Saturday, September 27, 2014

Entries from Julian's Diary

From Julian's diary:


    I didn't tell Jilly about my fear that I might not be able to give her the child we wanted, given the high rate of sterility exhibited by the MorcuCorp clones. I began a line of research into fertility and gene splicing, in case we'd need some non-traditional methods for procreation, but it turns out it wasn't needed. Jillyan became pregnant very soon after we began trying for it. 




Our son Kai. I admit, I did want a daughter, but I'm not disappointed with Kai. How could I be? I'm a father now.


        When Kai's hair started to grow out, we were both surprised by his hair color. Jilly's side of the Brannon family hadn't seen a brunette since her great-grandfather, Heath Brannon. And the Landgraab line has been dominated by blondes for centuries.


    Jilly, pregnant with our second child, bathing Kai.


     Dylan Brannon, our daughter.


Dylan takes after her mother, for the most part, but she has my eyes.


The kids at play. Jilly told me that she wanted to have our children close in age to each other. Her own brother was a teen when she was born, and grown up and out of the house before she could remember him. She grew up with cousins that were more like siblings to her than her own brother, and she wanted our son to have the kind of family she was raised in. 


Kai's birthday. They are growing up so fast!




Kai is something of an artistic prodigy, like his mother at that age.


     He's also an avid gamer, much to me delight.


Jill gets up at dawn every morning to surf before she goes diving. If I could find a way to harness her raw energy, I could power the world.


     Jill and Dylan. We often find Dyl outside on the balcony off her bedroom. She loves being outdoors, and I expect her to grow up to be much like her mother, always on the go.


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For the record, Kai's traits are Loner, Artistic and he picked up Computer Whiz as a child.
Dylan has Loves the Outdoors, and I forget the other trait right now.

Both names are ocean related. Kai means 'ocean' in Hawaiian and Dylan means 'son of the waves' in Welsh. According to baby name websites, anyway.

I'll actually pick up on a proper narrative in the next chapter. I just wanted to get sort of caught up to where I am in game now.

There are many more out takes and snapshots on my simblr under the Brannon RLC tag
To see the images in the tag in chronological order, use the Brannon RLC Chrono tag

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Chapter 2: Danger Cake



     No longer feeling the pressure to find a way back home, Julian was finally able to relax and enjoy life with Jilly on Isla Paradiso.


     But of course for Julian, part of enjoying life was to continue his research. Though he no longer felt the pressure to discover the atomic differences between this world and the one they originated from, the question itself still fascinated him, and Julian continued to devote several hours a day into research and experiments on the local flora and mineral samples.


     In his experimentation, Julian discovered a way to create plant/crystal hybrids that were able to absorb particular moods he would project into them through interaction. The practical applications of this new process were limited, but his work caught the attention of the professional science world, and Julian found himself sought after by the local research facility. Unwilling to give up his freedom, he turned down all their offers of a permanent position, but he did agree to come in from time to time to correlate his data with them.


     Always a thrill seeker, Jillyan continued her work in undersea exploration, catching exotic fishes and collecting shells for profit. The constant threat of shark attacks in the course of her work were just the icing on her danger cake. Not from the lemon shark, of course, being a generally peaceful species only interested in tasty fishes and not so much into battles for undersea dominance.


     The great white shark, however, is a much more aggressive and fierce predator.


     Seeing Jilly as a competitor for the tasty fish he feeds on, the great white attacks!


Only to be shown who's boss. Jillyan comes out of the fight unbloodied, taking one of the shark's teeth as a trophy.


     "I got into a fight with a great white shark today," Jilly mentions casually over their dinner at the local cafe.

     "You...what?" Julian chokes.

     "I whupped his ass, too," Jilly continues, "I got one of his teeth. Devin, the guy at the consignment shop, said I could get over $2000 for it, but I decided to keep it for my collection."


     "Oh, I almost forgot...the city council heard about my shark fight, and the gave me a reward. A whole island. Not a big one or anything. But still, kinda cool, huh?"


     "Jill, you are the most amazing woman I've ever met."

     "The shark was a wimp. It was not that big of deal."


     "We've been here for awhile and we're pretty settled in, Julian. I think we're ready to start our family."

     "Our house doesn't even have a bedroom," Julian objects, "We should move into something bigger before we start having children."

     "Well, what about that island the town gave me? We can build ourselves a house big enough for us and our kids."


     "That sounds like an excellent plan."


     At Julian's insistence, they held off on having a baby until they had a house big enough for a family. The island the town gave to Jillyan turned out to be an ideal spot for building, and they had a three bedroom house ready to move in in no time.




The first guest to visit their new home was Meri Fairweather, the merman who helped them escape from the strange island they had landed on after their plane had crashed. He brought a friend along with him, one of the seaborn, named Mia Azul.


   When he'd brought Julian and Jill to this world, he told them he visited it frequently because of the clean waters and abundant sea life it boasted, but after only a few moments of observing the way he and Mia interacted, it was clear that there was a greater lure for him here than the ocean's bounty. Jill and Julian were not surprised when Meri announced that he would taking up permanent residence here.


    


     "Mmm, getting this hot tub was an awesome idea," Jill purrs as she leans back into the bubbling water, "I can't believed we managed in that tiny house for as long as we did."

     "It's not like we spent a lot of time there," Julian answers, lowering himself into the tub beside her.

 "Well, now we have all the space we need..." Jilly says, nudging her shoulder beneath his arm.

     "It's the perfect time for us to have a baby," Julian agrees to her unfinished sentence.



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     The first generation is kind of breezing by. Since Jill & Julian got so much story in the end of the Brannon legacy, their legacy here is mostly them finally getting to settle down to a regular life together. And it's not all that exciting as a story, so I'm just presenting an overview of it until their kids start on their stories. I'm pretty excited for Gen 2, I love the roll (not revealed yet) and I have some ideas of what I'm going to do with them (though those ideas are evolving while I'm playing, so who knows, lol). 

     My tumblr followers know that my game is ahead of this chapter already. I was going to do the pregnancies and babies in this chapter, too, but I want to keep my chapters under 20 pics, so I'm splitting it up and will probably have another chapter soon. I am in the habit of posting gameplay pics on my tumblr everyday. A lot of it is out takes and scenery shots. Some of it has been spoilery, I guess, like seeing the babies already. But I won't be spoiling any serious plot stuff on the tumblr when the story does turn more towards actually having a plot. I don't consider the birth of babies to be all that spoilery, at least, not when it's fairly obvious the heir was planning on starting a family the way Jill and Julian have.

Just a reminder, you can check the Brannon RLC tag on my tumblr to keep up with the legacy out takes and such. The link is also on my side bar. And, check out the Rolls section of this blog for my generation rolls, obviously, along with my personal goals for the generation and notes on how that is progressing.

Oh, and the island Jill & Julian built their house on is actually the secret mermaid island you get if you befriend an NPC mermaid and they decide to show it to you. Jilly did have to fight a shark as one of the requirements to acquire a different island that they haven't built on yet. So I mixed up the different events in the story. Mia was an NPC mermaid. After she did her job of giving Jill the island, I moved her into her own house on an unoccupied island lot, and then moved Meri in with her from CAS. (I edited Mia in CAS to give her the custom skin and hair)