Mixed Nuts Screenshot Dump

I'm not shy of labeling myself as a norn breeder. Keyword being norn, not ettin or grendel. It's always been about the norns for me, in all their infinite variety, personality, and cuteness. But after chatting with a few people in IRC and DS, I was inspired to try a mixed world-- containing all three varieties of creatures, ideally living in some form of harmony.

This screen-shot intensive post (warning, I mean it-- this one has a lot of images) documents the first few hours of my experience with this handful of creatures.

It started simply enough -- I hatched six creatures: Gon, a male Bruin Norn, Okt, a male Atavist Ettin, Kona, a female Jungle Grendel, Finn, a male C2 Grendel, Kyla, a female Chameleon Ettin, and Sepenta, a female Draconian Norn.

Suddenly I had six babbling babies running around the Capillata.

Okt and Finn almost immediately saw a kinship in their graphic style, and took a teleporter to the workshop together to gaze in awe at the training dummy.

Meanwhile, Gon and Sepenta's "run grendel" instincts made themselves quite apparent as poor Kona tried to make some new friends. They were just creatures being creatures, I thought.. this won't be much different than any other world I've run.

But when I looked away for literally five seconds to check on Okt and Finn, I was shocked to see a notice appear telling me that... Gon had died.

Kyla had come out of hiding and apparently managed to beat the helpless norn to death without any warning at all. Maybe this was going to be more complicated than I thought...

Quite on time, I received a few creatures through the warp from Papriko-- a female banshee named Areguzandora, and very nice gargoyle/chichi cross, who I named Skai.

Alright, I told myself. This isn't a docked world for nothing. It's time to migrate everyone into their own space. Despite the aggression of the ettin, I decided the grendels would be first to go. I just didn't trust them.

Sadly, the migration was not without its consequences either. Areguzandora mysteriously died after the journey, though not before expending her last bit of energy to walk to the aquatic meso. Perhaps she knew she was dying and wished to go to a peaceful place.

Really, none of the creatures wanted to stay in their assigned areas. Kona took a liking for little Skai and began following her around. I kept a wary eye on them both.. I do not have much trust in grendels, but I let them do as they pleased.

But I had made another mistake. Sepenta the Draconian was complaining of cold, so I led her into the desert meso, hoping she would find it more to her liking. But my heart froze as I noticed yet another death notice on the screen.

Kyla had murdered her second creature, and if I had anything to do with it, it would be her last.

As much as I wanted to beat her to death then and there (see how she likes it..), I managed to control my rage and instead, decided she would simply be imprisoned until she was properly trained.

I spent a good 15 minutes or so slapping her whenever she hit the norn dummy and tickling her for pushing it. She was a stubborn creature, but she would either learn or stay in that workshop for the rest of her life.

Skai, in the meantime, was growing up. I considered hatching her a mate, but with Kona still sticking close to her, I decided I didn't want to interfere with that strange but charming relationship.

Deep in the shadows of the Shee ark, between the point of docking, Finn begins to hatch a devious plan...

Okt hasn't been mentioned in a while. He's been happily living on that little hillside in the norn meso, munching carrots and generally enjoying life.

Skai and Kona continue to spend every waking moment by each other's side...

...Sleeping moments, too!

Finn, noticing the crobster dispensor, considers the possibilities..

Kyla remains imprisoned, but is starting to do a lot better.

What's this? Skai wandering alone without Kona? And in the jungle, no less? It seems... she was suddenly seized with a burning desire for knowledge.

Another death notice. Wow, I'm worse at raising creatures than I thought... Okt, our happy carrot-eating ettin, suddenly drops dead from ATP Decoupler. Never even saw it coming... sigh. So sad. I'm sorry Okt. I'll get better at this.

Crobsters... more crobsters! I gotta have more crobsters!

Humming sounds backed by dramatic instrumentals signifying the passing on of wisdom.

No, I don't think he ever stopped staring at the screen throughout this entire crobster-raising venture.

When Skai returned from her vision quest, filled with new knowledge and speaking in a language Kona did not understand, the poor grendel (I can only assume) felt quite left out and hurt, and began beating Skai in a rage.

Skai moved back, but Kona pursued viciously-- wait, is that the medical bay teleporter?

"Now look what you've done! How are we supposed to find our way home now?" Kona can only express her disgust with the one word she learned from Skai's foreign babbling:

And with that, it seems the friendship has been torn.

...Meanwhile, Finn's crobster army seems to be revolting against him.

(I feel the need to mention that I'm not interacting with these creatures at all-- I'm only watching them. If I was interacting though, this would have been a great time to create a meeting between the bickering pair and the crobster army of doom..)

Kona and Skai both made it back to the norn meso... and while they ignored each other for a while, they slowly started to warm up to each other again.

I guess sometimes friends just can't stay mad at each other.

Kyla, while being technically "free" now, still has yet to leave the workshop. It must be the sheer number of all those strange and wonderful machines to push.

Finn falls into a bit of a depression after his plan to take over the ship with crobsters falls through. I really don't know where all those crobsters went-- it's possible he ate them all.

In the meantime, I hatched a male guppy ettin named Flail; in the event that Kyla ever leaves the workshop, she could use a companion of her own kind. In the meantime, he's chilling out in the DS meso.

Enter Etincelle, a very pretty creature from the warp who was eagerly welcomed onto the shee ark.

At this point I was a little tired of all the creatures speaking gibberish, but as I really don't find much joy in instant vocabulary and don't have the time to hand-teach them all, I worked a bit of CAOS magic and modified the robot toys to teach nearby creatures a random word when they push it. Like a toy version of the C2 doozers. Finn seemed to take some comfort in learning new words like, "ill". (Hey, is that a surviving crobster?)

(Then just for fun, I gave them all randomized pigments. Leave it to me to pause my PERFECTLY NORMAL creatures world just to start scripting something wild.)

At this point I decided it would be best to guide poor Finn out of his ex-crobster lair and into his natural habitat, where he stared awkwardly at the mushrooms like he had never seen one before, then promptly devoured them.

While performing a routine bacteria/toxin check, I noticed Kona was split from Skai again, and was aggressively slamming around a gadget. Did she say something to make her angry? Something like, "go take a bath, you bacteria-infested lizard!"? Luckily she wasn't at all sick, just carrying the bacteria, so a few sprays and she was clean again.

Meanwhile, Finn wanders out of the jungle again (complaining of homesickness the whole time), and into the desert, where he takes joy in setting off the volcano.

And this is where we leave it for now. So far it's been quite a crazy trip. I really wasn't expecting a mixed world to hold this much drama, but it's had far more than its share of both touching and depressing moments.

Who knows what the future holds for Mixed Nuts?