Generation Five

Letting off steam.

Pascal and Aegon both took it rough when Mio died. It was just the two of them now - a very old man and a young teenager with a lot of grief and anger. Aegon had barely known his mother, Lily, who died when he was very young. He had never even met his biological father Rahad, and his step-father, Davon, walked out almost before Lily's body was cold and in the ground. It was left to Pascal and Mio, his grandparents, to raise the young boy, and when Mio passed away after 97 wonderful, full days, Pascal and Aegon suddenly found themselves alone in a very big house.

Father and son, but no family resemblance.

Pascal tried to be as much of a father figure to the boy as he could, and one of their favorite stress-relievers was to spar together. He let Aegon try whatever hobby he wanted to put his hand to - whether it was photography (he let the boy have his old camera from France), training the new foals (the last Mio had worked to breed out of her racing horses before she died), music, or sports. Aegon tried almost everything, and while he could accomplish almost anything he put his hand to, nothing seemed to help. He even tried meeting his biological father in the park one day, just to talk, but it didn't go well. Rashad had no interest in being a father to Aegon, who looked so much like his mother. Did Rashad even remember Lily, or was she just another in a long line of conquests? Aegon didn't know, and didn't bother to ask. The meeting probably raised more questions for him than it answered. At least he managed to keep up an awkward friendship with his half-brother, Aemon. They studied together a few times after school, and they were in the same class, but there was little more to it than that. Davon was nowhere to be seen.

Aegon did well in school, and his hobbies narrowed over time to photography and painting. Artistic talent seems to run in the family. Due to the great success of the family over the years, they were now considered the 'old money' of the city of Appaloosa and Aegon was never pressured to get a job during high school. He considered it, but soon someone came along to distract him from any thoughts of money or careers.

The perfect wedding.

Jodie. Aegon knew instantly that she was the girl for him, with her fiery hair and infectious smile - but would she accept him? They struck up a friendship, and after moving past the awkward teenage years, one happy day after they had both graduated from highschool, she agreed to marry him.  They were young and in love, and had a beautiful moonlit wedding in a pavilion by the beach. He had found his happiness, and she had found safety with the Morels, after her parents had tragically been infected with vampirism. Now they have a young son, Virgil, who has his father's eyes and his mother's red hair, and the future is wide open for him, the next generation in this family saga.

Pascal watches the whole story with pride, knowing his grandson has matured into a fine young man, proving that, where sims are concerned at least, how a man behaves is entirely up to him, and not the decisions made by those before him. Who knows what will happen for Virgil, the sixth in a long string of sims, and hopefully the predecessor of many more in the days to come?

I'm wondering how long it will be before Pascal finally dies. He's almost 110 now - an unheard of age for a sim set to a normal lifespan.

Yet More Family Drama: A Shocking Turn of Events!

It seems that this legacy game in the Sims 3 is turning out to be the most emotionally involved Sims game I have ever played.

Last time we checked in with my sims, the young mother Lily had just married, after an emotional break up with Rashad and the birth of her first son, Aegon, whom she had with Rashad and is illegitimate. Things were tough for a while, but she married Davon, a guy she met in town, and things started to become better. She became pregnant again and had another son, whom she called Aemon. Life seemed to be all well and good for all the Morels and the Lassiters.


Then, it happened. On a perfectly normal Sunday afternoon, Lily had gone downstairs to the kitchen to cook dinner for everyone, and I saw that the dishwasher was broken. I told her to repair it, and then turned my attention back upstairs, where Davon was working on a woodcarving and his stepson Aegon was painting. Next thing I know, I hear a horrible bzzzt noise and everyone rushes downstairs. I look to see what the trouble is, and there's Lily, curled up dead on the kitchen floor. I stared in shock. This was a horrible turn of events.

Death showed up and took Lily away, and left nothing but the urn sitting on the floor next to where she had died. Mio took her daughter's remains to the cemetery and put her on the family plot with the rest of her predecessors, and she stood there for a while and mourned. This was the first time I had buried a child before the parents in the Sims 3. I sat for a minute and quietly mourned with Mio. This was not how it was supposed to happen.

