The great migration

[Originally written September 3 2020]

With a plan in place, I loaded up Creatures 1 and set to work exporting all the Norns onto a USB in the KVM for easy transfer to the other computer. This left Greg rather suddenly the only creature left in Albia – and I couldn’t resist spending a little quality time with him before proceeding. 

Between bad lessons learned from the problematic food COBs in the base game and a few accidental slaps at the worst moments, Greg needed some one on one attention to relearn his previous good habits. I tried to get him to sample some of Jessica’s improved carrots, but he seemed to prefer the honey pot – and I can’t say I blame him! I don’t care for carrots, either. 

I also had to help him rediscover his love of the ball, which he’d been scared off of by a few smacks that were aimed at troublesome Norns (or even meant to be tickles for Greg himself – Grendels’ hunched pose can be problematic). I did eventually get him to sample a carrot, and then he enjoyed some downtime by the lemon trellis, where he demonstrated his restraint by resisting the siren call of the weeds. But looking was fine, so long as he didn’t touch!

Then it was into the kitchen to play with the top and take a nap by the fire. He seemed to be settling back into living a happy life! It must have been nice having all the toys and food to himself and not having gaggles of Norns tripping over him for once! Enjoy it while it lasts, Greg; there are 8 eggs lined up to be introduced to the world soon.

So I left Greg to his nap and moved to Creatures 2. I suppose I should probably talk about my world setup before I dive into the storytelling, so here it is:

• Frog Norn improvements! I have downloaded the lasting frogs COB, but I didn’t inject it – I simply hatch my Frog Norns (who use my new sprites).
• Sprite fixes to remove the extra tails on Ron, Forest, and most importantly Purple Mountain Norns, and to fix the male PMN ears and eyes.
• A pump fix to reduce accidental wallbonking by adding a pipe to move the water fountains a little farther away from the edge of the pond.
• Modified carrots, potatoes, nuts, and tomatos, in the same vein as Jessica’s C1 carrots – hide them when the creatures can’t eat them!
• And of course a host of updates and patches that ship with the Albian Years, as well as a few official COBs like the pufferfish and such.

And of course, one does not simply start a new world without a naming scheme! I batted a few around and ultimately settled on Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit names. Ironically, my first task was to get something out of a volcano – or alternatively, and perhaps more appropriately, getting Smaug out of the mountain. See, that was what I’d named the Grendel, and I knew time was of the essence; Grendels tend not to do well in this game due to living their lives in the radioactive volcano, so I wanted to get Smaug out before it did too much damage. I swooped in with the laptop, lured him to the lift, and brought him to the surface for an impromptu lesson on the most important vocabulary: “come hand.” 

He also learned “eat” and “fruit” in the process, although he refused to actually eat the coconut (ok, “masham berry” – it’s a coconut as far as I’m concerned) he picked up on the way.

Eventually, though, we made it to the Calendar Tree in decent health, where I taught him some more words and got him to eat some honey. Mission success! I left Smaug to his devices and checked briefly in on the other native resident of this world, Smeagol the Ettin. He was doing fine, so it was time to begin the migration!

I decided to start with only the girls. The point of this whole migration, after all, is to let this generation die off naturally (which wouldn’t happen in Creatures 1) so their offspring with fixed genomes can inherit the old world, and the Creatures 2 Norns can eventually succeed them in the new one. As such I don’t want my imported C1 creatures reproducing in C2 – there’s no way to back-port their offspring and I don’t want them taking over this world. The simplest way to prevent breeding is to separate the sexes. So I ushered Beth and Erika into the world! 

I must have exported Beth right on the cusp of aging (or perhaps she was somehow stuck in adulthood in C1), since she came into this world a little more haggard than I remembered her – and considerably purpler! Oh, C2 pigmentation genes, I really don’t understand you at all. Erika was also affected, looking quite blue – but hardly sad, as she was thrilled by the new invention called a water pump! 

One of the words I taught Smaug had been “weather,” and boy did he turn out to be a bit obsessed. He ended up following clouds across the bridge and into the desert, and I can hardly get him to pay attention to anything else when there’s a weather phenomenon nearby. What a character! I’ve never been too crazy about the C2 Grendel, but  I must admit I’ve gotten rather attached to this guy.

As I cycled through the creatures, I found Smeagol attempting to enter the dangerously radioactive volcano – thankfully I got there just in time and slammed the door in his face. But he took to just hanging out in the door area behind Pitz’s doghouse, where there was nothing for him to eat – and where nothing would grow. I left him a honey pot on the swamp bridge, but I feared that wouldn’t be enough. 

So I decided to plant the red mushrooms from the Life Packs in his chosen area. With enough of them, you can raise the inorganic nutrients in the soil high enough to start growing plants, and eventually I was able to turn the area into a thriving garden! 

The only trouble was it was nearly impossible to click on anything in there without accidentally uprooting the vital red mushrooms. Oh well.

I went back to the Norns and found that due to the increased number of object types in Creatures 2, the girls were actually missing a lot of vocabulary! So I gave them some lessons, which led to an amusing misunderstanding where Beth evidently thought she was supposed to bow to the fruit! The Norns did surprise me though, in that they’d learned more than I’d expected. Maybe Doozer-Sensei is also responsible for teaching them to bow!

For some reason the Norns were content to not leave the incubator area. I’m pretty okay with this, especially given where I found the next creature! I was quite shocked to find Smaug in the ocean, but very thankful that I’d injected the pufferfish into the world! Without it, it would only have been the sheer luck of my timing that could have saved him. Unfortunately the fish ejected him from the water on the volcano side, so I had to call him back down to the boat to cross back to the tree – but not before he grabbed a bat and, I can only assume from its disappearance, ate it! No, Smaug, that’s how you get Coronavirus!

Meanwhile, Erika and Beth were having regular slap fights that I was always too slow to intervene in; I don’t want to smack a Norn if I’m not sure they’re actually responsible for the slapping I’m hearing. This didn’t seem to bother Erika any, as she was happy as a clam with all the new toys in this world.

But as much as I’d like to end on that happy note, while cycling through creatures I happened to note that Smeagol’s life chemical was very low. They sure don’t live very long, do they? I’ve decided that to avoid using up a ton of names on them, all the Ettins will be named Smeagol, just like this one. Anyway, I’m generally not an Ettin person, but I thought it fair to stay with him in his final moments and make sure he was comfortable. He took one last nap, moved over to his garden, and curled up with Pitz for the final time among the greenery I’d brought to his little corner of the world. Rest in peace, little guy.