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Kadanzer Weyr Membership RulesKadanzer Weyr Membership Rules A writing group such as Kadanzer Weyr needs to have a set of rules in place to ensure that everybody is working together and to prevent the group descending into anarchy! Each Pern group has its own particular interpretation of the world and sets its rules accordingly, so what you see here may seem to be more relaxed than elsewhere in some respects, but more strict in others. These are the rules under which we operate here at Kadanzer Weyr; by joining the club, you agree to follow all of these rules, so please read them carefully! GENERAL RULES: There must be NO commercial use made of any materials pertaining to Ms. McCaffrey's works displayed on this website. Materials may only be accessed for personal, non-commercial purposes. We expect all members in this club to have read the original two trilogies of Anne McCaffrey's Pern books. These are The Dragonriders of Pern (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, The White Dragon) and the Harper Hall Trilogy (Dragonsong,Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums). If you haven't yet, please do so. We accept the events of Pern fiction published before 1991's All the Weyrs of Pern (and part, though not all, of that book) as precedent-setting for the continuity of Kadanzer. This includes the original two trilogies, Moreta, Dragonsdawn,Renegades of Pern, and the short story The Smallest Dragonboy and the novella The Girl Who Heard Dragons. We accept some, but not all, of the information presented in The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern and The Atlas of Pern. Events in later books (such as increasingly spectacular draconic and wher abilities) are not accepted as part of our club's continuity. This is simply to protect us from having to rewrite our club's 'reality' every time a new Pern book is published. All members are expected to familiarise themselves with the group's scenario and history before submitting stories— this is common sense and saves a great deal of heartache, on both sides, at the editing stage. The full Handbook is available from the members' area of this website, as are character sheets and the story archives. While we don't insist that everybody try to read ten years of archive material in their first week, keeping up to date with the fictional events of the Weyr is important — you won't understand half of what goes on in the group if you don't! We recommend the Quick History Synopsis as a quick way to get caught up, though you can only get the full experience by reading (and commenting on) the stories in the archives. Members are expected to be polite to one another, and to follow directions given to them by the club's Board Of Directors (BOD), the club's Persona Approval Team (PAT), and the club's Story Approval Team (SAT). Adult materials. We have a PG-15 rating for our club, and members younger than 15 aren't allowed to join. Any adult material must have a warning, and will be hosted privately, so that only CM and RM members can access it. Adult situations are fine if done appropriately. Nudity in art is acceptable if labeled. Sexual situations are fine if tastefully done. In short, porn or gore for gore's own sake will not be tolerated. If you have questions or concerns, consult the BOD. Plagiarism of stories or artwork is grounds for automatic membership cancellation. All submissions are expected to be a member's own original work. Kadanzer Weyr retains reprint rights to all materials submitted to the club. MEMBERSHIP RULES: 1. There are two types of membership to Kadanzer Weyr: Contributor-Members (CMs), who own and operate characters, and Reader-Members (RMs), who do not own characters but who have access to the website and the message boards, and who are encouraged to participate in the creative life of the Weyr and who are welcome to submit art and fic at their own speed. People who simply want to enjoy the creative content of the group will be able to without having to register as CM or RM members, but "adult" themed material will be restricted for CM & RM members only. --1a). All CMs must support the membership through the submission of one piece of art or one or more written submission (fiction or handbook article a minimum of 500 words in length) per annual quarter. CMs who fail to participate for more than two quarters in a row will have their characters turned into NPCs, and will drop to RM status. They will have to wait one quarter before being able to re-apply for CM status. Additionally, in rare situations, completion of significant web projects (as approved in advance by the BOD) will also serve to satisfy a member's quarterly participation requirement.(See Participation Requirements below.) Submissions need not feature the CM's own character(s) in order to fulfill their quarterly membership requirement. --1b).All RMs must log into the website on a regular basis to prove their ongoing interest in the club. RMs are required to make at least 1 website comment per quarter in order to retain their RM membership, with a 1-month probation period for inactivity. 