Everything was different after that. Davon, who had been a perfect gentleman before the death of Lily, took a bad turn. Maybe he was mentally unstable anyways, and couldn't handle life with his in-laws and his stepson while the memory of his young wife's death was so fresh in his mind. Maybe he couldn't stand seeing Aegon every day, who looked so like his mother. Maybe the house was too full of memories. Whatever it was, he couldn't handle it, so he gathered up his toddler son Aemon, took one last look at his stepson, who was sleeping fitfully, and walked out.  He got a cheap house on the other side of town, and despite Mio's attempts to contact him and try to convince him to move back in and help take care of his stepson, it is no good. I guess Davon never liked Aegon anyways, but was too enamored of Lily to say anything about her previous misfortunes with Rashad.


Now the big old house is very quiet, and Aegon spends his days trying not to think about how he is suddenly all alone in a house that is much too big for a little boy and his grandparents. This was not the way I had imagined my game going. I hope the grandparents live long enough for him to reach his teen years, otherwise my legacy game might be cut short.

WARC: Getting Organized

The Windy Acres Riding Club met again last night, and our numbers have grown a little bit. We had some new members, and took care of some administrative tasks to get better organized. After voting on the website for our uniform and team names, we put them into action in-game.

 The riding practice uniform is a combination of Arth-Crus and some Quilted Pants, dyed black. Kiralynn gave us freedom to choose our own shoulders, gloves, and shoes, and while we can't wear hats, we can wear headbands, so I chose the Boots and Gloves of the Eorlingas, and the Circlet of Men. No shoulders for me. I think they would take away from the fantastic look of Arth-Crus. My full look turned out rather dashing and smart, I think. I might change the boots though. They look a bit too chunky. There are some good slim knee-high boots in Dunland, if I remember correctly, but it is a long way still for baby Indy till Dunland. She's up to 35, so almost halfway there, but still, a very very long road. Got to stop messing around and seriously push through the levels. I can go back and grab rep/deeds later.

We decided on Heraldic colors for our team names, so we now have teams Argent, Sable, and Azure, and also the backup team of Purpure (captained by me!) Once we had finished all the team organization and decided on what time alternate practice on Saturdays should be (noon est!), it was time for our leader Kiralynn to go. Most people stayed though, and I ended up leading an impromptu practice for the new folk last night. I did a rough job of explaining what we were doing, but I think folk got the general idea, and in the end I think progress was made by all. We only made it through two formations, but for me, who had NO idea how to explain it the way Kiralynn explained it last week, I feel it went well. At times I felt like Marlin trying to retell that horrible joke about the mollusk and the Sea Cucumber.

 Practice will be each Wednesday evening at 9:30 EST and Saturdays at Noon EST. Contact Kiralynn ingame on Landroval or visit their website for more info.

On Youtube, She Is.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been working on leveling a new Indrabar on Landroval. Although I am well past the Lonelands now and into the thirties, while I was trudging through the Lonelands, I ran into a minstrel named Movaro. Turns out, Movaro is played by a guy called Dulayne, and he's doing a let's play series on Youtube. Consequently, Indrabar made her first internet debut as we ran together doing an escort quest!


If you're interested in his channel, check it out here. I've embedded the episode here, and Indy makes her first appearance at about 2:56, running by blithely like a true huntard. We group for a while and he moves on to other quests after I switch to another character. Most of his other videos are pretty fun to watch, so I recommend checking out his channel.

I must say, my first Youtube appearance is tons of fun to watch, but I can't help but see all the mistakes I made while I was running with him.

The Windy Acres Ranch Riding Club

I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but I started fresh on the Landroval server, and have been leveling several characters there. On the whole I love the milder attitude and general slower pace of that server, and the RP events add a bit of spice to the now familiar Lotro experience.

One such event, which was loads of fun, was learning to ride dressage in formation. Anyone who has grouped with me on Gladden, or who has read much of this blog, will know that I am something of an obsessive horse collector with Indy. Seriously, she has about 70 of them. So this event was right up my alley. My only problem is that the Landroval Indy doesn't have that many horses. In fact, she only has about five or six. Time to go get some, I guess!
 
We learned spacing first, and a few terms, and the leader of the event, Kiralynn, taught us how to ride in several formation patterns. I get the feeling the person behind the character might actually do a lot of work with horses in real life. Aldekim beat out the time with a drum, and hearing the beat actually helped stay in time, as silly as that sounds.


