Post by Neeq Machine on Jan 21, 2011 22:59:35 GMT -5
OOC
How Impression is Decided
So you want to Impress a dragon, do you? A lot of thought and care goes into selecting which Candidate Impresses which dragon - or if a particular person or dragon will Impress at all! In order to help you in creating and playing a Candidate character, this part of the guide outlines the out-of-character behind-the-scenes information which goes into matching people to dragons.
Age
First, is age. In general, the age range for Candidacy is 12 to 22 Turns of age. In rare cases - usually with gold or bronze dragons - characters above the age of 22 will be considered. Note, however, that this is a very rare occasion and has a lot to do with circumstances and the mentality of the dragon. A child-like dragon is far more likely to Impress to a younger Candidate. This is generally also true for chromatics (green, blue, and brown). Keep in mind that this is not a hard-and-fast rule, only something that is a rule of thumb.
Any character who is "single" and between the ages of 12 and 22 is fair game if they attend a Hatching, unless the administration is specifically asked not to Impress them to a dragon.
What does a dragon look for?
Dragons have an intense need to Impress when they Hatch. They go through their "list" to decide who to Impress to, but when the pool of Candidates is slim, dragons will Impress to someone who is a less-perfect match.
1) A dragon's mind-mate must have some innate telepathic and empathetic ability. This is what Search dragons look for, and why a Candidate MUST be Searched. Without this innate ability, a human is incapable of bonding to a dragon.
2) A Candidate must be receptive to the dragon. An open and willing mind is needed to Impress. Thus, a Candidate is capable of refusing a dragon. If a girl sits there and emanates interest in golds alone and denies the approach of any other dragon, she (most likely) will not Impress any other dragon.
3) The sex of the Candidate is important. Female dragons prefer female riders; male dragons prefer male riders. Chromatics are much more flexible with their selection of sex than metallics.
4) Dragons have preferences in gender and orientation. These preferences are much stronger in the metallics than the chromatics. A homosexual will never Impress to a metallic dragon - the heterosexual mating drive of gold and bronze dragons makes such a bond impossible. Even attempts at force-Impression cannot breach that sort of mental difference. A gold's mind-mate must be interested in men; a bronze's mind-mate must be interested in women.
Gold: Impress to heterosexual females.
Bronze: Impress to heterosexual males.
Brown: In general, Impress to men - either heterosexual or bisexual.
Blue: Usually Impress to men, of any orientation. Bisexual or homosexual women are also relatively common.
Green: Impress to any gender and any orientation.
5) Personality. Of the pool of Candidates, a dragon looks for a good personality match. On occasion, personality can trump sex and gender -- it just has to be a perfect personality match.
Character Personality
On Hidden, dragon profiles are written without looking at the Candidates. Each dragon is written and created on its own, just as a dragon would develop apart from most human influence in an egg. Only when a dragon has been fleshed out already do we start to match up dragons to Candidates. For some colors, the crowd of Candidates is "slimmed" considerably by gender and orientation. However, Candidates are not randomly assigned dragons for Impression. We look for matching personalities and complementary personalities.
Matching: Do the dragon and Candidate have requisite personality matches? Gold and bronze dragons are generally very strong-willed and require strong-willed riders. Personalities for chromatics vary widely, but certain similarities are also necessary.
Complementary: Are weaknesses in the dragon matched to the strengths of the Candidate, and vice versa? If a dragon is terrified of fire, is their rider capable of working with that? If a rider has a tendency for laziness, is their dragon more diligent?
Remember, we're not trying to punish or reward different personality types. We're trying to make realistic matches! If there are no dragons which mesh well with your character, you might not Impress at all that Clutch. That's not super likely - it's not like slight dissonance between a dragon and a Candidate will make us reject the match - but it's a possibility.
The Player
Yes, we look at the player - and at the characters and rankers a player has. No, we aren't playing favorites - personal like or dislike of a player has nothing to do with how we Impress.
So what do we look at? Well, a bunch of things. For instance:
Activity: Is the player active? Do they post in a timely manner and play the characters that they have? If you only actively post in hatchings and your threads consistently die within a post or two, that's going to decrease your chances of Impression. On the other hand, if you have active threads consistently and are a presence on the board, you're more likely to be considered for ranking or special dragons.
Track record: Has the player successfully played their Candidate in required threads? If the player has had (or has) a weyrling, are they active? Do they post where necessary without complaint? Players who have a good track record with Candidacy and weyrlinghood are more likely to be trusted with more special rank and status. This isn't to say that if you're new, you will be overlooked for ranking dragons or special opportunities. This is only to say that in the time you have been on the board, have you been responsible in the commitment required for playing a Candidate or a weyrling?
Number of rankers: If the player already has a high number of ranking characters, the likelihood of ranking Impression goes down. Ranking characters include metallic dragons & whers, or positions such as Weyrleader. Take it this way: if you already have a bronzerider, it's less likely that you will get a bronze dragon than someone similar with a similar character but without a bronzerider. We try not to load one person with all the shinies, after all.
