Dolphincraft Specialties Book
Chapter 1: Overview
Within the Dolphincraft, and in fact in any other craft, there are many subcategories known as 'specialties'. These specialties are basically chosen focuses for those in the craft that have reached journeyman stage, and have learned all the 'general' things about the craft. This book's purpose is a more in-depth description of each of the following specialties within the Dolphincraft:
Antiquities
Dolphinhealing
Dolphinsinging
Instruction
Exploration
Navigation
Search and Rescue
Chartography
Chapter 2: Antiquities
Just the name antiquities gives some hint to what this specialty is about. In all sea going cultures, over the times, things are lost and things are found, ships are shipwrecked, docks are damaged in storms and goods are dropped into the seas. Now, from time to time, these artifacts are found, and here on Pern they're often located by ever curious dolphins, especially metallic items since they send back a good echo when hit with sonar.
However, antiquities is not just the location of the items, even though that is the first step, it is also the restoration of found objects and those with this specialty learn to be very knowledgable in handling items damaged by saltwater corrosion and animal encrustations - like barnacles.
Last but not least, identifying an artifact is also an important part of being an antiquities specialist. With the aid of the hall's library as well as older members of the hall, it is their duty to find and place the item in history, if at all possible, while also making a record of it should it be lost again or destroyed.
Chapter 3: Dolphinhealing
One of the most important sections of the charter between dolphins and humans reads:
'Humans would remove any bloodfish that might attach themselves to the dolphins' bodies, to float any stranded dolphin, to heal the sick and treat the wounded, to talk to them and to be partners if the dolphin was willing. '
-- from the Dolphins of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
Therefore, dolphinhealing is an important aspect of the dolphincraft. It is a combination of skills between two halls, healer and dolphin, with skills derived from both. A dolphinhealer does more than just remove bloodfish, though this is a common affliction. Their overall duty is to heal, to the best of their ability, any dolphin who needs their attentions.
Dolphinhealers specialize in learning common dolphin ailments as well as the more obscure, and they draw on their healer training as well as their dolphin training. Treating a mammal that lives in water is verily different than one on land and therefore they learn and specialize in handling dolphins within their own environment - effectively operating in the water. It is their job to get to know dolphins, well, inside and out.
Chapter 4: Dolphinsinging
Dolphins, being intelligent, sentient mammals, have their own way of recording history, and this way is through song. To keep the past fresh in their memories, they make up songs about their history and sing it down the generations, much like cultures that keep verbal record, instead of written ones. However, as time passes, things can get confused, or changed, like languages.
A dolphinsinger's responsibility is to translate dolphin songs into written records so that this verbal 'shift' is minimized and humans may have access to these stories. While written records are still not perfectly reliable, they are more reliable than verbal methods and therefore the dolphinsinger is a recorder, as well as a translator who draws upon the scribing skills of a harper and the dolphin-related skills of the dolphineer.
Chapter 5: Instruction
Just as the name of this specialty suggests, it is about education. Those that choose this speciality concentrate heavily on instructing others, be they part of the craft, or possibly outside of it in a special liason manner. It is an educator's duty to learn as much as they can so that they may teach others, using the resources available in the hall; the library for instance.
While any journeyman or master may teach apprentices, it is those with the education specialty that put the most into it by choice, they not only teach, they also would be researching better ways to teach as well as finding more things to be taught to their students. Being as they are, they never really stop learning themsleves, but then again, does anyone?
Chapter 6: Exploration
Exploration is just that, exploring. A journeyman that chooses exploration focuses upon the observation of Pern's ever changing seas, for no two patches of ocean are the same and neither do they remain that way. Change is forever occuring, be it from tectonic shifts, volcanic activity, storms, hurricanes, or just the natural tide motion of the water. Nothing remains the same for very long in this active environment.
An explorer's duty is to note these changes and report them back to the appropriate people at the hall. For instance ships can run aground if there's been a change in the shoreline, and there's also the possibility that while exploring, the dolphin-partner team might come upon artifacts that further the antiquist's purpose. With the keen senses and sonar of a dolphin paired with the skills of his/her partner, a formidable pair of explorers is formed.
Chapter 7: Navigation
Those that choose the specialty of navigation are just as much a part of the Seacraft as they are the Dolphincraft, for they do most of their work on board ships, as the name implies. They are another hand on deck just the same as any crew member upon the ship, and do the duties of one when not performing their main function.
Their main duty, as a navigation specialist, is to guide the path of the ship, using their honed skills as a navigator, as well as cross-referencing with the in-water vision and sonar of their dolphin partner for the purpose of positioning. While they do use the maps that those of the chartographic bent make, they relie on their wits just as much as drawn pathways - charting courses through unknown currents with their skill and the aid of their dolphin partner.
Chapter 8: Search and Rescue
Like the name implies, those that specialize in search and rescue mainly focus on doing just that, rescuing others that are in need. An important line of the contract between humans and dolphins reads as follows:
'Dolphins would protect humans on or in the water to their best abilities, in whatever weather and unsafe conditions, even to the giving up of dolphin life to save the frailer humans: they would appraise humans of bad weather conditions, show them where the schools of preferred fish were running, and warn them of sea hazards.'
-- from the Dolphins of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
Those that choose to specialize in rescue, train to perform their function under stressful and less than ideal conditions. They are the fail safe for those in need and with their dolphin partners, it is their duty to bring those in danger to safety, be it from shipwreck or any other hazard that may occur on Pern's oceans. They concentrate on not only getting themselves in place on time, but in organizing others in the effort of rescue, be the ones in need human or dolphin.
Chapter 9: Chartography(sic)
Chartography(sic) is the ancient skill of map-making, and has been around since before the advent of writing, for even in 'caveman' times, there were maps, however crude, but maps still. If it shows you how to get somewhere, it is a map and that is where a chartographer's(sic) skill lies.
Those that choose this as a specialty not only learn how to make cleanly precise maps, they also learn how to use coordinates and information given them by explorers. The maps they make are what the navigators use to guide ships about Pern's ever-changing oceans. The skill of map-making is a very refined one, for one slip up on a map can be fatal for a ship that might possibly run ashore or go the wrong way and end up fouled out in the middle of nowhere, or drifting into the great current.
All references to worlds and characters based on Anne McCaffrey's fiction are © Anne McCaffrey 1967, 2000, all rights
reserved, and used by permission of the author.
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