Northern Winds Reboot Part 2 - Settling into Twinbrook

Polly and family have been living in Twinbrook for a week now, so it's time to roll each night to see if they are going to be forced to move.

In this episode, they are still in Twinbrook after 17 days. I'll post the highlights.

Sunday (Day 7) was a good day for Polly. One of the things she really wants to do is to make more friends. She went to the art gallery and met and befriended Wei Keane.

They were getting a little too friendly, if you ask me. I didn't encourage them to get amorous as she is already in love with DeAndre Wolf, the famous musician.

Polly also befriended the old woman in the witch hat who seemed to be sad about something.

Maybe her job wasn't going well or she had just been laid off or fired. At any rate, Polly was getting hungry and asked the woman if she wanted to go somewhere for something to eat. They went to Red Rendezvous. This is one of my favorite EA builds, but I always forget it's my favorite because I make changes to it. This is just the base game version, so it only had self-serve juice bars and no food offerings. (I fix this later.) However, Polly ran into DeAndre so that was a bit of serendipity.

She invited DeAndre to join them in their trip to the restaurant next door.

Because it was a fancy restaurant, they gussied up on the way. The new friend lost her witch hat.

Because the woman was having a bad day and needed someone to talk to, and because there were only two chairs per table, DeAndre sat at a different table while the ladies had their "girl talk." They all had a good meal and parted ways.

Later that night, Polly decided to try turning the rocks and metals she found into gold. Her first attempt yielded a gold bar, but her second ended in disaster!

She turned herself into a gold statue. Her son and grandson were distraught, but her great-grandson slept through the incident.

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility –

Emily Dickinson

To be fair, Polly has lived about three lifespans and had a life full of all kinds of adventures. She looks like she's ready for her next great adventure. Her loved ones will miss her.

I wish they could take her statue with them. I may have to consider breaking the rules for that or adjusting it a bit. She won't fit into their backpacks.

It seems Grim likes their home.

I think he's admiring the fish tank and wondering who caught the fish.

One quick trivia challenge before Grim leaves. I think Kyngston deliberately make the questions easy so Grim would win. "What's the name of the guy who collects the souls of the dead?"

"Was my grandmother a boy or a girl?"

At any rate, Grim won and disappeared, leaving poor Kyngston to grieve.

The next morning, Kyngston encountered DeAndre down at the beach and broke the news to him.

DeAndre was pretty broken up about losing his friend and lover, but he soon got over it. I got this notification a few days later.

"This song's for you, Grandma."

Young Calvin was invited over to the Bayless house by Chase, who previously contemplated wanting to have Kyngston's baby after a concert he gave. If not the father, maybe the son? Calvin was still grieving over the loss of the great-grandmother.

However, he felt better after a pillow fight.

He tried flirting with her, but she said she had a boyfriend already.

As night fell, Calvin reached the conclusion that Chase wasn't the girl for him.

The next day, Calvin aged up to a handsome young man, and suddenly Chase changed her tune. Sorry Chase, you lost your opportunity.

Calvin set up a dating profile and LIED about nearly all of his traits! (autonomously) The only trait he owned up to was that he loved the outdoors.

Animal expert? Really Calvin?

Calvin is a strong-willed individual who has autonomously taken upon himself to learn to sketch. He found a sketchbook in the house and confiscated it. Whenever I go looking for him, he's sitting outside sketching. Often when I try to redirect him to do something else, he refuses. I even bought him his own art easel and placed it out on the balcony outside his room. I directed him to try to paint something, but when I went back to check, he had nearly finished it before abandoning the project. I found him outside sketching again.

Most of his sketches are crap. I'm glad this critter was saying "Moooo" or I would have mistaken it for a bear. He is getting a little better lately and sometime draws some interesting, though often amateurish pictures.

Calvin went to the summer festival with his dad and grandpa after graduation. Later that night, he was asked out on a date by Lolly Racket. He went to meet her and they really hit it off.

