Hark(er)! An OWBC, Chapter One: AUG

[jothirteen]

Good news, everyone! I finally defeated my procrastination (sort of) long enough to get the 1st chapter of the OWBC out.


So I've started a new challenge - this time, I'm giving a try to the Officially Wacky Boolprop Challenge, aka OWBC. Let's hope I actually manage to complete this one, it's a shame if I can stick with one legacy family for 16 generations but not complete one challenge that lasts for 4, even if it's quite a bit harder.
Anyway... The title? That's just my usually awkward creativity shining through. It's a reference to "Hark! A Vagrant" and a play on words both...since my founder's last name is Harker. Yeah. Not really clever. "AUG" is the obligatory biochemistry reference that has to pop up in everything I write. Basically, this is the very first chapter of this OWBC, and AUG, the start codon, it's always at the beginning of a new protein. (But it can also stand for something if you want it to, like "Again, more of my Usual Gameplaying".)
Okay, nerdy and uninteresting references are over, let's go on with the show then.
(Just a heads up for those familiar with this challenge: I haven't forgotten to mention the bonuses/mini-challenges I'll be trying to complete, they're at the end of this entry. With that said...)


Our sweet younger founder here is Nisha Harker. (She's a clone of a born-in-game sim from Veronaville, extracted via SimPE, whose ancestors include an older version of my simself, a couple of CAS sims, a dormie from ALT, and three premades.) Nisha is a Family sim, and a Pisces 8/4/10/3/10 (well, you could guess the part about her nice points just by looking at this picture). Her LTW is to have 6 grandchildren, and she's attracted to charismatic and fit young folks. Zombies are not her thing, though.


The other household members so far - the three flamingos, who will remain unnamed (the flamingos are legion, after all, one name would be enough), and the gnome, who I've named Glycogen. And that's biochemistry reference number two, folks. (And I just found myself wishing I could actually name gnomes TS3 style, instead of just referring to him by a name in my head and in the story.)




The house...nothing too great so far (but since I loathe building houses, it wouldn't be great even if Nisha had a million simoleons for me to work with).


During the first uneventful few hours, Nisha works in her skill points...


...and gets a job (Law career track).


Finally, someone walks by (this is one of the townies I created via Tombstone of L&D and NPC and Townie maker in this neighbourhood), a redheaded young man by the name of Cody Crichton.




Nisha seems to like him, and they have 1 bolt of chemistry, so I'm not going to make too much of an effort to find her other options for a potential future husband.


Noon rolls around, and we have our welcome wagon. With 2 premades and a CAS sim, it does seem like Cody will not get any sort of competition.


"Hello, I'm Nisha Harker. I'm new here, a challenge founder, you see."
"How delightful, a new addition to our little neighbourhood. I'm sure we will become good friends."
(This dark-haired lady Nisha just met is Morella, by the way, the TS2 version of how I envision the title character from the Edgar Allan Poe story in my head. The best I could do via BodyShop, at least.)


"A challenge founder, you say? That's great! You know, I often wondered how being part of a legacy would be like-"
"Oh...no, OWBC, not legacy, actually."
(And she'll leave it at that, as she is way too nice to let Cyd know that OWBC founders and heirs cannot marry premades either. Though...who knows, spares are fair game, and she does want 6 grandchildren, so they might end up being in-laws.)


"This is turning out to be such a great day. I love meeting new people."
"Aww, thank you, Nisha. We do live in a fantastic neighbourhood, I'm sure you'll love it here..."


"...even if some of the neighbours might end up being...not as friendly as you'd think."


Nisha's hunger bar has plummeted after a few hours of social interactions...so back inside she goes. Too bad about the lack of Cooking points, one meat sandwich isn't that much of a lunch for a sim whose hunger bar has turned orange.


Morella is one mean sim, but Sanjay Ramaswami is pretty awesome. He made sure he'd put all the flamingos she kicked down back up again. If he wasn't a premade, and married, he'd have made his way to the top of the list of candidates for Nisha's future husbands.


