All The Weyrs List: About Us

For easy navigation, this page has been divided up into several parts. You can browse the whole page or go to whichever section interests you.

• What we are
• What we are not
• Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• A brief and at times irreverent history

What the All the Weyrs List is

The All the Weyrs List is, first and foremost, a collection of dragon names used on the various Pern MUDs which have been around since 1990 or so. The original purpose was to keep names from being re-used. Keeping track of what every other game was doing in the heyday (when there may have been 30 or more games open at the same time) would have been almost impossible without some central registry, as it were. Since its inception in 1991 or 1992, the list has served that purpose.

The ATWL serves several secondary purposes as well. It generally has up-to-date site information and URLs for games which are open. It can be used by games to supplement their records. History buffs can find anything from the newest generation of dragons from a certain lineage, to trends in hatchings beginning from some of the very first. Its primary goal, however, is to help keep the names as unique as possible. There is no rule against re-using dragon names, but it seems as if an overwhelming majority of riders like the idea of their dragon being the only one with its name.

The list is split up into several sections. At the bottom of all of the pages are links to the major sections of other pages. There is also a link to the All the Plants of Pern page -- if you need to get back after going there, please use the "back" or "return" function on your browser. Though we consider the all the plants list to be an invaluable asset, we are not affiliated with its maintainer. Here is a quick breakdown of the various pages within atwl.org; the nickname will be used throughout this page rather than including a link each time.

• The index page (http://www.atwl.org) gives announcements and the requested format for submissions.

• The about page (http://www.atwl.org/about.html) is the one you're reading at the moment.

• The codes page (http://www.atwl.org/codes.html) lists clutch codes as well as the shorthand used to denote things like game-to-game transfers.

• The game list or full game page (http://www.atwl.org/full.html) includes all games which have been on the ATWL (except for those removed when the games' founder threatened lawsuits if the games weren't deleted).

• The names page (http://www.atwl.org/names.html) is a simple alphabetical list of all of the names, and the single most important page overall. It includes information on where the name originated. Although there is a seperate page for names used in books, the book names also appear on the names page.

• The book names page (http://www.atwl.org/books.html) is a listing of names used by Ms. McCaffrey (and at some point most likely Todd McCaffrey) in the books. Characters who appear in multiple books are only listed in the book of their first appearance.

• The credits page (http://www.atwl.org/kudos.html) is a work-in-progress page with thanks from the various maintainers. Our part of it is still completely offline for now, but it will eventually exist.

• The last page is actually a group thereof, but they're all in the same format. They are the pages for the individual games. There are two sections, the Weyr listing(s) and the hatching records. The former is/are the more malleable of the two; that's where you will find all of the dragons on a game, be they OD, ON, NPC, or transfers from other Weyrs on the same game or other games completely. The latter section is more set in stone. We'll obviously correct mistakes, such as if we've inadvertanly left off someone whose dragon hatched in a specific clutch; if we misspelled a dragon's name; if we got the incorrect pre-impression name; if someone sends in pre-impression names for clutches added before Phoenix instituted that part of the ATWL; or for other similar reasons. For the most part, though, the hatching records section is not touched once the hatching has been committed. Even if a rider (or the whole clutch) transfers off-game, the records for the hatching(s) held on that game remain with the game.

To the table of contents

What the ATWL is not

• The All the Weyrs List is absolutely not affiliated with the domain name atwl.com, nor do we have any idea what they consider their name to be an acronym for. If what you were looking for is very similar to the word "Pern" but with one letter changed, try the .com site.

• The ATWL is not a MUD, fan club organiztion, or a play-by-email (PBeM). It is a resource for the various MUDs, and it can certainly be used by offline fan clubs or PBeM lists. No roleplay, story-telling, or other interactive communication occurs (unless you count the e-mailed acknowledgements we send upon receiving updates) on the ATWL or within its domain name, however.

