Saturday, November 27, 2010

The Thinning Of The Herd

There were more deaths today, though not nearly as many as yesterday thankfully. The day started out with almost imediately two deaths, Lennert and Emmeram. Their deaths were not owed to starvation however, but instead to pain. They were being banged around in the lift too much. This is the issue with too many norns riding the lift. One norn is lift button happy and the others get dragged along for the ride whether they wish to or not. It frustrated me to see this. As I tried to remove norns from the lift, they only proceeded to walk back to the lift and get back on. Ohwell, can't teach them all to be smart.


I was happy to see Kunie soon become pregnant! During her first pregnancy she stomped around in the snow up top by the norn cemetary place. she was litterally stomping her feet happily in the snow as if she was quite enjoying making foot prints! There were a couple of times she came dangerously close to the edge, and there I hovered my hand ready to catch her in case she fell, but she was too careful to fall. Eventually she made her way back into the lift and down to the ground floor where it is much safer to lay eggs!
I transported to the warp room where I was informed of two visitors. Two brothers who have arrived together from the same person and same world. I do believe I know the previous owner of these norns from the forums. They are actually two little alien norns, named Alba(pictured here) and his brother Adoeete. I don't have alien norn sprites so they show up as harlequins in my world. Alba arrived first and seemed very smart in pushing the lift button and taking a ride to the second floor. There he got stuck on the second floor lift button however. His brother arrived seconds after him and became infatuated with the first floor lift button. I didn't have high hopes for them.

Sure enough, after his brother had already left the warp room Alba died (probly from starvation, it had been a few minutes) on the second floor of the warp room. I was a little disappointed to see him go, but was encouraged by his brothers progress.



It was after quite a while that I was traveling between rooms that I happened upon the norn meso and this little norn wandering around in it. Adoeete had passed the IQ test! Good for you Adoeete! I plopped him down in the norn home of the Norn Terrarium and he seemed very happy to be there.


Another norn death alert appeared on my screen and my hopes dropped. If my norns keep dieing like this, soon i'll have another male norn crises on my hands. It is poor Kouichi. I'm just glad these norns lived long enough to pass on their gentics. Kouichi most likely died from starvation.

Kunies first born and first son is Yoshinari. Yoshinari has his mothers arms and his fathers body. He was born very playful, and a little bit curious. The first things he began doing was walking around and playing with toys! He played with the little rocket toy here for quite a while.

I left little Yoshinari to play with his toys while I watched over the rest of the norns. When I came back to the toys he was gone. I searched for him and found him in the norn incubator area where the cheese dispenser is, with a piece of cheese in his hand! He wasn't eating it however. I was very fascinated to find that he was talking to it. It's normal to see norns talk to their food or "express food".. but for this long! I think he was having a conversation with his cheese. After what seemed to be minutes he finally stuffed the whole thing in his mouth and ate it! Yoshinari is turning out to be a very smart little norn. He went back for more cheese, pushed the dispenser all by himself, and ate what came out. After he ate his fill he moved on.

His next destination was the toys again. Yoshinari walked over to the lift which is quite a travel for little norn legs, and pushed the button, calmly riding inside all the way to the ground floor. There he stood by the toys again and played with the rocket launcher mostly.

Kunie wandered passed and I followed her. She was making her way accross the norn terrarium to the other norns. I was surprised to see, as the camera followed her, that there were many if not all of the norns in this one area, seemingly standing around. I watched carefully only to realize they all were passing around a single apple. Kunies telepathic mind agent thingy was telling me that she was "eating fruit" and my guess is that is what all the norns are doing. But if you eat the fruit it should disappear with a crunch... Confused, I grabbed the apple and removed it only to have it snatched out of my hand by a norn hand. I tried a couple of times with the same result. Next I grabbed ahold of a norn hand and pulled it away from the group. The norn whose hand I took happened to be the same holding the apple and suddenly I hear a crunch and the apple finally disappears. It must have been a strange glitch... Interesting though.
Much time passed as I watched the norns play, retreat and approach each other, express and eat. All was well in the world. I had decided that the food was a little sparse for my population number, and so took a C1 fridge and plopped it in a norn house. Suddenly everyone began stampeding to it! Little Yoshinari was in no hurry though, and was the last to realize there was food up in the house. I watched with delight as he smartly walked right over to the button, pushed it to call the lift, got in the lift, waited patiently in one place as it carried him to the next floor, THEN walked right to where the fridge was. Yay!
Kunies next pregnancy took place here, and this is where her next egg was layed. She felt that the comfort of being in a norn dwelling and with lots of food near by was good enough to continue the norn population. A little boy popped out, again mostly apple norn with a little chichi tail. His name is Gin'ichirou. You can see him peeking from behind the egg shell. He was immediately overwhelmed by the norn numbers and retreated them all, but soon approached again to eat his very first meal!

