Okay, Hear Me Out.

Okay, hear me out.

What if Pern dragons were WAAAAY more like colony insects?

Gold = Queen

Bronze = Drone

Chromatics = Workers

Brown = Soldier/Major

Blue = Media

Green = Minor

So you've got these pretty obvious and almost perfect correlations. But if you make them actually function like their ant/bee counterparts, a bunch of fun things happen!

Queens are still the baby-makers, but Bronzes/Drones are the ONLY ones physically capable of mating with them.

Browns/Soldiers and Blues/Media are not actually "male", they're the same caste/sex as Greens/Minors (which is not exactly "female" either).

Bronzes/Drones do not have fathers! All Bronzes/Drones are born from unfertilized eggs (they have a set of single chromosomes, instead of the full set of chromosome pairs).

Chromatics/Workers can rarely lay eggs, but they can only produce Bronze/Drone eggs because they can't mate to produce fertilized eggs.

Fertilized eggs become Chromatic/Worker eggs.

To get a Queen egg, you need a Queen, a Drone to fertilize her eggs, AND THEN you need a bunch of Chromatics/Workers to coat a Chromatic/Worker egg in Queen goo, causing it to change from a Chromatic/Worker to a Queen.

TO RECAP:

To create a Bronze/Drone, you only need a Queen.

To create any Chromatic/Worker, you need a Queen and at least 1 Bronze/Drone.

To create a Queen, you need a Queen, at least 1 Bronze/Drone, and a hoard of Chromatics/Workers.

I'd also like to note, in RL insect hives, the Queen doesn't direct the workers to create or choose a new Queen. The workers collectively decide when and which egg to convert. I feel like this helps with the common Main Character Syndrome that Golds and Bronzes get in Pern stuff.

So... Yeah. For your consideration.

If anyone wants to do anything with this concept, do! Have fun!

Okay, Hear Me Out.

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