End of the Line Dynasty (4x4)

[Rhoxi]

Wow, I'm not sure I've ever seen Grim change out of that drab, black robe of his. It's about time he got a better fashion sense--and apparently an afro, too! I would make sense for India to wear the India clothes, but sometimes you just gotta go with what works.

[hazelnut]

It's the second time I've seen what I have to call the Grimming trunks.  The first one was with Lea - and that Grim had curly hair.

At least India likes hot pink, which goes well with her skin .

[Hallucination]

I love Grim's afro. I'm not sure why, but in my head the Grim Reaper always had a Scream mask on underneath the cloak. Not an afro.

[saltpastillen]

I wouldn't exactly say I've been travelling without problems.  I really wanted to do serious tomb-raiding with India but unless China miraculously resets at the next town move (or because of the latest patch?) that's going to be a problem.  No Chinese adventures and no Pangu's Axe = severe game limitation  .  I haven't travelled seriously since the DecaDynasty and my graphics then were set so low that it's like a whole new game.  (Those holes have bugs in them?!  So that's why they all went "Ew!")

My Sims don't usually get fined, although the firemen always turn up way too late.  It's usually"good job putting out the fire" and "you guys should be more careful next time".  I'm beginning to think fire alarms are a complete waste of money  .

Lol, graphics can make the world of a difference.

I think fire alarms is one of those clever cons, and that somewhere there is a sim making obscene amounts of money from a patent and living the high life, gloating each time another poor sim spends his last simoleons on a useless product.

[hazelnut]

I love Grim's afro. I'm not sure why, but in my head the Grim Reaper always had a Scream mask on underneath the cloak. Not an afro.

I think he's the first Sim I've seen that the afro really suits .


Tombs and Tombstones

Back home, life continued much as before.  India was making her way up the career ladder, getting promotions most days.  Her coach was still not satisfied, though: she might have reached level ten of athletics but there were specialist skills she needed to develop, like running at high speed while looking around for the ball.



She also needed one more challenge, so meditated whenever she had an hour or two to spare.



Shortly before his daughters were due to reach full adulthood, Rob, who was working from home as usual, got up from the computer and started to float.



He seemed to find dying interesting rather than scary or unpleasant.



“Fair enough, Grim.  I’ve experienced most of what life has to offer.  Let’s see what comes next.”

His womenfolk couldn’t take his death so calmly.  Jane hadn’t expected to outlive her son-in-law and he’d barely reached the end of a normal lifespan: it just wasn’t fair.  Susanna was heartbroken.  Rob had been there all her life.  How could she manage without him?

Grim played with his phone and waited for them to stop fussing.



Then he went downstairs to sit and read on their comfy old sofa.



He’d barely finished his book and disappeared when he was called back.  Sue had survived her husband by less than three hours.



India arrived home from work just in time to say goodbye…



…and then Grim went back to his favourite spot.

*   *   *   *   *

India had another work opportunity: one that was very close to her heart.  As a publicity stunt, she was asked to go to Egypt and enter a tomb.  Not that she was going to stop at just walking into it, or even just seeing one tomb.

She took the whole family along.  After the shock of her parents’ deaths, they could all use a break.  They weren’t quite sure how Chloe would stand up to the climate: would she wilt in the desert sun?  According to the notes Adam and Phil had left on the family website, there was plenty of shade at base camp, so it seemed worth the risk.



The twins made a good tomb-raiding team.  India tackled the rubble piles and traps; Laura explored dive wells and poked her hand into holes.  India collected relics; Laura picked up the gems and metals.  India, who’d become a master of meditation shortly after arriving in Egypt, used tranquil transference to get past the boulders that blocked some of the routes and then back to base camp, while Laura went home the long way.



India met a man she fancied.  This was a change: up until now, all three girls had primarily been attracted to women and relations between Laura and Chloe had briefly been frosty when they’d discovered they were sharing a girlfriend.  Unfortunately, this man was far from the ideal dynasty mate.  For one thing, he’d been dead for a very long time and it was starting to show.  For another, he didn’t let his declaration of love stop him from attacking India.  But then, she didn’t let mere physical attraction get in the way of beating him to a pulp.