A last death happened before I left for the night. I found Paturin by the pond. He was already a pretty old norn even though he had not yet reached elder stage, so I was glad he had a long life. Poor Paturin didn't make it in time though before starving to death. He hadn't made it to the food fast enough. Rest in peace Paturin.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Thanksgiving Day

Sorry I didn't post this yesterday, there was just so much going on. I'm sure you can understand one gets busy on a holiday. Anyway, yesterday I opened up the C3 norn terrarium (modified for winter of course) to the norns, as well as having the north pole metaroom. Now they have an ungodly (dramatization) amount of space to roam around. Imediately the norns took after it, teleporting to the norn terrarium and seemed to be having a blast! Something unusual and odd began though, the norns started dropping like flies! Inspections found no toxins or bacteria, but did find one telltale sign. I found that those norns that were dropping had very high drives for starch, fat and protine.. in other words they must have been starving to death. The north pole IS equipped with food, a single empathic vendor set by the pole itself that will dispense when a creature expresses it's hunger. I kept the north pole pretty sparce of food though, because I wanted it to be realistic and in the winter food would realistically be sparce. The norn terrarium is plentiful however.
Among the dead are: Merdasan, Leo, Atsuhiko (waaah! D:), Lazar, Napayshni, Bob Ross, Hisashi, Berchthold, Muhsin and Jason. I went from 23 norns down to 14, which is still a healthy number in my opinion.

The first norn to die had nothing to do with starvation however. Kasumiko finally met her life limit at age 7 hours and 12 minutes, a record! Well done Kasumiko! I think the secret to her long gevity is in her genetics, which i'm glad she passed on so many times. Rest in peace!


 Little Muhsin hatched from a Kasumiko egg and would be her last son. Muhsin however would not make it to the new norn terrarium. Too bad, I would really have loved to see such a pretty, frosty white norn live to an old age.


The next norn queen was placed right in the terrarium in a norn house. She is the last daughter of Amana's four children and sister to Kasumiko, Kiyoe and Liane. Kunie arrived very happy and displaying a bright smile with wide, bright green eyes! She loves her new home and has fun exploring her new sorroundings! Kunie displays a very rare pair of toxic norn arms. I cannot remember though, if that is due to her having toxic genetics from my secret toxic population, or if it is a simple sprite mutation.
Much to my surprise, the learning room in the norn terrarium was found by smart little Emmeram. I didn't expect any norns to find that room because it's tucked away, but Emmeram walked right up to the door, pushed it and went through as if he'd known it was there all along. He enjoyed some cheese while I turned the machine on, and much to my further surprise he was soon followed by a few other norns. When five or six norns were now populating the learning room I watched them kick around the single ball in there, as if they were all playing a game of soccer!

I didn't think I needed to post a photo of all of the norns that died because it is a bit sad. I was very discouraged when Atsuhiko passed, he was my favorite norn. Also, because his son also passed away, his only surviving relative is a girl that has already been warped out to be a future queen. Hopefully his genetics can be passed through her.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Twinned Again



An unexpected death greets me when I first log into DS. Nikorasu passed away peacefully among his family members by the cornucopia.


 Kasumiko and Atsuhiko took a trip together to Ron's house. Kasumiko was the instigator, pushing the teleporter and teleporting them inside the warm house. Atsuhiko enjoyed his time with Kasumiko all by himself. They walked around exploring the room and eating some of the fruits from the fruit bowl. Apparently this was a romantic enough time for them to kisspop and create twin pregnancy icons!


