The Strange Case of Pointed Midnight

 So, I wasn't quite satisfied with the conclusion of my last post. I didn't like not being able to figure out what happened. So I decided to do an experiment. If you read the last post, you know that I had a baby hatch and die instantly - listed as Child age, no less, rather than baby. I thought it must be a genetic problem that killed her at birth, but I couldn't find any evidence of such a catastrophic mutation in her genes. 

So today I said to myself, hey, why not go open up the World folder for Arcus Malus, find her genome in the Genetics folder, and respawn her with Genetics Kit? Let's see what happens. If she dies at the instant of birth again, that means there must in fact be a fatal mutation somewhere in her genome and I just missed it in GeneCompare. But if she lives, that means something else went wrong. And I may never be able to figure out exactly what, which is a bit frustrating. But at least she'll get another chance at life. Plus, we can observe her sleeping and stress to try to work out what those Clear Source mutations actually do. 


Meet Pointed Midnight. (That's what APT decided to name her and I left it even though it's a bit silly.) As you can see, she survived birth this time. So whatever went wrong must not have been genetic. I have no idea what it could have been. For now I'm going to put it down to the engine having a hiccup. Will investigate more later. For now I'm going to observe this girl and see if I can spot any abnormal behavior or traits with regard to the three major mutations I noticed in her genome last time (sleep, stress, and hunger for carbs). As I type this, the game is paused and she's six minutes old. Let's unpause and watch.

Right now she's messing with the door that goes between Lost Seas and Devil's Reef. I'm monitoring her biochemistry with X-Ray+. So far her H4C seems normal, but she's very young still. It might take time for the mutation's effects to build up. I haven't noticed her trying to sleep or undergoing stress yet. These all might take time to show. 


Actually, so far everything seems incredibly normal. She's about half an hour old now. I've watched her exploring the various metarooms via doors and portals, playing with other dragons and with toys, eating whatever catches her fancy, and experimentally pushing/pulling/etc. everything else around her. It is a little odd that I haven't caught her sleeping yet, but she hasn't experienced anything really stressful yet, so that's in the air. The hunger for carbs does seem to rise faster than normal, but it hasn't gotten out of control yet because she's a reliable eater. 


She's still doing pretty good. Except for sleeping. She never sleeps, and if I tell her to rest, she ignores me. So her instincts aren't being reinforced. But other than that, she seems perfectly functional. I guess sleep and instincts are optional when you get down to it. I'm going to keep watching her just in case things get weirder when she gets older. Her drives are generally staying low. She's good at taking care of herself.

Honestly, I would have never noticed her in the run except that she died in such a mysterious way at hatching. Now I'm extra curious what the heck went wrong there.

Welp. More later. Will be watching her over the up to seventeen and a half hours of her life. If anything odd happens I'll update.

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