He was remarkably persistent, though.  Two days after he’d crumbled into a pile of dust, India’s phone rang.  King Raymundo Mazzamesses II wanted to know whether she’d like to go on a date.  Curious, she accepted – but no date materialised.

She and Laura went back to the tombs until, finally, their progress was halted.  India had been asked to investigate the basement of a house that turned out to be owned by one of the market traders.  Since she was never at home, she couldn’t let them in to explore.  There weren’t any more quests on the noticeboard at base camp, so India took on a couple of brief photographic jobs, which were just enough to get her to a level 3 visa.



With no immediate prospect of interesting adventures, they decided to go home.  Almost as soon as they arrived, three sets of birthday sparkles hit…





…followed by three midlife crises.  The paparazzi loved it.  India wished she could move house right now and get away from them but she still had her tasks to finish.

A couple of days after her birthday, she achieved her lifetime wish.



Now she just needed one more promotion.  It was looking as though Jane would live to see her granddaughter move towns… but then time caught up with her.



“That’s OK.  I’m nearly seventy, after all.  You wouldn’t believe how badly I ache in the mornings.  I could really do with a good rest – and it’ll be nice to see Anderson again.  It’s been a long time.”



And she shook hands with the Reaper.




India is the first heir not to have a family name.  She’s named after my main World Adventures Sim, India Smith.  (Najones would have been just too obvious a surname – and anyway, I didn’t think of it until later .)



India the First was, indeed still is, a Seasoned Traveller, International Superspy and all-round highly skilled Sim.  She’s also, despite a lack of obvious traits, an appalling flirt, with at least one partner of each sex everywhere she’s been – as much James Bond as Indiana Jones, really.  Once she’d finished exploring every tomb in the game, she started a second career as a tester of new towns.  She’s currently holidaying in Isla Paradiso and plans to move on to Bridgeport, which I suspect may be her true spiritual home.

Her namesake is having a rather less straightforward time with the tomb raiding.  I suddenly realised as they were about to leave for Egypt that using metal collector as a unique challenge for Rob had been a very silly thing to do.  I should have hung on longer and switched him to butterfly collecting.  Jane had already found all ten varieties in Monte Vista, so it would certainly have been possible and with the two Chinese species as well it probably wouldn’t have taken all that long to complete the challenge.  Metal collector is just too easy to get by accident.  By the time I remembered that picking up treasure and buying from shops count towards the total, India had found six different gems and four metals.  Hence the double act with Laura.  It’s a bit of a nuisance and quite hard to get used to after playing with solitary adventurers but, so far, it’s been working.  India’s collection stats haven’t changed, while Laura has finished two challenges.  If I can continue the system with another non-heir, India should be able to carry on exploring and pick up relics for one of the next town’s collections.  I’ve lost one high-value relic because Laura found it in a sarcophagus, and it will also severely limit the scope for excavating at dig sites (which I was looking forward to, because by the time I bought World Adventures, they’d stopped working.  All of the DecaDynasty relics came from tombs.)  Still, it’s a lot better than failing the dynasty.

[saltpastillen]

Using the collection challenges can be precarious, I hope you remember in the future because it would be an annoying thing to fail a dynasty because of.

BTW, love the freckles on India the first. I wish they would have made freckles and beauty marks inheritable(or at least possible to add when styling), that would have been awesome.

[hazelnut]

Using the collection challenges can be precarious, I hope you remember in the future because it would be an annoying thing to fail a dynasty because of.

Me too.   I'm really kicking myself over this.  The plan was for India to live a long time, breaking space rocks for money and tomb-raiding whenever she got a chance.  I think I'll still stick to that but it does give an awful lot of scope for messing up  .  And, as you say, it would be an infuriatingly silly way to fail.

BTW, love the freckles on India the first. I wish they would have made freckles and beauty marks inheritable(or at least possible to add when styling), that would have been awesome.

That's also one of my pet peeves.  A lot of my Sims have freckles (probably because I'm fond of redheads) and it's a shame it doesn't last past the first generation.