I'm not sure why she's wearing the witch hat. Maybe she was in the school play. Oddly enough, she's a teen and he's a young adult, so I don't see how she managed to ask him out on a date unless the game had somehow cued it up before he aged up. He asked her age, and she said she was a few days younger than him, so he'll wait for her to age up. Calvin wanted to sing karaoke with her, so that's what they did for their "date."

I fixed up the Red Rendezvous to include professional bars and replaced the stereo with a karaoke machine. It was quiet this night, except for a few nay-sayers who apparently didn't enjoy the performance.

I guess they sang so bad they broke the karaoke machine, and Calvin had to fix it.

*** Note: The Racket family has some interesting lore. The details can be found here: Racket Lore but in a nutshell there are three generations, and they all live in a big mansion, except for one of Lolly's uncles. They are a mafia family, but Lolly and her brother Shark aren't aware of this. Lolly and Shark can't stand each other, but I think they have to share a room, (at least that is what I discovered in a previous game I played in Twinbrook.) The uncle who doesn't live with them does not want to be involved in their nefarious activities so moved out of the mansion and lives modestly elsewhere, possibly in the swampy area. There's also someone in the graveyard who is a Racket, but doesn't show up in the tree, and there's an urn of a sim who doesn't seem to be related hidden somewhere in the mansion, who died of electrocution, suggesting a possible murder. ***

A few days later, I went back changed the Red Rendezvous from "hangout" to "arcade" and added arcade games upstairs. The town apparently loved it.

I should probably change the name from Red Rendezvous to simply Rendezvous since I made the upstairs blue.

Moving on, Kyngston has been really focusing on his career now that he is in a town with a wide variety of venues to play at. His fan base seems to be rather small . . . .

And he has had a few difficult concerts, like the time he played late at night outdoors during a hail storm to only one devoted fan who really needed to use the restroom, and a cagey raccoon who was just passing through, it turned out.

However, Kyngston persevered, and the next thing he knew he achieved his lifetime wish of being a vocal legend!

Way to go, Kyngston!

As for Maxwell, he's just hanging out, painting, soaking in his new hot tub he insisted I get for him, . . .

. . . and doing what werewolves do. . .

such as defacing public property and sniffing people inappropriately.

He's been trying to write some books; (he keeps getting those wishes,) but when Calvin was a teen, he pulled a prank with the computer, and Maxwell, being a technophobe in the first place, was really put off. I don't think he has been writing since.

Maxwell got Calvin back on Calvin's graduation when he changed into a werewolf in broad daylight and startled Calvin so bad that he passed out.

I think Kyngston's biggest scare was when he saw the ghost of his dead grandmother.

Maybe she missed her family. I put her urn in Maxwell's inventory so we don't forget her if we have to up and leave one day soon.

I noticed none of the guys were that close. I guess Polly was the glue that held them together. I started having them do some activities together to build up their relationships.

They're on more solid footing now. On day 16, Cho Sonwhun asked Kyngston out on a date. They met at the criminal warehouse, then went to the movies and woohooed in the theater. This was followed by some karaoke at the Rendezvous and a trip to the firehouse where ravenous Kyngston got a snack. Then they danced to the stereo until early morning. The date was incredible, and by the end of it, he asked he if she'd like to move in. (I manually added her to the household, so I can control her.)

Cho doesn't know about the family curse, and Kyngston assumes Cho is using birth control, but really they are engaging in risky woohoo now that she's living with the family.

If she has any children, they will have to stay behind with her, so I guess she will have a part of Kyngston to keep with her after he departs.

However, if Calvin has a child while here, that child will need to come with him. If he has more than one, an heir must be selected and the rest left behind with their mother.

Lolly Racket has aged up now, and Calvin is allowed to get romantic with her.

I'll get a better picture of Lolly next time. I gave her a new hairstyle because her old one was the same as Penny Pincher's, and I wanted her to look different.

Here are a few random shots that didn't fit into the narrative.