Heh. I haven’t drawn in a while.
This is my entry for the CCSF 2014 Grendel Beauty Contest. Fun stuff!
I had to leave early to handle some small family issues when I last posted but I’m back with bad news. While I was away two of my creatures died. Garth and Carrie. They were both Ancient when they died so I can only assume that they died of old age. That left me with only 5 grendels left. Lisa, now my oldest, was Old at 3 hours, 39 minutes. Biologically, Tiffany was older. At 3 hours, 37 minutes, she was Ancient. At this point, things always got very slow and very sad. I knew my creatures would all start dying soon. I knew Celeste would be around for a while because of my tampering. I hadn’t limited their breeding past adulthood so, though Celeste was the only Adult left, she might still get pregnant with Revenant, now my only male. Only a few minutes later, at 3 hours, 42 minutes, Lisa entered her Ancient life stage. It wasn’t long til she passed away.
At 3 hours, 58 minutes she was dead in a corner of the desert. Trisha was nearby and I actually had to move both her and a boulder to get a picture of Lisa. As I wrote Lisa’s obituary, Tiffany died over the piranha pond in the jungle. At 3 hours, 48 minutes, she died of old age. There were no other creatures around but a Roamer seemed to hang out with her for her last few moments.
Now I was in an unusual situation. Revenant and Trisha were now my two youngest creatures in their Old stage. Celeste was older but was still in the Adult stage because I injected her with life chemical. Because she would take longer to pass away, I considered hatching the eggs while she was alive so that I could export them for later. Then I’d be able to record all the babies while Celeste lived out her life. For now, I still had Trisha and Revenant. I tried to get them to mate again and some kissing later, I really had my hopes up. They never kisspopped.
Revenant slowed down and slept a lot more. He still ate berries and seeds like he did when he was young but he was also less interested in kissing the ladies. His testosterone was high but his energy really wasn’t. I took some time to check on the world’s ecology. My plants were still thriving and I could still use some parts of the Garden Box, particularly the decorations. For some reason, patch plants would crash the game. Until I got internet again, I wouldn’t be able to find a fix for it so I was content to plant things by hand again.
I checked on all three of the Grendels. Trisha and Revenant were content in the desert hitting rocks and eating berries and seeds. Celeste got stuck in the halls of the shee ark saying ‘drop’. I asked what she was doing and that was all she said “drop”. I asked her how she felt and she told me about how angry she was so I took her to the Norn Terrarium up to the calm balm and asked her to drink. She eventually fell asleep.
Revenant took to taking frequent naps and playing in the elevator. I rarely saw him outside the desert now. At 3 hours, 35 minutes, he was definitely getting up there.
Nothing happened for a long time. The three grendels seemed to have gone their separate ways. Celeste stook to the Norn Terrarium, Revenant to the Desert and Trisha to the Jungle. They never expressed loneliness so I’m sure they were all happy. Revenant needed some calm balm since he was so angry now in his later years.
Eventually, Revenant made his way to the Jungle Terrarium and spent time with Trisha. He still preferred to nap over anything else. Trisha was now 4 hours old and entered the Ancient stage of her life and Revenant wasn’t far behind, becoming an Ancient at 3 hours, 49 minutes. Trisha was still up wand running around . She actually slapped Revenant awake to kiss him. That was an unusual surprise. They rested together and rarely wandered away from each other now. They even kisspopped but since Trisha’s had her two eggs, there was no pregnancy. At this stage of her life, I don’t think her egg would have been laid anyway. The two of them really stuck by each other.
I found Celeste near the medical bay again. She always seems to freeze when she gets angry. When she freezes, she tries to eat things she normally can’t, like dispensers. She doesn’t actually move toward them and if I punish her, she changes the action but not the noun. Once she’s been fed some calm balm, she seems to get back on track, though. It’s an odd quirk that I’ve only noticed in her. Is it EE? I don’t know!
What happened next was tragic. Trisha died at 4 hours, 25 minutes next to Revenant. He didn’t move from her side after she passed away despite the nagging bugs. Eventually, hunger drove him to move and he ate some seeds. He didn’t venture far from the the spot where the spent so much time and continued to eat the seeds and mushrooms there. Whether he liked it or not, I picked him up and put him in the Norn Terrarium. The bugs weren’t doing any favors for him and I at least wanted him to be comfortable.
For a long while, he rested amongst the popping pappus. He didn’t seem to want to move anymore. He had a herd of grazers nearby to keep him company and he didn’t seem to mind them.
