That’s what I’m calling these from now on. “Soft resets.” They mean I’m starting the world over, but I’m using the same creatures as before. Like before, I won’t be using many agents.

bandicam 2015-01-03 11-30-53-490 copyTo start us off, I brought in Lydia. She looked so small and frail now that she’d aged. She was still scootin’ around, though! She made it pretty far by the time I started taking pictures.

For those who don’t remember, she’s the oldest norn of the group and the most successful mother thusfar.

bandicam 2015-01-03 11-30-55-177 copyNext, I brought in Aidan, who was still taller than an elevator call button, but he still stared dumbly at the call button for a while. To my relief, he finally slept, and made his way towards the exit of the house.

He’s the oldest male and Lydia’s primary mate. He’s fathered many of the next generation, including Bobby below.

bandicam 2015-01-03 11-31-16-430 copyBobby, a near spitting-image of his father Aidan, was next to arrive. He was more active out the gate than his father but didn’t leave the house.

Beside the eggs, Bobby is the only surviving child of Aidan and Lydia. Tragically, his siblings lives were taken by a plague that ran through.

bandicam 2015-01-03 11-31-29-442 copyFinally, Opal, who marched right out of the house to play with the spinning top. Aidan suddenly became active again as she ran by. What a relief!

Opal is the youngest norn, at 5 and a half hours old. She’s a first gen and our first Horse Norn mix so far and I find her very pretty.

With our norns in place, it was time to add some agents. First, I added the Encyclopaedia Nornica to educate future generations. Next, Grendel Friendly. Those poor guys get a bad rap from the developers. The Bee Hive Upgrade was next, along with Coconuts for the island. The Grendel Selector Button followed and then the Refrigerator. Lastly, I used the tickets to set up some favorite places. As I did that, both ladies became pregnant!

Lydia became pregnant with Bobby’s egg (don’t worry, Creatures don’t have the genetics to have problems arise from incest) and Opal with Aidan’s. I was so happy to see Aidan back in the running.

bandicam 2015-01-03 11-47-33-470 copyThat said, Lydia suddenly became sick. Her pregnancy was in progress but I had to focus on getting her fed, and she wasn’t making matters easy for me. She spent much of her time sleeping, which was good, but she still wouldn’t eat. I pleaded with her but still no luck.

I decided to leave her alone after a few smacks on the butt did nothing to help. She fell asleep and I hoped her egg would at least join us before she passed away. I could see Opal’s pregnancy proceeding normally through the Observation Kit but though her health dipped below 60, I couldn’t pry myself away from dying Lydia, whose health was in the low 20s.

She spun wildly and finally, when her health reached 17%, she ate her cheese. Her health dipped to 16% before it started to rise. 20, 25 then 30%, and then Opal laid her egg. I paused it and encouraged Lydia, who hadn’t laid her egg yet to eat more cheese. She laid her egg and her health continued to decline – she was still sick.

When her health dipped to 19% again something turned on in her brain and she was suddenly a great eater again. I’d hope she realized she was in dire straits and needed to eat. When her health poked above 50%, I decided to take a less active approach to healing her and took some time tending to Opal, who was recovering from her pregnancy.

bandicam 2015-01-03 11-59-32-534 copyI’d gotten her to eat a cheese after separating her from Aidan who, of course, acted like he wanted another egg! Lydia, meanwhile, was on the way up despite still being ill. It seemed she was doing a fine job taking care of herself in my short absence.

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I’d almost forgotten that I’d lost two norns. It’d been a month since I stopped blogging in favor of welcoming my husband home and seeing to a TON of obligations with his family. Maybe someday I can afford the trip home to see mine.

Anyway, I still had 4 norns – two male and two female but not one of them was younger than 4 hours. Opal, who was over 4 and a half hours old and Lydia who was over 7 and a half hours old were both starting to take longer and longer to recover from their pregnancies.

I took some time to teach the norns the rest of their vocabularies while I mulled over what to do about the population. I basically had two open slots now but I wasn’t in a rush to hatch those eggs just yet. I had just come back and wasn’t sure who was who or what I was doing.

A quick census was all I needed to come back, though.

Untitled-1 copyAidan was still stuck, staring at the lemon, Bobby was playing with the lifts, Opal was napping in the lower levels of the island and Lydia was playing with the jack in the box and having a generally good time, smiling even.

I then glimpsed at the eggs. I had a total of 6 of them and a gap after the first. Because of the gender ratio, I guessed that I’d made a slot available for a first gen egg! Sounds just like me, anyway.

I then remembered to turn on the observation kit and lo, it seems everyone was feeling just fine! I did have to feed Opal once when her health dipped below 60 but a honey pot had her fixed right up. She did sample the Campanula on the island but she fought off the effects fine on her own.

As I tried to figure out how to use the “Think” word from Encyclopaedia Nornica, Bobby made his way to Opal on the island. I kept them well fed but if I remember right, these two were such good breeders I didn’t think they’d need my help.