2. Get permission from a character's owner before using their character in a story or a piece of artwork. Approval is required for the use of all characters not your own, so be sure that your stories or art are approved by that other member before you submit them to Kadanzer Weyr. Please see Submission Guidelines for what does and does not require approval; if you have any questions, please contact the BOD at the address listed above. NPCs will be approved at the SAT level. Any character marked BOD-NPC must be approved by the BOD before submission to the SAT. 3. All members are required to join under their real identities; it's fine for members to participate under pseudonyms, but the BOD needs to know a member's real name. Joining the club under false pretenses is grounds for immediate dismissal. Additionally, sockpuppeting a false membership is also grounds for immediate dismissal from the club. 4. Members who leave the club have two choices for each character they created -- the character can either die (in whatever manner the member wishes), or become an NPC for adoption by a new member or future Threadfodder. We will refuse any request to expunge characters, art or stories from the website, and the Weyr will no longer accept "character transfers away" as a method for dealing with characters of members who are leaving the club. Characters adopted (but not created) by a departing member during their time at Kadanzer always revert to being adoptable NPC's, unless the BOD agrees to their deaths. The departing member gives up all rights to characters made NPC, and even if they rejoin the club later they can only get them back if they are adoptable at that time. We will not rewrite club continuity on behalf of departing members, although we will be as accommodating as possible. See Participation Requirements & Submission Requirements for more WORLD OF PERN RULES: While the old world rules that all fan Weyrs were expected to follow have now been relaxed, Kadanzer Weyr is still keeping many of them in order to maintain our continuity. No argument or exceptions to the following rules will be considered: Dragons come in five colors: gold, bronze, brown, blue and green. There will be no odd-coloured or otherwise "sport" dragons in our timeline -- Ruth was unique and will remain so. Gold dragons Impress only to women, bronze dragons only to men. Greens, blues and browns may Impress to either gender, although female blueriders are uncommon and female brownriders are rare. There are no restrictions regarding the sexual orientation of any dragonrider, although characters often make assumptions about certain color/gender combinations. Gold flights will be won only by bronze dragons — there are cultural taboos in place that generally stop brownriders from participating, but even those who do try will be facing inevitable disappointment. Flightleaders and Wingleaders are always bronzeriders; Wingseconds may ride either bronze or brown. There will be no green or blue Wingseconds in the fighting Wings. This is due to the naturally hardwired hierarchy of the dragons -- a bluerider, no matter how talented, will not hold a leadership position if their dragon cannot effectively command their wingmates in battle. If you want your character to hold a fighting rank, have them ride one of the larger colors. While there are no longer any specific restrictions in place regarding descent from canon characters, please bear in mind that our Pern is set some 16 generations after the events of the Ninth Pass and, given the Pernese tendency towards large families, those genes have been spread pretty thinly over the Turns. After 400 Turns, everybody on the planet would be able to claim some form of canon descent if they felt inclined to do the research, so claiming a relationship to some canonical notable will only serve to give the PAT a good laugh. (Note: we do have a handful of characters who are refugees from the Ninth Pass Southern Weyr, but they are limited in number and the majority have defined backgrounds already) Benden Weyr, Ruatha Hold, and the Fort Harper Hall are no longer restricted sites and characters may claim those places as origins. However, as we do try to keep our stories set within Kadanzer Weyr territory, and there is nothing special about Benden Weyr or Ruatha Hold in the Tenth Pass, so we would ask that people not get too excited about being able to use them! Also, please note that in our timeline the Benden dragon bloodline of the books is effectively extinct, having paid the price of a chronically inbred immune system early in the Ninth Interval. Dragons from Benden Weyr are exactly the same as those from elsewhere in our Tenth Pass. There is neither religion nor magic on Pern. Local superstitions and folk tales may exist, but nothing more than that. All riders can "hear" their own dragons, and a very few rare individuals can hear all dragons, but ESP, telekinesis, teleportation without a dragon, heightened