It took a bit more practice than I would have expected, but it got easier as the night went on. We will continue meeting at least once  a week and will hopefully be ready for a performance soon!

Play on Landroval? Interested in joining the Riding Club? Check out the website and contact Kiralynn on Landroval in-game!

An Update on the Masterwork

I've been working more lately on the cathedral I started ages ago in Minecraft, and I'm finally making some definable progress after months of nothing. Kind of like writer's block, only with, well, pixelated blocks. I tried to take this screenshot from the same location as the original shot in one of my earlier posts when I first came up with the idea for the cathedral, but I've since torn that platform down so it was more of a guesstimate.

You can see I've started to define the roof, and although it's hard to tell, a lot of progress has been made on the walls in the nave and aisles, and I put in a huge rose window at the front entrance. It's actually kind of hard to tell the scale of this thing from this screenshot, but I wish you could see it in person and walk around in it. It's so much more inspiring now that it's so much closer to being finished, I feel more and more motivated to press onward the more I add to it. Hands down it's the most ambitious project in Minecraft I've ever taken on before. The wall defining the border of the kingdom was huge, I'll admit, but it was, well, just a wall. It's not that challenging. This though, this is taking thought and planning and trial and error and a little bit of math even. Not my strongest suit.

The project at sunrise.

The above picture is purely to attempt to give you a sense of scale, but then I suppose if you know anything at all about Minecraft you'll be able to see how huge it is. Granted, it's not the greatest or most impressive thing out there, especially if you do a youtube search with choice phrases such as 'epic minecraft cathedral' but I'm still pretty proud of it. Maybe once I finish it, it won't be such an eyesore and Squid won't have a reason to complain about the half-finished building on the edge of her backyard.

I also lost the link to whatever real-life cathedral I was modeling this after, so it's completely out of my head at this point. +5 to creativity, please? One thing that really pleases me about building this is how I've come up with some new ideas and even stolen some building techniques from watching the videos of others on youtube. Did you know you could place stairs upside down? I do know, and I'm thoroughly exploiting the technique in my flying buttresses. I still wish we could put stained glass in our windows, but as I was talking with a friend the other day, the tech to implement that would be huge, and probably not something Notch would want to add, since Minecraft can be a demanding program to run anyways, at least on my machine.

Hrmmm, after going back and looking at older posts, I was apparently modeling this thing after the Metz. Mine looks nothing like it. Oh well. I'll keep trudging merrily along. /whistleahappytune

A Question of Legitimacy

As some of you may know, I decided to play through one Sims 3 family for 20 generations as part of my Day Zero Project. Generation 5 was just born to my gen4 girl, Lily, but I have a bit of a long story to preface my ... moral conundrum.

This is Lily. Lily had the start of a fantastic life. She had a great family, lots of opportunity, and a handsome boyfriend. She was determined to be a master of all the instruments in the Sims 3, and was making great progress, playing for hours each day.

Her boyfriend, Rashad, while handsome and sensitive and fabulously artistic (he painted and sculpted), wanted more than what she was giving. She wanted to get married, but he never asked her. Instead, he finally convinced her to scoodlypoo with him, and she did, in the hopes that it would satisfy him and then they would have a beautiful wedding. Instead, right after it was done, the totally cliche and very unfortunate happened: they had a fight and broke up. It was like he went crazy - implying her mother was a llama and other such nasty things. She was heartbroken, and she never saw him again. Last she heard, he was a writer for a tabloid magazine.

And then, surprise! You know what they say - it only takes once. She was pregnant! Her parents and grandmother were not thrilled, but they welcomed the child into the world, and Lily stood tall despite the rumors flying about town about how her son was conceived out of wedlock. For a while it was so bad Lily couldn't leave the house without people stopping and pointing and gasping and shaking their heads at her. One restaurant even refused to serve 'her type!' Despite all this, she persevered, and soon enough little Aegon was born.

 Surprisingly, he carries the genetic marker I put in Duncan at the start of the whole thing (bright yellow eyes. No, it has no purpose or meaning, other than I wanted something easily identifiable for a marker, as an experiment). So far it has shown up every other generation (Gens 1, 3, and 5), exactly.

All seemed well with the world, and eventually the rumors died down. People are fickle, and they will always have something new to gossip about. Hopefully it will be a while before poor Lily finds herself in the spotlight again.