Kasumiko layed her first egg after a short time just on the left side of the fruit bowl table. A few steps later she layed down and layed the second egg on the other side. With one blue egg and one red egg Atsuhiko is soon to be the father of two babies at once!


The first to hatch is a little boy named Leo. Leo looks the most like his mother, with only a little predator norn tail from his father. The double tailed Leo crawled around a little bit and ate some food from the fruit bowl while his parents teleported themselves back out into the cold outside.



 I tried to show him the teleporter so that he would know how to use it and transport himself back out into the world to join the rest of his family. He only walked over to the shee plushie and layed down for a rest though. Leo's sister hatched next and her name is Lenexa. Lenexa is a girl so you won't see her until far into the future. She hatched a beautiful predator norn with only a portion of her momma showing.

Kasumiko is 6 hours and 50 something minutes old so I expected the next death icon to be about her. I was surprised to see the second mysterious death of today to be Michihiko. I wonder if it's the cold that is killing them, but to my current knowledge cold only makes them uncomfortable. If anyone knows differently, please correct me!



The Christmas home has been decided. For Christmas there will be another migration, a short and simple one. This migration will be to a home decorated for Christmas. It's not yet known how long they'll stay there, or if i'll open up both the north pole and this new home together for the rest of winter. We'll see!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Peaceful on the Homefront


The title of this post is due to Leyati. Leyati's antics finally became too much, and me needing to constantly keep an eye on him was enough. His constant surveillance needs were causing me to miss a lot of the other norns lives. Norns were growing up and getting old when I haven't even gotten to know them. I finally warped Leyati out into the unknown, where he lands nobody knows. Good luck whomever recieves him.


This is little Mankichirou. Mankichirou has his mothers C1 norn body and tail, and the rest is apple norn. He was also blessed with two tails, one of each norn breed. Mankichirou is quite an average norn and there isn't much to be said about him that stands out.

Pleasantly, I was greeted by a warp icon atop my screen and my first thought was "Oh goodie!" I do love getting male norns in the warp and it's like a present on Christmas from Santa each time! This is Adalmund. He is a generation 1 clown(harlequin) norn but I still accepted him. I figured it would not hurt to have clean generation 1 genetics reintroduced into my world every now and then. Adalmund arrived looking very confused, a warp can do that to a little norn!

Meanwhile, my check on Bob Ross (from the previous post) revealed he had passed the IQ test and was happily scouting around in the norn meso. Like usual, I plopped him down in Rons House where he happily snacked on some berries from the fruit bowl.


Bob Ross wasn't in a hurry to get out of Rons House into the open world so quickly. He walked over to the lift and pushed it, transporting him into the garden area of Rons House. Here he pulled and ate some carrots while watching the pretty purple butterflies flutter about. You don't see them outside in the snowy tundra.


Finally when he had become too bored to cope any longer, he took the lift back down to the lower reigon of Rons House and walked to the teleporter. It took him a few pushes to get through, but he finally arrived into the cold, crisp open air and beheld the wonder of a snowy paradise with a big smile!



The next norn to visit Rons House was little Adalmund. He had also passed the IQ test with flying colors and even faster than Bob Ross had. Adalmund snacked on some fruit first, just like his predasessor before making his way to the teleporter.

With my help Adalmund slipped through the teleporter and was transported into the same snowy tundra. He seemed less impressed with his new sorroundings, but was just as happy in them as Bob Ross! Adalmunds first item on his agenda was to make it to the cornucopia of food and push it. This brought a stampede of norns over to it almost immediately. Adalmund didn't have much time to chomp a few bites down before he quickly began to retreat the stampeding norns!
Atsuhiko spends all of his time happily playing with toys and objects. He likes to walk around and do nothing but push a toy, then walk to the next and push that too. He does this all over the tundra. Sometimes the population of norns becomes too much for him and he ends up spending a lot of time retreating norn. Atsuhiko likes to be by himself a lot. Hopefully when he turns youth this will change. I would love to see baby Atsuhikos running around!


