Generation 2 Chaos

I've been somewhat avoiding getting back into Creatures, especially the COBbling side, while I settled into a new job. I'm now feeling settled enough to dip my toes back in once in a while. I figured I'd play Creatures 2 a bit to get back into it, so I finished up teaching the last few second generation Norns. Magni was in the swamp, and Bjorn was by the calendar tree. The Grendel died with heavy metals poisoning, so I took pity on the new one and led it up out of the volcano in between teaching Norns. 

Everything was going smoothly. When I finished, I decided to bring Magni back to the incubator area, since he seemed pretty miserable in the swamp, and he soon passed away in his sleep. That left only Bjorn in the world, and he struck up a friendship with the Grendel in his final days. The two played with toys and scratched each other's ears for a while, before Bjorn finally passed away. 

I've noticed that in my world, creatures that die simply vanish on the spot without a death notification, cry, or animation, but the graveyard does record them, so whatever, I guess.

But with his passing, that left the world open to generation 2! I imported the gaggle of now-trained Norns and "encouraged" them to scatter - by which I mean I led groups of them up the elevator and hit the button on the random transporter. Eventually, most of them ended up near the calendar tree or the ledges overlooking the waterfall below, or the desert. The Mernorns, of course, were all gathered in the light ocean, and not yet being able to swim, they clustered at the bottom, next to the submarine bay.

Of course, being busy dispersing Norns around the world meant not paying close attention to any of them. I was glad that I had alerts set up for low ATP, because I did catch a couple of adventurous Norns who had jumped into the pond by the music room, who I promptly dropped off by the calendar tree and resuscitated.

Sadly, not all of my news is good. Another notification caught my attention, but I was surprised to see Baldur was not in the pond, but rather, stuck in the glass tube under the gelsemium. I quickly injected him with defibrillant, but he collapsed immediately. I repeated this several times, scrambling to figure out what was wrong while also trying to keep him alive, until I found the problem. Somehow, his heart had failed. There was nothing I could do for him, and I was left baffled. What had gone wrong? He had been fine while I'd been teaching him his words. 

I decided the mystery would have to wait. Baldur had been one of only three land-dwelling male Norns, so I had to replace his spot in the gene pool. I removed the remaining Norns who were in the incubator room (and also put several Mernorns back in the ocean - more on that later), and hatched Harek, a standard Hebe Norn. In hindsight I should have hatched an Emerald, since Baldur's appearance was completely Emerald, but it is what it is. 

Thankfully things calmed down long enough for me to teach Harek his words and send him out into the world, but they didn't stay calm for long. For one thing, I kept having to put the Mernorns back in the ocean after they launched themselves out with the unmovable spring toy. I'm not sure why the previous generation never yeeted themselves out of the ocean, but this group does, so I'm going to have to remove that thing.

Most notably, I got yet another low ATP notification, but this time it was from Hjalmar, one of the Mernorns. Obviously he wasn't drowning, but he still needed medical intervention. It took a bit of effort to get to him, since (to my disappointment) the male Mernorns all look pretty much the same and they were all clustered in one area. Once I was sure I had the right one selected, I injected him with defibrillant, and determined that he was starving. He seemed to have some trouble eating the sponges, so I removed and re-injected them into the world, and with some encouragement, I did eventually get him to eat. 

At this point I'd had enough chaos for one day. I was further irritated by the brokenness of the plants in Creatures 2 all throughout this, and now had another "remove this COB" task on my list for the spring in the sea, but most of all, Baldur's sudden heart failure bothered me. Looking back over his genetics, I immediately see the problem. 

Receptor

Gene 361: 116 Antigen 0

Organ: "Current Organ^(Heart)", Tissue: "<no tissue>", Locus: "Injury". Chemical: "Antigen 0".
Digital: Output = 0 + 50 if Signal > 16.

Organ: "Current Organ^(Heart)", Tissue: "<no tissue>", Locus: "Injury". Chemical: "Loneliness".
Digital: Output = 0 + 50 if Signal > 16.

I had massively underestimated how quickly this damage would build up. He literally died of loneliness! Poor thing!