Meanwhile, poor exhausted Nisha had to go to bed just after sunset, sending her new neighbours in their merry way.



The next day, there was work...and a promotion. The matchmaker, who had appeared (perhaps to "subtlely" let Nisha know she could find her a sim that was decent husband material, just for a few simoleons) seemed to be quite happy about it as well.


And so, it was time for something more exciting to happen (doing all I can, but challenge beginnings are never that interesting, bear with me here).


Nisha invited Cody over...


...turned to greet a random townie walking by (another of the custom townies, Yvonne O'Connor - you'll be seeing more of her in this chapter and future ones)...


...and it was time to get some pink hearts flying.


Yvonne didn't seem too pleased to have her new potential friend pay so much attention to the man she had a crush on. Conspiracy theory time! Theory A: Yvonne has/had a small crush on Nisha (or Cody) herself. Theory B: Yvonne just likes being the center of attention, and she wouldn't be the first sim I had like that.


Or maybe... Theory C: She wants to be invited to their wedding. Which would make sense, the life of a townie is pretty boring. She'd get to dress up, maybe meet a couple more sims, perhaps eat some cake. All better things than whatever townies do in sim limbo.
(Whatever Yvonne's main goal is, though...that flower she's wearing pinned to her chest? It looks painful, doesn't it? Maybe she ought to take if off or change her shirt.)



Eventually, as it was getting late, Nisha just asked Cody to spend the night there (and he obviously accepted, as you can see above). (Yvonne eventually left sometime in between me taking the last pic and these ones.)


The next day, we had Nisha leave for work again, as Cody stayed behind, looking a bit puzzled and wondering if had seen the gnome wink at him, or if it was just lack of sleep getting to him. You keep thinking it's nothing, Cody, it will be better for you in the long run (gnomes can be creepy little things...just look at the TS3 ones, moving when no one is looking at them, and doing all sorts of crazy things).



Anyway, he left shortly after Nisha went to work. An elderly townie named Thierry Pappas (yes, yet another of my batch of custom townies) walked by a bit later and proceeded to steal Glycogen. (It had to happen eventually.)
He lingered there for some time afterwards, too, pondering deep phylosophical questions. Or maybe just wondering if Nisha would get a new gnome for him and his fellow townies to steal as well.


Eventually, Nisha came back from work and it was time to really get the challenge going. She called Cody over again...



...they finally fell in love...



...she proposed and he joyfully accepted...


...and Cody moved in.
Stats time: Cody Crichton's an Aquarius 4/4/4/7/6. Family sim, just like his wife-to-be, with a LTW to become Minister of Education. His turn ons are jewelry and red hair and his turn off is grey hair. He joined the household with 5000 simoleons, 7 family friends, a job in the Slacker career, and 18 skill points.


And three more flamingos were promptly added to the growing flamingo army in his honour.


He also had a decent amount of things in his inventory...including another flamingo (he probably knew he was going to marry into an OWBC, clever man). That gave us a couple more thousands of simoleons, thank you Cody.




Which allowed me to improve their living conditions a bit.



Cody and Nisha, meanwhile, got started on the next generation of Harkers. And succeeded.


The ACR pregnancy scanner then let me know that Nisha was pregnant with natural twins - and I realized she had terrible pregnancies just hours after she first got pregnant. Oh well, at least she's a Family sim and will be happy with the 3 pregnancies (and at least 4 children) that she will have.



Cody, meanwhile, was faring better, and even stargazed for a bit while Nisha was asleep, since I do need an alien baby to be born sometime during this challenge. No luck on that front, though.


The next morning, Nisha's fun bar was so low I had to make her rap for a while to get it to acceptable levels. Too bad she can't afford anything else to raise her fun yet, her only other options are skilling objects.


But she cheered up a bit later that day, as she invited a few friends over for her and Cody's wedding party.


