Creatures at warp speed

 [Originally written July 3 2021]

Holy smokes, I’d forgotten how chaotic Creatures 3 is. I spent less than half an hour playing and a lot happened in that time.

I’ve been batting around the idea of making a Calm Balm vendor to help out with angry creatures, but once I downloaded the tools for C3 agent making and started ripping apart the scripts for the medicine dispenser and mini empathic vendor, I realized I might be in just a bit over my head. That’s not going to stop me of course, as I’m going to dive into a way-too-complex project in true Shee fashion, just as I did with genetics. But I did decide maybe I’ll do it another day. 

Instead, I returned to the Shee Ark and tried to recall what was going on, besides a lot of noise. Most of the Norns were either in the Woodland or the Meso. I had an egg in my inventory, and Daisy laid another moments after I logged in. Acacia was in the Jungle, sneezing, so I quarantined him, gave him a lemon, and spritzed him with pink fog, but as far as I could tell he didn’t have anything wrong with him, so I moved him to the Meso.

Willow, the grumpy Grendel, passed away, and soon a new Jungle Grendel hatched, who I named Hawthorn. I taught him the basics of appropriately venting his anger, introduced him to Sycamore, and saw that they seemed to be getting along well enough, so I left them to it and went to hatch the two eggs in my inventory. No sooner had I hatched them, though, than I was drawn away by a death notification. Sycamore had turned on his new Grendel friend and beaten him to death, so I swooped in to re-educate him with the training dummy. During this time, Amaranth got pregnant and laid her egg on the heat pad in the Meso, where it hatched.

I told you a lot happened in a short span of time. With three new hatchlings with genomes to analyze, I decided that was quite enough and closed the game.

First up is Peony, the daughter of Foxglove and Pine. All of her mutations were minor. One mutation was a variant change in a receptor gene that isn’t expressed anyway. One gives her slightly better boredom reduction from playing with toys. The gene that causes adolescent Norns to feel crowded by their parents (and thus want to move away from them) kicks in at the youth stage instead. She has two invisible alterations to pigment bleed genes. And her constitutive drive maintenance organ is slightly more vulnerable to damage.

Next is Maple, the son of Daisy and Spruce. He has two minor mutations and two noteworthy mutations. One of them is that the Stress emitter on floating recip-emit 15 has become tied to variant 1. If I’ve read the genomes right, that FRE has a receptor for the “hunger for protein” variant of the stress chemical. So what that means is, when hungry enough for protein, FRE 15’s stored value increases, and should cause the emitter to produce the generic stress chemical. In Maple, the stored value updates correctly, but the emitter only works for variant 1 creatures. Maple is variant 3. 

The other noteworthy mutation is a changed instinct, but Maple inherited his father’s “do not express” flag on this gene, so it won’t affect him.

Instinct

Gene 0854: Push portal when hurt

When… “Tissue 2: noun” “It is <ID 34>^(portal)” …and you “Activate 1 it^(push)”: -0.306 Pain.

When… “Tissue 1: verb” “verb: Default (quiescent)” …and you “Activate 1 it^(push)”: -0.306 Pain.

This, of course, is utter nonsense. The verb lobe handles creatures hearing verbs being spoken, and I don’t think the default/quiescent verb can ever actually do anything in this lobe. If, somehow, a Norn with this mutation dreams that someone tells him to do the default verb, and he pushes something, his dream tells him this will reduce pain. I don’t expect that bizarre nonsense instinct will have any real effect, so this is more noteworthy as the lack of the “go through a portal when hurt” instinct. But even that means nothing for Maple, since he and his father both have this gene flagged as “do not express” anyway.

Finally, there’s Sunflower, the daughter of Amaranth and Sequoia. She is very slightly more susceptible to muscle toxin, and has three invisible changes to pigment bleeds. Otherwise she has no noteworthy mutations, but she sure is cute!