Norns of Nornal-Ish, the Second Generation

Oh, the joys of life! I thought I was going to get away with not having a sinus infection this season but apparently Nature had other plans. And decided to throw a summer cold right on top of it too. Right when I was in the middle of writing this blog post. So, about three weeks late, here it be!

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Group #1
One day after a round of testing agents in my other docked world, somewhat appropriately named "Mioonktoo's Lab," I had it in my mind to make another just for the fun of it. Nothing unusual, really, besides naming it "Nornal-Ish" and disabling the grendel and ettin egg layers so that I can just focus on the little balls of fluff for the time being. I forgot what all I injected into the world, except for all the current rooms of the Children of Capillata agent series and the agent that came with Amanora's Butterfly Norns. Then I hatched a few norns. And by a few I mean five pairs that except for one (The Butterflies mentioned above, which are available here) were all Creatures Labs breeds; which were the non-expressive Civet, non-expressive Bengal, Siamese, and Zebra.

Raising and teaching the lot went rather uneventful, unless one counts finding that the Siamese couple were a slap-happy pair as something significant. Or maybe I really didn't find anything of significance because I was busy creating a document to track which female had laid which egg, and later, which male fathered the resulting hatchling. Once they reached breeding age they kept me quite busy with both egg collecting and battling outbreaks of the sniffles. Until I had run afoul of an idiot moment and accidentally wiped out the first generation. With exception to the Siamese female, who had managed to sneak off to the Norn Meso and perished right outside its door while I was busy treating the sneezy herd, all of the first generation adults had reached the first elder stage. Thank goodness that I had thought to put all 28 of the eggs in my inventory!

However, I must report that there were very few hatchlings of immediate interest. Two of them died at different times after hatching, two lovely purebred Bengal females sported different pigment variations (One was simply brighter than the standard and the other had a lovely minty blue-green tint that lasted until adolescence), and one little lady who I have yet to figure out for sure which female has been her mother (For her egg was in the Zebra's clutch, but she came out looking purely Siamese!).

The more interesting things I had found was in the breeding tally itself. Currently on the side of the females it appears that each one, except for the Siamese, had laid six eggs. I imagine the reason for the few eggs of the feisty little lady is that only the bravest of males would dare try breeding with her. Speaking of the males it seems that there must have been a competition among them, most especially between the Butterfly and Siamese. Had I not have accidentally erased them from the world I don't think that there would have been a clear winner between the two of them until one kicked the bucket, but as it stood the Butterfly won with ten hatchlings to his name and the Siamese was close behind with one less. The next competitive pair was the Civet and the Bengal, with the Civet fathering five in comparison to the Bengal's four. Interestingly enough, though, was that the Zebra male had fathered no hatchlings himself. Perhaps he had no interest in competitive breeding like the other four appeared to have? I'm afraid I won't know for sure.

Group #2
A few days later, indecisive about how I was going to tally up the score with the second generation of Group #1, I hatched another group of first generation norns. Five pairs like the first and they were all Creatures labs breeds; Chichi, Fallow, Bondi, Bruin, and Harlequin. At the time I had named these handfuls of hatchlings I had my roleplaying haunt in mind and so had named them after player characters who's names started with an "A." For certain I had named three of the little fluffballs after evil-aligned characters and suspect that one of them had performed some little ritual while I wasn't looking. I'm sure I have written that once before, but I had to make mention of it again because it does sound (to me!) like an extremely plausible explanation for the surprising hatchlings I had gotten later.

With this second group, things had gone just as smoothly as they had done the first. The were differences between the two groups however. Even though it was the first egg chosen the Bruin male was the last one to hatch, and in the early stages the Fallow male sometimes got aggressive with the others like the Siamese couple had. There was also a surprising absence of illness among them, so the only thing they kept me busy with was gathering and tallying up the eggs as they were laid. They had kept right at that into old age even though at the age of 5 hours and 40 minutes a little more than half of them had decided that they had lived long enough and peacefully passed away. Two hours later another norn joined them, currently leaving three old farts aged somewhere within the 8-9 hour span to kick around the ark.

It wasn't until I was sure that they were done breeding that I started hatching the clutches sitting in the inventory. And I must say that this group had surprised me in more than one way! At the tally 56 eggs, nearly double the amount produced by Group#1, they were a very competitive and fertile lot. Of the females it was the Bondi that came out on top with an impressive 14 eggs; followed by Harlequin, Bruin, Chichi and Fallow at the respective amounts of 13, 12, 10, and 7 eggs. For the busiest male it was the Harlequin at an astounding 18 hatchlings; followed in the same fashion as the females by Fallow, Chichi, Bruin and Bondi at 12, 11, 9, and 7 hatchlings.

On the hatchlings themselves the death count is an easy handful of five; one of which might be very familiar since he has been posted about before. Fear not, for I will deliver soon on posting more about my exploits in learning about the genome of one little norn named Beirut. For those curious about the other four genetic fatalities, they are listed in the Projects section.

There were no visible pigmentation mutations in this large group, but there were definitely three that stood out the most to me. They were definite firsts for my experience, the least startling being the half-Bruin female that had a full Bruin appearance. The remaining two still remain in a tie. Why? Because they appeared to have spontaneously acquired Grendel parts even though there was no Grendel genes lurking in their parents' genomes nor lurking on board Nornal-Ish. The first to hatch with such a trait was a full Chichi I had named Brayera, who had come into the world with Banshee Grendel arms. (Remember when I mentioned at the beginning that three of the ten first generation norns were named after evil-aligned characters? Her parents were two of the evil three.) The second little fellow, named "Biscuit" by popular vote among my roleplaying peers, is completely unrelated to Brayera and even more unsettling. I believe I will let my only picture of him of speak for me.

I have exactly no idea how this poor little fellow's appearance happened but he must be terribly disconcerting for his siblings to look at, especially with his head detached from his shoulders and floating! I'm no expert in this matter, but as soon as I am able to keep up with a thread I will be posting in the CC about him. Unless I see a comment to this post about it. But either way I am curious. To head off at least one question I do have C1 to DS installed, but I have no idea what version it is or where I had downloaded it from.

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And that is where I had left off on the second generation of Group#2 and the original blog post. I am still in the same fix on how I'm going to go about breeding them all. But until I figure it out I will be taking notes and working on Beirut. Well, at least I will return to him once the household settles down a bit from a massive rearrangement now that an older relative has moved out and one of my younger siblings has begun a new school year. Quite a busy recovery from respiratory nastiness I must say!