Kasumiko is nearly 7 hours old by now and will leave this world soon (i'm guessing!). Her vital signs are down to 30% which leads me to believe she hasn't long left in her natural lifetime. See you on the flip side! Blah.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Introductions and Surprizes

In Rons House stayed Nibaw and Hisashi. They hung out there and were the best of friends. They enjoyed picking and eating food together, and challenging the stopper pot plant at the right edge of the screen. Nibaw met a peaceful yet very unexpected death though, much sooner than he was meant to. His death was a mysterious one, and Hisashi didn't understand it either. At first he didn't seem to notice his friend had peacefully passed on with a smile on his face.

It was only when Hisashi noticed his friend was not at his side anymore when he noticed that he had died. When he realized what had happened, he stood by his friend and prompted him to get up and move by pushing him several times. When that didn't work, poor lonely Hisashi sat down on the ground by his friends side until Nibaws remains disappeared in such the way norn remains do in a cloud of sparkly dust. Rest in peace Nibaw and i'm glad you lived and died happily.
Two pregnancy icons greeted me atop the screen at the same time. I rushed outside expecting one to belong to Kasumiko and the other to one of her daughters that I had not kept close enough an eye on. I thought she had aged to youth and become pregnant before I could export her. Surprisingly, both pregnancy icons brought me to Kasumiko! Kasumiko was pregnant with twins! This event when natural is very rare in the game of creatures, and so it was cause for celebration!

Unfortunately the egg was snatched up by the father and carred just off camera before I could snap a picture. Kasumiko had layed her first egg. She lay resting on the ground after she layed it for a minute or two. It was interesting that, though the pregnancy icons both appeared nearly simultaniously, that the laying of both eggs would be spaced so far apart. The father was discovered to be Berchthold.

The second egg then came and Kasumiko looked tired and very happy to have two eggs. The second egg was soon picked up by the second norn you see in this picture, and held for a while before being set down again. This norn is not the father but he seemed to be very careful with the egg anyway. Maybe he was giving it a warm hug to keep it warm.

From the first egg came Fermund. Fermund hatched with little difficulty and among a family of warm bodies so he wasn't too cold. Pictured with him is his brother, whom hatched second.


Kouichi, a spitting image of his twin brother Fermund, hatched second and quickly became overwhelmed with all of the norns around him. He got over it soon though and found himself happy to be among his family.



Another new arrival is Emmeram. Emmeram spends his time trying to avoid Leyati, which shows he has some smarts. Any norn who avoids Leyati, that slapping norn, is destined to live a longer life than those who don't.


Through the warp came a visitor named Bob Ross. His profile held the message that the previous owner or "shee" of this norn wanted to make more contacts and so that's why this norn was sent out! (Hello previous owner!) What an important little norn to  have the job of going out and making new friends! What is that called, an ambassador or something? Anyway little Bob Ross (adorable name by the way) seems very sweet, with not a violent bone ins his cute C1 body. He is generation 10 only, and likes to push buttons. This may work against him however, as he has not yet made it out of the warp room because of it

Meet an important little norn. Atsuhiko was hatched because I really love this new norn breed released by the CCSF.Visit the CCSF here to see! Atsuhiko is a predator norn, and if you've ever seen the predator movies you'll recognise it right away! He has the beautiful spotted white skin, cute dreadlocks (which you can't see in this snapshot sorry) and even better, the evil looking mandables on the corners of his mouth! Read all about the predator norn breed on the CCSF page!


After eating a first breakfast I dropped Atsuhiko into Rons House where he will have a doorway to the outside snowy world to join the rest of the norns. I let him spend quite a while in Rons House to familiarize himself with the world. He looked at the teleporter for a minute, the likes of which he'd never seen before! And then walked to the fruit bowl to snack on some fruit. In spite of what the predator breed description on the CCSF site says, this little norn seems to be very sweet.

Atsuhiko walked over to the cute shee doll that was nearly larger than he, and picked it up, playing with it and holding it. He held onto it for quite a while, hitting it once but only once just to see what would happen. He layed down with it a little bit also and snuggled.


