History
This sets the scene well…
I have been playing Rimworld for… a while. That doesn’t mean that I was sitting on my ass micro-managing digital avatars, but pretty damn close to it!
Across over hundreds of different scenarios I’ve seen colonies survive, die, and escape the planet. But mostly they died, which is fine because eventually you come to realize that it really is about the story. And I’ve used it to tell lots of stories.
So why was this time different?
The stories we tell ourselves
I have only recently bought the downloadable content extension called ‘Biotech’.
I thought it would be fun.
The interest probably came about because I have academic qualifications and professional experience in protein chemistry and genetics, which I got into around the time of the Human Genome Project. Although I don’t do lab research anymore, I still find it fascinating and like to follow the work which I think will bring both major benefits AND problems, and if used like every other type of new technology we (humans) have invented will try to weaponize it at every chance, so I think we need to understand it, extremely well.
So, Biotech. This is where I was first introduced to ‘children’ in Rimworld. And it was not a happy introduction. Sure, in older versions of the game there were biologically complementary colonists who paired up and were ‘gett’in some luv’in’ as the game charmingly describes it, but this had not happened since installing Biotech.
And it still had not happened by the time the first Slavers showed up.
Rimworld has handled the topic of Slavery very well. The game world is brutal. There are slavers. They buy and offer to sell you slaves. If you buy them, the slaves then join you as free colonists. Net happiness ensues. Yes, even for the slavers, but most importantly for the enslaved, and for the reasons above, this is not something you can just ignore in the game.
(Don’t bother arguing that you should attack every slaver you see, because they always arrive in greater numbers and with greater weapons, and all that would happen is that they would leave with you in chains as well!)
Thus, my first introduction to children in Rimworld, was when a slaver turned up with one to sell.
There was no moral quandary. Rimworld is a planet-wide wild frontier. Either you buy the slaves that turn up, thus freeing them, or they go away still in chains to an uncertain and dangerous fate.
By this time my colony had become substantial, added to by earlier slaves, recruited prisoners, and random wanderers who liked the vibe. In a word, it was ‘full’.
Then along came this pig-woman, and small imp-boy both for sale. I deduced that to make it work, I had to buy both, and dedicate the pig-woman to raising the imp-boy, and take the hit in terms of food, medicine, materials, electricity, and space. To do this I had to sell some valuable parts, but what was I my choice, send this child away in chains?
So, I made a house-rule for this colony. The first of many.
This colony would never send a child away in chains. And if they couldn’t afford to buy them, they would (die after they) attack the slavers in an attempt to free them.
Nice, but big deal.
The first energy crisis
While they are being raised, children are a productivity drain. They can haul and clean, but can’t make, grow, or cook anything. They also take away the time of the adults in the form of teaching. They also get themselves into trouble. The first time I noticed this was when we got raided and when I checked where the imp-boy was. He was out in the wilderness apparently ‘nature running’ whatever the heck that was!
The concept would be barely recognizable to many of the people reading this, but I could relate. As well as growing up mostly on a remote tropical island (as the child of a working ex-pat), I also grew up partly in a rural town. So yeah, climbing trees and chasing animals, and swimming in dams. I got it.
The imp-boy got back to safety, and we knocked back the raid, and took a prisoner who seemed useful.
So, I gave the colony some new rules. First, that Children would be confined to ‘Home’ areas. Second, the colony would never by a Television or any recreation that would stifle ‘nature running’. Don’t worry kids, I got your backs.
Eventually, the prisoner was recruited, but they didn’t bring anything new to the table.
The resources/energy of the colony started to slow, and winter was approaching.
Also, I could foresee that more inevitably slavers would arrive, and by the colony’s own rules they would be bled dry freeing slave children. But the colony was not a perpetual motion machine! It was either going to grow or shrink, and right now it was shrinking.
After much thinking I came up with a plan. And a new rule. Superfluous newcomers, the newly recruited, and the newly released would be resourced to setup new colonies. They would get as much in resources as the starting colonists had, and assisted to get their colony up to speed.
I setup and gifted the pig-woman, imp-boy (who had matured by now) and the other imp who had been captured in a raid and then recruited. I ran the new colony until summer started, and they had net positive food.
Then I disbanded the new colony.
It was not part of my story. I hoped that it would remain on the map as some kind of new ‘outlander union’ or tribe, but alas Rimworld isn’t programmed that way, and it just because a new ruin, forever lost to the game.
After the first colony was released back into the wild, the original colony purchased a new member, another child, who would become extremely important in the history of this little corner of the universe. Her name was Grey Squirrel, an eight-year-old girl of no distinctive traits and no particular genetic lineage. Everyone just called her ‘Squirrel’. