Nothing Exciting, Part 29

I had been getting a bunch of these concerning errors again, and a few world crashes later I decided maybe I should move worlds before things went totally pear-shaped. After exporting everyone, out of utter curiosity I tried hatching the other cloned egg, just in case. What emerged was a plain generation 1 Hebe norn, which, while hilarious and strange, wasn't something I needed in my world right now. I opted to leave him out of this round. The inner workings of C2 are such a mystery to me.

While I've been running these world with very few updates, patches, or cobs, I decided to get a little crazy with this one and see how it affected my gameplay. I made note of everything I injected, so hopefully if something goes wrong I can narrow things down. But I'm not sure why, for the life of me, I thought injecting the fishing update was important when I was going to inject the ocean bridges anyway. Oh well.

I imported Ben first, and realized right away that I wanted to take a little more time to teach him before importing the others-- a rare moment of privacy rife with educational opportunity.

I spent several minutes with him, teaching him words, how to eat, and so on until his only drive was a mild loneliness. He was such a happy baby, or so it seemed.

It wasn't moments after I imported Colm that the exhausted expression fell over Ben's face and he began to regret expressing any desire for companionship at all. Socializing is hard work.

Colm wonders why his arms are suddenly attached to the corners of his mouth. These are the mysteries.

I spent a lot of time in the beginning making sure Ben loved the hand, in hopes that I could persuade him more easily to follow me later. As Ben is professing his adoration, Colm, who was headed towards the lift, suddenly turned around and felt that he had to say something.

Even as he naps, Ben murmurs his wishes. But Colm seems to firmly disagree with such an idea. I might need to take some time to train him too. 

I didn't forget about Eric, even though I don't think I've really mentioned him since he was born. When I imported him I moved him up to the desert so as to not crowd the other two.

I really wanted to teach him some words, but he kept running away every time I sat down the laptop to play with something. At least he has a healthy desire for exploration.

I decided to import Amber and Adam together onto the bridge. Adam seems a little bit annoyed by all this moving around.

I initially imported Doreen to the other side of the bridge, but those legs won't stay still! I'm sure she'll meet the others soon.

Annd.. oh dear, it looks like Eric just figured out what happens when you push weather with Clouds of the Gods injected! That update alone is sure to make things more interesting. I hope this world stays stable long enough to see how these updates impact things.

Nothing Exciting, Part 28

It's kind of silly that I didn't try to pair these two off in the first place. As both first generation norns, they've been though... quite a lot together. And now they finally get to spend some time alone in an island paradise, surrounded by not-coconuts....

Napping on the beach...

It's a pretty romantic setting, really. I think these two belonged together all along.

...And then Colm shows up. Fed up with a solitary life in the desert, his tiny little legs took him halfway across the world to meet others of his kind. The first thing he does is insult Adam, a mischievous grin on his face.

Adam is a bit annoyed as this youngster intruding on their romantic getaway, but Amber doesn't seem to mind.

In fact, she is enamored with the child, looking him over closely. For whatever reason, she has always been fascinated by the little ones. Meanwhile, Adam starts to wonder if he should just get used to his old lonely life with ants for company.

Doreen seems to have acclimated well to her underground life. She's made up with the doozer, avoided the deathcap, and is just overall having a nice time exploring.

...That dog is a little scary though. She considers taking the lift.

Colm show some interest in the love potion. Adam knows he's much too young for that, but I don't think he cares. "Sure kid, drink up., whatever. See what happens. Life is all about the experiences you have, right?"

But this whole time, Amber was hiding her little secret. As she lays her blue and white marbled egg alone, she wonders if Adam will ever know.

I grabbed the egg, hoping to have a little time to teach this one myself. It's another boy, autonamed Ben. With three male children now, I'm still feeling pretty uncertain about this world's future, but at least the population is growing.

Nothing Exciting, Part 27

Hey guys, meet the new baby! Her name is Erin and--

...or, well, I guess not. At least this crash was totally unrelated to the egg.

