Hera: Everyone Dies (or so it feels)

Man, this is going from exciting to just...depressing.

First, we lost Loorea. She had gotten separated from her trio of traveling friends and with a still upsettingly high score, passed away alone in the desert. It really is a shame she never got to pass on her genes to the future; she had so many interesting visual traits, even if she was...well... not of the highest intelligence.

Then, I noticed Stella's score had become even worse, and, desperate to save her, I dropped her back in the barrel room for some intensive "eat seed" training. But she didn't even survive that. Looking at her drives, it's really very sad.. she generally wasn't too bad at taking care of herself, but she just couldn't understand where starch came from. At least she got her genes into Rishi, who passed them on through her genetic children, so Stella will still live on, in one form or another.

But life continued on in other parts of Albia. Rishi continued her journey throughout the world, and Lilac followed, through every elevine and door-vine. They didn't split up until they reached the incubator room. No one had walked those halls since Amina had when she was first brought into that world. Rishi chose to stay there, resting in the grasses and munching on the apples, while Lilac chose to go to the surface, heading west towards the island.

 It came to my attention that maybe I've been a little biased against Lilac, considering her harsh treatment of Rishi. Her score was edging higher, and I hadn't really put much effort into helping her out. Lilac and Amina were the only two of the original six left, and Lilac deserved as much help as the others (Not that Amina needed any help while her score sat at a record 35).

Luckily, she didn't seem as affected by aging as the other creatures were-- I remember it took her over two hours just to get her to adult, and now, at a little over four hours, she retained her adult status.

I set about giving her some food and encouragement, and she made her way past the island, across the sea, and climbed up the tree to the platform PinkiePie once lived on. There, she was joined by Kindi, who had just turned adolescent. These norns grow up so fast!

With Lilac well on her way to a more acceptable score, I felt a little better. Of course, with so many deaths in the world, the script fought to catch up, and soon Rishi was carrying another splice of herself and Amina. But this one wasn't going to stay in the world. After naming her Kitty, I went ahead and exported her. Maybe I'll reimport her later, or save her for something else, but I don't think this world needs yet another Amina/Rishi cross, as genetically promising as they may be. I want to keep some diversity in this world-- but genetically strong diversity, still. I've got a bit of a plan to accomplish this, but it's going to take a bit of time!