Pax Albiana

Has it really been nearly two years since I played Creatures 1? Strange how so much time can pass, and yet when I return, it feels like it's been maybe a week. Anyway, when I started the game, pretty much everyone was clustered on the island, so I decided to move some Norns around. Some were more reluctant to leave than others; Cassius continually tried to wrest control of the mover from me to return to the island, but I eventually got him over to the beehives. Eudocia, Gaius, and Augustus were boated over to the Grendel Tree without complaint, and Aurelia rode over to the lighthouse without any fuss either. Eventually only Oriana remained on the island.

Eudocia, who has been quite good about taking care of herself - sleeping and eating on her own - laid an egg in the Temple, surrounded by a gaggle of Norns (and the Grendel), a few of whom made a couple attempts to go down to the deathcap, which I swiftly intervened in.

Medical Monitor is the Best

I decided to finally spend some time in my recently-restarted C3/DS world, and boy did the Medical Monitor make a difference. Now able to stamp out diseases before they permanently harmed my creatures, I could focus on other things, like my fool's errand of trying to get the Grendels and Hardman Norn to get along. 

They still require a lot of oversight, but another feature of the Medical Monitor means I don't have to constantly hover, at the very least. In addition to toxins and diseases, it also alerts me to creatures in pain, allowing me to swoop in and break up fights. No longer can they get away with beating each other as long as I'm not looking! The Hand Knows All!

Hitting the Reset Button, Again

So, after adding the Medical Monitor and X-ray agents to my world and finding that all the Norns had been rendered sterile, I realized I'd need to start over. It was just a question of how much so - introduce generation 1.5, or full reset? I hatched the existing eggs and found that the population was... skewed. This wasn't going to work. And since I decided to also add the agent that removes seasonal gender bias, I'd need to remake the world again. As such, I've decided to put the second gen creatures up here for download. As before, they come with a mutation report as well as their parents' and their own genome file.

Medical Mysteries

 Eden is once again beset by one mysterious problem after another, and I cannot for the life of me tell what's wrong. I was streaming this session for some friends and may have forgotten to take as many screenshots as normal. Oh well!

First, I suddenly lost Meadowglade the Treehugger and Berrycove the Bengal Norn, for no apparent reason. In hindsight, I have a screenshot of Meadowglade shortly before his death that shows high levels of injury, thanks to a sickness I was slow to cure. I imagine Berrycove suffered the same fate.

I also caught Streamivy the Grendel hanging out in the airlock, and pulled him out before he could jettison himself into space, much to the amusement of those watching the stream. I then picked up a trout from the Woodland to airlock and show them what happens when something gets airlocked. The fish disappearing in a puff of smoke kicked off a round of hysterical laughter!

All around Albia

After double checking that I'd already taught Aurelia all her vocabulary, I injected my better bees and beelacanth updates into the world, and set about planting the flowers in the jungle and near the lighthouse. Then, as usual, I looked over the Observation Kit and went to tend to whoever had the lowest life force - in this case, Julia, at 30%. She was in a small cluster of Norns on the island, so I broke the group up and shuttled them over to the mainland, but scattering Norns is easier said than done. Making matters worse, at around 20% life force, she got pregnant! Thankfully, I was finally able to get her to eat something, and once she started, she scarfed down several more pieces of cheese.

Meanwhile, Verania was also pregnant and hovering at low life force, but there was nothing I could do about that, so I instead turned my attention to Eudocia, the one Norn still on the island, whose life force was now the lowest on my list. She, thankfully, didn't put up much resistance when I asked her to eat. It's amazing how some creatures are so difficult and others so easy to work with. After that, I made my rounds. Verania laid her egg in the treehouse, then took the cable car over to the windmill. Julia laid her egg in the temple at almost the same time, while Augustus looked on. Cassius played in the garden, and Secundus rode the raft back and forth underneath.

In with the new

My typical routine for C3/DS is the launch the game, launch the biochemistry set (as a substitute for the observation and health kits), and then proceed with gameplay. I have installed Advanced Protective Tub to automatically name creatures using a custom catalogue, but apparently the biochemistry set didn't like that. Sure enough, on line 2358 is "Man-o\\\'-war", and the biochem kit was apparently choking on that escaped apostrophe. I removed it, changing the line to simply say "Man-o-war", and everything was fine. It's not like I'm going to be using that word list anyway, as I've designed the Nature Names catalogue to generate names like Mistwillow or Dawnbrook.