• The ATWL is not a record-keeping service for the various games. Game admins should consider the ATWL to be a backup, at best. While we hope that we will be able to hand the list over to someone else before we are unable to update it for months, RL doesn't always make that possible. There is a game out there which was using the ATWL for its only records, and as noted in the history, at one point the ATWL was not updated for nearly a year. The former maintainer lost all but a few of the e-mails for that period. The game in question still, after nearly two years, has not filled in all the gaps, and still has several hatchings missing because no one on the game kept their own records. While we hope we hand over the list before anything like this happens, please be aware that is can happen and has happened. To butcher an aphorism: Please do not put all of your eggs in one mound.

• The ATWL is not a place for MUD wars or in-game politics. If Ms. McCaffrey tells us that she has shut down a game for some reason, we will take appropriate measures (as stipulated by Ms. McCaffrey). We are not going to remove a game just because the admins are mean to players or whatever. Please also don't ask us to take sides in on-game disputes, such as if two people consider themselves to be Weyrwoman. Please also don't ask us to retcon impressions, for or against. If you want to play on-game that a dragon created yesterday actually impressed in a hatching held two RL years ago, that's fine with us, and we'll even list the dam and sire in the Weyr listing. Please don't ask us to assign the OD dragon the same clutch code or list it in the hatching records, though. On the opposite note, please don't ask us to remove a dragon who is already listed in the hatching records. We'll mark it as NPC or deceased, but not remove it.

FAQs

The most commonly asked questions come first. A few which aren't asked but perhaps have been implied are at the end.

• 1. How do I join?
  The All the Weyrs List (ATWL) is a resource for Pern-based online interactive games (MUDs). It is not, in and of itself, a game. We also regrettably cannot help with questions about the different types of MUDs, getting connected thereto, client help, or any other mechanical/technical concerns. For those unfamiliar with MUDs but interested in joining, we recommend the very comprehensive MUD Connector introduction, especially the "Information for the Ultra Newbie" section and the "Help Getting Connected" link therein.

• 2. My (first/middle/last) name is/I wrote a story about a character named/I am for some other reason interested in the name <name>, what can you tell me about it?
  Probably not much, unless we happen to have run the hatching in which it appeared. Your best bet is to check out the names listing, which will tell you in which book or on what game the name originated. If it's a book name, then only Ms. McCaffrey knows how it came to be. If it isn't, see if the game it's from is open -- most open games have web pages, and most (if not all) of those pages have e-mail links. The person or people who read(s) the game e-mail may be able to track down whomever named the dragon and put her or him in touch with you. If the game is closed, the name's origins are probably lost in the mists of time.

• 3. Can you recommend a game?
  The admins of the ATWL play on and administer several games, some of them overlapping. In order to be fair to those games which we do not play (mostly due to time contraints rather than any failing of a game in question), we won't recommend games. We also don't because people look for different things in games, and those we happen to be most familiar with are certainly not good matches for everyone. We do recommend that you look at the pages for the open games; many have a short blurb and a link to an official homepage which can give an idea of the game's flavor and setting.

• 4. Why do some games have dragons of colors which don't appear in the books, or which Anne McCaffrey has said can't occur in fan clubs?
  In a few very old games, before Ms. McCaffrey was consulted or before she began regulating fan club rules (these are very old games, so we can't be sure if it was the former or latter case) there were some hatchings/ODs with colors such as black, red, and white. Most of those games closed in the early 1990s. All games since about 1991 have followed fan club rules, which allow only the five cardinal colors and specifically prohibit white dragons.

• 5. Why do some dragons not have "th" endings on their names?
  There are three dragon names (Cyan, Diamondfire and Shaklissko) which don't end in *th (Cyan was brown, but the other two were not of the five cardinal colors). This is another case, as with non-canonical dragon colors, which has been lost in the mists of time. If you notice any other non-th names in the names page, it means we typod; please let us know. In at least one individual game listing, one or more dragons' names were too long to fit in the dragon-name sections; those names appear in full on the names page.