I checked on Lydia in the meantime and found she’d reached the next stage of life – she had grey on the tips of her ears and in the hair on her head. She seemed very tired but after a long nap, she was ready to pull mama. However, I’d noticed an issue. In making my rounds, I learned that Lydia, Aidan and Bobby weren’t experiencing hunger.

It was about then that I’d decided to export everyone and their eggs and start over. It seemed like I was starting to have all sorts of weird issues.

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All it took was finding the bees, apparently. She scooped up a honey pot and started chowin’ down. I was glad to see she was finally going to be OK!bandicam 2014-12-02 00-51-44-706 copy Look at that smug smile. It just says “I knew I’d be OK all along. Hah! Made you worry for nothing.”

As for Aidan, I don’t know what was wrong. My best guess is that something happened to his drives when he got sick. A closer look at the Norn genes showed that this sort of thing shouldn’t happen. Poor guy. I wish I could help him.

bandicam 2014-12-05 00-03-40-517 copyHe did manage to settle down long enough for a nap, though. That was a good consolation.

Meanwhile, Bobby and Lydia were playing near the jukebox. I eventually shut the thing off myself but they were otherwise just fine. Opal and the grendel were in the underwater observatory and our grendel friend was saying “food”. The empty honey cans gave me an idea what he wanted. Also, he’d apparently named himself “bpbp”.

Soon enough, I had another pregnancy notification. Even though she was nearly 7 hours old, Lydia showed no signs of slowing down when it came to laying eggs. Ths was good news. A 6th egg would be great to have in case a plague wiped out this population. That wasn’t likely with everyone spreading out the way they were, but a backup plan is always a smart idea.

bandicam 2014-12-05 00-30-55-454 copySpeaking of smart, I wanted to communicate better with my norns, so I got the Encyclopedia Nornica and visited each norn with each book. Strangely, visiting Aidan with the book seemed to cheer him up!

Somehow, Gavin became sick with Antigen 1 and, naturally, Babs didn’t want to leave his side . Gavin wouldn’t be separated from her to feed or to quarantine. He stubbornly stood his ground and eventually got Babs sick too, despite my best effors to prevent it, including using the sky tram.

They both coughed and cried in the company of the grendel, who also managed to make his way up to the bees nest. It seemed like there wasn’t much I could do. Even surrounded by honey they didn’t eat. Despite my best efforts, including slaps when Gavin got desperately ill, he wouldn’t eat. His health dropped to 7%.  When it dropped to just 6%, he passed away.bandicam 2014-12-05 00-40-57-599 copybandicam 2014-12-05 00-45-23-800 copyAfter that, I wasn’t in the least optimistic about Babs. I didn’t have time to mourn Gavin when I was trying to feed Babs who was difficult about eating anyway. Then, out of the blue, Opal became pregnant. I prepared myself as Babs’ health dipped to 9%, 8%, 7%, 6%, all the way down to a paltry 2% and then she said “sleep” and passed away. Eerie last words.

I suppose a macabre consolation to this is that she died doing what she loved – ignoring my pleas with her to eat food.

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Opal still had a long pregnancy going and Babs and Bobby were due to have an egg of their own soon. Eventually, I had to C-Section Opal (for my own sake) and then I could focus on her recovery.

bandicam 2014-12-02 00-21-50-635 copyBeing the father of so many unhatched eggs couldn’t have been easy, though. Gavin was easily beating out Aidan and he almost seemed very proud of this fact.

I checked on Aidan and found him in the trees, where I’d left him over an hour ago. His health hadn’t dipped or anything so I hadn’t needed to check on him specifically. I did lure him down and he was soon among the population again.bandicam 2014-12-02 00-25-57-005 copyHopefully, he would add to this collection of colorful eggs. They almost look like trinkets, and Lydia like their guard (or hoarder).

bandicam 2014-12-02 00-27-28-825 copySince I was checking on the boys anyway, I found Bobby by the deadly Death Cap mushroom. I quickly got him out with the lift but he insisted on playing with the lift to go back down anyway. Once he left on his own, I felt safe again.

I did have to divert my attention again, though. Babs refused to eat since laying her egg. Her health dipped into the upper 40s and I started nagging her to eat. She only stubbornly stomped back and forth below the waterfall. After stomping around more, she finally settled in the computer room where she napped. She still had her cheese with her but seemed to refuse to eat it.

I eventually gave up.

Aidan was faring much better, however. He’d hardly moved from his spot but was still doing fine. I guess staying still doesn’t take much energy at all. Our grendel did walk up and slap him as he passed, though. Entertaining though that was, it wasn’t very nice and it didn’t seem to do much at all to help Aidan get ambulatory again.

Unfortunately, it seemed like his body just froze. He could still grab things but the science kit showed that his drives hadn’t changed at all for a while. Restarting the game didn’t work but, somehow, a quick slap on the butt got him sorted. How odd!

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