Then it was time to test that name catalogue out with a round of new 1st generation creatures. I hatched ten breeds of Norn that I want in the world - I have all of them, but I'm just not a fan of Bruin, Civet, or Harlequin Norns, and while I like Toxic Norns well enough, it's a huge hassle to keep and interbreed them with other Norns. I then introduced the Grendels (which seem to now be only Jungle Grendels; perhaps it's fixed now). I had to regenerate one name because it happened to come out as Cedarcedar (and yes, Moonmoon is a potential name from this list too), but otherwise I'm quite happy with the results.

Out with the old

After much thought, I made a decision. All eggs would be stashed in my inventory, and once the existing population died out, I'd hatch the eggs and put them up for download on the blog. The world itself would be the same, but I'd be starting from scratch with the creatures.

Fig, Acacia, Spruce, and Sequoia were hanging out in the Woodland, in a very loud feedback loop of opinions about each other. Maple and Sycamore had extracted themselves from the noise and gone to the Jungle for a respite. Daisy had similarly moved to escape the noisy boys and was chilling on the bramboo terrace. Amaranth, Carnation, and Tulip were in the Meso with Dogwood the Grendel, while his brother Coconut was off doing his own thing somewhere.

Alas, my comments about the Grendels behaving surprisingly well were apparently tempting fate, because I was a split second too slow to intervene when Dogwood unexpectedly turned on poor Amaranth and killed her. At least he had the decency to look like he felt guilty about it, something he didn't bother to replicate when he killed Tulip. Carnation, however, with her Hardman blood, could hold her own and gave him what-for when he picked a fight with her. In the moments after that, I got another death notification for Fig, though I'm not sure of the cause in that case.

Paradigm Shift

 [Originally written July 5 2021]

Yesterday I spent the day cobbling together my first C3 agent, and I’m quite proud of it! This smart vendor can only vend so many calm balm potions in a given amount of time, represented by an energy meter, and won’t vend if too many are already nearby. If the conditions are right for vending, though, it vends on push from creature or hand, or if a creature complains of anger (using code very similar to the empathic vendor). Gone are the days of hitting gadgets and toys to deal with anger; now these potion makers are distributed around the ship!

Download the Calm Balm Vendor

And not a moment too soon. As I placed the new vendors, there was a flurry of noise and activity among the creatures. I hatched a replacement Hawthorn (wasn’t gonna waste a perfectly good name) I injected with the genetics kit, as my egg layer seems to still be spitting out both kinds of Grendel. Oh well.

In the chaos, sadly, several Norns were lost. Ash and Lilac succumbed to old age, while Birch, Peony, and Sunflower were killed in the midst of attempting to transition into a potion-based anger management model. 

Then, as suddenly as the chaos had started, it calmed down. Norns wandered about the ship, Hawthorn and Sycamore learned to turn to potions instead of violence, and, after a few eggs went into my inventory, I was given a blissful respite from the constant influx of new creatures. At this point I turned down my creature cap to 20 (18 breeding cap) because this is about all I can handle.

Finally, I was able to actually make my rounds and check on everyone. They were scattered about in the Jungle, Desert, Woodland, and Meso, and I got the occasional scare from death notifications from Ettins wandering into ponds and drowning. Sadly, one was not a false alarm; Fig, of all creatures, killed Hawthorn just as he was settling in. The new Grendel is a Banshee called Dogwood, and he seems to be taking well to the potions. Amaranth and Daisy had to be scooped out of their vacation in the Jungle for quarantine as they picked up some sickness, but thankfully the lull in activity gave me a chance to actually deal with the situation. A few minutes later, Pine had to get a similar treatment, but all three got a clean bill of health and released not long after.

After that, I sat around in the Meso, keeping an eye on Dogwood and Sycamore. It was too… well, it’s never quiet with Norns around, but it was too calm. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. A flurry of eggs, outbursts of violence, a sickness… but nothing happened.

Having lost two of the three recent hatches and with three more eggs in my inventory, I decided it was time for another round of hatches. The first one was Tulip, daughter of Rose and Sequoia. She has an ominous looking mutation that changed her initial concentration of air into chemical 28, but she was the first to hatch and didn’t immediately collapse, so I guess it’s not as problematic as it looks. She also has three invisible pigment bleed mutations.

