Crestfall || Plodding Along

After spending quite some time waiting in limbo (I've finished college and moved to a new city to start an internship - hello, everyone!), Crestfall is awake and alive again, and things seem to be a little more hectic than I remember them being...

To say the world is crowded might be an understatement, especially in ancient Albia, which is absolutely bursting at the seams with multiple generations of Gargoyle Norns. Topping off at 62 total creatures across the entire world and chugging along at a lovely 4.8 frames per second, it seems like it's time to turn the population waaaaaaay down, so I'm going to start gradually tapering it off. For now, the cap is at 50, and I think I'll keep reducing it until we're down to a more compact 30 creatures. It's tough trying to balance wanting young Norns to keep coming in while also not wanting to prematurely kill off the older generation.

The plus side to such a large population is that it appears color mutations are finally beginning to emerge! Bourbon Plantain here is a dark purple color that admittedly reminds me of the grape-flavored cold medicine I had to take as a child, compared to the lighter pink most Gargoyle Norn females show at her age.

Ferris here is still having a grand old time in the far left corner of the Bridge with some gadgets. He's approaching 18 hours of age, by the way. Yes, he has been content to sit in a corner with some gadgets for longer than most creatures spend living in the first place!

Despite my best efforts to keep the Burrows full of toys and food for them to care for themselves, the Aardvark population has done quite poorly, and continued to drop off until only these two males were left. It looks like I'll have to rethink my use of the Burrows for now, or maybe start a new population in there and see if they fare any better than the previous!

Now what's that I see in there...?

Did you catch it?

Now look at the colors on this fine guy! Snobbish Desert here is a very, very old Norn at almost 7 hours of age, but it appears that in his last minutes of life, he's spontaneously become a beautiful pastel green color. From what I can tell, he was born a normal color, and none of his many children and grandchildren appear to have any of this coloring. Will they turn green in their old age, too? Or was he simply an abnormality in a still fairly-normal population? 

It was at this point that I noticed a list of creatures that had been found in the Warp, but had yet to warp in. I then realized that Albian Warp was probably respecting my (quite packed!) population cap. Whoops! I briefly bumped the cap back up to allow some creatures to enter...

The first Norn to arrive was Onerous Moor, from Fuuinrei! Apparently, he was meant to arrive on April 4th. That's a long time to be stuck between worlds, especially as a baby! I wonder if perhaps this is another genetic breed?

The second was Arnhelm, who, as the picture indicates, is clearly healthy. :) He's a generation 1 Bengal Norn from Xerus. 

Next came these two, Amalindis and Antoni, also healthy generation 1 adults from Xerus! They were followed by Arke, Afureddo, and Agilulf, though Agilulf was quick to take the Portal back home as soon as he could. To my surprise, as soon as he was gone, he came right back!

I made sure to move him a little more away from the Portal this time, so he could get settled in with everyone else.

Here they are all together! Considering the pattern between all of these creatures sent our way and the variety in them, I'm willing to bet their coming to visit us was intentional - thank you, Xerus! <3

They're, um, getting along swimmingly... 😅

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