• 6. I have a great idea for a Pern game. How do I get added to the ATWL?
  Since Ms. McCaffrey's fan rules have changed, ATWL will be accepting new submissions. Please send the following information if you wish to be included:
  • Information on the game must be provided before the first clutch submission. This includes: site address (both dynamic and numerical IP) and port number, a URL if applicable, the code type (ie MUSH, MUD, MOO), geographic location of game (ie Northern or Southern Continents, both etc), timeline and if you have AIVAS, and the name of the Weyrs you are opening. You may also provide a small informational section.
  • Please do not using duplicate names for gold dragons (this is relevant because of the way we refer to hatchings).
  • Please send clutch submissions and original dragons you wish listed in the format displayed on this page.
  • For other questions please e-mail us.
    

• 7. Why do you no longer list dragons/riders as inactive?
  We're not sure why or when the activity status came into play, but it was not always there. Unfortunately, it was very hard to keep up with, and there was never any guarantee it was accurate since players often slip in and out of activity. If you're interested in seeing if someone still plays on a game, please log on a Guest there and ask -- even when we did list inactive riders, our information was often out of date since we usually didn't hear about inactive riders who resumed playing.

  We do still list deceased riders, since death is presumably permanent. If we start having issues with retconned deaths we will probably just get rid of that code, as well.

• 8. If you refuse to list inactive/deceased/whatever characters, why should we let you keep our records?
  You shouldn't. As stated in the "what we are (not)" list, the ATWL exists in order to list dragon names so they're not repeated, at least in the "ideal world" sense. Everything else, including game listings; hatching records; keeping track of rider names; recording game-to-game transfers; and anything else we may add in, is done because it piqued our curiousity or that of one of the former maintainers. We should not be the only or even the primary means of keeping track of any game's records, especially since the ATWL's server exists in hurricane territory ;). The only thing we promise is that we will get names in the names page as soon as we can after receiving an entry.

• 9. I know you don't like names being re-used, but this name is so cool and the game is closed/the dragon and rider are deceased/the dragon was black|purple|white so not canonical anyway. Can I re-use the name?
  We'd really rather you not, and encourage you to use your imagination and come up with a similar name -- you may even find a variant you like better. Closed and inactive games have been known to re-open, and there may be a retcon of a death. Even with the non-canonical colors, most of which have not been around for over a decade, the player could possibly come back and transfer the dragon to an open game, shifting to a canonical color in the process. More important than any of the above, though, is the notion that the newly-minted dragon is somehow unique, and having a name which has never been used before is a wonderful way to insure that.

• 10. I really liked what this game named their queen dragon. Should I re-use the name for the queen I'm going to hatch, or should I save it for the next time we need an OD dam?
  Please don't, in either case. You'll notice that our clutch codes include the increment of the queen's clutch, for instance "Footh's 1st" "Barth's 4th", and so on. Keeping track of more than one of any queen name is a headache, especially since it's often not clear if it's a new queen or a cross-MUSH transfer. So far it's happened a few times, and luckily the queens in question were not actively clutching at the same time. If there ever is a case where they are, it will be a logistical nightmare. We try to keep the names list updated in real time from the moment we receive an entry; please at least make sure the potential queen name isn't in use by any other dragon. If you simply cannot live without giving a queen a recycled name, please make sure that it's never been used by a gold who had a PC clutch and is not in use in any of the open games. Actually, make sure it's never been used for a gold in any of the games, since the re-opening event of a closed game might be a hatching by one of their vintage golds.