Number of Candidates: If the player has multiple Candidates, each successive Impression is less likely. In other words, while one Impression holds no penalty, it is less likely for your second Candidate to Impress than someone else's first Candidate, and so on. Feel free to make multiple Candidates, just don't expect them all to Impress all at once!
Unusual Impression[/size]
Double Impressions: One Candidate, Two Dragons
Double Impressions will be very rare (if we decide to have one at all) and will not be pre-announced. They will be done in the Hatching posts. Any special information - such as certain hatreds for each other the dragons would have, or if one is severely injured - will be PMed. If one of the dragon kills the other on the Sands, that will be written in the Hatching post.
Re-Impressions
Dragonriders who have survived losing their dragon are free to Stand for Clutches. Re-Impression is possible, so long as they are not completely out of their minds in grief. A terribly scarred person may or may not re-Impress -- it depends greatly upon their state of mind, how they've survived losing their dragon, etc.
Re-Impression for dragons is very unlikely. If you have a HAD and a dragon's rider is killed, and you want to force-Impress the dragon in question, PM an admin. We cannot be more serious about this. While it is a possibility, it needs to be cleared with the administration team first (and possibly the previous owner of the dragon in question).
Force-Impression
If you have a character you want to force-Impress a dragon in a Hatching, PM an admin. If you try to force-Impress without getting administrative position, expect to be mauled. You will only be allowed to force-Impress a dragon if it has been cleared by the admins. You are allowed to ask for a particular dragon, but chances are that dragons have all been assigned before the Hatching starts. If you are interested in force-Impression, talk to the admins about it before the Hatching starts - preferably several days before the Hatching is scheduled, at the very least.
IC
Although all IC information for Impression can be found in the subsection of that name in the dragon guide, the subsection is reproduced below.
Impression is the defining moment of a dragon's life. From that point on, they are joined soul-to-soul with another thinking being, in a union far closer than any other. But what is Impression? How does it even work?? These and other questions are often part of the soul-seeking a Candidate or new weyrling may find him- or herself wondering about.
The act of Impression is fairly simple. The draconic mind is incapable of independent existence. Without a human mind to anchor on, once a dragon starts breathing air, a dragon will go mad from the sheer emptiness of the world. Though gold dragons may remain to guard their eggs even after they have lost Theirs, the gold on the sand is no longer a sane dragon. They are more beast than person, and will gladly fling themselves into oblivion to escape the gaping nothingness where once vibrant life existed.
Exactly how a dragon Impresses is less certain. Some have suggested that pheremones play a part in the process, while others claim a more spiritual meeting of souls. What is known is that a newly-Hatched dragon is capable of telepathically linking their mind to the mind of a human. This link varies in strength, but on average, a dragon-human pair can "think" conversations privately with each other, "hear" especially "loud" thoughts (particularly dragons overhearing their human's thoughts), and sense the presence of the other. Extremely tight bonds may involve emotion sharing and occasionally even phantom sensations.
The circumstances of Impression make the whole process even more complex. In an ideal world, each dragon would have someone on the Sands or in the Stands who was a close enough of a match to their "missing half" to Impress to, and a happy time would be had by all. That, unfortunately, is a very unlikely circumstance. Panicked and young dragons can and do Impress to the only available mind, or fling themselves between without a true look-over of the available prospects. More than one dragon has lost itself between at the moment they finally find who they were looking for.
Extremely occasionally, two dragons will make a near-simultaneous Impression... of the same person. In such an event, usually the dragons will battle until one kills itself or is killed. Impression, once made, cannot be withdrawn--or the latecomer would just turn away. Humans with such a predicament are almost never able to prevent their mindmates from attacking in blind defensive rage, despite the horror of the thing. Luckily, this situation is incredibly rare.
Re-Impressions are possible, both for humans and (extremely rarely) for dragons. Humans who lose their dragon usually are distraught enough to take their own life, but in the few cases where this is not so, a human may be able to re-Impress. The Potential is still there--and even greater, if the pair were Bonded for any length of time. In dragons, the possibility of re-Impression is usually only in the circumstance of golds guarding Clutches... or when an un-Impressed HAD is near enough to force-Impress a dragon. Bereft golds are generally too crazed with mental pain to so much as allow someone to get close to them, and HADs are few and far between, but the possibility exists.
Force-Impression is also fairly unlikely, due simply to the danger of being clawed in half by an irate dragon. By physically grabbing a dragon and forcing eye contact, usually with speaking involved, a human can force the mental contact which leads to Impression. In many cases, these bonds are just as strong as an Impression would normally be, but the human partner may exert a controlling impulse on a dragon thus Impressed--a bad thing in a partnership. Force-Impressing is frowned upon (strongly), and discrimination is quite likely.