Restarting the game and trying again yielded a male baby instead, autonamed Eric. While it would have been nice to have a girl, at least we get to keep this one. Or at least I hope so.

Meanwhile, Doreen is having a bit of a disagreement with the local doozer.  

She grabs the punchgun and threatens to send him flying if one more word comes out of his pointy little snout.

Later, the ettin then encourages her to try a local delicacy! Luckily for Doreen, eating anything was never her strong suit. 'Get' though? She's a pro.

Colm is still learning that there are some things in life he can doo, and some, sadly, that he cannot. Still, nothing can prevent him from trying.

Meanwhile, Amber and Adam take a lazy nap on the bridge.

Amber acknowledges the existence of the love potion, but refuses to take it. 

If they're gonna do this, they're gonna do this the old-fashioned way. 

Nothing Exciting, Part 26

Foo indeed.We're down to three adult norns in the world and the fate of the population is in their tiny paws.

Time for drastic measures.

While the trio seems very interested in passing the weird bottle around and chatting about it, no one takes even as much as the tiniest sip. I am not sure why I even thought this was going to work. 

Oh well. On the other side of the world, Colm clutches a hunk of cheese in his paw and stares at the laptop learning machine. There's so much he does not know. But perhaps right now that is for the best. The ettin and grendel that used to mill around up here are suspiciously absent.

When I tab back to the others, Doreen has.... jumped into the volcano, apparently either giving up all hope of repopulating, or is expecting and is hoping some radiation-induced mutation will give her next offspring an edge.

Well, she's not pregnant, so it's probably not that.

I shoo'd her off into the swamp-- the last thing she needs is radiation poisoning right now. She looks more exhausted than ever, poor thing. The task of repopulating your world is enormous, and I don't blame her for just wanting a quiet escape from it all.

Colm seems to have mistaken the computer's attempt to teach 'food' as instead a request for food. He offers his cheese to the glowing screen, hoping perhaps this will be the start of some kind of ...friendship?

Meanwhile, Doreen found the ettin. More than likely, this is a different ettin by now. I specifically do not enable the grendel/ettin selector because my hands are full enough with the norns. I also kind of like the idea of having these passing mysterious strangers whom we never really get to know.

After a long, hard day of learning what a toy is, Doreen falls asleep next to the deathcaps. Thankfully, she is smart enough (so far) to not eat them.

Meanwhile, Amber and Adam plod along in their tired little lives, ignoring the love potions scattered about. Good for them, really. They don't care about the world population. They just want to live their lives and do what they want. Really, I ought to just let things be. Let them enjoy the time they have.

While they are doing that, I'm going to try to hatch Doreen and Adam's egg again. Just one of them this time, since the second seems to be the one that crashes the game.

Nothing Exciting, Part 25

Doreen seemed to not want to lay her egg for some reason. Even after injecting this cob, she squatted down but nothing came. Eventually I decided to use the remove function to create the egg manually.

I am not sure what went wrong here-- maybe I accidentally clicked twice? Two eggs appeared. The new parents seem very.... concerned about this development.

Baxter tries to comfort Doreen. "Don't worry-- you'll be such a great mom!" he encourages her enthusiastically.

Doreen is unsure. Very unsure.

Her uncertainty was with good reason. Don't get attached to this baby, as gorgeous as it is, because as soon as it hatched, a series of errors caused the game to crash.

My best guess is that both of those eggs contain the same genome, and maybe the game freaked out when it tried to create a creature with a genome that already existed in the world.

When I restarted the game, I decided to set those eggs aside for now and instead hatch an egg that's been sitting around for a while. With Bambi sadly deceased, I hope that little baby Colm can keep the Pixie genetics alive a while longer. (Who am I kidding though-- none of these creatures should be breeding.)

Just as I'm trying to teach this newborn his first words, Baxter suddenly, with no apparent reason, passes away.

Geez, this world might be on its last leg. I guess on the upside, there is now approximately zero chance of getting any more pure goldie babies.