When we last visited my world, there were still two grendels and Five Cheese left.

Five Cheese and Tuatara are now Ancient and Bethany is still quite spry as an adult. So far, Five Cheese has survived a whopping 7 hours flat and will soon set my record for the creature I’ve kept the longest.

Before I could celebrate Five Cheese’s longevity, Tuatara, sadly, passed away. He was 3 hours, 49 minutes old. He is not survived by any eggs because of a genetic disorder that he shared with his sister, Wide-Eyed Payment. Bethany was nearby when he passed away so I know he didn’t die alone.

Bethany has returned to her favorite activity, watching seeds fall and sipping on Calm Balm. She spends a lot of time sleeping as a result of the potions, but she doesn’t seem as wracked with grief as when Gifted Waves passed away. At 3 hours, 5 minutes old, she was now Old but didn’t seem to be slowing down. I scooped her up and moved her to the Norn Meso. Here, she at least wouldn’t have to deal with mosquitoes. Not to mention a giant bottle of “Happy Juice” to keep her calm.

Now I had to plan. I wanted to create a new world for the Generation 3 Grendels and Generation 2 norns to live in but didn’t know how to handle the eggs that had been laid already. I could hatch the eggs to export the babies and then import them into the new world, or I could save check their monikers and inject them using the Genetics Kit, though I doubted that would keep their life history.

Whatever I did, I really wanted them to start fresh.

No matter what, though, I wanted to introduce Theo, a bengal norn from LibbyNorn’s wolfing run into this new generation to, hopefully, lead a better life. I do know that I’m going to be playing with Norns this time, though. Maybe I’ll start with one egg from each norn girl? Maybe I’ll throw 6 eggs in at once, two from each girl? Maybe I’ll introduce them all one at a time! Who knows? We’ll see!

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NOTE: Yesterday was my last actual day with the computer. Everything from here on is back-log. Please feel free to leave comments anyway and I’ll reply to them as soon as I can. I should still have internet (and at least my iPad) until we move and would be happy to reply!

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Well, we’re back. It seems like there’s bad news every time I start to write lately. The three norns are all resting and the three grendels are up to their usual shenanigans. Tuatara is bored and running around, hitting seeds and Gifted Waves and Bethany are flirting below the Terrarium door. Suddenly, though, Gifted Waves passed away. I felt awful for Bethany, having lost the love of her life right in front of her. He disappeared in a green cloud and Bethany left the spot to sulk in the grass.

I started to fetch seeds for Sour Drink since she said she wanted them. She and the other norns have stopped moving altogether at this point and I thought they were getting very old. I brought her a seed from the top level of the terrarium, left to get more and then she died while I was away. Apparently, she’d decided to take the lift down while I was gone and I found her like this.

Next was Uptight Kettle, who passed away while I was saving the photo of Sour Drink above. He was surrounded by apples when he passed away and one of his last phrases was “uptight kettle love mom”. It was the first time I’d heard him say it and I’m sad to say that it was also the last.

Five Cheese is still surviving while she was napping, I decided to carry her to the Aquarium Terrarium to live out the last of her days. I gave her a beach ball and a chili pepper pot to enjoy and I returned the ball to her every time she pushed it. I didn’t want her to die alone and she was easily my favorite norn out of the 6.

I love you too, sweetheart, and darn it, I want to make sure you know it before you die. Speaking of love, though, I think Bethany may have been depressed. I was worried that she wasn’t feeding herself because of the death of Gifted Waves so I showered her with a banquet… which she started to wolf down like she had nothing else to live for. I started to think that my worried were unfounded, but she still chose to stay in the spot that she and Gifted Waves had spent so much time in. She’d taken to only eating the Awkwood Creeper seeds and spoke very rarely now.

Five Cheese took to pushing the garden gnome now and she took increasingly frequent naps. By now, I was spending all of my time tending to her needs or sketching while I watched her play and eat on the beach. She told me that she was lonely and I quickly cured it with lots of petting.

I did eventually get tired of Bethany feeling sorry for herself, so I took her up to Tuatara who was complaining of boredom. I encouraged them to push and play and they did. They ultimately decided that watching seeds fall from the Awkwood plant was more exciting than playing and running away from the mosquitos, but I’m glad they were bonding anyway. Tuatara was old now, but he still had some kick to him at least.

I rushed back to Five Cheese, and made sure that she still had plenty of food. She spent all of her time now playing with the gnome and eating cheese and seemed very happy.