empathy, empathic healing, and other forms of psionic or magical ability are not allowed. The advances made by women in the Ninth Pass have been largely swept away by time and circumstance and by our point in the timeline the situation in the Holds is analogous to that seen in Dragonflight. Arranged marriages are the norm, with any hold-bred woman left unmarried past the age of 18 regarded with suspicion, and even if a Lord's daughter is the last of her bloodline it will be her husband who runs her Hold while she takes on the traditional role of wife and mother. The Crafts are much the same, with female apprentices being accepted in only some of the Halls and female journeymen being considered rare and female masters even more so. Only within the Weyrs do women really experience equality with men. Watchwhers are not companion animals -- they are large and semi-sentient carnivores bred by the Minecraft for work in the pits and often used as Hold guardbeasts. Wild whers are a separate species found on the Southern Continent and are highly dangerous creatures that cannot be trained to coexist with humans or livestock. Participation Requirements FOR CONTRIBUTOR-MEMBERS: CMs are required to support their membership with 1 submission per quarter (1 piece of finished-level art, or 1 story or handbook article of 500 words or more). Additionally, in rare situations, completion of significant web projects (as approved in advance by the BOD) will also serve to satisfy a member's quarterly participation requirement. Participation in a fiction collaboration is welcome in support of a CM's quarterly participation requirement, but the member's contribution to the collaboration must equal at least 500 words in length to qualify. Contributors who have not made a submission by the end of a quarter's second month will receive a reminder and 1-month heads-up. If a CM fails to support their character(s) for a quarter, they will be given a warning and put on probation (probation period of one quarter). Making a normal submission during the probationary quarter is all that is required (Contributors don't have to also "make up" the submission for the quarter they missed). But, if a CM fails to meet the participation requirements for the probationary quarter as well, they will lose their membership, and their character will become an NPC. (Please also see the Communication Requirements, outlined below.) Most new members will join a quarter that is in-progress. New CMs must participate (meaning, submit art or writing) by the end of the first FULL quarter after they join. This acknowledges that the new CM may not have time to participate during the partial quarter in which they joined. If you are a new member and you ever have a question about your membership status, please contact the BOD for clarification (at kazbod@kadanzer.org). Contributor Members who are removed due to inactivity may be refused future membership to Kadanzer Weyr on a case-by-case basis. CMs who lose their membership are always welcome to become Reader Members, or to rejoin immediately as Reader Members (if there has been a gap in communications). But, CMs who are removed due to inactivity are required to wait for the next full quarter before submitting any request to adopt a character. (As always, becoming a RM will ensure first crack at available NPCs when the time comes.) Kadanzer works on a three-strikes system, and after defaulting on a third attempt at character ownership, a former member may be refused future adoptions. NOTE: The BOD doesn't want to suspend memberships for lack of activity, and will do what it can to meet the needs of each member, but some consistent communication between an inactive member and the BOD is required. If a member requests it, a Leave of Absence from the group can be obtained from the BOD, waiving one quarter's participation requirements. A longer LoA may be arranged in special circumstances. But it is the responsibility of the member to contact the BOD to request a LoA. CHARACTER OWNERSHIP FOR CMS: Contributing Members have a character ownership cap of 5 characters total. (Deceased characters do not count against this 5 character limit; all deceased characters are functionally treated as NPCs) Whenever possible, new members are requested to consider adoption of existing NPCs. Ownership of ranking characters is no longer directly linked to participation levels, except for goldrider characters (For more, see "Goldrider Characters" below). --1a.) Every year, during the 4th quarter of the year (October 1 thru December 31), every CM is required to update their character sheet(s). Failure to do so will result in the loss of the character(s). There are three types of characters at Kadanzer Weyr: Owned Characters (sometimes referred to as player characters), Adoptable Characters (often called NPCs, or non-player characters), and BOD-Owned NPCs. BOD-NPCs are non-owned characters who are controlled by the BOD because they are in positions that require stability; and they may be adoptable in certain circumstances, and someone who is