Seskorix: Mutation Station

Oh would you look at that, it's another post. Had a few interesting mutations pop up, hope you found them as interesting as I did!

Double Edged Blade
This little guy from the Terra Pluvialis group, Blade, has a weird shift in one of his stimulus genes. Normally, when an object approaches a norn, it helps relieve loneliness and boredom, but raises the crowdedness a little. With Blade, this reaction still happens... except in response to being slapped by another norn! That was the main change that happened with him, so I assume he still feels the negative effects of a slap, but at least he gets some benefit from it.

He has a twin, Besu, who has the same mutation, so I'm guessing it will end up fairly common in the Terra Pluvialis group.

Deviance from the Norm
When every single norn that hatches looks exactly the same, you come to expect that to continue being the case. So you can imagine my absolute shock and excitement when Benoit here hatched with Jungle grendel arms! Other than his unusual appearance, he is relatively unchanged from a regular Chichi norn, apart from a few minor shifts which shouldn't have too much of an impact. Hopefully we see a lot more grendel arms in the Norngarden group later down the track.

I Don't Know What This Means But It Can't Be Good
In the Lost Cave group, a baby named Ben was born. He has a change in one of his emitters that I'm pretty sure may make him infertile, but I can't actually be sure. There is a gene that I'm pretty sure relates to testosterone production that usually reads 'Creature, Reproductive, I am fertile, chem=Testosterone, thresh=128, samp=4, gain=5'. In Ben, the 'Reproductive, I am fertile' section got changed to 'Immune, I'm dead'. Now, I am by no means an expert, but I think this means Ben will only produce testosterone when he's dead, which sure isn't good, especially considering the Lost Cave group has been expanding the slowest.

Can You Even Breathe?
Bibasu, born in the Norngarden group, had only a few mutations, but one of them does not seem like good news. A reaction where water and air combine to create oxygen got shifted so that instead of oxygen, Bibasu gets an unknownase. This may mean he's unable to produce oxygen himself. If this is the case, the only thing keeping him alive is his initial concentration. Once he's used that, it's game over for him.

Sure enough, he keeled over seconds after this photo was taken. At least I could figure out why this time. The next norn to hatch after him, a girl in the Lost Cave, also died seconds after birth. These are dark times for Seskorix.
Third Generation Begins
Deep within the Silence Falls, a very special norn is born. Meet Catrin: the first member of the third generation! She looks a little disheveled, but I wouldn't worry too much, she hatched that way.

As things are progressing pretty quickly, and the oldest first gen is still fairly young, I'm putting a new rule into place: all living members of the earliest generation will be exported once their grandchildren's generation has one member in each population. In the example of the first gens, once there is a third gen in each population, they will be exported. For the second gens, they will be exported once each group has a fourth gen. This gives the younger generations a chance to reproduce, instead of the gene pool being dominated by their parents. Hopefully, this should make the gene pools a little more interesting and will also reduce the effects of overpopulation. I'll make a post detailing the status of the populations once the first gens are gone. But for now, I think I've bored you all enough with all these pictures of baby Chichis, so I'll cut this post off here. Posts like these just help me make sense of creature genetics, so expect more genetics showcases like these in between generations. Hopefully the next time I write there will be more visually interesting creatures for you to see!