I intended for Pyrene to have, but it's a lot more fun having dragons tormenting her than just whuffling her occasionally. And, let's face it, she enjoys provoking the riders with it.

When I created Pyrene, it was with the intention of only playing during her my holidays, when I had plenty of time and a free internet connection courtesy of my parents. I did want her to ride at some point ideally (preferably gold of course! Typical newbie intentions), but even just from browsing the web to find out about PernM*s, I realised that I'd be lucky if there was a Search Cycle entirely within my vacation. So I created her young enough to get a couple of years worth of chances and took her to a Weyr to be around dragons at least (I chose High Reaches largely because it had just opened and had a PC Search, so when I was browsing the webpage, I found a lot more on it than on Ista). After two weeks, I realised that I was going to be playing her in term-time too. Instant addict. Even so, I was about to head off to Italy for a year and I had no clue what I could expect in the way of access there, so I couldn't apply for High Reaches Search starting in October. Undaunted, I established her as a weyrbrat at High Reaches and spent the summer making the most of things (and sulking at everyone who said they were applying for Search. The least they could do was wait for me!). 

    Italy proved to be severely limiting in the access stakes: nothing at weekends, and not before 2pm MOOtime weekdays. But most of my friends had been Searched, and there's nearly always RP to be found when there are candidates at the weyr. When I came home for Christmas, most of those friends Impressed too, and I found out that a weyr immediately after a hatching is a tired weyr, with little RP about. I should probably have foreseen this, but it came as a huge shock to me that most weyr residents are there for the sake of Search, and if they don't make it, the idling out rate is high. Of the people who I'd played with over the summer, the riders were recovering from Search, the weyrlings were busy with their new dragons and the non-riders were either getting over not making the cut or simply nuked. Pyrene was still my only character at that time, so I was suddenly reduced to scrounging for RP (oh alright, it wasn't that bad). But among the Impressees had been Rade, Py's old head nanny, leaving that position now vacant. Rade had been huge fun as a nanny and had made it fun for me to be a weyrbrat, so after Mirisae had found a new head nanny, I asked her if Pyrene, now 14, could be an assistant, and assistant she stayed for the next six months (two IC turns) until the head nanny got idle reaped, and I took on the role. We had to run to young nannies in those days; we didn't have many options. By this time, I'd also done a stint on SearchCo, putting off applying Pyrene until I had enough access to be able to make the most of it.

    At this point, I reached something of a turning point in how I viewed Pyrene's future. I was pretty well established at the weyr by now, doing SearchCo had been a lot of fun, very eye-opening and had let me feel included, regardless of activity or knot. The fact was, I didn't really feel that I needed a dragon anymore. Or perhaps to be more accurate, I knew that Pyrene would always be able to be part of High Reaches Weyr, even if she never Impressed. Also, I was thoroughly enjoying being a nanny. There were all sorts of RP opportunities there, partly due to some truly fabulous people playing brats (among those joining the ranks that summer were Auri, Siannen and Saendi) and some equally great nannies, specifically Tyara. RPwise, Pyrene could moan at people getting pregnant, whine about her workload and be bitter about the fact that she'd never Impressed. I think it was essentially attention-seeking vanity on my part... there were plenty of riders at the weyr, but precious few nannies. I still wanted her to ride, don't get me wrong, but I also wanted her to stay as she was. 

    Faced with this dilemma, I weighed up potential goals for Pyrene: Stay a nanny; stay a non-rider with perhaps changing career to headwoman or something; Impress blue and freak out Pyrene (this was what everybody else wanted!); Impress gold which was what I really wanted; Impress brown or green. Applying for blue was more or less what everybody expected me to do, and I think it was that more than anything that put me off. It was too much "Oh, she hates blue dragons, so let's impress her to one. Hah hah, chortle chortle." and I wasn't sure where I would go with it once that joke was over. There was nothing in brown- or green-riding that particularly appealed to me (not that I had anything against them either). Impressing gold would be fulfilling all those crazed newbie dreams and giving me a chance to try something that was completely the other end of the spectrum from my current low profile, the drawback was that I wasn't sure if there would be another gold while I was young enough to apply... HRW already had four, and even if there was another, the odds of the SearchCo deciding that Pyrene would be the best person for it were slim. Nannying was huge fun for all the reasons I already knew about, and I knew that if I ever did get tired of it, there were other weyr positions to play with for non-riders. Plus, non-riding at a weyr had the advantage that very few people actually try it long-term and actively, which meant that in an understated way, I'd be rarer for doing that than any of the other options. 

