Friday, February 1, 2013

Aging Nyrn

I returned to Nyrn for the first time in a long while, spurred on by the memory of my norns. I entered a senior citizen world. Just about every norn save for a couple is ancient or old in age and probably gumming their food by now. It was pleasant to find though, that everybody seemed to be having a pretty good life with very few difficulties. As I visited Aku he turned to me after plucking a mushroom from the ground and held it up to show me as he expressed his feelings. Unfortunately there is no source of starch where he currently is staying and i've never been able to convince him to leave his love of mushrooms to look for one. So there he stays, happily studying and exploring the mushrooms that grow. Thankfully they will keep those norns choosing this area free from dying of starvation. Aku and his friends will just have to suffer for now.
Sweet old Arvs is currently the oldest norn in the tribe right now and not even able to walk very far. He limps back and forth in front of the bee hive, completely content with his current location, with a bright smile on his face all the time so i'm confident to think he's happy. His old man walk keeps him from easily moving around but he doesn't mind, and enjoys the warm sunshine and fresh breezes. As I watched him, contemplating how he'll probably be the first of the old man tribe to leave life, Akka and he snuggled together in the cold winter air for a rest.
To my surprise the first to leave was not Arvs at all, but rather Quirin. "Oh, that's a young age to go at!" I thought to myself as I looked over his page. Aku kept him company in his last minutes so that he wouldn't be alone, and though he only lived for a little over three hours, his life was a full one, all the way to age "old"!
In the desert Orika refuses to return to the tribe. Her passion has always been to strike out on her own where no norn has gone before and explore new lands! She's been successful in doing such up to this point, however, with her age came walking issues (genetic trait i'm sure.). I felt so sad for her and shook my head as I watched her repeatedly and without tiring trying to walk over the mound of sand to get at the peppers in front of her. No matter how hard she moved her legs, though, each step either got her nowhere, or moved her backwards. Twice I had lost my patience and grabbed her hand, pulling her forward so she could gobble up the peppers.. each time I left her to check on the other norns and returned she was stuck back on that hill again though. I don't know what i'll do with her. As long as she's happy! She also happens to be the healthiest norn in the whole tribe.

Two more deaths, one after the other presented itself, and once again neither of them was Arvs. I was both happy and sad to find that, though, because while I'm happy Arvs is living quite a long time! I'm also sad to find these particular norns are dieing so soon.
 Aku will now be picking mushrooms in norn heaven while Anya will be playing with the mushroom seeds there! They'll have all they've ever wanted!

Current norn population: 3 plus Orika.

4 comments:

  1. Yay, another update. \o/

    Just what do Orika's walking issues look like? If she occasionally looks towards the camera and taps her foot, then that's a problem with the ChiChi Norns/derived breeds that's caused by high Arousal Potential (chem 39). To fix that, select Orika, open the CAOs Command Line (shift + ctrl + C), and type "targ norn chem 39 -1". You'll need to do this at regular intervals (or whenever it becomes a problem). Granted, Arousal Potential is also what allows creatures to breed (it gets turned into sex drive when opposite sex pheromone), so if Orika ever finds her way back down to the males, you might want to stop doing that. I have no idea why CL decided to implement that gait, because it sucks.

    However, that doesn't look to be the case there (since it's usually a problem with creatures that face to the right), which in that case I've no real solution.

    As another note: the C2toDS lifts lack pull scripts, which largely explains why creatures using them are unlikely to go down (since by instinct creatures pull lifts to go down). To remedy this, I recommend killing all the lifts and replacing them with elevines. In addition, C2toDS by default lacks CA linking in most places (apart from the world seam) - the Magic Words Room Edits can help you fix that issue. Both of these are available from Naturing :: Nurturing (if you don't already have them, that is).

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  2. Thanks for the reply Grendel! To answer your question it's not the gait issue where she looks at the camera. She just keeps limping forward repeatedly without going anywhere, and it only happens when she's on the hill.

    Thanks for the suggestion about the lifts, I had no idea they lack pull scripts. That would explain why any norn that has made it to the surface has never gone back down... however the norns use the lifts in the swamp area all the time and go up AND down in them... so are you sure it's not just the surface lifts that lack pull scripts? In any case, I may just switch to elevines. Thanks for the suggestion!

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  3. All the lifts in C2toDS lack pull scripts - I've looked at the code. What you're seeing is the push script at work. Moe tried to be fancy with them and had the push script make the lift go up or down depending on what the creature wanted to do and/or the level the lift was at.

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