I switched my focus to Celeste who was busying herself by hitting the door to the jungle at the top of the norn terrarium. I was worried there might be some bad connections in her brain or… something. Whatever it was, it made her seem really off. She wasn’t a bad grendel, just a confused one. I debated putting her down. She didn’t seem very happy but I’m not comfortable euthanizing my creatures outside of my experimental groups. When she said “eat door” I made the decision to put her down when Revenant passed away. She’s laid one egg already and I’m not comfortable encouraging bad genes to continue through the pool. As I’ve said before, I’d love to check her genes but I can’t with GeneCompare on the fritz.
Then, at 4 hours, 38 minutes old, Revenant passed away with his grazer friends nearby. Unfortunately, this meant that Celeste was next. I wasn’t sure what the most humane route would be so I decided to click through the toxins in the medical bay. Cyanide and ATP Decoupler both work very quickly but I was sure Cyanide caused pain. In the end, ATP Decoupler seemed the way to go. Jettisoning her into space seemed like it would be terrifying, after all. At 5 hours, 2 minutes, she was put down. It was so quick that my medical monitor didn’t have a chance to alert me to the toxins before she died. Goodbye both of you. Revenant, you have fun macking on the ladies in Silicon Heaven and you, Celeste, can finally eat that door.
After sorting the eggs and exporting the babies, it was time to move on. I’m sad to report that Garth is, in fact, not a daddy.
Eggs
Carrie 2 – Trisha 3* – Tiffany 2 – Lisa 2 – Celeste 1
- Population Options has hiccups, apparently.
This time, the game opend up to Trisha coming down with a cold. 1 Bacteria produced Histamine B. After I released her, I followed her around for a ways and watched her wander to the Desert Terrarium. This is the first time I’ve seen a creature there since I started the game. Mind you, my oldest grendel, Carrie, is now 2 hours and 18 minutes old. It didn’t take her long to make her way back to the jungle terrarium. She seemed to enjoy playing with doors.
I checked on the others to find that Celeste has slowed down quite a bit since she was little. I took her to the Norn Terrarium to feed her seeds but she didn’t seem interested. She started to move on her own once Garth came back to her and she eventually picked up the pace again. Other Grendels were starting to slow down, though. Carrie stared at a door for a long time and said “eat door”. Revenant wouldn’t move from his spot next to the pond for a while and Lisa was smacking the norn dummy again. At least Garth was still moving around. Once everyone else got moving again, Celeste seemed to freeze. Other creatures smacking her didn’t seem to get her to move, either.
Rather than worry, I checked on the others. Carrie was exploring the ship, going as far as the middle level of the desert. Tiffany was ahead of her, eating seeds off the sands. Carrie actually seemed to be following her. Ahead of Tiffany was Trisha who’d been butting against the left side of the desert, watching Gnarlers and eating bramboo. I wasn’t worried since Boneys are supposed to do well in radiation. Tiffany was terrified of the boulders coming down, though.
Volcano aside, things started to quiet down again. The square roots have basically taken over the desert. Just then, another pregnancy. Lisa is pregnant again and with Revenant’s baby. Revenant’s already made great efforts to continue his own line and I’m proud of him. Lisa did manage to get sick with a bacteria but it cleared up without a hitch.
Also, I apparently oopsed in one of my previous posts. My oldest Grendel is Garth who is now nearly 3 hours old. Revenant got sick after I checked and found Antigen 5 in his system. I put him in confinement with a roamer who sprayed him down pretty well and fed him cough syrup and vitamin potions. I fed him a general cure and that seemed to do the trick. I let him join the others and watched him play with the door to the norn terrarium. Eventually he got stuck standing there saying “eat door”. I was sure it was nothing so I grabbed him and moved him to the norn terrarium myself.
Still, I was starting to get bored again. I injected Celeste full of Life and put her with Revenant. Then I tried coaxing them into mating and before long, she was pregnant. I was relieved that this worked so easily. It meant that she could mate after all and she laid her egg without any issues. Normally, I’d have checked on her genetics by now but I only found that GeneCompare still wouldn’t work on my computer.
After a short oatmeal break, I made the rounds again. Celeste was walking around the norn terrarium through the collection of calm balm potions that I’d scattered by the left elevator, Trisha and Lisa were stomping through the desert talking about hitting norns, Tiffany had made her way to the jungle and was eating awkwood seeds, Carrie was nearby, eating mushrooms and saying she disliked me, Revenant was napping in the norn terrarium, on the floor and Garth was at the top level of the jungle getting stung by bugs and moving right.
To make things more interesting for me, I added Popping Pappus to the world. I couldn’t seem to find it, though. A quick double check of the norn meso revealed that it had taken root, though. It was about then that I started adding a lot of plants and animals to the world. Fish went into the aquarium, justanut seeds were planted (thank you BD pack!), Anemones infested the waters along with Crobsters, Popplants and Terraka Weeds started to appear and Trappers were appearing in places other than the norn meso.
