Weyr Entrance

It's bright, bitingly cold, and you can see your breath crystallizing in the air. On either side of your transport, mountains rise past you, their peaks trimmed with brilliantly white snow. The air is impossibly fresh, scented with glacial ice, coniferous trees, and wood-burning fires. Little plumes of smoke rise from your destination - there it is, tucked snugly in a heavily-forested valley, the nearby mountainsides dotted with cavern entrances and the ground populated by cabin-style buildings. It looks a bit like a ski resort - you can, if you squint, see people enjoying the snowy slopes - but there's a clear difference. First, you're on a dragon. Second, your dragon is far from the only one around.

A clear bugle resonates from below and the watch, a dark green dragon the colour of pine needles, nods in your direction. The landing is smooth, and you can feel the warmth of the day on your face now that you're at ground level. All around you, dragons and people bustle. Open-front shops line the ground level of the buildings, and on the walkways between them, ornamental metal firepits offer a place to warm your hands. A new smell joins the fresh mountain air: baked goods, fresh from the oven, beckoning you into the merchants' rows. You find yourself thinking this looks like a nice place to stay, even for just a little while.

This is Meridian: a fledgling mountain Weyr, a welcoming refuge on Pern - and, somehow, a place that feels like it's existed for decades.

Time flows differently around Meridian Weyr. Its residents age as normal, and the seasons change as you'd expect, but there are oddities. Candidates can leave Meridian and return home with a fully-grown adult dragon mere days after their departure; others Impress, stay until their dragon is able to travel, then return to their home Weyrs to find almost no time has passed. Perhaps the best phrase to define this Weyr is "outside the timeline" - not immune to the passage of time, but not quite connected to the world around it, either.

Being as it is, the Weyr is difficult to navigate to for untrained riders and dragons. Ambassadors from Meridian accompany guests whenever possible, including Searchriders from other Weyrs and visitors from all over the Nexus. Strangely, when travelling with a rider of Meridian, the journey always seems to turn out perfectly normal. Whether by strange magic or dimensional bubble, the Weyr is what it is - and if its riders know its secret, they aren't telling.