Stardate 0501.27 - Population Shifts

the narnia/avantasia population was 7 to 5, but finally, it's balanced out to 6 and 6. berna has died; she had heavy metal contamination from the stingers. her twin, blithe, is ancient but still living. and on the avantasia side, corona has been born.

she appears to be a full hardman, but she is the offspring of bridget (hardman/amphibi-drac) and achilles (hardman). i doubt she is amphibious. she certainly has a temper!

brogan seems to have an obsession with pushing grendels. i hope he doesn't try it if one comes to visit! i've stored all the eggs, so i bumped up the population to include two grendels to hatch. mine seem to all love the beach. the current one is in the aquarium again. gah, now corona has picked up the grendel-pushing idea!

i tell you, when norns hit their teens, they just go crazy.

gah! now achilles is fraternizing with a grendel and learning to hit gadgets!

Stardate 0501.22 - The Second Generation

astra and zebra have died today, closing the chapter on the first generation narnians.

bayli has laid an egg, assuaging mt fears for the fallow bloodline. carz is the father of dan, who hatched today. hes got an orange bengal look, although his body is fallow-spotted instead of striped. zebra arms and astro legs.

another narnian egg has hatched unexpectedly! i dont know how that one avoided being put into storage... dominika is the daughter of chandra and carz, a mostly astro norn. (at generation 4, the mixes are already getting quite long! g-beng, zebra, astro....!) it seems narnia is destined to take up more population slots than avantasia! five to seven.


in avantasia, another hardman/draconian mix has hatched: athena and dragos son, brogan. he has a hardman head and drac body. he seems to be amphibious, and ages at a normal rate, and has a hardman temper.

bridget was lonely and old enough to mate, so i fetched achilles from the jungle. but athena got to him first! athena was annoying brago, who was not old enough to mate yet.

but eventually, bridget became pregnant with twin eggs. later, as brago reached adulthood, she became pregnant with an egg from him. now her three eggs are sitting around, unhatched. not to mention the four narnian eggs in storage. (these twin pregnancies are really pushing my population rate!)

during the lull, two grendels managed to hatch. achilles still has a fondness for grendels (although perhaps he means he likes to eat them, as he was going out the door saying 'eat grendel'). but with athena's help, they were dispatched.
no other grendels have hatched, since our two newest narnian eggs.



in minor news, i think i've got the perfect solution to the stickleback population. an albian snail launcher, plus little tails to give it a push now and then, keeps the stickleback in snail (bug) supply. (snails by edash - http://www.edash.screaming.net/creatures/) (tails by daan and aquashee - http://www.aquasheep.be/albianoceans/)

Stardate 0501.15 - The King Is Dead

Aslan, the ancient golden bengal whose genes flow through every narnian-hatched norn, passed away peacefully in his sleep today. he was gazing thoughtfully heavenward... perhaps asking for a blessing on his peaceable kingdom.

zebra and astra remain the two last generation 1 norns. zebra has laid 6 eggs, and astra 5. not all of them have hatched, and i want to leave the way open for the later generation eggs. bayli hasnt laid any eggs at all, though she's the only one. i'm concerned, as she is fayli's only offspring, and if she doesnt mate, the fallow line will die out.


drago died today as well, managing all 3 kinds of starvation at once. his son, brago, is following in his footsteps. whenever he's bored, he obsesses about seeds instead of playing with toys.

bridget is growing, and has turned a paler shade with a greenish tinge. both she and brago get a bit lonely, but athena and achilles are off roaming, and my machine cant handle a big population to hatch with them. in fact, theres such a full house, no grendels are hatching. unrest may be brewing.


in a separate norngarden, i managed to get two well-adjusted dracs into adulthood, should i ever need a breeding population.

i also spliced four hardman/amphobo-dracs in the lab. one was not amphibious, and one was too angry, but two genomes came out with a good balance. even the angry young norn may do well in avantasia, if the grendels become a menace again.

Stardate: 0501.14 - Is Contentment Possible?

my latest baby amphi-drac, brago, was actually content today. in fact, he was free of boredom and hunger long enough to be lonely. bridget, the hardman/amphi-drac cross was also lonely, so they are keeping each other company in the forest. sadly, bridget is outgrowing brago.

bridget has a hardman body and hip-wader boot drac legs. i'm not sure yet what other drac traits she might have inherited. i did take her into the water to test for air bubbles... then again, i can't tell if she's breathing water or is too tall to make bubbles and is about to drown. so that ended that test!

i dragged drago into the jungle and mated him with athena again. but i may yet get desperate enough to try genetic engineering a drac and a hardman in the gene splicer.

athena grew cold, so i took her under the volcano and set it off. well, that certainly warmed things up! athena did NOT like the big boom, and she ran around scared. for all of two seconds. then, of course, she was mad. stomping, snarling mad. bloodsong retreated norn while athena hit machinery....

achilles has been roaming around, and hanging out in the jungle toxic pit, picking up bacteria. well, one. he had a little histamine, but he's tough, he got over it. he met a grendel on the bridge and killed it. but achilles is more of a sissy than athena, he runs around crying after a fight. (of course, i could stand a tribe of amazon norns, here!)

fig, the grendel was popular, even with the hardmans. he went to live on the sunny beach of the aquarium. i tried to drown him twice, but he looked at me with those big, round, red eyes and... well. he went back to the jungle and died, but i'm not sure from what. possibly old age!


narnia has become innundated with eggs. well, the fool population controls did not get saved properly, they were set to 16/14! now i don't know what to do with all these eggs. maybe only keep the latest ones, but what about the original females' eggs? don't they get a line of desendants? and berna gave birth to twins, like her mother. looking at zebra's history, she's laid about six or seven eggs alone! d'oh! so i can take some of hers out. except i dont know which ones they are!