Next was Hazel, Sycamore’s first child by Foxglove. He also caused the weird glitch in the mutation finder where it would spit out vast walls of text due to the actual gendiff.exe failing, so I edited my script again to make the “cannot identify line format” error terminate the script; I am no longer seeing weirdly formatted lines anyway, so I only see that error when gendiff breaks. 

Having corrected the script and Hazel’s genome, I took another look. He has a couple invisible pigment bleed changes, and a minor inconsequential change in his half-lives (a 255 changed to 254), which I didn’t even bother to figure out what chemical it was. Slightly more notable is this change to a receptor.

Receptor

Gene 0006: Drive 7

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Drive levels”, Locus: “TIREDNESS”. Chemical: “Tiredness”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 0.851).

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Drive levels”, Locus: “TIREDNESS”. Chemical: “Tiredness”.
Analogue: Output = 0 - ((Signal - 0) * 0.851).

Normally, as the tiredness chemical value goes up, the creature’s tiredness drive in the brain will go up accordingly. In Hazel this has mutated to be inverted, so the drive goes down as the chemical goes up. However, since the nominal value here is already 0, and the value can’t be negative, this effectively means his tiredness drive will always be 0, no matter how much tiredness chemical he has in his system. Thankfully, his sleepiness drive is fine, so he’ll rest because of that (hopefully).

Last, we have Sycamore’s second child, Carnation, daughter of Amaranth. The mutation finder detected 4 mutations in her, and opening her file produced a note saying that 3 genetic errors were corrected, and one of the genes the mutation finder indicated had no visible change in the genetics kit, so that must have been one of them. Another mutation was an invisible pigment bleed change.

This left two instinct mutations, but I couldn’t write them off as being the remaining autocorrected errors; Amaranth’s file had 2 autocorrected errors too. Indeed, both of the indicated instincts were mutated, which means that Amaranth’s error mutations have passed to Carnation. I’m still not sure if they actually affect anything though. Anyway, the instinct to eat fatty foods when hungry for fat mutated to be variant 1. Carnation is variant 5, so this instinct is dormant in her. The other mutation was an exercise in irony.

Instinct

Gene 0467: Approach if lonely

When… “Tissue 2: noun” “IT is <ID 36>^(Norn)” …and you “Approach it”: -1 LONELINESS.

When… “Tissue 2: noun” “IT is <ID 36>^(Norn)” …and you “Approach it”: -1 CROWDEDNESS.

Essentially, Carnation won’t instinctually want to go to other Norns when she’s lonely, but she will instinctively flock to them when she’s crowded. She’s a masochistic introvert who stays by herself even when she wants company, and is perpetually uncomfortable in crowds but can’t bring herself to leave. I can relate!

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!

The king is dead. Long live the king!

 [Originally written June 19 2021]

So it’s been about half a year since I last did anything with Creatures, as I’ve been occupied with the entire Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, as well as a nasty bout of depression. The antidepressants finally seem to be kicking in, though, and I finally had the mental energy to deal with the chaos of Albia. Initially I just made my rounds through the world, getting my bearings and figuring out just what was going on when I left off six months ago. I noticed I still hadn’t re-injected the underground mushrooms, so I did that, then checked in on each creature.

Eudocia laid an egg up in the computer room near Verania. Julia was pregnant and hanging around on the island with Quintus, Augustus, and Gaius. Tiberius was in the kitchen, and Greg was in the garden playing with Marcellus. I spent some time trying to coax a few creatures with low life forces to eat, and various Norns moved around. Julia laid her egg. At one point I noticed a small group of Norns riding the lift down to the deathcap, so I intervened, pulling the lift back up and leading the herd back to the safety of the garden.

It was then that Julia was marked sick in the observation kit. I immediately jumped over to the island to see what was up. She had come down with a case of Antigen 7, Histamine B, and Unknown Toxin 3. And she was standing right next to Augustus and Marcellus. “Ah boy, here we go,” I said to myself. I didn’t even try to lead her away from them; it would have been an exercise in futility trying to split this little flock, and besides, she was already smearing her germs all over them. Indeed, within moments, they also became sick. I designated the entire island as a quarantine zone and brought over some cheese, and set about trying to ensure their life forces stayed high. This mostly meant focusing on Julia, who was at 55%, because the other two were hale and hearty with their life forces in the 90s.

It only took about 3 minutes to fight off the infection, so it was a fairly minor incident. However, Julia’s life force was still low, and she was proving to be difficult to feed when her friends were around, so I put her on the boat and lured her through the jungle, where she encountered the Grendel. Nothing seemed odd until he spoke: his words were garbled. My first thought was that somebody’s speech had managed to confuse Greg and he would need to be reminded of the correct words. I selected the Grendel.