    So, with everything weighed up, Pyrene's future was settled as gold-riding first, nannying second, blueriding third. Which, as far as Search went, was gold-only. I don't know if it's the greatest reasoning, it's certainly no better than anybody else's motivation for doing what they do with their character, but several people have asked me why I wouldn't apply for blue, so this is my way of laying the question to rest once and for all... or at least pointing people to my answer. There isn't anything wrong with blues, they're one of my favourite dragon colours, and usually one of the best played and best to play in my opinion. But in the end, she was my character, I was the one who had to play her and I didn't think I would be able to do all that much long term with Pyrene on blue, or at least not as much as on gold and certainly not as much as a nanny.

    So I went ahead with non-riding at the weyr unless there should be a gold egg laid that I could apply for. Poor Pyrene... all she wanted was to Impress and escape the nurseries, and she'd just about given up hope of doing either by this time, but then, I always did have fun playing her as stressed. I did apply her for the next Search, but as Stand-only, finally getting my chance to play her as a candidate. Sometime after that, I decided that a new head nanny would help keep the nurseries on their toes and swapped knots with Tyara... only to have my new assistant nanny knot exchanged for a candidate one five minutes later when Thesy Searched me. This latest Search, luck went my way as a gold egg had been laid and SearchCo let me give Pyrene the shock of her life in Impressing Cadgwith. So that pretty much sealed her fate, although I like to think that if Cadge had gone elsewhere, I would have stayed active with Pyrene as an assistant nanny. I still maintain that there are more RP opportunities in nannying than in most other weyr positions, riding included. I knew when I applied for gold that I'd be giving up that RP and taking on something that wouldn't provide RP to such an extent, and I still miss nannying. But fortunately Cadgwith is incredibly fun to RP, and I'm having a ball with Pyrene the weyrwoman.

    It was inevitable really that someday I'd get Pyrene pregnant. The question was how to get her into a state of mind where she'd keep it. Thanks to the assistance of many good friends, I succeeded, although it's anybody's guess how motherhood is going to affect her. Still, she was entirely too happy with Cadgwith for company. Now she's thinking of the family life and wondering if perhaps there is something to be said for it after all. Not that she had the best start to it. After two and a half years, I realised that I'd never nearly killed her. She'd had a relatively angst-free experience, aside from the original running-away and feelings sorry for herself before she Impressed. I do feel that every character deserves to stare death at the face at least once in their played lifetime, so when it came to the birth, I consulted Kariel and we pulled out all the stops, ending with Pyrene nearly bleeding to death during an emergency caesarian section.

    What else is there left to do to this poor girl? I'm not sure, although I can tell you that sleeping with D'renn is not an option. It's probably about time I tried being nice to her again. My online times are still dubious, but I'm more settled with RL now and Pyrene has always been very demanding of my attention. My ultimate goal has always been, I suppose, to see if I can continue playing her actively right through old age. Of course, this would mean I'd have to play her for another 15 years RL, and the chances of me being able to do that, is slim, never mind whether or not she'll sustain my interest that long. Still. We'll see what happens.

   So that's Pyrene up to the present date. If that spiel wasn't enough for you, you can read the full details of her IC history under history, funnily enough. The fair of fire lizards that she's gradually acquired have their own page too although admittedly it looks more like a tour of Cornwall, that's only been added to by Cadgwith's arrival. The brats also get a page, for no reason whatsoever. Finally, of course, I have logs of her in action (go here for a near exhaustive list) and links to the webpages of my friends. For non-Pyrene characters and links and for my guestbook, visit my main page. If you want to know anything else, you're scaring me.

The character of Pyrene, her adult portrait and her history are copyright her player, 1998-2001. The quotes are all taken out of context from Pyrene-logs and I cannot be held responsible for the sanity of the original typists.

Last updated March 4th, 2001