I took a short break to make sure the ecosystems were well. I added more bramboo to the norn terrarium, gave some to Five Cheese and added piranhas back to the jungle pond. Why? Well, the mosquitos were seriously getting out of hand. In the end, I decided to start a new world for the next generation and stopped mid-replanting.

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Scandalous Laborer was next and she died in pain. Lowly Adjustment was walking away from her when I found them and I was ready to drown him I was so angry. More likely than not, he didn’t kill her and it was just bad timing. I sent him to the hill for a while after a swift spank.

Scandal, like all the other norns, is survived by four eggs. She seemed the most loving of the norns, even telling Sour Drink how much she loved her, despite Sour Drink expressing her distaste for Scandal.

I really hate having so much bad news so many days in a row, but I really want to keep the generations separated. I’m also pretty honest about keeping a back log so I’ll go ahead and admit to you all that all of these deaths are being handled in the same day. I really wish Norns didn’t live such short lives.

Five Cheese reassured me, though. She walked into the pond to fetch a toy. I dragged her out and set the toy on the shore and she said “me love mom”. I couldn’t wait to meet her children.

Next was Lowly Adjustment. He was the most violent in the end though I don’t think he genuinely killed anything in his life. I’m sad to see him go, too and always thought that he was the most eccentric of the bunch. I’m not even sure why.

By now, there are only 6 creatures left; 3 norns and 3 grendels. Speaking of those Grendels, Bethany and Gifted Waves were still together, not having left each others’ side since last time.

They spend most of their time napping and kissing. It seems the spark hasn’t left since they first had their 2 eggs together.

Meanwhile, Tuatara was still trying to push the Holistic Learning Machine. I decided go ahead and let him. There was no point in having him butt into the Selective Force Field so much. He walked up, hit it once and walked away, completely disinterested. This… was truly hilarious to me for some reason.

Soon, he was Old and I allowed him to join the other Grendels in the Grendel Terrarium. Since he isn’t able to breed anymore, there’s no harm in it. The boys played with the rocket toy together while Bethany ate seeds. I moved back to the Norns.

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See those charts? All but two of my creatures are Adults now and Clear Glass just died at only three and a half hours old.

It’s hard for me to say yet whether he is survived by any eggs but for now, we’ll just have to wait to find out.  He spent his last moments in my ‘grendel incubation’ area.

Life is slowing down more and more as the creatures move on to their digital afterlives and it’s giving me time to plan my next moves. I was thinking about moving on to Grendel Generation 3 but I’d rather not show favoritism towards my Grendels. It looked like Norn Generation 2 would be next and I’d already prepared the ship to allow them to explore.

There on the right is a picture of the tools I’ve been using to restrict exploration. The left tool is a selective forcefield and the one on the right is a door hider. Once the next generation is lined up, I’ll be opening up all four of the Shee Ark terrariums to them. The capillata is still reserved for experimentation and holding creatures with detrimental genes.

I’ll probably also introduce bacteria again, although it’ll likely be limited to the top right part of the jungle terrarium. I’m not sure how I want to handle it yet, but we’ll see.

Next to die was Impartial Relation. He passed away at 4 hours, 25 minutes old and was easily the most long lived of the Generation 2 norns. Hopefully, his daughter (spoilers?) will carry on his genes.

He died next to the stone of knowledge  where I first started learning about him. He died doing what he loved best, yelling and stomping. I’ll miss you, Imp.

I was worried that Wide-eyed Payment would be next. Not only was she already 3 hours and 44 minutes old, but her pregnancy seemed to accelerate her aging a bit. I could have been hallucinating but I still feared for the worst. She busied herself by eating tubas. I gave her a toy and left to answer another death notification.

Elite Cap was next and while I was away, editing his photo, Wide-Eyed Payment passed away. They were so close in age, I was expecting them to pass away at around the same time, but in the same minute?

I’m sad to see Wide-eyed Payment go and take two unborn babies with her, but she is survived by a single egg who had the fortune to not carry the progesterone mutation that she did. Elite Cap is survived by at least two eggs through Flawless Color.

The first Norn to go was Loving Wren, the oldest of them all. He is survived by four eggs. He got a little slap happy and started to seclude himself by the door in his old age but I’ll always remember him as one of my happy-go lucky first gen norns. Five Cheese was nearby when he passed away and I heard her cry shortly after he passed away.

The other norns were up to their shenanigans, at least, as though they hadn’t aged since they were little. There were many whines and cries amongst the elderly norns and I feared one of them would be next. I opened the chart again and braced myself.

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