It wasn’t Greg.

My heart sank. Some time in the half hour following my last sighting of Greg, he had passed away offscreen, unnoticed. Losing him, especially without even noticing, hurt possibly more than losing one of the Norns; after all, Greg had been around since the very start of my Creatures 1 playthrough, through many generations of Norns and several world transfers.

Still, I had no choice but to accept it and move on, without so much as a graveyard entry for him. During all this, Verania laid an egg, which hatched around the same time I noticed the new Grendel. I quickly named and exported the hatchling, and then went to deal with the unexpected newcomer. I named him Secundus, and used the ball to lure him to the computers so I could teach him his words. Secundus proved to be just as quick a learner as his predecessor, and just as obedient.

I brought him down to the kitchen to meet the Norns, a couple of whom had grown into old age, just in time to Julia to lay another egg (right next to Verania for safekeeping). Welcome to the family, Secundus. It never gets any less chaotic.

A very delicate situation

 [Originally written November 24 2020]

If there’s one thing I can say the Creatures 3 crowd are, it’s loud. Even with the new genome that discourages excessive expression, these creatures like to chatter. After taking that break and then going to the relatively quiet worlds of C2 and C1 first, it was actually kind of overwhelming!

The two Grendels, Daisy, Ash, Spruce, and Acacia were clustered in the Woodland, yelling at the top of their lungs, so after checking in on them, I fled to the relative tranquility of the Meso, where the creatures were a bit more spread out. Rose continued to chill up by the lemon pod. That seems to be her home, and I don’t expect her to move any time soon. Both of the youngest Norns seem to have found adult mentors, as Foxglove stuck close to Birch on the lowest level, and Amaranth played with Pine on the middle level.

On returning to the Woodland I decided to redistribute the creatures a bit within the metaroom to end the cacophony without significant disruption to their lives. Once my brain had recovered from the auditory overload, I made my rounds and found everyone in good health. Lilac and Ash’s entry into old age was heralded by one last(?) egg. Sequoia has five mutations, two of which are irrelevant pigment bleed changes.

Receptor

Gene 0095: 139 Antigen 5

Organ: “Current Organ^{(043 MITOCHONDRIAL FUNCTION)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Injury”. Chemical: “Antigen 5”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 0.255). 

Organ: “Current Organ^{(043 MITOCHONDRIAL FUNCTION)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Reaction Rate”. Chemical: “Antigen 5”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 0.255).

Normally, Antigen 5 causes injury to this organ, but for Sequoia it’ll instead alter his reaction rate in some way. The fact that this receptor outputs 0 when there’s no Antigen 5 in his system doesn’t seem to be having any harmful effect – if it caused the reaction rate to come to a stop, I’d expect him to be dead, as this organ hosts the reactions involving the production of ATP.

Reaction

Gene 0364: 091 Ag to Ab 6

1 Antigen 6 + 3 Glucose = 3 Antibody 6 + 1 Hotness.
Rate: 48 (Half-life: 5.8 seconds)

1 Antigen 6 + 3 Glucose = 3 Antibody 7 + 1 Hotness.
Rate: 48 (Half-life: 5.8 seconds)

Sequoia produces the wrong antibody in response to antigen 6. This doesn’t worry me too much based on my previous research, which seems to indicate that the antibodies don’t actually do anything chemically in Creatures 3. If they do anything at all, it’s fighting the bacteria itself rather than the disease, and frankly that’s not a problem when my response to any and all bacteria is the pink fog.

Stimulus

Gene 0535: 058 I have teleported

Stimulus: “<spare action>”, Signficance: “0”. Reaction: “Default (quiescent)”, Intensity: “0”.
-1 Pain, -1 Boredom, -1 Crowded.

Stimulus: “<spare action>”, Signficance: “0”. Reaction: “Default (quiescent)”, Intensity: “0”.
-0.992 Pain, -1 Boredom, -1 Crowded.

The Genetics Kit lists this stimulus only as “spare action” but based on the title of the gene it’s the stimulus of passing through a teleporter or warp portal (I’m not sure whether they have the same stimulus or not). Sequoia gets slightly less pain reduction from teleporting… though I’m not sure why teleporting relieves pain at all.

Edit: I later figured out that this is to encourage creatures to flee through portals when they're being attacked.