"So you and Cody are getting married already? You met...what, three days ago? Four?"
"Yvonne, that's completely normal in challenges! Besides, we are so happy together, and with two babies on the way already, there's really no point in waiting. I wanted to ask you something, though, that flower of yours, doesn't that hurt-"
"Why does everyone ask me that? I'm fine!"


"I was hoping we could have some musicians come play at our wedding...but we didn't have enough money. It doesn't matter, though, I'm sure it will be wonderful anyway, me and Nisha are so much in love, that's all that matters."
"Two sappy Family sims getting married, huh? You and Nisha might want to ease up on the optimism, Cody, or else this challenge will eat you both alive. Good thing you're not in an Apocalypse Challenge or something like that."
"Cyd, that's not the sort of thing people want to hear at their wedding... Try to cheer up a bit, you're the one being overly pessimistic here."
"No, Cody, not at all- I'm just being realistic here."


"What were you and Cyd talking about, Cody?"
"Oh, nothing, sweetheart. Nothing important. Just forget about him, this is our day, after all."




And so, Cody Crichton became Cody Harker.


"They didn't care about what I had to say...but as their friend, I was only trying to warn them. They might be happy now, but later on-"
"Cyd. Seriously, shut up about it! Let them be happy at their freaking wedding at least."


Cyd seemed to follow Yvonne's advice after that conversation...for that day at least.


The party ended up being a success all around, not only was a roof raiser...


...but Cody also left for a short while - and brought back Glycogen. (Hurray!)


A limo arrived to take Nisha and Cody on their honeymoon, too...


...but that ended up being the shortest honeymoon ever, as they came back a few seconds later to have Nisha pop into her second trimester.


During that time, Cyd also became glitched in the Harkers' kitchen, and I had to get rid of him via moveObjects. (Don't worry, he got better.)


Things went back to being uneventful after the wedding. I kept Cody in the Slacker career so that he could get a career reward (he can always change to Education later on to hopefully fulfil his LTW).


Glycogen got stolen yet again. This time by a neighbour, a CAS sim named Joanna Montresor.


Cody also brought the female slob over from work, and they became good friends. I'm mainly mentioning this bit because she has one of the coolest names in this neighbourhood - Xenia Newton. It just sounds awesome, doesn't it? (I have DocNerd's custom renamer mod installed, by the way, it makes for some great names.)


Nisha also seemed to like Xenia, and even though she has 8 neat points, her 10 nice ones made her refrain from being disgusted by Xenia's sloppy eating.


That night, she reached the 3rd trimester...not much longer to go, thankfully, both for me (eager to get some generation 1 kids here) and for her (she really does have horrible pregnancies, poor thing).


Cody got a makeover. Really curious to see how his features will mix with Nisha's, I do like his face template, but I haven't had many sims with it marry into my challenge (or other) families.


Nisha also got some nice-looking maternity clothes, since her everyday outfit didn't have a pregnancy mesh and all. Yes, she'll only get to wear it as a maternity outfit for a very short while this time, but it'll come in handy for her next two pregnancies.


She nearly starved to death a couple of times (not to mention having her fun, comfort and energy bars almost permanently in the red...). I wondered if her pregnancy was so hard on her because she was carrying twins...but that was pretty much just wishful thinking, as you'll see in future chapters.


They really do make a very sweet couple, don't they? Sometimes arranged marriages in challenges turn out to be perfectly arranged.


And yes, after what it seemed like forever (to me? to Nisha? to you readers? all of the above?), Nisha went into labour.
(Just a small note, before I forget to mention it in future chapters: I do have the Triplets & Quads hack installed, and I usually choose the "have a random number of babies" option for challenge sims - except in cases when the sim gets pregnant with natural twins, I just let them have twins then.)


The firstborn twin is a blond boy with Cody's custom eyes, and also his custom skin tone (I think). Meet Börje Harker, readers.
(Another note: -sorry!- right after starting this challenge, I wrote a dozen or so naming themes in pieces of paper, and I'll be randomly selecting one of those for every birth from now on. The one I got for pregnancy "B" was "Behind the Name random renamer", and Börje was the first boy name starting with a B I got via the random renamer.)


