Suddenly, Death

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There were suddenly three death notifications. Theo and Geoff had both drowned within seconds of each other. I didn’t catch them walking off of the pier and I didn’t find them in time to save them. Rachael died of old age amongst a small group of 3 other norns: Nami, Cheddar and Mary.

I was sad to see all three of them go, but I was glad that at least two of them had lived to old age. Theo, on the other hand… I was really hoping to give him a better life than he had previously but I feel like I’ve failed utterly. Drowning seems like such a horrible way to go and it hurts me to think that he was just chasing after his friend. Good bye, you three. I’ll miss all of you.

It took watching Sylvia walk off of the pier to realize what happened to Theo and Geoff. She walked into the water looking for seeds, likely the coconuts on the other side. To prevent this happening again, I built a (terrible) bridge across and had Sylvia test it for me. Success. I even went ahead and built another on the opposite side.

Before I could celebrate, Hannah passed away. I’ll always remember that crazy walk of hers, the walk that got me seriously thinking about a norn’s gait. Thankfully, she wasn’t badly affected and she’ll live on in my memories. Farewell, Hannah.

Now I was down to 10 norns and half of them were ancient. They were also approaching the life expectancy and soon, Chase was dead as well.

When he died, I was busying myself by making sure that the world was just the way I wanted, playing around with Room Edits and Garden Box (visit Naturing :: Nuturing). He was always a quirky norn and I don’t think his instincts ever took. He was especially violent and I’m happy to say he didn’t have too many children. It sounds mean, but I don’t want more violent norns.

It was quiet again for a long time. I was free to fix the CA Links in Veridia, properly connect the archways between the Shee Ark and Albia and even install Elevines where I felt they were needed.

I found Tiara resting in the hallway. She hadn’t moved in a long time and she said that she was hungry for starch. I tried to feed her a seed and she just wouldn’t eat it. I slapped her once to let her know I meant it and she ate it right away. I was relieved.

It was hard to say who might be next. With bacteria running loose again, it was anyone’s guess. The only adult I had left was Cheddar, Five Cheese’s son and he was already 4 hours, 32 minutes old. Come to think of it, some of the older norns were Five Cheese’s. Mary was ancient at 5 hours, 32 minutes. It didn’t seem like she’d inherited Cheese’s age genes.

Sadly, Cheddar, the youngest was actually the next to go. There was no warning. I was looking at the other norns to check their ages and then I got a death notification. I fear he may have starved. I’ve tried to get norns to eat when they’re hungry but there was no food in the swamp that he was in. I hope Silicon Heaven treats you well, Cheddar. I always thought you were a great looking and well behaved norn.

Now, I was busy checking everyone’s needs. Bored norns were given toys, hungry norns were given food, EE norns were moved, etc. Sylvia had a problem where she just wouldn’t eat seeds, dispite my pleading and discipline. Eventually, I put her in a field of mushrooms and she ate those instead to sate her need for starch. As I was tending to Sylvia’s needs, Mary passed away.

She was very close to her sisters and didn’t have much of a violent streak. She got sick often and her name is the one that comes to my mind most often when I visit the medical bay. I hope she is happier wherever she is now than couped up in the medical chamber. Thankfully, she died of old age as opposed to injury or illness.

Timber, sadly, passed away in much the same way. As soon as I finished writing about Mary and returned to the game, Timber passed away, eating mushrooms. I hate to say that a weed grew in his place, though he wasn’t eating those. Good bye, Timber. I’ll always remember you as one of the gentler boys. You did get into a tiff with Geoff, but boys will be boys.

Now, Tiara was my only Old norn and the others seemed like they were ready to pass the torch. They continued to complain and give each other bad advice, but they were at least safe. They paired off into groups. Tiara stayed with Sylvia, Nami with Rave and Belle with Grant. I don’t know if they were afraid of dying alone but I knew they had each other.

Eggs

Mother Hannah Mary Nami Belle Rachael Tiara Sylvia
Eggs 4* 4 4 4 5 4 2*

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Starting things right

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What a way to start. Grant became ill with Sleep toxin. There were no bacteria so my best guess is that he got bitten or stung by something. He was cured before long and sent on his way.

Meanwhile, a bored Theo was given a toy to play with and an absent Cheddar had every norn in the mob talking about how much they disliked him.

Every time I passed, it seemed like all of the norns joined in telling me how much they loved me. As much as I appreciated the sentiment, my ears certainly didn’t.

Then, for the first time, I had an illness on my hand that scared me. Chase became ill with Glycotoxin. When I found him, he was eating weeds in Albia. I wasn’t sure if this is what caused it, but there was no bacteria. Geoff had no side effect to his bacteria and once he was disinfected, he was sent back into the halls.

I returned to Sylvia to see how she was doing and saw that she was starved for protein on the bridge. I carried her to some mushrooms and she gorged on the fruit without my advice. I felt like I’d bonded with her while she was young and I thought it was silly for me to worry about her fertility now. It turns out she’s just picky about her mates, at least as far as I can tell. It’s unfortunate that I might not get to use her’s or Hannah’s eggs in the next group of Norns, but if their babies carry this bad gait, I don’t have much choice. They’ll all be allowed to live on their lives in other games. I still like the idea of using the Norn Meso for this type of creature, but it’s hard for me to catch problems without Gene Compare.

She and Theo still seemed to enjoy each other’s company. I wasn’t expecting any more eggs from these two, especially in Sylvia’s advanced age, but I wasn’t exactly against the idea, either.