Meanwhile, I decided to introduce new blood to the population. I’ve been hesitant to bring in the Hardman breed despite them being tied with Bengals as my favorite, because I’ve already had such trouble with keeping Norns and Grendels together. But I figured that with Oak being as tame as he is, now’s the best time to try it. If any Grendel could get along with a Hardman, it’s him. So I welcomed little Sycamore to the world and immediately introduced him to Oak. This was a very delicate operation so I had to watch them very closely and train them very carefully. As such I spent most of the session with them.

At first I kept them in the Learning Room, with a cookie machine to provide a gadget to smack around and not a lot else, so that we could focus on learning how to handle anger. Once I was satisfied with their behavior I moved both of them to the Meso and kept a very close eye on them, though I did occasionally check in on the others; Spruce and Ash were telling Willow about how much they loved Daisy, while Willow politely disagreed, and Daisy herself was hiding behind the framework by the door to the Jungle, presumably trying to get away from her obsessive fanclub. Pine was hanging out by himself, and Acacia had gone off on an adventure to the Jungle. After a while, I moved Sycamore and Oak to the Terrarium, as Foxglove had just laid an egg and I already had Daisy’s in my inventory, so I figured I could proceed with normal creature management. 

I stashed the new egg and hatched the existing one, welcoming Fig into the world. My world’s naming scheme so far has been to use fruits for the Ettins and trees for male Norns and Grendels, but of course most fruit-bearing trees are named the same as their fruit, which takes out a good number of tree names, so I’m dropping that distinction. All three of Fig’s mutations are inconsequential – two minor nudges to pigment bleeds, and one slight increase in the intensity of the “quiescent” response to the stimulus of playing with a bug.

RNG giveth, RNG taketh away

 [Originally written October 11 2020]

There was still an empty population slot in Albia after the plague claimed Flavia’s life, and it left the world heavily skewed male. As such I’ve chosen to break from the ordered queue and skip to a female hatchling to bring into the world – appropriately, Flavia’s daughter. This means, of course, that it’s time for a genetic analysis. The report says Eudocia has three mutations.

Reaction

Gene 078: 019 drive reducer

1 Sleepiness-- + 1 Sleepiness = 1 Reward.
Rate: 8 (max to 0 in approximately 0.4 seconds)

This gene is responsible for both reducing sleepiness and rewarding sleeping. Normally it's active from birth, but in Eudocia it won’t kick in until adolescence. That’s going to be a problem for developing proper sleeping habits!

Receptor

Gene 237: 031 shiver

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Involuntary Action 4^(shiver)”. Chemical: “Coldness”.
Digital: Output = 0 + 255 if Signal > 141.

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Involuntary Action 4^(shiver)”. Chemical: “Coldness”.
Digital: Output = 0 - 255 if Signal > 141.

This one’s not as bad as it seemed. My heart sank when I saw the inverted flag, thinking it would probably make her shiver whenever she’s not cold, but no… It actually means she’ll never shiver, because the output will be either 0 or -255 (which gets clamped to 0).

Receptor

Gene 305: 041 sleep when v. sleepy

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Involuntary Action 5^(sleep)”. Chemical: “Sleepiness”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 230) * 255).

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Drive levels”, Locus: “Tiredness”. Chemical: “Sleepiness”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 230) * 255).

I’m not actually sure what to make of this one. Normally, this gene basically forces a creature to pass out if it gets sleepy enough. In this case, that effect is removed, but on the other hand, a high sleepiness level will make her feel very tired, which may encourage her to rest (and then to sleep) anyway.

Also, I have, of course, updated the genome as I did with Augustus. Actually, it turns out I missed a few things when tweaking his genome, so this time around I made the same changes plus a few more:

• Removed the punishment output from #059, #058, #062, #064, and #068 
• Added 1 hunger-- output to #142 
• Removed hunger-- output from #144 
• Removed hunger output from #145 
• Added 8 Activase output to #146
• Added receptor and emitter tied to floating locus 2 (set based on Glycogen, output Hunger based on locus)
• Added gene to convert adrenaline and activase to fear-- and anger--
• Tweaked #292 so adrenaline reacts with ageing

Eudocia turned out to be a very inquisitive little Norn, shoving everything she could into her mouth – including weeds. Well, everything has a price I suppose. After learning that food and herbs are good and weeds are bad, we attempted to move on to adjectives – but young Augustus had other ideas! With the single-minded purpose of a Norn on a mission, he called one lift, rode down, grabbed his new playmate, boarded the other, and rode back up! After wrangling Eudocia back down to finish her lessons, I released her to the company of her friend in the garden. The world seemed stable enough so I reintroduced the hootch hider and moved on to the next task at hand.

