Author Topic: The Shanashield Dynasty- Gen 1 Complete! Plus Spares! [Aug 3]  (Read 4851 times)

Offline dontmindme

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This dynasty is kind of a special project to me. I was nearing the end of my Immortal Dynasty and feeling 'meh' about the whole thing, like I had to force myself to play it. I suppose I just needed a break. I went back to some old screenshots and the ones that stood out to me, the ones that really made me giggle or remember a moment fondly, were ones which contained a particular dynasty helper/spouse. On a whim I went back into a (really, really, really) old file of the ID and saved him to the bin. I then rolled his traits and gave him a makeover. Thus far, he and his insane (sometimes literally) family of Life States heirs and spares have been a lot of fun. I hope you guys enjoy them too! Also, because I had just gotten my Master's degree when I started this project (in December), everyone has the initials M.S (you may groan now). Thanks to all the writers and readers for inspiring me to do this. This site feels like a really safe place to write my first 'original' story and I really appreciate that.



Prologue:

Okay, so, 'once upon a time' and all that is supposed to end with 'happily ever after', right? Thing is, life doesn't stop. Not until you're dead, at least, and really, who's going to say dying while your husband and daughter have an eternity to mourn you is a happy ending? Not many; I'm sure there are some out there. So, here's the deal: My name is Malik Oakenshield (nee Shanahan, but seriously, don't call me that) and for a while, I had a happily ever after.

I had my husband after decades of fighting for us to be together,










I had my work (which I loved, by the way),






and I had two great kids.






Who says you can't have it all? Time and the Black Wizard, that's who. See, the Oakenshields are trying to do the impossible- well, I say impossible but everyone thought cloning baby forms of living people was impossible so I guess I should say nearly impossible- save Dragon Valley. That seems like an enormously broad statement, I know, but it is the mission statement. The Valley's long lost the magic necessary to create life, ie the next generation, and well, long and short of it is, the spell the Wizards and fairies placed on the household won't extend to the rest of the Valley for generations. Something about the gradual build-up of magical energies and completing various activities to strengthen it. Once the spell's in place, provided there are any people left, of course, the Oakenshield line will act as magical batteries for all eternity. Yeah. Happy endings really stop existing once you realize that little tidbit.

So, I died and while I'd like my husband to move on as best he can, I know he won't. He's just not built for slights and hurts to slide off his back like water off the ducks in the river behind the house. That was my job, sadly, and now no one's there to do it for him. Our shy, awkward daughter will be okay or at least pretend to be; she'll insulate herself more and more into the family until the outside world only knows she exists because there must be eight. Too much like her great-grandfather in that regard. I may not like old Oakenshield but I don't have to like a person to pity their future. Man, that's depressing.

That's how this whole thing was supposed to go. Knew what we getting into and all that. Well, things changed. One day, there was a crack, a huge, physical crack and the sound! The sound went straight through you, vibrated deep in your soul. We all felt it, all of us dead. And we all knew that something had fundamentally shifted. Chaos reined as we attempted to find loved ones and figure out what happened. The only who could provide any answers, the Black Wizard, Lady of the Dead and Kellys (long story) and most powerful of her kind, was nowhere to be found. I know the others searched high and low in increasing panic. Me? I heard my Wizard. Well, I think, at least. Her voice was warped, an echo wrapped in static over a bad cable connection. But it was her. No one who has a Wizard can mistake them.

I concentrated as hard as I could and even then I barely understood her. Something happened, I gathered, that opened the way to other lands, other worlds, from the land of Death. I could go to one, if I wanted. I could experiment, see if another dynasty-spell performed similarly to the current one. The possibilities unfolded before me. If it worked, another family could take up the mantle, step up, and sacrifice for their world. If it worked, perhaps together, the two spells could feed off of each other in a perpetual feedback loop, requiring no one once complete. If it worked, I could see my family again. If it failed, if I failed, well, no harm, no foul. That's what experimenting is all about. We literally had nothing to lose.

So, forward I went. For my husband, for my daughter. But, mostly for myself. An eternity without them is an eternity too long.

Offline dontmindme

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Re: The Shanashield Dynasty- Prologue: A Little High Adventure
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2015, 12:59:08 PM »
Stat Page!

