About

The Main Hall of the Herdercraft is located just outside High Reaches Hold. The Herdercraft is Pern's solution for animals: they breed and tend the herds to support the weyrs and Pernfolk alike. Outside of the main duty to herdbeast and weyr, the Herdercraft is also responsible for the breeding and upkeep of various other animals: runners, canines, felines, avians, and many other versions of herd beasts: burdenbeasts, caprines, porcines, ovines, and drays.

What is a Craft?

A Craft, on Pern, is a collection of professionals who study particular trades. Other examples of the Crafts include Smiths (working with wood, metal and so on), Harpers (dealing in the arts and diplomacy), Healers (as the name would suggest, studying medicine and healing), Vintners (distillers of alcoholic beverages) and so on.

What does the Herder Craft do?

The primary job of Herders is to care for the animals of Pern. This mainly includes domesticated animals, such as runners, canines, felines, rabbits, herdbeasts, ovines, porcines, draybeasts, caprines, ferrets and small avians, such as chickens and ducks. (For more information on the Earth equivalent to these animals, click here). They do not care for dragons, firelizards or whers.

At an apprentice level, a Herder's day will mainly be taken up with classes, chores and studying. Senior apprentices will generally choose an area in which they wish to specialise, from there onwards they have classes tailored more to what they wish to specialise in. Journeymen and Masters tend to have projects which they will work on, though even they will be constantly learning new things, no matter how much of an authority they are considered on a subject.

ICly, there are all manner of things that Herders can do. They can be involved in breeding programmes (for example, certain Herders choose to improve the breeding lines of runners, canines, felines etc, or try to create a new, specific breed), showing, beasthealing, teaching and many other areas. Cross-crafting can also lead to various specialties, such as becoming a farrier or a saddler. Apprentices can RP classes, chores (such as mucking out, grooming and so on), and general mischief.

One of the main reasons the Herder Craft is approached on Harper's Tale is for people to buy pets. The Hall is the only place where players can do so, and so it often gets a lot of requests. This means that for all Herders, there is the opportunity to make some IC marks, as well as the chance for anyone to offer descs for the various animals that will be available for adoption. For more information, click here.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License