I decided this was to check in on Greg. He was still with a cluster of creatures on the island, and I figured it was time to bring him home. I lured him (and Julia) onto the boat and back over to the garden, where he received a warm welcome from Eudocia. His life force was down to 48%, so I got him to eat a few carrots, and then reintroduced him to the ball, much to his delight. He then demonstrated proper sleeping habits to both of the young Norns.

If Greg is Gallant, then Julia is Goofus. Upon meeting the youngest child in Albia, instead of teaching her a valuable life lesson, she just slapped her. Thankfully, this was one of those wonderful rare cases when it was clear who was doing the hitting and there was nothing blocking me from getting in there to set the aggressor straight!

Meanwhile, back on the island, Verania was exhausted from the effort of laying her first egg (tucked neatly behind her), courtesy of Gaius. I was rather worried about this pregnancy – I wasn’t sure Verania could hold up to the stresses on her body, given her tendency to neglect her own needs, and I feared the child would inherit her handicap. I couldn’t resist taking a peek at the genetics – and I’m relieved to report that she didn’t pass her crippling mutation down!

I felt this was the appropriate time to shepherd Gaius and Quintus off the island, so onto the boat and into the lift they went – both napping the whole way down! They were gathering their strength for their next move, once they’d lulled me into a false sense of security with their easy compliance. Well, it worked, and lulled I was, so I checked in on the two Norns with the lowest life forces (besides Verania), Tiberius and Lucius.

Unsurprisingly, the problem boys were hanging out together and far more interested in each other than in anything else, including food. Lucius offered a comforting hand to hold after Tiberius was evidently traumatized by my constant shouting at him to “push food.” Both of them steadfastly refused to do so despite my attempts to convince them for the next fifteen minutes, so I changed tactics; I reinjected the cheese tray and began imploring them to push vendor. No dice. Then, after ten more minutes, Tiberius finally sampled a carrot. Something clicked in his little brain, and he devoured several more!

Lucius continued to be difficult, so I took a break to check in on Eudocia, who was all grown up and had just laid her first egg. I also briefly caught Greg near the deathcap but he seemed more interested in playing with the lift than the mushroom. Oh, and Julia had also laid an egg during my struggles with Lucius and Tiberius. Speaking of, the latter tried in vain to convince his friend that food really is as awesome as I said it was! The Banana Norn remained unconvinced of the edibility of the chunk of hardened curdled milk before him. Still, after enough prompting, I got him to eat. I considered this enough of a victory and called it a day.

Island drama

 [Originally written October 4 2020]

It started with a false alarm that warned of true danger to come. Sidonia, Julia, Flavia, and Greg were hanging out on the island, when Lucius was flagged as sick in the observation kit. I left the islanders to go check on him, but he’d just eaten a weed. I remembered the COBs I’d not injected yet and reintroduced cloud butterflies. While I was over there, I found Quintus bothering Tiberius, who really needed to eat, as his life force was at 41%, so I tried to convince him to eat something. 

Meanwhile, Flavia laid her egg on the warm sands of the beach, and continued partying with her friends. As the egg cracked, Flavia told the others about how tiring being a mom was, even before the egg hatched, and Sidonia warned her to flee before the emerging hatchling saw her! They had nothing to worry about, though, as I exported the child immediately.

Then I heard a tell-tale sneeze. Oh dear. I wondered if someone had eaten the campanula plant… but no, this was the real deal. Sidonia had come down with a case of Antigen 0, with an unknown toxin along for the ride. I was able to shepherd the other three creatures away to the bottom level of the island before it could spread, so there was that at least. 

I spent 14 agonizing minutes trying to convince Sidonia to eat a carrot between turning around incoming movers and occasionally breaking up slapfights in the underground and trying to convince Flavia to eat as well – though she wasn’t sick, she hadn’t recovered from her pregnancy and her life force hovered at 30%, even as Sidonia’s steadily dropped. It was no use – Sidonia collapsed with the carrot still in her hand.