Eggs
Carrie 2 – Trisha 2 – Tiffany 2 – Lisa 2 – Celeste 1
When we last left off, all the grendels were finally in the shee ark. This means that everyone is able to breed with and play with each other. Revenant has taken to drinking potions and going to sleep, though! Besides that, he enjoys eating fruit and pushing the elevator button. All the other grendels have taken to smacking and kiss popping and trying to eat things they shouldn’t.
It wasn’t long before Tiffany got pregnant, though! Bart seems to be the culprit again. I haven’t heard from Garth much, sadly. He seems to enjoy the jungle and hasn’t gotten sick yet! Good for him. If it’s genetic, I hope he spreads those healthy genes around!
With all the creatures doing… whatever it was they were doing, I realized I hadn’t spent any time in the desert. The Square Roots had grown all over the place, my flowers had chosen to be green and my bramboo wasn’t growing very tall. Suddenly, another sickness notification. I headed to the Norn Terrarium to find that Lisa was standing next to the elevator button on the far top left. I sprayed it with disinfectant, grabbed Bart and dropped him by it. If he contracted a bacteria, I would know. It was then that I realized that he was very blueish. As I edited the picture of Bart here, I finally got some news from Garth and Celeste! They were sick with bacteria.
Not my idea of good news, either.
I did have the idea to start spraying the creatures where they are, though. It makes sense to me, anyway. If I spray a creature where they are, I also spray whatever they’re touching. If I’m right, that means I get to kill two birds (or bacteria) with one stone.
Let’s try it out, though. I found that the teleporter in the norn terrarium had some bacteria on it. I sprayed it with the disinfectant spray and, sadly, the bacteria persisted. Eventually, it got so bad that I released a Roamer into the world to help alleviate the bacteria problems. I released a few more and hoped they’d eventually eliminate the problem since I couldn’t remember the command to kill bacteria.
I helped cure the grendels who were still sick and watched as the Roamers sprayed down the entire Shee Ark.
Bart soon got Trisha pregnant again and I watched her as she prepared to lay her second egg. As I waited, Bart died when ATP Decoupler entered his system. Carrie got sick and I was able to help her before she got any worse off. The roamers set to work disinfecting the Jungle Terrarium and there seemed to be pink spray all over the place. If they were just here a little sooner, Bart may not have died.
Before I had much time to mourn, another pregnancy indication came up. Revenant might be a daddy after all! I think the egg was Carrie’s. Trisha was nearby at pregnancy and when the egg was laid. Another indication popped up and Tiffany and Revenant are the parents for sure this time. Lisa expressed her friendliness around Revenant but nothing came of it for a while. Instead, he ran into the pond trying to get away from her love slapping.
Now that the bacteria had stopped coming, I could tend to other things, like recycling all the gadgets and planting seeds. It wasn’t long til I didn’t have much to do and the breeding had slowed down quite a bit.
Anyone who knows me personally knows that when I get bored, I knit to pass the time. Since we’ve moved I’ve had difficulty finding the time and energy to knit so instead I decided to play around with the SERU button. Funny thing. I pack up my computer for a month and suddenly, some agents work where they didn’t before and others don’t but used to.
Anyway.
I adopted this little creature. Just as I did, someone got pregnant. This time, Trisha and Revenant are the lucky parents. I’m a little worried that Lisa and Celeste haven’t laid eggs yet. Since they’re limited to 2 each and grendels live short lives, I wonder if they’ll carry on their line. Still, it’s a little early in the game to worry about that.
Back to my little SERU creature, though. I’ve decided to name him Picket. He’s survived being a baby so far and doesn’t seem to have too many problems. Rather than see about checking his genome out in GeneCompare, though, I wanted to see what I could learn about him just observing. He seems very stable and better at figuring out problems on his own than my current lot of grendels. He actually walks more like a norn and has that little norn body to boot.
He spends most of his time eating which is nice and he hasn’t had any complaints. It’s tempting to introduce him to my other grendels though I don’t want to muck around too much with my gene pool. Just doesn’t seem right. In any case, I think I’ll export him to play with later and to upload.
I decided to check on my grendels to find three of the ladies stuck in the workshop of the Capillata. Carrie, Tiffany and Lisa were all there, smacking a puppet and starving for starch. Carrie still disliked me and was happy to let me know it.
Lisa was happy to be back home in the Norn Terrarium and celebrated by getting pregnant with Revenant’s baby. I scooped it up and set it with the others.
Eggs
Carrie 2 – Trisha 2 – Tiffany 2 – Lisa 1