[saltpastillen]

That's also one of my pet peeves.  A lot of my Sims have freckles (probably because I'm fond of redheads) and it's a shame it doesn't last past the first generation.

I love to make my sims read heads too - this is one thing we could use a patch for

[hazelnut]

I love to make my sims read heads too - this is one thing we could use a patch for

We certainly could.  (Rather than two largely useless patches in two weeks, you mean? )


Brave Decisions

Chloe lay in the bath, thinking.



Now that her mother was gone and she’d soon be moving out of the family home, what should she do with her life?  Most important, did she want to stay a PlantSim?  It wasn’t as though she was all plant.  Sometimes, like now, her hair looked more like normal hair than leaves – and she still seemed to need food, even though PlantSims shouldn’t, from what she’d read.



Rob had left her a few doses of the same cure he’d used on Laura that time “in case you want to turn human”.  Even though she’d been a PlantSim from birth, he seemed convinced that it would work on her, too.  So, what did she want?  To carry on as she was or become a normal human?  There were no more Forbidden Fruit seeds, so there was no way back.  What should she do?

At last she made up her mind, dried herself off and went out into the garden.  She wanted to be among plants when it happened.  She took out the bottle, lifted it up and poured it over her head.

Mother, I miss you!  I hope I’m not making a huge mistake here.



For a moment nothing happened.  Then she was engulfed by a blinding green light.



Laura happened to walk out into the garden at that moment.



“Clo, what are you doing?”
“Super Spice.  Like you used, remember?”
“But what’s that green glow?  I remember a golden light…  Oh, like that, in fact.  Good luck!”

And with that she went into the house to play video games.  And as for Chloe…



…she ended up looking a lot like India – only with normal skin, green eyebrows and yellow eyes.  She took herself off to the mirror and dresser to sort out a new look.

*   *   *   *   *

Later that day, over at the Coliseum, India finally reached the top of her career.  It had taken a little longer than she’d expected to get her final promotion: for a few days it had felt as though she was making no progress at all.  But now everything was OK.  She’d finished her tasks.



She arrived home to find Laura on the phone, checking up with the estate agent.



Yes, their new house was ready.  Suddenly, everything was happening too fast.  Watched (of course) by the paparazzi, India hugged her twin…



…and then her aunt…



…and said goodbye forever.



She supposed she’d better go inside; tidy up, pack what little she was allowed to take…  No!  She couldn’t be hungry at a time like this!

Apparently she could.  She sat down alone at the big family dining table and ate Jane’s wonderful food for the last time.  She loaded the dishwasher for the last time.  It felt sort of pointless but she supposed someone else would be moving in sometime and they wouldn’t want to find her dirty dishes on the table.  Anyway, her grandmother would have expected it.  Then she picked up the potion that Great-Grandpa Goopy had left for her.



Here goes!



Oh!  It was like birthday sparkles, only somehow different.



Unbirthday sparkles?



And then she was back at the beginning of young adulthood.



Maybe she should change her clothes slightly.  It wouldn’t be quite as warm where she was going and a bare back didn’t seem entirely sensible.



That’d do, for now at least.  Before she had time for second thoughts, she picked up her phone and dialled.

“Toni’s Taxis?  Hello…  Yes, I’d like a taxi to the airport, please…  Ten minutes?  OK, I can do that.”



Too late to change her mind now.  She walked out to meet the taxi.



Oh dear.  She was all on her own.  Until now, it had been a pair starting in each new town.  Still, she remembered her family history.  Goodness-knows-how-many-greats-grandmother Ana had started out alone in Twinbrook.

Yeah, but she didn’t have to be pregnant within four days of arrival, said a little voice somewhere inside her head.  India did her best to ignore it.  She settled herself in the back seat of the taxi.



As they drove across the bridge, a police car passed in the opposite direction.  India knew that Laura was on duty tonight.  Was it her twin?



She craned to see but it was too dark and they passed too quickly to make out the driver.

They drove up the hill…



…over its shoulder and down again.



On a last-minute impulse, she asked the driver to turn off so that she could have a last look at the Coliseum, where she’d spent so many happy hours training or playing in front of ecstatic crowds.



Then she sighed, lifted her head, and asked him to turn the car and drive on out of town.