Saddened by the loss, I turned my attention to Flavia, whose life force was still low. As the world seemed stable and I didn’t want to keep fetching carrots, I reintroduced my fixed coconuts to the world, and set about trying to convince Flavia to eat them. Julia went up to the surface to greet Verania, who had come over at some point after Sidonia’s passing ended the lockdown on the island. Meanwhile, Greg, ever the obedient and well-behaved Grendel, continually demonstrated eating for Flavia, to no avail.

After about ten minutes of effort I gave up for the time and went to check on the boys in the garden. They greeted me with smiles and blank speech bubbles – I’ve been seeing that quite a bit, especially lately, and I have no idea what’s causing it. They seemed happy enough though, so I left them to it and returned to the island. Verania sat on the beach ball, looking quite shocked at the contents of a honey jar Julia brought over – in actuality she’d been frozen in that position for quite a while. Meanwhile, I continued trying to get Flavia to eat. Then, after quite a bit of coaxing… she finally ate some honey! I lavished praise on her, which started a cycle, and she began wolfing down food. Her life force steadily rose, and with that problem solved, I was ready to deal with the empty space left behind by Sidonia.

Augustus could finally re-enter the world – with an additional round of genetic updates. After some digging, apparently Purple Mountain Norns don’t use the hunger management system the Ron and Forest Norns use, so none of my creatures have it. Still, I’d like to introduce this improved genome to the world, so I’ll begin phasing it in by adding it to every new creature from this point on, including Augustus. Discover Albia has an excellent article on the genes involved, which I used as a guide for modifying the genome. The changes amounted to the following:

• Removed the punishment output from #059 
• Added 1 hunger-- output to #142 
• Removed hunger-- output from #144 
• Removed hunger output from #145 
• Added 8 activase output to #146
• Added receptor and emitter tied to floating locus 2 (set based on Glycogen, output Hunger based on locus)

Please note that I did leave in the mutation Augustus inherited on #145. I only changed the second output from Hunger to <NONE> to match the Life Kit genomes.

Reaction

Gene 145: Glycogen -> Glucose

Standard: 1 Glycogen + 1 <NONE> = 3 Glucose + 1 Hunger.

Life Kit: 1 Glycogen + 1 <NONE> = 3 Glucose + 1 <NONE>.

Augustus: 1 Glycogen + 1 Need for Pleasure = 3 Glucose + 1 <NONE>.

Augustus turned out to be a quick learner, and had soon mastered both computers’ vocabularies as well as the nouns I taught him along the way. 

That was more than could be said for some of the older males in the garden, who apparently missed a couple words, so I wrangled them down to the drive computer for a remedial course.

That was when I noticed that Flavia was listed as sick – and in a way, I’m thankful for that, because Greg was also ill, and I might never have noticed had Flavia not drawn my attention. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention – I hit the Grendel Button to select Greg so I could keep an eye on his life force, since I could monitor Flavia in the Observation Kit. 

What I failed to notice was that the Observation Kit was somehow paused, and this mistake would cost me dearly. I thought her life force was much higher than it actually was, and Greg and I were equally shocked to see her keel over. What’s worse, I misclicked and missed my chance to give her an entry in the graveyard, but I had no time to kick myself over it; the Grendel’s life force dwindled to 34% as the virulent cocktail of chemicals raging in his body took their toll.

I had already lost two Norns to sickness today, I wasn’t about to lose Greg too! In the struggle that ensued, I was very thankful for his obedient nature – he needed every chunk of coconut or piece of cheese he shoveled into his mouth to keep his glycogen levels stable as he fought off the disease! I just had to keep them coming – and at last, we emerged victorious!

I wasn’t out of the woods yet, though. Verania, standing on the beach above and smiling blankly at me, started to sneeze and cough. She hadn’t caught it from Greg or Flavia; this was a mix of an unknown toxin, both histamines, and Antigen 0, the same one that had killed Sidonia over an hour before. And this time I was completely helpless; Verania is too mentally handicapped to follow commands. All I could do was ensure that food was nearby and turn away any other creatures coming in. I fully expected to lose her too, and prepared for the worst. Yet, somehow, she pulled through!

Julia and Greg decided they’d had enough drama for one day and settled down for a long nap. I agreed with them fully; though I have an empty population slot to fill by introducing one of the exported hatchlings (with hunger management modifications), I think that, and any genetic analysis that may be involved, can wait until next time.