Aegon was growing up quickly, learning new things every day about talking and walking and how to properly chew on toy cars. Lily continued to practice her instruments, and eventually she was able to leave the house without being ridiculed or shunned. They moved on with their lives.




 And by 'went on with their lives' I mean Lily really, truly, moved on. She went out and met people, determined to overcome the bad name people had put on her, and one of the people she met was Davon Lassiter. This time, she'd found a great guy. They got along great, he was a hard worker and, most of all, he respected her. He didn't seem to mind (or maybe he didn't know) about the rumors that occasionally still cropped up about Lily, and he was great with Aegon. He was sweet, funny, and even though he was overweight, he was a hard worker. They got married in an incredibly private ceremony (you don't get more private than the bathroom), he moved into the family estate, and soon after she was pregnant again. Things were looking up. Davon got in shape and really slimmed up, then he got a job as an inventor. The new baby turned out to be another son, and now Lily had two children, Aegon Morel (her maiden name) and Aemon Lassiter (her married name). Lily continued with her music, but it was harder now with two children.



And now the question stands: which one of her children will be the heir for the legacy game? Are there rules against bastards? Is it which ever child comes first? Does Aegon have to stand aside for his step-brother Aemon, simply because of a wedding ring? Does Aegon get precedence because he has the genetic marker? Answer in the comments below and tell me! I will go with whoever you decide, so vote!

Death Dances Tonight: Guest Submission!

Today we have a guest submission from a reader, doodlebrain, who is an avid Sims fan. Here's the screenshot she submitted and the story that goes with it:

Here's the story: My character Issabelle Montgomery, is a celebrated 5 star chef. She lives in Bridgeport and owns several businesses and night spots, one of which is The Grind. As a master mixologist, she was given the task to moonlight at the Grind. The bartender on duty happened to be very elderly and as she walked out to the dance floor while my girl tended the bar, she died--on the dance floor. Death comes, and sends her away to the hereafter, however, Death did not leave, but decided to have a little fun and dance. On the table. Weird. Very weird.

Even Death needs a little fun every now and again! Thanks for the submission, and happy Simming! 

Have a funny gaming story of your own? Want to submit a screenshot? Tell me everything at elfingamer@gmail.com

More Meta-deed Completion

For a long time, I assumed Indy was forever doomed to be casual. I was never going to see the inside of anything tougher than Sword-halls. Then I started raiding, and I saw the insides of some very cool places. Progress was beginning to be had all around on meta-deeds of all sorts.

 Then I stopped raiding, for the most part, due to dropping my sub and getting out of the game for a couple months while I tested out SW:TOR, and in the process of leaving the game I got behind and all the rest of my kinmates are far ahead of me in content and raiding experience. Trying to get in runs now, being behind the curve, it's kind of hard sometimes to imagine ever having all of the meta-deeds finished. If they keep adding content fast enough, then perhaps I will never be finished and I will always have some sort of goal. Of course, as long as I have alts, I will have goals, but that is a tangent we don't want to go down just yet.

Tonight, with the dedicated help of my favorite tank, I managed to finish one of them, the Tempest of Dol Guldur. This one, while less intensive than say, the Moria or Angmar meta-deeds, still took a long time and a lot of work.

Now it's all paid off, and I finally have it finished. The default name was Moonlight, but I changed it to Ananlend, Sindarin for a very long journey. Indy decided to show off on the banks of the Great River Anduin in the new area of Thinglad just after sunrise. I know this sounds silly to all the non-gamers out there, but it was rewarding to finally see it, to ride it around. Felt like I'd accomplished something. Even if it was all pixely and not really worthwhile in the long run, I guess.

My only problem now is to decide what deeds to tackle next. I have pretty much run out of things to do duo or solo, and I'm getting into deeds that will take a goodly number of people to run. The more people something takes to run, though, the longer it will take me to complete the deed, especially when the deeds are ten levels old. No one wants to run that old stuff. For example, I have the Ost Dunhoth meta-deeds to do now. But no one runs Ost Dunhoth anymore, because it isn't cap anymore, and no one wants to waste time on getting raid gear when they're going to blow through those levels on their way to 75 anyways.

/sigh. Back to being casually anonymous, I guess.