• 11. Who should send in the updates, and how soon should they be sent?
  Before anything else, please check with the admins on your game. They may already have a designated wizard for clutch submissions, or they may have a policy such as some IC-ranked member of the Weyr doing all submissions for that Weyr. We may, at some point, set up some sort of procmail filter to deal with the spam, and at that point we may limit who can submit. For now, anyone can send in the updates. We ask, though, that you let others know you're doing so. We have gotten clutch submissions from several people who impressed, the hatcher, and one of those left standing, all within minutes of one another. As for how soon, in general the sooner the better, but we've been through enough hatchings that we know sometimes you need a few hours or even a day or two to catch your breath. For those not involved in running the hatching, you might want to wait for two or three days, then if we don't have any announcements up about being out of commission for a while (especially around holidays or Dragon*Con), submit the clutch. Always make sure that no one else has, though -- we've gotten submissions from people days after we added a clutch.

• 12. How long should it take to get the clutch added?
  We try to do so as soon after we get it as possible. There are some things to remeber: e-mail is not as instant as many might believe. It may take us several days to receive the message. Also, please check the announcements on the index page; if we're both out of town or otherwise unable to update, we will almost certainly MOTD it. On the other hand, if you hear that the Raleigh-Durham area of NC has been evacuated, voluntarily or otherwise, due to a hurricane, then the ATWL isn't going to be updated for a while. If we can't get the whole thing added for some reason, we will at least try to update the names page, since our primary concern is insuring that names aren't re-used.

• 13. If you're so interested in the clutch results, why don't you come to my game to get them?
  For several reasons, though for the sake of brevity, we'll just list the first two. First of all, not so very long ago in the ATWL's past, the maintainers were called some pretty nasty names, told that they were never (under threat of lawsuit) allowed to list certain games, and had their RL names posted to Usenet for doing what was asked above. So for the first part of our answer, it is not worth the stress or the accusations that we're being too aggressive.

  In the second place, even though there aren't as many games as there used to be, there are still quite a few. It sometimes feels as if we don't have enough time to give to the responsibilities we have, let alone do rounds of other games to see if they're going to have or have recently had hatchings. One of Two has a full-time job with a long commute; Two of Two is full-time job-hunting and also has a new member of the family to care for. Adding updates to the list is no tribble at all <ahem>, but trying to actively keep track of sixteen games is non-trivial.

• 14. Why are you so picky about the format of the hatching entries?
  If you look at how the game pages are laid out, you might begin to see a pattern. The Weyr listings have dragons in order of size (gold, bronze, brown, blue, green) with the dragon names alphabetized within their color designation. If you look at the hatching records, you will see the same thing. This format was inherited from the former maintainers, and since it works well, there is no reason to change it. Our request for format is not arbitrary; we request it because it's how we order everything in the games.

• 15. I'm a busy person, and my time is valuable. Why can't I just send it in with whatever random order I feel like?
  Actually, you can. Just don't expect us to fall over ourselves thanking you. We will offer profuse thanks to anyone who does help us out by formatting their entries as requested; it not only makes things easier, but helps prevent listing mistakes. When dragons are out of alphabetical order, for instance, we may switch the dragons around in the Weyr listing, but forget to switch the riders, thus ending up with a mismatch. We may also miscolor the critters in the Weyr listing if they're all out of order, or if all of a smaller color is listed before all of a larger color.

• 16. Why should I make your life easier when this is what you're paid to do?
  Our personal beliefs on how you should initially treat any other person, whether they're being paid or not, aside: we are not paid to maintain the list. Not only are we volunteers, but we pay for the privelege since we had to use our own funds for the domain name registration. We actually do this because we like the idea behind the list and we generally enjoy communicating with the people we get to meet along the way. We just ask that people please meet us halfway when it comes to submitting the hatching entries.

A Brief History

Gather round for a story of Perns past, lo these many years ago. Bring along your bags of salt, because some of this will need to be taken with many grains thereof. Like most folklore, some of these things may be true, some exaggerated, and some completely legend. Stuff closer to the present is more likely to be accurate. That being said...