Monte Vista museum
Next story chapter


Summary – Generation 8

Heir: India
Traits: athletic, disciplined, ambitious, charismatic, brave
Lifetime wish: Become a Superstar Athlete

Unique maxed career: Professional Sports
Two unique best friends: Christian Herring & Dolores Shorter
Three unique skill challenges: Timber Terminator, Body Builder, Master of Meditation
Four unique opportunities: The Focused Athlete, Ticket Counting, Adonis in the Making, Tomb Raiding Hero
Buildings bought this generation: Slanciato Spa
Newly-upgraded properties: Little Gipper Fishing Park, Venice Beach, Piazza Regalia, Sunbather’s Retreat, Moonlit Stroll Park, Restful Mausoleum, Seafood Hideaway Fishing park, Siesta Community Pool, Gymnasium Ultima, Museum D’Art, Worries and Woes Country Pub*
Vacations used: 4 out of 4

*The pub suffered the same fate as the Shoreline Cabin in Hidden Springs: it was demolished, a few basic facilities added (underground, this time – most of the Monte Vista upgrades were in inaccessible basements, either from a lack of space or because they spoiled the appearance), a Fountain of Youth installed and then the rest of the space used for the family graveyard.

[Rikki8528]

Well done on making it to town 3! Can't wait to see where is she going!

[saltpastillen]

Excited to find out what town she'll start over in.

[hazelnut]

Well done on making it to town 3! Can't wait to see where is she going!

Excited to find out what town she'll start over in.

Thanks.  Although she's moved, that's as far as it's gone to date. I'm exploring the new world in a parallel file, looking for husband material, so don't expect a Town 3 update in the immediate future  .


Monte Vista Museum

The school collection was severely hampered this time around by a lack of graduations:




The Collections



1. Sculptures
Masterpiece Urns of Franco, sculpted by Michael.
Total value §146,243

2. Nectar
Perfect pomegranate and life fruit nectar, made by Tabitha.
Total value §30,580

3. Lifetime happiness rewards
Teleporters* – Mike and Tabitha bought one each; Alexander bought two.
Total value §60,000

4. Beetles
Plasma bugs created by Rob.
Total value §13,600

Total value for all four collections §250,693

*If I’d realised before I started this game how much Climatron Control Units were worth, I’d have been very tempted not to disable Seasons – although, given how buggy it’s been anyway, it’s probably just as well that I didn't .
I prolonged Alex’s life a little just to see how valuable his books became.  After completing his requirements, he switched his specialism to masterpieces and wrote a number of bestsellers.  The best was still only worth §1175, though.


All buildings and properties owned and fully upgraded.










Career Rewards


                                                                                               Mike


                                                                           Tabitha


                                                                                                Alex
(He also had a Yomoshoto Evasion, of course, but it went missing at some point.)


                                                                             Rob

Official list: Successful Sculptor’s Medal (Mike), Nectar Maker’s Symbol of Honour (Tabitha), Investigator’s Key to Monte Vista (Alex), Medical Trophy of Honour (Rob).


And the graveyard…


              From left to right: Gino Ferrari, Eduardo and Carlotta GilsCarbo, Mike, Tansy, Richard, May, Tabitha and Goopy.


                                                                                       Alex and Eunice


                                                                                        Jane and Anderson


                                                                                          Rob and Susanna

Large tombstones: Michael, Tansy, Tabitha, Alexander and Robert all qualified.

India moved on week 39, day 7.  She had well over eleven-and-a-half million Simoleons when she moved – but didn’t keep them for long…


Next chapter

[Rhoxi]

Two towns down, two to go! You mention it being colder where she's going . . . so I'm guessing Aurora Skies?

[Nutella]

I'm guessing Midnight Hollow.

[hazelnut]

Two towns down, two to go! You mention it being colder where she's going . . . so I'm guessing Aurora Skies?

I'm guessing Midnight Hollow.

I think of Monte Vista as being Mediterranean, so most of the other towns would be colder.  Although, since they generally have beaches, maybe I'm wrong there.

It's not Aurora Skies or Midnight Hollow, for the simple reason that I own neither of them .