Atsuhiko walked over to the heater,having grown tired after all of that playing, eating and exploring. The heater provides a welcoming warmth and coziness from the icey snowy cold outside that he will be stepping into. Enjoy your heat while you can Atsuhiko. (you can see the dreadlocks in this photo a little better, aren't they adorable!)


I taught some basic words with Atsuhikos sorroundings, then lead him back to the teleporter so that he could go out and meet the other norns. He didn't seem to know what to do with it, and because he still doesn't completely know the english language it was difficult to get him to use the teleporter. Eventually I pushed it for him, and watched him watch with interest as I taught him to use it. Once outside his energy seemed to pick up and his interest perked as he walked to each toy and pushed it, playing with all the new toys around him! Here he is enjoying an ice crystal. Hopefully he will find a good home in the icey snowy tundra.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

"Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch! Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead!"

The snow brothers, Aize and Assassaburou spent most of their time in Rons home. They would occasionally teleport out to grab some grub and slap some norns before returning, but mostly spent their time there. They bullied the norns that entered the home, taking advantage of the close quarters to gang up on and slap them. Much to my surprise and i'm still quite confused as to what went wrong, this turned out to work against them! First Aize dropped dead on the lift the snow brothers enjoyed playing on with no known cause. A while later his brother did the same thing in the same place. I was careful to watch them and the only difference between Rons home and the outside is that Rons home happens to be heated by a heater and is quite warm inside. Perhaps this worked against the snow brothers. Now The North Pole is awash in near peace, only Leyati remains to wreak havoc and boy does he, takes right after his father! No worries though, I have him under close watch, and he doesn't set foot in Rons Home.

Back outside, Berchthold has found himself in a  pile of food. The cornucopia has been abused again thanks to some bored norn, leaving a feast for hungry norns all around! Everyone swarmed around to take part in the feast except little Berchthold who looks rather exhausted, or maybe he ate too much and has a tummy ache.

After a short pregnancy, and long wait for the egg to hatch I am greeted by an adorable little Merdasan (picture enlarged because he blends in so well with the snow). Merdasan hatched out of his egg a beautiful frosty white like many of his brothers and sisters. He appeared to be a very healthy, normal little norn baby at first, until I began seeing some strange words comming out of him. Words alien to the norns of my world. He began expressing himself, saying that he was pushing leaf, of which I have none in The North Pole, then walking to the right of the world where it is basically barren with no toys or food while expressing he was going to go eat a seed. He THEN began expressing his fear of a nearby grendel (which I have none in my world) , once reaching the place where this "invisible seed" apparently is.

This imaginary grendel was chasing him allover the barren part of The North Pole! I could not for the life of me figure out where he was getting all of these ideas! It's as if he is hallucinating them all, as if he has schizophrenia or something! All of the grendel egg layers are autokilled in my world, I made sure of that, so I would not have to suffer any eggs. Here he is running from the grendel, while expressing how scared he was of it and "retreat grendel"!

After a few minutes of such antics, Merdasan dropped next to an ice crystal and fell asleep quite quickly. After a long, restful sleep he awoke and appeared as normal as any other norn. I have not since seen him hallucinate anything more, and he has not mentioned grendels at all.
I witnessed another adorable behavior from one of my norns. Kasumiko spends much of her time by herself, or in tiny packs of two or three norns. She keeps herself amused with her sorroundings. I found her standing in one place, looking very odd. When asked what she was doing, she expressed she was "eating weather" which translates roughly to a norns version of catching the falling snow flakes on your tongue! Kasumiko stood there gazing up at each little snowflake as it fell, reaching out and catching each one she could reach! The little red apple norn stood by watching with curiosity and interest at her odd behavior for quite a while, but eventually decided it was not for him to try, and moved on.

Michihiko, pictured here, has developed an awful limp. I often watch him walking with the rest of the norn pack to and from food piles with a horrible limp that causes him to drop to all fours every other step. He doesn't have trouble getting around though. It doesn't slow him down or seem to bother him so I let him be, but can't help but feel a little sorry for him.