Well, that plan backfired, Abraxius thought. He’d tried to convince her not to treat Anton as a new toy, but she’d picked up on his jealousy and flounced off to the work tent with a book. It was pretty clear that he was out of favour.

He’d followed her, hoping to smooth talk his way back into her good graces, only to be ignored - but as the new guy himself walked in, Etan looked up from her reading and smiled. Abraxius knew that look, the “Etan likes!” look as he thought of it.

Granted, she wasn’t quite falling into his arms, but there was definitely a spark of attraction there - maybe two or three sparks. They just seemed to click, sat on the floor of the work tent chatting about all manner of things. Even when Anton was asking about her life as headwoman, they genuinely seemed to like each other; it didn’t seem like an attempt on his part to gain status in his new home (which had been Abraxius’ main motivation for flirting with Etan, he had to admit) and Etan was actually listening to him, rather than just declaring him hers and being done with it.

Note to self, Abraxius muttered as he walked out, look up that breakup spell again.

Abraxius Platinum, Archmage of the Pink Order, former prisoner of the Vedraloga turned second husband of Headwoman Etan, wasn’t sure he liked this new guy. Granted, he understood the cat-person eccentricity - no one became an archmage without developing a few quirks of their own, and affinity for cats was a common one - but.

The newcomer wasn’t one of Etan’s husbands, so Abraxius didn’t feel nearly as obliged to put up with him as with London. Yet something inside him kept coming back to the same thought: he could be. Anton was the sort of young man Etan would find hard to resist - for all her reputation as a fair leader, the headwoman was known to have a weakness for flattery, and nearly every bad call she’d ever made was the result of her attraction to some man or another.

He was also well aware that most of the tribe thought of him as one of Etan’s bad calls. Not without reason, either - he’d never admit it, but he was jealous, and that was hardly a done thing in Kulo Sena, especially if you happened to be an unsuitable consort to the village’s leader. So he invited Etan over while London was out hunting...

Despite all his magical gifts, all the bands of study and practice, he didn’t know much about love charms, and that out-of-love spell was only useful when the targets were already together. It looked like Abraxius would have to resort to his more mundane charms to keep his place in Etan’s court...

I swear my nice sims are much better at wrecking potential friendships than the grouchy sims. These pics were taken during one trip to the Heart of the Village, during which four sims, all with at least eight points in Nice/Grouchy, wound up with negative relationships with each other. The problem? Trying to initiate “admire” socials towards random strangers, which are invariably rejected.

Anyone else ever had to deal with this? I’m considering modding away “admire” autonomy for non-friends or something...

As usual, first order of business for a newly moved-in household is gathering firewood and water. Wild Kiss heads off to do that, starting with the very hastily thrown together forest lot that has literally nothing but nine Giving Trees so far. Well, she’s just here to grab branches and be done with it, right?

Wrong. She’s here to chat with Juvash’s god of the suns, strategy and those who choose to avoid all that ACR stuff. Sola virself is aroace, so ve’s not remotely impressed by the Romance/Pleasure sim standing next to her making random comments about Sola’s sphere of influence. (It doesn’t go further than that, as everyone on Juvash knows that attempts to hit on Sola always end in tragedy.)

Headwoman Etan, however, is attracted to WK - and the feeling is mutual. It’s an established custom in KS for matriarchs of different households to have romances with each other, so I can guess what’s going on in that last pic. The mi-Avira clan as a whole is known for two things, twins - but Etan mi-Avira is known for one thing, relationship drama. This too can only end in popcorn. Uh, tragedy. I meant to say tragedy.

Rotation 1, Household 1: ROS = unexpected pregnancy (it was a death ROS, but I don’t allow those in the first rotation so I rerolled)

As their first order of business, Rivadya and Sivu make their way to the Heart of the Village to flirt with apartment neighbours and play some treeball. Oh, and maybe fetch water, that might be important?

Dill has an even better idea: stay home and spy on Headwoman Etan. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh yes... and guess who else WK had the want to flirt with?!

Sena Yuleng, Etan... you’ve just snatched the title of “headwoman with most relationship drama” from your aunt Kenda...

The first day in Zera’s household started the way it started last time: with way too much ACR for my tastes. Wild Kiss certainly lives up to her name, sharing a first kiss of the iteration with Sophos before heading over to flirt with walkby Caleb (who has, up to this point, only been interested in guys). I actually told her to, because she wanted to, but I wasn’t expecting him to accept the flirt!

Etan was also walking by (coincidence?) and Melchol greeted her, which again was followed by a lot of ACR.

Outtake from the previous post:

Etan: Snowflakes make excellent eyepatches, arr! Now anyway, about those shamans...