Founder: Malik Shanashield
Traits: Family-Oriented, Eco-Friendly, Vegetarian, Good Sense of Humor, Mooch
1 BFF: Marigold Moldano (fairy)
2 Career Rewards: Cooking Certificate, Food Processor
3 Unique Opps: Fresh Cookies for Sale, All New Bi-Pedal Dishwashing Machine, Learn a Recipe
4 Unique LTH Rewards: Strong Stomach, No Bills Ever, Competitive Eater, Born to Cook
5 Unique 5k+ Wishes: Master Cooking Skill, Be worth more than 200k, Marry Violet, Master Gardening Skill, Reach lvl 10 of Culinary Career
6 Unique Skill Challenges: Master Planter, Menu Maven, Star Chef, World Class Chef, Botanical Boss, Master Farmer
7 Unique Items: 7 Malik-grown Potatoes
Spouse: Violet Slymer
Spares: Magnolia, Mazus, Maple, Myrtle, Mircranthes


Gen 2: Maytendus "Tendo" Shanashield
Traits:
Toddler reqs:
Child reqs:
Teen reqs:
1 BFF:
2 Career Rewards:
3 Unique Opps:
4 Unique LTH Rewards:
5 Unique 5k+ Wishes:
6 Unique Skill Challenges:
7 Unique Items:
Spouse:
Spares:


Gen 3: Shanashield
Traits:
Toddler reqs:
Child reqs:
Teen reqs:
1 BFF:
2 Career Rewards:
3 Unique Opps:
4 Unique LTH Rewards:
5 Unique 5k+ Wishes:
6 Unique Skill Challenges:
7 Unique Items:
Spouse:
Spares:


Gen 4: Shanashield
Traits:
Toddler reqs:
Child reqs:
Teen reqs:
1 BFF:
2 Career Rewards:
3 Unique Opps:
4 Unique LTH Rewards:
5 Unique 5k+ Wishes:
6 Unique Skill Challenges:
7 Unique Items:
Spouse:
Spares:


Gen 5: Shanashield
Traits:
Toddler reqs:
Child reqs:
Teen reqs:
1 BFF:
2 Career Rewards:
3 Unique Opps:
4 Unique LTH Rewards:
5 Unique 5k+ Wishes:
6 Unique Skill Challenges:
7 Unique Items:
Spouse:
Spares:


Gen 6: Shanashield
Traits:
Toddler reqs:
Child reqs:
Teen reqs:
1 BFF:
2 Career Rewards:
3 Unique Opps:
4 Unique LTH Rewards:
5 Unique 5k+ Wishes:
6 Unique Skill Challenges:
7 Unique Items:
Spouse:
Spares:


Gen 7:  Shanashield
Traits:
Toddler reqs:
Child reqs:
Teen reqs:
1 BFF:
2 Career Rewards:
3 Unique Opps:
4 Unique LTH Rewards:
5 Unique 5k+ Wishes:
6 Unique Skill Challenges:
7 Unique Items:



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Offline Nettlejuice

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Re: The Shanashield Dynasty- Prologue: A Little High Adventure
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2015, 04:35:15 PM »
I'm thrilled to see a new story and what a great prologue.
Chant: Life States (TS3) / Immortal Dynasty (TS4)




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Offline dontmindme

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Re: The Shanashield Dynasty- Chapter 1: A Whole New World
« Reply #4 on: May 08, 2015, 11:22:42 AM »
Thanks for the support, everyone! I really appreciate it. I don't have a ton of screenshots but that seems to be the new norm around here so I hope you don't mind.

Chapter 1: A Whole New World

The following is an excerpt from Malik Shanashield's audio recordings of his experiment. Video and pictures will be provided when necessary.




It's late. I think; the gloom and generally overcast skies mess with my sense of time. I suppose I will adjust but until then, this smartphone they gave me for becoming a property owner will be incessantly checked. Oh, speaking of smartphones, I can use mine to take pictures and store this insane experiment's data. That'll certainly make me feel better at any rate. Auntie J always said the difference between science and making a mess was writing everything down. Oh, and having testable hypotheses and replicable methods and results which fall under statistical significance but writing everything down is an important first step.