Everything went better than expected

 [Originally written October 3 2020]

The Meso is a very comfortable area, so creatures seem to not really want to leave it. I expect this is exacerbated by the fact that the only ways out are via portals and the door to the hub; the hub doesn’t have much interesting-smelling in it to draw them through the door, and I don’t believe portals carry smells at all so the only reason Norns push them is boredom or crowdedness. As such, most everybody except Ash, Lilac, and the Grendels were in the Meso (the rest were in the Woodland). Birch at least decided to be adventurous and wander into the Hub, but not for long – he just entertained himself going back and forth through the door.

With everything calm and a large number of young male Norns, I decided it was the ideal time to bring in a new breed, and hatched Daisy, a Fallow Norn. She got on quite nicely with Spruce, and the two were pretty well inseperable.

Rose has seemed pretty content to remain on the top level of the Meso by herself. She sometimes sits by the warp portal but doesn’t go through, although sometimes she gets visitors through it.

Acacia outgrew his younger playmates and became a bit aloof, while still sticking around the area. Perhaps he wants to be seen as the cool older kid? Pine certainly seems to be in awe – either that or he’d just been smacked around a bit by Birch! I noticed he often had a frightened look about him and I wasn’t sure whether it was caused by other Norns treating him as a punching bag or something else, so I gave him a new Cuddly Tree to play with.

Meanwhile, in the Woodland, the stress of dealing with Ash’s incessant attempts to play catch with him turned old Willow gray! Oak was perfectly well adjusted, if obsessed with his gadgets, but I occasionally had to encourage Willow to take his anger out on the objects left laying about for this express purpose. Still, the fact that Oak at least turned out well tells me I did something right with that one. I’m getting my Grendel-taming mojo back!

Lilac wasn’t content to stick around in one place – leave it to the Chichi to teleport all over the place! She decided a trip to the Desert was in order, where she attempted to play with the rocks – classified as toys, yet not something creatures can play with. I can understand why object categories behave so inconsistently in Creatures 1 and even 2 to an extent, but you’d think by Creatures 3 they would have figured it out… Thankfully I found a fix for this on the internet so I’ll inject that for the next session.

Spruce took after his mother, braving the trip through the warp portal to the Woodland. Evidently the climate wasn’t to his liking, or maybe he just liked the feeling of teleportation, since he just went back and forth for a while. 

Meanwhile, Lilac continued her adventure by teleporting to the Workshop, but from there she decided to walk to the Hub and eventually join the gaggle of Norns already in the Meso. This left Ash and the Grendels as the only inhabitants of the Woodland. 

To even things out a little bit, I grabbed a few creatures and moved them to the Woodland. Acacia looked like he wasn’t having any of it, since he immediately headed back for the warp portal, but changed his mind on the top level.

Spruce headed for the drumset, while Daisy went straight down the elevator and in the opposite direction. Just a tip, Spruce: if you’re going to try to serenade a female, drums are not the most romantic instrument to use. 

In the Meso, excessively tall bramboo was getting to be a problem, and somehow they’d started sprouting in the middle level, so I stripped the tallest stalks bare and used the berries to make cookies, which I scattered around at random.

Oak, ever the well-behaved Grendel, made friends with Acacia and enjoyed playing with the rocket toy with him. Now if I can just get all future Grendels to be like this one! Ash, meanwhile, enjoyed the cool breeze from the weather generator.

Spruce had figured out that the drums weren’t doing the trick and went to be a little more direct with Daisy. This time she returned the interest, and soon there was an egg on the way!

Almost simultaneously with little Foxglove’s birth I got a death notification, which momentarily scared the bajeezus out of me, but it was just an Ettin. The little Norn was quite healthy! She has three minor pigment bleed mutations and one change to a receptor. I don’t believe it’ll have any significant effect, but she’ll need slightly more prostaglandin than usual to heal her immune system.

There was a period of not much interesting going on. Spruce, Ash, and Acacia harrassed the Grendels while they tried to sleep. Lilac wandered through the warp portal to the Terrarium. 

As Daisy recovered from her first pregnancy, she gained an entourage of hopeful male Norns, and it didn’t take long for one to catch a lucky break and father her second – this time, it was Acacia, though Spruce was eager to take credit! 

I don’t have the heart to break it to him, but thankfully Norns aren’t smart enough to put together Amaranth’s parentage from her appearance. She has three mutations – two to chemical reactions and one to a pigment bleed. Incidentally she gets two autocorrections when I open her genome. The pigment bleed just has a life stage change, and one of the reactions has a mutability degree change. The third flagged gene has no changes so it must be one of the automatic corrections.