Minor infections became an after-thought and I became very effecient at treating colds in my norns. Nobody got sick for very long and I was starting to get bored again. Time for some planning.

I hit Ctrl R, opened up Garden Box to save before I broke the game and headed for the agent injector.

Veridia looked like a good candidate for creatures with bad genes and I could feel free to add them to this world whenever I wanted, so long as they got along with each other. It’d be something of a waste to send Sylvia and Hannah here at this point in their lives, though. They weren’t having any more children so there was no harm in letting them stay.

Their children would have their gaits tested before being welcomed into the next group and if they couldn’t walk, they would be sent to Veridia to stay. There are definitely worse places to end up.

Eggs

Mother Hannah Mary Nami Belle Rachael Tiara Sylvia
Eggs 4* 4 4 4 5 4 2*

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Albia

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Sylvia’s fertility situation got me thinking about Tiara. She’d been able to lay her first egg before and I wondered why she wasn’t getting pregnant anymore.

Turns out, she was exploring the desert.

I returned her to the Norn terrarium and encouraged her to push norn. Before I knew it, Theo was fathering two more eggs! To celebrate, he banged on his drum as I carried Tiara away to collect her eggs.

There were two more minor illnesses between Grant and Chase. I’m glad nothing serious has spread yet, to put it mildly.

Just then, and with a little encouragement, Tiara became pregnant with her fourth and final egg. I set it with the others.

I had a new idea, though. The ladies were all done laying eggs now, as long as they were able. I decided to split up the group to make things less crowded and moved half of them into Albia.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere. Sylvia became pregnant with Rave’s child! I got so excited. After this,  I got rid of the archways for now and decided to move everyone to Albia. Before I could finish , Rachael became pregnant again. At first, I thought it was a false positive since Norn Statistics didn’t show her as pregnant. Out came an egg a few minutes later and soon, she had 5 eggs to her name.

I double checked my population controls and they were still set properly.

With the eggs sorted (again) I reinstalled the Archways. The Norn Terrarium would lead to the incubation area and to the water mill, the desert to the volcano, the jungle to the swamp and the beach to, well, the beach. Now, the norns could all make it to and from the various parts of Albia without too much searching.

The age of my creatures was starting to show. My older norns have always taken to getting slap happy and this group was no exception. They already enjoyed slapping but now they acted like they had an excuse to do it.

Theo and Sylvia had an egg on the way now and Hannah had a little one on the way. Hannah’s odd limp started to look more appropriate on her old, pregnant body. After the girls laid their eggs, I stepped back and let the game run for a while. Hannah ate carrots on the forest floor while Tiara watched. Rave napped above and the mob meandered towards the volcano.

It wasn’t long before someone made their way back to the Shee Ark. Geoff became ill when he returned to the jungle. Once he was healed, he returned to the Norn Terrarium on his own and became ill again. I sprayed the door then let him wander again, hoping nothing else would disturb the peace.

I returned to Sylvia and found her limping like her sister Hannah. I eventually made the decision not to let their children carry these genes into following generations and marked her eggs for download-only, along with Hannah’s.

Eggs

Mother Hannah Mary Nami Belle Rachael Tiara Sylvia
Eggs 4* 4 4 4 5 4 2*

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Boundaries, be darned!

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Happy Birthday to me?

—

I took out the force fields since everyone was now an adult. Hopefully, this would encourage them to explore more! After I removed the force fields, there seemed to be a long period of silence. No pregnancies and no illnesses, anyway. I started to think that the force fields had carried disease on them. I disinfected one and set it in the medical bay to keep anyone from carrying out my tools.

It wasn’t very long before Belle and Chase both broke the silence by becoming ill. Once they were cured, I set them in the hallway. Cheddar had followed us out but once he saw Chase was fine, he headed back into the jungle.

I started to suspect there was something wrong with Chase, though I couldn’t be sure what. He was disobedient, and did things that just didn’t make sense to me. I wished that GeneCompare worked on my computer but I would probably have to check his genes later.

In the meantime, I checked on the other norns.

I caught Theo trying to “eat elevator” but a quick slap got him to join the others in eating and kiss-popping. Still no babies from Sylvia. Given the silence, I decided to check her fertility.

Her Arousal potential soared and fell and her oestrogen seemed to behave normally. Until timber came by. Her oestrogen rose and peaked again. I tried again, allowing her oestrogen to drop, but reintroducing Timber did nothing, just a coincidence. I put Tiara into the chamber this time, hoping to find an answer. Her cycle behaved the same way.

Eventually, I gave up trying to be scientific and just threw her into the Norn Meso with Cheddar and encouraged them to push norn. Every time her oestrogen was on the decline, I hoped for the best and sicked them on each other. It started to seem more and more like it just wasn’t meant to be.

I tried the same with Theo and Geoff but no amount of kiss-popping produced a baby. By now, it seemed like she was out of the ‘eggs race’.

I returned to Theo to find him starving himself near the bottom layer elevator. He kept saying “eat elevator” when I asked what he was doing. I grabbed his hand and sent him up the lift to get food and he snapped out of it.

I was also starting to notice old creatures in the game. Geoff, Chase and Hannah were all Old now and all three seemed less interested in kissing.

Eggs

Mother Hannah Mary Nami Belle Rachael Tiara Sylvia
Eggs 3 4 4 4 4 1 0

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