Once upon a time, a person impressed a dragon on a Diku/LP/MOO/MUSE/MUSH/whatever. Firelizards crooned, dragons hummed, the sun shone down beatifically, and everything was right with the world. But trouble was looming on the horizon of this MUDdy paradise, for eventually the rider found out that, on another game, a dragon had hatched and had the same name as our hero(ine)'s lifemate [Ed note: If anyone remembers the original details, especially the dragon/riders' names and the two games involved, please let us know]. Apparently, the rider had heard that dragon names were never repeated, possibly in an interview with Anne McCaffrey or even from Ms McCaffrey herself. Our hero(ine) wanted the other dragon's name to change and made a fuss which is still remembered among the older players, albeit in a very vague sense. Something clearly needed to be done.

Along came the heroic, or perhaps just masochistic, Talea. With great fortitude she set forth, trying to untangle such knots as "Just how many games did I'anth and bronze Cyinth exist on, anyway?" She did so, and put together the first ATWL, some time after the first wave of Perns had shut down and when Pern NC still had people falling over themselves if more than thirty (Wow!) people were on at once. This was long before the days of the World Wide Web, so the ATWL existed as an e-mail [Ed note: If anyone still has a copy of an early ATWL e-mail, please let me know. I printed mine out and deleted it, and I am way too lazy to type the thing back in, even if it isn't nearly as huge as today's list]. For sanity-check sake, this was before the explosion of Pern games, so the mail, while quite large, was nowhere near as unwieldy as it would be today.

Talea eventually moved on, giving the list to Deirdre/Ice for some amount of time. Not much is known of those days, though this can be seen as good -- it's been nearly two years since we took over, and we still get occasional comments with regards to the state the list was in when we inherited it. Bad times are rarely forgotten.

Roanne was the next in line for the title of ATWL maintainer, and she is responsible for many of the things now taken for granted. For instance, she HTMLized the list. She was also the one most affected of all of us by the explosion of Pern games. She added the majority of them, and is probably the maintainer single-most responsible for making the ATWL as well-known as it is. Her legacy on the list is up there with Talea.

After Roanne came Phoenix who, with an apprentice and several minions, continued to keep the list alive and kicking. A minion of Roanne's, she was around for the fiasco wherein a game admin decided to "expose" the ATWL on Usenet, mostly making a raging fool of himself. Because of that, she did some outreach, but mostly set up a system of submissions still used today. Phoneix's pet project was listing pre-impression names for riders who took on honorifics or who changed/shortened their names. She also split up the list further by giving each game its own page. Real life eventually sucked Phoenix up, and her apprentice, Eirane, took over.

Eirane was a good, if relatively background, maintainer. She quietly added hatchings as need be, and was probably the person behind the Guestbook. Despite many RL problems, she did her best to keep the list going. Finally, however, RL stopped pulling punches, and Eirane lost access for nearly a year. When she managed to get back, she was too exhausted to hang on, and turned over the list to the current maintainers.

One and Two of Two, whose names come from the scheme used to identify the alien race Borg on Star Trek, may also occasionally call themselves Six and Seven of Seven. It all depends upon how flippant or whimsical we're feeling. We took over the list in October of 1999. Our first month or so was spent splitting up the games and trying to track them down, as well as trying to convince many admins that after nearly a year something was finally being done. Our thank-you list is huge, and may someday be finished, once we're fairly certain we're not missing anyone.

After the month of gathering raw data, we began slogging through the whole mess. Going by the Guestbook, it looks like we had things mostly up and running again by early December. It would be several more months before we finally plugged in and assigned all of the clutch codes, and it took a while for people to resume sending in clutch results; mostly because they weren't used to the list being updated in real time. There are still some people who forget, but often we will receive updates from those who impressed, which is why we've held off on setting up selective submissions. We also registered atwl.org as a real domain.

After things were more or less settled down, Seven of Seven (Two of Two) became gainfully unemployed, and took the opportunity to overhaul the pages. Among other things, she seperated the active and other games in the game list page; started using spaces rather than tabs (since some browsers choked on them); made them Bobby-compliant; and made a uniform system to denote game-to-game transfers.

Not much has happened in the last couple of years, except Seven of Seven has left the staff due to real life comittments.

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