Forced Labor

So Squid and I finally managed to push a little bit farther in the epic line, and wouldn't you know it, those stupid Dunlendings, who we'd helped and helped and helped, they sold us out to Saruman. Now we're prisoners, forced to work in his dungeons. Squid had the worst of it, as I think I was too busy being a photographer to actually help her with her tasks. She manages to carry a barrel full of weapons magnificently though. Sashays like a boss. Her taskmaster is staring like a creeper over the top of the barrel. Try as we might, we couldn't get rid of him. Kept stalking her. Course, she is gorgeous. I only wish it wasn't so dark underneath Orthanc, because it makes for dim, hard to see pictures.

And she has some awesome moves. Like this one, to the left, where she douses a rat in holy light. We actually had a quest called "Kill Ten Rats." I don't know if that was just lazy story-writing on the part of the devs, or pure genius. Also, my eagle, can't remember his name, looks fantastic in this picture. All swoopy. Ahem. Even though we were prisoners, our wardens were kind enough to let us keep our weaponry. And our nanimals. What kind of prison is slavery in Orthanc, anyways? Other than the hard labor and disgusting living conditions, it wasn't that bad.

So a short post, because I am out of sudafed.

Deed-mongerer

Yes, I know he's not emoting in this shot.

So if any of you have been reading this for a long time, and I pity you if you have, you may remember a post about the new meta-deed mounts. There were three deeds, and the other day, I finally finished all three of them. I have my Angmar meta-deed done, my Moria one, and just now, my Lothlorien one. So now, I has a shiny white goat as a reward. Oh, and I treated myself and bought one of the mounted emotes from the store.

Of course, it took me so long to finish all three that by now they have other meta-deeds out. One for a Mirkwood horse, one for an Ost Dunhoth horse, and I think there's an Isengard one as well. Oh well. Something else to keep me on the perpetual grind, I suppose.

SHFT: Super Rare

Short post today, just wanted to brag.

So today, I was exploring a random hole in the ground and came across someone odd. Mr. Tim. No, Squid, not Mr. Timn. Just Tim. He wasn't hard to kill, and he dropped a spiffy hat.

And the best part?  Apparently he's super rare and killing him is the only way to get that hat. Now I feel special, cause Indy has a pointy hat.

This almost makes up for me deleting my spectre boots.

SHFT: Mistakes

All this time I've been playing Terraria, I've been playing as a character named Garbledytesting or somesuch nonsense. Well, I finally got her gear up to snuff and decided to shove everything in chests and then delete her, and use Indrabar, whom I created a long time ago while I first played Terraria with my husband. So I shoved everything in chests, and then, I shoved all her gold and armor in the piggy bank. I saved and exited the world, and deleted her. Then I loaded in Indrabar. Then I noticed something odd.  Chests will carry over between characters. Piggy Banks do not. All that gear, my Spectre boots, my feral claws, my mining helmet, my 56 gold. It's all gone. At least I put the weaponry in a chest, so I still have that. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. Time for Indy to earn her stripes, and to find some more Hermes/Rocket/Spectre Boots.

Spritely Happy Fun TIme: Making Something of Myself

So today in Terraria I decided I was going to kill a boss. I had already killed the eye of Cthulhu about six times, and he was getting boring quickly. So I went off in search of my dungeon.

I found it, and the dungeon guardian got me. Funny, no one mentioned him. After some research I learned I needed to defeat Skeletron before I could safely get into the dungeon. Only one problem - I couldn't defeat Skeletron. I tried several times before I decided I was undergeared.

I went after the Eater of Worlds instead, at my husband's advice. I killed the Eater of Worlds after a couple botched attempts, and then, just to see if I could, I killed him again. By then  I was feeling pretty spunky, so I went off to attempt Skeletron again.

It was rough at first, but once I got rid of his hands, he was almost as boring as the Eye of Cthulhu. So he is dead, and my new favorite thing to do is die in the dungeons, mobbed by lots of angry skeletons. I am on a hunt for enough golden keys to open all the locked golden chests in the dungeon in the hopes that I will find a shadow key for the few shadow chests I've seen scattered about in the hell regions of my Terraria world. No luck yet - three golden keys and no shadow one :(

Even though I haven't found my shadow key yet, I exited Terraria feeling pretty good about myself and my accomplishments - that is, if it's okay to feel good about achievements in a pixelated world. Oh, and I have Spectre Boots now. Very happy face.