Stardate 0501.12 - Trouble and Paradise

Long day today. Dracha and Drago reached adulthood, finally, and I re-imported the hardmans, Athena and Achilles. I turned off the elevator button hiders, and am pleased to note we did not have a recurrence of elevator obsession. Drago did a little button pushing, but I thwapped him, and he quit.

From thence it was a long battle against boredom and starvation. For the abundance of food the dracs can eat -- critters, bugs, pests, food, and even fruits and seeds -- it is certainly difficult keeping them fed.

Meanwhile, the hardmans were their cantankerous handful. I dragged them by the scruffs to the learning room. Athena was having none of that, she stomped out almost right away. I dragged her back a time or two, but she's stubborn. They didn't learn to speak quite properly, but at least they understand when I say "what?" or "express."

Then I realized my adult dracs hadn't bred yet. Worried that they might yet keel over dead, I thought it prudent to push the hormones a tad. Then I thought, if I get another drac egg, I'll have another tender drac baby to nurse -- aigh! So I dragged Achilles over into the mix, and it didn't take long for Dracha to get pregnant. Except I don't know who the father actually is -- and won't until the egg hatches. Ah, the suspense!

For insurance, I also bred Athena to Drago. Now the trick is what will the cross-breeds be like? Will they be amphibious like the dracs? (And how will I know without drowning one?) Will they be tough like the hardmans or delicate infants like the dracs? Only time and study will tell.

Then Dracha died. She was homesick after laying her egg, and neglected to eat or push toys. I suppose my caution was well-founded, but I also think I should have taken a closer hand in caring for her.


Athena, with that same determination as always, migrated straight to the jungle. Where she is completely ga-ga in love with the grendel punching bag. She eats arkwood seeds and chilipeppers, and beats the tar out of the bag until she's tired.

Then, of course, a real grendel strolled by, and she ignored it. D'oh! But when he came back as an adult, she made her first kill. She seems to ignore the baby grendels. (And I had pics of Athena, but ScreenGrab didn't work again. I think maybe I pressed the wrong keys. ::sigh::)

Meanwhile, the boys hang out in the forest, needing to be told time and time again to eat and play. Although while in the learning room, I, myself learned a handy new word: 'definitely.' None of that, "me bored," "maybe push toy." Now it's "definitely push toy." Hopefully that will get the idea across better, but so far... the results seem the same.




Meanwhile in Narnia, life is peaceful and full of butterflies. My first generation is growing elderly, and their colour is fading, especially Astra's. The second and third generations are growing up. And I think I am going to run into the all-adults/no-eggs or all-eggs/no-adults scenario again.

I have decided that Narnia and Avantasia will have six norns each, and I will leave two creature slots open for grendels (or ettins). Of course, it doesn't help that Narnia has 8 and Avantasia 4. And that Bloodsong is stubborn and won't off or export any of the elderly norns. (It also doesn't help that one can't set population levels by area.) But with a little egg control, things ought to work out. (Yeah, like any of my plans have worked out!)

Stardate 0501.11 - Ah, Adolescence

a milestone today: the amphibi-dracs have reached adolescence. and seem to have forgotten everything they learned in childhood! do they remember to eat if they're hungry? oh, and toys are SO childish. no, these adolescents can't be bothered with those. elevators are all the rage. forget eating and playing, it's pull elevator all day.

and they don't listen. i point to toys, i say push toy, i say no, no, a thousand times no.... i drag them away, i pick them up and plunk them down elsewhere.... i skritch them when they DO use a toy, i even swatted them when they pulled the elevator. ooooh, those rebellious teens!

despite the time and effort it took to raise them this far, i swear i am frustrated enough to let them die out if they can't get over this elevator obsession. why is it the norns i don't pay attention to and don't coddle have no trouble whatsoever, but the ones i hand-raise (no pun intended) have all kinds of problems? am i bad parent!?!?


i've gone ahead and moved drago and dracha to the forest in avantasia. i've also removed norngarden and the gargoyle norns from narnia. i'll put the gargoyles in their own norngarden docking station, and let them live unmolested for a while. i might put in some drac eggs with them, see if they manage to survive. but having a gargoyle norngarden IN avantasia-naria was just getting beyond the scope of the project, here.


and since i exported goliath and gala, (and some fool had the breeding limit set all the way up to 12 instead of 2, like it's supposed to be!) two more narnian eggs have hatched. both are generation three, and both are offspring of astra and blithe. i didn't know those two got along so well. one is a male, with astro body and zebra head, and one is female, mostly astro but with striped legs.

also, fayli died today. she was hovering over the eggs in the incubation area, and didn't get enough starch to eat.