2.6 On the Battlements

 

 

"I feel bad I'm not home so often. I'm always running off and leaving you alone while I do crazy quests," Flora voices her fears to her husband.

Ariel wraps his big arms around her reassuringly. "It's not what I imagined life would be like, but I can't complain. I have my own career to attend to while you're gone, and when you are here... life is amazing."

She kisses him. They fall into bed, but before they have their clothes off, Ariel continues, "I only wish things weren't so dangerous for you. Some of your stories..." he shudders. "Do you think you'll ever be done working for the Resolute Fist?"

"I think I'm getting close to the conclusion," she promises.

 

She's off to France again. Today she must appease the ghost of a museum curator who tragically lost his life when he stumbled into a hidden passageway in the museum and could not get back out. This case made her cry for a while, but at least she has another one of those damn keystones.

 

This would ruin my whole career, but it's only a minor inconvenience for Flora.

 

Another mummy that needs to be put down.

 

Like cats, mummies are ambush predators. 

 

They will pretend not to be interested in you until you turn your back.

 

 

 

Flora is almost done with France. On the outskirts of Champs Les Sims is a scary castle she'll have to break into if she wants the final pieces of some relic she has to reassemble to enter the Sanctuary of Horus.

While some of the French aristocrats Flora has learned about were entrusted with relics to keep them safe for future generations—and deliberately made them difficult to get one's hands on—other relics were simply plundered, their thieves ignorant as to the items' true value.

This castle belonged to one of the latter type, and the long dead man who lived here would be surprised that his home has become part of some world-spanning puzzle game for some woman on a quest to seal an ancient threat.

 

 

Flora uses zeneport to get up on the battlements, and gains access to the upper living chambers.

 

 

The remnants of an old study, maybe even an alchemy lab.

Like Admiral Landgraab, the original owner of the estate was extremely paranoid, and filled the castle with traps. 

 

 

 

 

 

These markings on the floor. They mean something. Hmm.

 

If only Flora had time to go get an archaeology degree.

Nobody will miss this vase, right?

Old nectar cellars. There's some good stuff in here!

Flora's presence awakens a mummy. He is not a morning person, and he bursts out of his sarcophagus in a rather foul mood...

"The things I do for shinies..." Flora grumbles.

Three mummies converge on Flora.

 

But as it turns out they are very polite, only attacking her one at a time.

The mummy in the stripey clothes claps and laughs at his brother's failures.

The shiny isn't even that shiny, if we're being honest here.

There's something depressing about the way the undead panic and cling to life as it's stripped from them, but what choice does Flora have?

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Etc.: I always get sad about the museum ghost, no matter how many times I play through EA's tombs.

 

Gilgolem Castle is a player-made tomb. I used the version without store content. The lot is extremely well put together, inside and out. It's beautiful, decently sized, and the puzzles match the energy of the base game, which I like.

 

Most of the traps in Gilgolem Castle were telegraphed in a subtle way, rewarding me for paying attention while not forcing me to tediously click every floor tile to see if "inspect" came up. Good puzzle design. Great job. I highly recommend this tomb.

Obviously Gilgolem Castle isn't part of the base game story lines, or connected to the Sanctuary of Horus. I'm taking a lot of liberties with my story because if I just wrote out all the adventure prompts word for word, what would make Flora's adventures different from any other adventurer's?

2.5 Don't Curse Me

 "What the? I thought I made this unbreakable ages ago..."

Nope, upgrade only 49% complete. You must have been interrupted.

 

"Dearest... let me mop up the puddle before you touch the sparking electronics." 

 

"Oh hush. I fight mummies."

 

Alexandria couldn't explain why she left Flora's wedding party early, and her family decided not to press her on it. She had never felt anxiety like that. It was suffocating. One moment she was fine, the next she was not.

 

 

 Lupin and Iris.

 

Alexandria and Iris.

Iris thinks her mother is pretty cool. Sure, Alex is mediocre as a psychic, but she's still psychic!

Adulthood comes for Iris. She doesn't feel ready.

She leaves for university right after her graduation ceremony, terrified, but determined to push her artistic skills to new heights. She'll never be punching mummies or freaking people out with tarot cards, she'll never have Echo's way with words and she'll never be the genius Lupin is (even if he won't apply himself), but she likes to think she has something to offer the world too.

 

 

Echo just had a son, Elias Yang. Flora and Alex pay her a visit so they can coo over their nephew / grandson. 

 

 

Flora tries to decide who the baby looks like more... his mom, or his dad.

 

Echo lives in the well-to-do part of town. Her place has a pool.

Ariel participates in a Sim-Fest at The Wave, the establishment that rejected him before. By popular vote, he secures the trophy, and finally has the proprietor's begrudging attention.

 

 

 That afternoon, he and Flora go out dancing at their favorite club. Life is good.

Lupin was sure his mother would be able to help him with gardening tips for his science fair project, but her advice is shockingly magic based and thus useless to him.

 

 

Flora does not strictly need her mother's potions to conquer the tombs in Shang Simla, Al Simhara and Champs Les Sims, but she'd feel a lot better if she didn't have to sleep around dangerous traps and roaming mummies, so... to speed the alchemy process up, she hunts for spotlight mushrooms around the island. There are some in her mother's garden, sure, but not enough.

As a last resort, she tries the grocery store, but they give her funny looks. Why would they have mushrooms with no culinary use, with neurotoxic properties, in stock?

"They're only deadly when not prepared right," Flora argues.

 

The consignment shop has a gem cutting machine Flora is allowed to use for a fee.There's a learning curve to making it do what she wants, but after enough tries, she knows how to cut gems in many different shapes. She's decided to keep her favorite one in her pocket, an offering for Shen Yu's dragon, should she ever come across this mysterious entity.