It's good to have goals, right?

Thing 75: Genetic Musings of the Desultory Kind.

As part of the Day Zero Project, one of the things on my list is to play through a family on Sims 3 ... but through 20 generations. Most of my progress with the DZP will be tracked through my other blog,  The Desultory Housewife, but as this was a goal concerning games I felt it was more fitting to post about it here.

But back to the goal. 20 generations. That is a lot of game time in the Sims 3. My record is only eight generations, and even that was trying my patience. For the record, I am keeping their lifespans set to normal, with only slight extensions on the sliders for adulthood. I am not a point keeper for legacy challenges, and I am not using any cheats. The family I've chosen for the challenge, so far, hasn't reached that boring point, but that's probably only because everyone is diverse enough that I'm able to keep my interest up and not get bored.

 The founder, Duncan Polk, started with a big empty lot, no money, a nothing but a dream. His temporary wife (who broke his heart and left him with two small children) almost broke that dream, but he pulled through, becoming a great scientist and thinker, and has now passed the torch on to his son and heir so that he can rest peacefully in that great neighborhood in the sky.

Meebo, gen2

His son Meebo is a fantastic gardener, and most of the family's income is derived from the sale of his produce. I realized while playing this sim that the gardener career becomes exponentially more and more difficult to level, because each level requires you to pretty much reach what you've made cumulatively in sales already.  50k worth of vegetables is a lot of times spent in the dirt.

Lana, gen2

Here is Meebo's sister, Lana. She's a writer and a painter, and I'm debating moving her out of the house as it's getting a bit full. Turns out royalties from books are a great way to make money, so between the seven or so books she's written and the occasional painting, she proves to be a good asset to the family's bank account, which in a house as large as theirs, is a very very good thing. There's always something broken or something that needs remodeling. Yes, I said it. NEEDS remodeling. Because, you know, that wall just has to go.

Kesha, gen2; and Pascal, gen3

Next are Meebo's wife and son-in-law, Kesha and Pascal. Kesha was Meebo's highschool sweetheart, and I was thrilled when I was able to get them to agree to marriage. Pascal came over from France, and while he's in the military now, his dream is to one day have a thriving nectary. They both enjoy pursuits of the mind, so they often play chess together on fine summer days (which, coincidentally enough, it is always a fine summer day in Appaloosa).

Mio, gen3

Meebo has two daughters. The eldest, Mio, is married to Pascal, and is a great equestrian. Her two horses, Cameo, and Cascade's First Cameo, are both prize winners, and she spends every day training them to be better racers and jumpers. Here we see her with Cascade's First when she was just a little filly.  It's actually kind of a good thing that the house is full right now and Mio can't have any children with Pascal, because the horses are a handful! One of the interesting things I noticed with Mio is that genetic traits in the Sims 3 can skip a generation. I gave Duncan yellow eyes as a genetic marker, just to see how it was passed down, and while it skipped Meebo, Mio has them. It looks like my Sims are doomed to be blondes though, as Meebo got his mother's blonde hair, and Kesha is blonde, and Mio and Satele are both blonde as well. Pascal is a brunette, so maybe there is hope yet for some darker hair, but I'm pretty sure Duncan's spitfire red hair, which only Lana seems to have inherited, will be lost forever. Mio will be the next heir, and the family name also changed to Morel with her marriage to Pascal. No more Polk :(

Satele, gen3

Meebo's younger daughter is Satele. She's only in grade school right now, but one day she hopes to be a great martial artist and athlete. Here we see her doing her homework under the watchful gaze of her grandfather's portrait. She is a dedicated student, and if I'm able to keep her in the house and not move her out to make room for heirs I'll probably send her on adventures overseas to participate in martial arts tournaments and collect rare treasures. Maybe. Don't know. She's kind of whiny right now, so she's getting on my nerves.

They also have a dog and a cat, Tiffany the beagle and Gilbert the cat. Gilbert is getting pretty up there in age, and I think he might go to be with Duncan soon. Tiffany is a proud hunter, and brings home jewels and bones and rare stones every day.

I will probably post an update once I get to generation 6 or something like that. Hopefully my save won't corrupt or anything.