Ugh, focus, Malik. Delete this from the phone later. Anyway, focus. You'd think that not being insane would make my life easier but you'd be wrong. Losing insanity's okay, it's losing my entire personality and having it replaced with a new one that completely bites. The Wizard seems to think that it's something to do with this world, like, if I'd lived here all my life instead of back home, this is the person I'd be. Am. I hate time and inter-dimensional travel. Once I get back home, I am never doing it again. Ever, period, end of story.

Come on, focus. Back to the original reason for recording this: the Life States experiment. The spell's groundwork has already been laid on the property, now I just have to fulfill a metric ton of requirements, find some woman of a different life state, and have kids. Repeat six times and discuss findings. [heavy, panicked breathing is heard on the audio for several minutes]

Future self, please delete that before publishing. Anyways, back to the....more easily attainable parts of the spell requirements. We'll deal with the [beat] personal pieces later. For now, learning skills and getting a job are the most important aspects of my life. Um, okay, let's think. Old me would've jumped at the chance to paint again but new me...yeah. Best leave that to someone with the necessary drive. Logic? No thanks. Been there, done that. Once is quite enough...even if I can't remember a thing about it. Gardening? Hmm. Yeah, actually, that could work. It's about the only science I haven't ever learned on account of old Oakenshield's obsession with keeping Life Fruits out of the hands of us puny mortals. Like we'd ever jeopardize our one chance to save the world. Back on topic, gardening. That'll work. I suppose I ought to learn how to cook as well, not a lot of veggie options at the diner. Speaking of, the diner's got a few open positions. That is certainly a better option than selling all of the fruits and vegetables I grow. I don't even know how many things I'd have to sell to get to the top of that trash heap. Opportunities to better the community should come up there as well; the diner does a lot of charity work. As for the rest...well, I guess I'll need to sit on that.

Offline Nettlejuice

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Re: The Shanashield Dynasty- Ch. 1: A Whole New World [5/8]
« Reply #5 on: May 08, 2015, 03:04:59 PM »
Your writing is so captivating no pictures are needed, at least for me  :)
Chant: Life States (TS3) / Immortal Dynasty (TS4)




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Offline dontmindme

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Gen 1 Complete! Plus, Spares!
« Reply #6 on: August 03, 2015, 01:55:44 PM »
Author's Note: Whelp, we have arrived at that point this is going to be less of a story and more of a report on the family, their goings-on, etc- real life has, unfortunately, intervened on that end. So, without further adieu, let us begin again.

Founder/Gen 1

Malik has few pictures, mostly because the road to completing his requirements was long and uneventful. I believe I spent most of his time on Speed 3. He was a very easy founder. He went to work, befriended his coworkers, came home, cooked some meals, and on his ever-increasing number of days off, he gardened. A green dragon named Delphi kept both of us from tearing our hair out over waiting for those pesky plants to grow. I set the seasons to be three weeks long, which means before the end we had move all of the plants into a greenhouse, which still stands on the property today.

Early in Malik's stay in Moonlight Falls, he was invited to visit the neighbors just down street. There he met and promptly fell for both Violet the ghost and Argus the werewolf (he and Dante would later become friends).




Fortunately, the attraction was a) mutual and b) went beyond just the physical. After having so many heirs who were indifferent or had outright hostile relationships with their significant others, it's a lot easier to appreciate the solid team these two made.

They were always playing games,



spawning adorable romantic interactions,




and, most importantly,



they were one of two couples who wished to marry each other. Many of the other heirs would spawn the generic 'Get Married' but only after their first children had been conceived or were born altogether. Their engagement was a long one but well worth the wait.

 In the meantime, Violet quit the Criminal career and began climbing the ladder towards a level 10 scientist. I don't have any pictures of it but she regularly helped Malik in the garden when it got too big for one sim to handle. Additionally, she also reached the top of the logic skill before Malik was done and discovered all of the potions. Her Young Again potions were used for a long time by the family, though her tutoring skills, in the end, proved more valuable.

The evening Malik topped his cooking career, he completed his requirements by marrying Violet.