interested should contact the BOD for more information. GOLDRIDER OWNERSHIP FOR CMs: Goldriders of any age or rank are extremely rare and must still be earned. Over the years, Kadanzer Weyr has observed that many times members work hard to earn a gold -- and then once they possess her, quickly lose interest (attaining the gold being their 'happy ending'). Therefore, sustaining activity with a goldrider character after having been awarded one is a concern, and the BOD reserves the right to restrict gold ownership to writers they feel will 'stay the course'. -- 1a.) The right to adopt or create a goldrider is given at the BOD's discretion to members who have made a substantial contribution to the club. In addition, the contribution requirements below must be met. The number of goldriders is limited, and there may be times when it is not possible to acquire one, or when only a specific goldrider is available. -- 1b.) Anyone desiring to adopt or create a goldrider must have been a member for at least 1 year, and must have met participation requirements in all quarters for that year. -- 1c.) Each year, one quarter's submission must feature the goldrider as the central character. FIRELIZARD OWNERSHIP FOR CMs: each member is allowed to have up to 5 firelizards total, spread among their characters as they see fit (with a limit of 2 firelizards for any 1 character). However – firelizards must be earned through fic or art submissions explaining how their character has come into ownership; members must also be CMs in good standing, who have participated for 2 quarters running without going on probation. FOR READER-MEMBERS: RMs are expected to leave at least one comment per quarter on stories or artwork on the website. (This is our only way of tracking whether RMs are still interested in following the group.) RMs may also submit artwork or stories, and if they do so, that will count as their quarter's participation. Failure to leave at least one comment will result in the RM being sent a "1 month left" email towards the end of a quarter. If the RM misses a quarter, they will be sent a probationary warning, and they must leave a comment sometime during the next 1 month. If a RM fails to comment during that probation period, they will lose their RM membership access to the club's website & message boards, and will be dropped off of any waiting list for character adoptions they may have been on. Reader Members who are removed for inactivity are welcome to rejoin again as an RM without delay, so long as they catch up on their commenting. Submission Requirement Types: Submissions need not feature your own character(s) in order to count for the quarterly CM participation requirement. (However – approving the use of your character(s) in another member's story or artwork does not count toward your own quarterly CM requirement.) The minimum requirement for Artwork is 1 submission of at least finished art complexity. Does Not Count: sketch-level submissions, dolls (even on your own base) or icons (except with special permission from the BOD). The minimum requirement for Writing is 1 story submission of at least 500 words' length. Does Not Count: poetry. Stories should be submitted to stories@kadanzer.org; artwork should be submitted to artwork@kadanzer.org. You are required to collect all of the necessary approvals for your art or your stories prior to submission, and to indicate this when you submit. TEMPORARY 2012 RULES: As Kadanzer Weyr works to overcome a long period of inactivity, the following temporary rules and restrictions are in place: TIMELINE: Timeline freeze – Year KAZ 2860 through 2862 Essentially – freezing the timeline so that the "current" year is considered to be Year 2860. Members are asked to focus on finishing up their "backdated" storylines. Members who wish to write "forward" can do so through the end of KAZ 2862, with the clear understanding that there will be no major changes in Weyrleadership (Senior Weyrwoman & Weyrleader). WEYRLING/CANDIDATE CHARACTERS: no more organized support. In the past, a huge amount of managerial & creative time and effort went into organized weyrling classes, with attempts to host Hatching RP, class-wide collab fics, etc. Unfortunately, this effort has rarely produced enough submissions to make it worthwhile, and many weyrling characters have been neglected once they were out of weyrlinghood. The BOD would like to encourage a wider range of stories, and hope that members will adopt or create characters who will keep their interest as adult riders. For the foreseeable future, Kadanzer Weyr will not continue to run organized weyrling classes. Members who want to own, write about, or draw new candidates and weyrlings are welcome to do so. However, they are strongly encouraged to backdate their character(s) to an existing class where there are other characters for them to interact with. Your feedback is always welcome! Email webmaster@kadanzer.org with comments or questions. [Sidebar Dragons: Jennifer Broschinsky | Weyr Badge: Whitney Ware | Most other graphic elements: Smitty] |