Previously on Kulo Seeri: Etan

So... I restarted the rotation in Headwoman Etan’s household, but when I went to edit pics for the first half, I found nothing but pics of my desktop in my screenshot folder. I’d set Bandicam to the wrong mode! It’s fixed now, but it took me some time to get back into the habit of taking regular pics. That said, here are some pics of the highlights:

Abraxius Platinum, the NPC mage who cursed the burial grounds two iterations of the hood ago and later fell for Etan, was abducted by spirits and returned as a dryad. He doesn’t mind though, it gives him more time for potion brewing and keeping an eye on their toddler daughter Molsya.

Tabiltamyuli, Etan’s eldest and the lorekeepers’ apprentice, got a bad chance card and was fired from her job in the Education career. I have no idea what this means for her apprenticeship, but as she has a massive crush on both her mentors, it’s probably for the best.

Abraxius may have fallen for Etan, but still ACR kissed her cousin Kira at the village centre. He generated with a Romance aspiration, so whether or not his feelings for Etan are genuine, old habits die hard I guess. You wait till word gets back to your intended, Abraxius...

Speaking of Etan, she got a bad chance card the day after Myuli did, and was fired from her job in the Politics career. I have even less idea what this means for her as leader of the tribe...

and then she went and got abducted herself, returning pregnant with (unsurprisingly for a mi-Avira) TWO voidlings. It’s only her fourth twin pregnancy, she’ll be fine.

First day of the first household in rotation 1 can mean only one thing: time to send my sims round all the finished community lots so I can get the households mingling, re-establish relationships, gather resources and block NPCs off all the lots with Visitor Controller. So Headwoman Etan’s two teen daughters, Tabiltamyuli and Kuona, start the rounds with a trip to Ancient Crab Rock - that’s the beach next to Teal Camp, and yes, the acronym is deliberate.

Myuli immediately heads for the shore, sculpting a sand replica of a structure she’d seen in one of her mentors’ lorebooks. Since I didn’t do my usual “maxmotives on startup” Day 1 thing, the girls are hungry, so once the project is complete Myuli goes to cook some sausages. Kuona stays by the lake, imagining what it would be like to explore beneath the water.

Kuvato, who’s betrothed to the girls’ aunt Yulica, joins his soon-to-be nieces for some snackage - I wonder if him and Yulica are considering expanding the family already?

Akali: So, Myuli, about that undead thing...

Tabiltamyuli: Nah, that’s not true. It just makes your toes fall off.

...and then my game crashed. Square 1, here I come...

mi-Avira Legacy: Founder Poll

My mum suggested that "Do it!" should be my simming mantra for this iteration of Kulo Sena... so I'm taking it right back to its roots with a legacy! Now, legacies need founders, and there are four young women in the mi-Avira line who could help me finish what I started in 2007. That's where my simblr friends come in! Introductions:

In the top left pic is Tamivadila mi-Avira, thirteen-band-old voidling alpha. She is the daughter of current headwoman Etan's cousin Kira - a spoiled princess in every sense of the word - and some of that attitude has passed down to Tami. However, the young voidling is highly intelligent and perceptive, and has begun to manifest the powers of her voidbeast ancestors.

Top right is Tabiltamyuli mi-Avira, who at twenty bands old is Etan's eldest daughter. Myuli lacks the supernatural lineage of her three cousins, though she does possess second sight - a mi-Avira trait that appears to skip six or seven generations. Her seer's bane is poor health. Myuli also has a strong interest in lore and history, leading to a brief apprenticeship with the village lorekeepers.

Bottom left pic is Risimolni mi-Avira, one of twin demigods in the running. She and her sister are daughters of the Transmuter, god of the cycles of life and the seasons, and both girls have powers relating to winter. Of the two of them, Risi has the shorter temper, but also has a deep respect for the traditions of her people and her lineage, and often experiments with pushing the limits of her powers.

Finally, in the bottom right pic, Areksutama mi-Avira is Risi's twin and the quieter of the pair, preferring to stay in her lovely neat tent and practise healing like her mother. More or less the opposite of her twin, Sutama's less outgoing nature means she tends to stay close to her small circle of friends and family, though she does enjoy using her frost magic more than she cares to admit.

And now:

I’ve decided not to rebuild this iteration of Kulo Seeri - I’m just starting over at a point before I played any of my households. However, I am giving my sims one rotation without ROS or blogging - unless something major happens in my game that I can’t not share. And something did.

The older guy in this pic is Abraxius Platinum, NPC head warlock turned senior husband of Headwoman Etan mi-Avira. The younger woman who’s flirting with him is Kuona, Etan’s daughter. No, Kuona and Abraxius are not biologically related. However, there is a law in the tribe, written by Etan, that any spouses of your mother, grandmother etc. are off-limits - usually I use Found Family to set that, but I forgot in this case.

Now, if they’d just stayed flirting in the bush, they might have been able to cover it up. But no...

Abraxius had to put some ACR moves on a couple of other visitors to the Heart of the Village... who also happen to be gods. The one in the red robe, hugging Abraxius in the above pic, is the Seeker - god of self-awareness, intuition and the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment (and is also sort of my simself). The blonde dragon god in the corner there is Air - god of creativity, agility, inspiration and freedom - who Abraxius also flirted with in front of Kuona. I don’t have a picture of that...