Malik took the longest out of all of the heirs, he was about five days to elder, to complete his requirements and it wasn't due to his lack of a head start, none of the heirs began working on their adult requirements until they were young adults. In universe, I'd say it was adjusting to such a fundamentally different place and to the whole 'I am no longer dead' thing. Out of universe, I started him a bit late in the cooking career because I wanted to get all of the gardening challenges done before fall and winter came.


Spares

Oh, boy. A running theme in this dynasty that, unless the mother is a female heir, it will take multiple pregnancies and children for the next heir to appear. All of the pregnancies are what really slowed the whole thing down and having ghost after ghost tossed into the loving arms of story progression seemed to increase the bugs and lag that would ultimately force the family to leave Moonlight Falls.

But, enough of that, it's spare spam time! And what lovely children too.

Violet endured two pregnancies and six children to obtain the heir.

Batch Number 1:



Magnolia, an excellent blend of her parents' looks if not traits



Mazus, a dull, vapid loser who had one job, make colorful babies with Emelie Van Gould, and failed utterly (but in this picture, he's at least adorable)



And Maple, a little troublemaker who, I personally believe, became the most successful used car salesman in the history of Moonlight Falls.

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that all of their noses are identical and, in fact, all of Violet and Malik's kids inherited this nose. This nose? Looks like this on a normal, not-ghost face:





Yep, Violet Slymer has a very large nose and while ghost overlay can mask it, there's no denying it exists. If I seem a little harsh/short with this set of triplets, it's only because they caused me heart attack after heart attack. None of their traits stuck after childhood. None of them. No matter how many times I replaced them, the game would drop them. Naturally, I was very concerned about the littles who came later, but it thankfully seems to have been a Batch 1 only problem. We also had a ton of problems getting them all to the cake and aged to adults before the heir became a child. With the huge time restraints on the child requirements, I knew the heir couldn't afford any distractions.

Magnolia and Maple got jobs and promptly left the house, leaving Mazus to the growing chaos. He would father five beautiful children with Emelie, produce only one vampire and two daughters with unusual coloring (Malik's green hair and Violet's blue), before the Watcher had enough of him and kicked him out. Fortunately, Emelie took him in and he had a quiet, successful life with her and his kids. His one vampire daughter, Graciela, befriended the family and was close to them until the end of Moonlight Falls.


A wild Maple spotted! Dude, your pops is happy you're honoring your heritage but those shoes? Really?


The boys at, I think, Dante's Spooky Day party when Gen 2 was finishing up their stuff.

Batch 2:

The aging of little Mircranthes



and Myrtle



was more than a little strange. They quickly became toddlers, children, and teens but afterwards, I left them alone to age naturally. I was hoping that they could grow up, at least a little, with their little sibling. Somehow Violet found the time to tutor them as children so that they could get decent traits. Merry would drop his teen trait once but it fortunately stuck when I replaced it. They actually got to know all of their older siblings and while their leaving saddened them, at least they had each other.

And Mazus.



These two were pretty quiet, they spent most of their time off in their own little worlds, though that didn't stop their father from spending as much time with them as he could. Merry could often be found brooding in the jungle gym while Myrtle preferred the sandbox.

The heir eventually joined the duo in teen-dom and the siblings who came into the world together would become adults together.




After getting their own jobs (I believe Myrtle became a cop and Merry a journalist), they moved out to give the heir the space he needed to complete his tasks. Myrtle would eventually hook up with someone who'd become important to the rest of the family later on and Merry sent the heir's spouse lots of stuff in the mail.



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Offline Malley

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Re: The Shanashield Dynasty- Gen 1 Complete! Plus Spares! [Aug 3]
« Reply #7 on: August 03, 2015, 03:27:57 PM »
Congrats on completing your founder's requirements! And the spares can be such a headache in life states dynasties...at least yours took place in generation 1 when you had room in the house  ;)

Offline Nutella

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Re: The Shanashield Dynasty- Gen 1 Complete! Plus Spares! [Aug 3]
« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2016, 07:59:47 AM »
I'm moving this to the Stories Graveyard due to inactivity.  @dontmindme - you can revive this story by contacting a moderator.

Original Storyboard:  Sims 3 Life States Dynasty Stories