There's the oh-so-familiar "here, hold this baby" scene...


...and the second twin is born. A redheaded girl with her father's eyes and her mother's skin tone, Bruna Harker. She will be the Bad Apple for this generation.
(Again, the name Bruna was the first "B" girl name I got via the Behind the Name random name generator.)




The Harkers are now a happy family of four! Well, they're happy enough for now, since soon the twins will become little toddler troublemakers, with the added bonus of one of them being completely uncontrollable.



And so it begins, parenthood is easy enough for Cody and Nisha at first...


...but if we add more variables to the equation, things soon change.
Nisha gets pregnant again while the twins are still infants (in retrospective, maybe that wasn't such a good idea, but what is done is done).


Aaand we already have Nisha feeling like a zombie while having to deal with two infants screaming their heads off. Yes, definitely not a good idea.


Morning sickness has also made its appearance, just...what, one hour after she got pregnant? Not a very good sign, especially since it's a singleton pregnancy this time (though Triplets & Quads might change that when Nisha gives birth). So much for my previous theory.


And this is where I'll leave you, with Glycogen pondering the exponential growth of the army of flamingos he was sworn to protect. Yes, that's some scary stuff, buddy, hang on in there.


Tune in next time for chapter 2 (whose title will probably be less pretentious), and which will hopefully be more eventful.


***

But, just before you go, let me just go through the list of bonuses and mini-challenges that I will be trying to complete in this OWBC, since I didn't mention those in the actual chapter.

Base Game Bonuses (worth 3 points each, 9 total):
-Obtain an alien through a legit abduction
-Go one whole generation - from birth to birth - without getting any promotions
-Have a gnome to guard the flamingos (household sims must always bring it back if stolen) [our friend Glycogen above]

Nightlife Bonuses (worth 3 points each, 9 total):
-The heir(ess) for every generation must go on a date via gypsy matchmaker and see it through to completion (they can do this as a teen, YA, adult or elder)
-Every heir(ess) is turned into a Grilled Cheese sim
-A sim must be turned into a vampire

Seasons Bonuses (worth 3 points each, 9 total):
-Throw a party once per season (any kind of party, roof raiser score not necessary) [so far, one - Nisha and Cody's wedding party, during spring]
-Earn a wishing well
-A sim must be turned into a plantsim

Story Bonus (worth 3 points):
-Finishing the challenge and posting it online [in progress]

"Boolprop Naming Scheme" Mini-Challenge (worth 10 points):
-First generation: children resulting from the 3 mandatory pregnancies must have names starting with B, O and O respectively [so far, Börje & Bruna]
-Second generation: children resulting from the 3 mandatory pregnancies must have names starting with L, P and R respectively
-Third generation: children resulting from the 3 mandatory pregnancies must have names starting with O, P and C respectively

"One Bad Apple" Mini-Challenge (worth 10 points):
-Every generation, one child (chosen at birth) must be uncontrollable (they get 8 commands at day if they go to college) [Bruna, for the 1st generation]

"Cowforbrains' Ghost Hunt" Mini-Challenge (worth 10 points):
-Three sims must die every generation (so a total of 9 sims during the whole challenge), and every cause of death must be different

"Family Scrapbook" Mini-Challenge (worth 10 points):
-Every member of the family must have their picture taken (photobooth, camera, etc.) or their portrait painted and hung somewhere around the house
-The founder and each one of the 3 heirs/heiresses must write a novel (so, a total of 4 novels)

"Workaholics Anonymous" Super Mini-Challenge (worth 15 points):
-Earn all the career rewards available (in my case, for the Base Game, University and Seasons careers, so a total of 20); any sim (heir, spouse, family friend that moved in, etc.) can earn them, but each specific sim can only earn a maximum of 3 career rewards