Third time's the charm, right?

 [Originally written September 13 2020]

I had to briefly go install Creatures Exodus on my testing VM in order to recover the unfixed man-o-war file as I had apparently lost the original, but after that and a great amount of world setup (and discovering that you can in fact airlock the noisy C3 floating cameras without crashing the game), I was ready for a fresh start with the CFF 2017 genomes.

I started by ushering two baby Grendels into the world – watched over by none other than Caliban, fresh off the import boat. You didn’t think I would leave him behind, did you? He may not be CFF, but as I won’t be breeding the Grendels, his different genome is a non-issue. Willow and Aspen greeted me and each other with a hail of punches – ah, the sounds of Grendels! Such magnificent creatures.

I taught them with the dummy as well as I could but I think the true key to keeping them around Norns is to introduce them early and keep a close eye on them. 

So I welcomed the first two Norns into the world: Ash the Bengal and Lilac the Chichi. So far these Norns seem to be doing a better job of taking care of themselves, although it took a little while for them to get the hang of eating.

This world, however, doesn’t seem to be so great for the Ettins. Caliban wandered into the Jungle and killed one (as I only dampened his genes that cause aggression against Norns) and another collapsed shortly after due to a very nasty disease (which I promptly coated in pink fog; I don’t want that concoction of glycotoxin, sleep toxin, fever toxin, and multiple antigens spreading!)

I’m beginning to wonder if stalking is a Banshee Grendel thing. Cleo used to creep on the Norns: not touching them, just following them and staring at them, and I caught Willow doing the same a couple times. 

Aspen, on the other hand, took straight to attacking them, which is precisely why I watch him near-constantly, ready to intervene with a well-aimed smack and pull the Norns to safety if needed. 

It’s made him a rather unpopular fellow, but I’m determined to keep these creatures together. I have kept Norns and Grendels together in harmony before, and I will do it again. The dislike is apparently mutual, although some members of the population seem willing to forgive and forget, and embraced my attempts to welcome the Grendels into the community. Others aren't shy about their opinions.

I caught Caliban wandering around on top the piranha trapdoor and eying the button ominously, so I deemed it wise to pick him up and take him back to the Woodland. 

He soon reached old age; he had, of course, lived a good deal of his life in my first world, so it was actually surprising he had taken this long. I will be sad to see him pass on, but I’ve been strongly considering immortalizing him as a mascot of sorts if I ever do get around to turning this journal into a blog.

Note: That's him up on the banner! Though he might be cut off if you're on mobile.

I remembered to turn on some of the Creatures 3 teleporters this time around – they so often sink into the background and I forget they’re there. Willow took advantage of this to get away from the bothersome Norns and found himself a nice spot in the Desert.

Meanwhile, in the Woodland, I was caught off-guard by a special proclamation! I have never actually seen creatures use the word “love” (or “hate” for that matter), only “like” and “dislike.” And certainly I’ve never seen a reference to any feelings one way or the other about me! It’s almost enough to make me consider teaching them to call me by name… but I feel like that would trip me up more than them!

And Lilac certainly seemed to be full of love in general, as she soon welcomed the first egg to the world – Ash apparently wanted nothing to do with the responsibility, as he took off running from her soon after! 

I am not rolling dice for the time being – I’ve decided I’ll start rolling a four-sided die if certain Norns get out of hand, but for now I want to see what the reproduction rate on this new genome is like. As for the egg itself, I stashed it in my inventory for hatching and genetic analysis next time! This genome supposedly prevents some of the nastier mutations I’ve encountered such as immortality and pose gene changes, so hopefully we won’t see so many crippling mutations from here on out.