Not everyone is pleased with Flora's new hobby.

 

Alex corners Lucretia's son, Johannes, after catching him trying to sneak into the alchemy chamber in the library.

"Don't curse me!" he yelps. "I just wanted to look at the book!"

"Alchemy is dangerous. You haven't been prepared."

Johannes scowls, his fear disappearing when the adult takes a gentler tone with him than he expected. His mother would have cursed him. "Mom wants me to take over the business, but she won't even let me learn basic stuff," he complains.

"Well I'm not becoming your mentor. I don't even let my own children into that room. It's forbidden by the guild for good reason." Alexandria turns and leaves, not interested in involving herself in some family conflict her boss is having.

 

Alex's own son has picked up his grades, at least, and she's certain he'll do well on his aptitude tests and be able to get any job he wants, so he'll never experience the financial worries that plagued Alex for much of the kids' lives. 

 

Lupin is a genius, but he doesn't understand how hard it is to survive yet, so to him her concerns and priorities come off as silly and shallow.

Lupin graduates and is immediately offered an internship at the local marine science center. His aptitude scores also suggest things like economist, and mathematician. All of this sounds really boring. There's no escaping it, either, since if he tried to run off to university like Iris he'd just be trapped in another structured cycle, the daily monotony of classes and coursework. 

In the end he takes the internship.

It's a sims graduation, so of course it's a routing failure trainwreck.

Flora gets some quality time with Echo and Flint.

Remember Johannes Parrott? This is him now.

As a graduation gift, Flora offers her baby brother enough money to purchase a small bungalow all to himself. She is not stingy with her newfound wealth. 

"Want me out of the house, huh?" Lupin seems a little confused by the offer, as he has never expressed a desire to leave his home.

"Not really! Home won't be the same without you. I'm actually going to miss you a whole bunch if you go, and you don't have to! You can use the money for anything you want. It's a gift. I just thought you might enjoy living on your own and making your own rules for a while."

Lupin perks up. "Maybe I would."

He's been a bit jealous of Flora and her weird Chosen One thing — nothing that cool has ever dropped into his lap — but he sees now he's always had a friend in his big sister. Sometimes she knows him better than he knows himself.

Let's get at least one close-up, please.

Thank you, Lupin. You may go.

 

 

With three of her four children now out of the house and living their own lives, Alexandria is feeling... sad. She misses them, but it's more than that. Unresolved fears and questions are starting to snowball into something she just can't handle.

So she makes a decision.

"You'll find the last of the potion stock in a chest in my room. If you run out, Lucretia can source more of what you need."

"You don't have to leave, Mom," Flora whines. "We can figure something out."

"I don't age. Someone's going to notice. It's better for you if I go."

"Well, where are you going? We can go with you."

"I don't know where I'm going so I'd rather you didn't."

Alex thought she'd put down roots here, put together a life she could be proud of, but the reality is none of it was meant to last. Her job isn't even that fulfilling; her potions help people, primarily the guild, but dealing with people who want her to read their destiny in the stars is tiresome and false. There are witches in the guild willing to help Alex get resettled, but really, she just wants to be on her own for a while. No guild. No watching adult daughters have husbands and the happy married life she didn't get to have.

"Mom... I know you're scared of watching us get old. But you're going to regret not being here with us before we're gone," Flora argues, tone more harsh than she meant it to be.

Alex frowns at her. "Let me ask you something. Did you tell Ariel about me?"

"Well... no... you swore me to secrecy."

"I'm leaving, Flora. I won't have the whole family needing to keep my secrets."

 

"Mom that's not fair... that wasn't a fair question. You TOLD ME not to tell!"

"Please look out for your brother and sisters," are Alexandria's final words to her eldest.

Flora frowns. She's been looking after her siblings since her teen birthday.

It's 4 AM. It's dark out. Alexandria has vanished into the night, with only a few packed bags. Ariel begins his morning with quiet meditation. Flora tries to enjoy her waffles, carb'ing up so she can get going, but the house's emptiness weighs on her. 

 

She wants to go back to bed. She wants to be unconscious.

"Mom left?" Lupin is shocked, and hurt.

Flora met up with her brother at the arcade. Even though he's all grown up with a grown up job, he's in the habit of coming here after work to blow off steam—and it's probably not the best place for this conversation, but this is where it's happening. They are surrounded by beeping machines and competing, incongruous music.

"She was afraid she'd start bawling if she tried to say goodbye," Flora says lamely, feeling sad for her mother but resenting that she must be the one to tell her siblings Alex has gone.

Lupin folds his arms, expression fading from upset to contemplative. "Iris and I were her last link to our father. She never said that to us but it was obvious, yeah?"

Flora shrugs helplessly. "I don't know."

"She couldn't handle us leaving," he continues, "I hope she's okay."

"Maybe it's not all about you," Flora suggests.

"Timing indicates it is."

"No... the timing indicates she wanted to leave for a long while but was waiting for all of her children to be grown up first." Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. It sounded good in Flora's head. The spoken words sound less good. Like maybe they were an inconvenience their mother longed to be rid of. That's not what she meant; it doesn't feel true... "Anyway don't feel abandoned. You have me."

Lupin gives Flora a hard stare. "Why do you seem so sure she's never coming back?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Etc.: Years later, I'm trying to wrap up this story based on notes that are borderline incomprehensible.

The next five chapters were sort of outlined / half written / half staged two years ago. After that it'll be all new adventures for this legacy family. That said, the next five chapters are ... difficult, and you'll probably see why I wanted a break.

With all the kids Generation 1 had to have grown up, my founder is released from her obligations of gameplay, and leaves this legacy in Generation 2's capable hands.

 

WARNING: Next chapter contains pictures that could be considered spoilers for Gilgolem Castle.