...but as you can see, Kuona took it badly. It actually degenerated into her slapping and poking both Air and the Seeker repeatedly before the sim I was controlling went home. All that has to have consequences (for Kuona in particular) but I’m not sure what.

To add insult to injury, Abraxius is not my type. :P

Headwoman Etan’s daughter Kuona somehow managed to join this hunting trip, despite not having gone through the rites of passage yet. Zyulo spotted an opportunity and engaged kid mode...

Zyulo: Nyah!

Zyulo: Also, you’re really kinda cute.

Kuona: Aww!

Mini Lorepost: Kuona mi-Avira, like her sister Myuli and their second cousin Nita, is a seer. All seers in the Seeriverse have a bane associated with their gift - Kuona’s is inconsistent ageing. Two iterations ago, this kicked in and took her from six to sixteen in an instant; she still thinks more like a six-band-old, so hasn’t gone through the rites of adulthood yet. As the premades also exist in the Seeriverse as the Elephant Sea Alliance, I decided that this is also my explanation for the ageing inconsistencies between Bella and her brother Michael Bachelor across the Sims games.

During London’s daily trip to the Heart of the Village to fetch wood and water, he catches sight of Etan heading for the as-yet-unnamed tavern. London and Etan still have a very strong attraction to each other, so he follows her in.

Etan acknowledges his greeting, but that’s about all she does before turning her attention back to a discussion with Tegan of the Vedraloga. To add to the awkwardness, Etan’s other ex-husband Melchol walks in... the one who broke a law he actually helped Etan write by divorcing her, but - unlike London - didn’t become arkal for it.

The two men exchange pleasantries and discuss the quality of the beers they’ve been trading for. It’s still an extremely awkward atmosphere in there, so London uses the excuse of having to get back to make the morning meal and heads home.

It just occurred to me that, while I’ve mentioned now-former headwoman Etan in passing a few times on my simblr, she’s never had a proper introduction. Now she’s a ghost and no longer leading the tribe, and I’m back to blogging, I decided it was high time I shared Etan’s story. Here goes:

Etan was the younger of a pair of twins born to Kitira mi-Avira, a former headwoman of Kulo Seeri, and Trevor Gorski, an outsider and the brother of Nuidya war hero Nate Gorski (now patron ancestor of victory, strategy and celebrations). Both twins were assigned male at birth; Etan’s name is literally her uncle Nate’s spelled backwards, a fairly common way of forming diminutives among the Nuidya. Sadly, Etan’s twin died within a few days of their birth, and Trevor ran off back to his homeland soon afterward. Kitira, who had never felt quite cut out for leadership - especially with her fascination with northern city folk and their technology - also left Kulo Seeri with Etan.

In Nuidya culture, it’s commonly believed that when a twin dies in infancy, the surviving sibling will possess great powers. But, growing up as a human in a small town mostly populated by supernaturals, Etan never felt particularly powerful. When Etan was three moons old, Kitira married a vampire and became one herself. As the only member of the family who could go out in daylight and needed to eat regular food, Etan started learning to cook at a young age, and spent most of her days alone or with her only childhood friend, exploring the nearby woods.

By the time she hit puberty, that wasn’t all Etan was exploring. She’d been raised as a boy, but had never felt particularly male - she’d always felt more at home around girls than boys. She came out as transgender in her early teens, transitioning through the blessing of the Spirit World. Later, she left her hometown and her strict vampire stepfather to study at a nearby city’s university, where she met her first husband London. The pair of them married shortly after graduating, and adopted twins Lydia and Demetrius.

Now, by that time, Kitira was getting fed up of the whole vampire thing. She’d had another daughter, followed by triplet sons, and was pregnant again. Her husband insisted on confining her to the estate while she was pregnant and hunting for her - given that she’d been raised to be a matriarch, that really grated on her. Etan and London helped her find a de-vampire potion and escape back to Kulo Seeri with her children.

At that point, Etan’s aunt Kenda had just been deposed as headwoman of KS, leaving only her eight-moon-old daughter as heir. But when Kitira’s branch of the family returned, Etan was offered the role. She accepted, but insisted on taking a crash course in Nuidya Culture 101 before taking up the mantle of leadership. From that point on, she was renowned for her wisdom and fairness.

Now in her early forties, with four biological children as well as her adopted ones, Etan has been leading the Nuidya for over two ninemoons and has finished the code of law her aunt Abina was working on before her death. Personally, I’ve found it really lovely and rewarding to watch her develop from her awkward coming-out period to being a strong leader who doesn’t stand for any nonsense.

But... now she’s a ghost, and has had to step down due to her own law that undead can’t lead the tribe. I just hope her successor can handle things as well as Etan herself has...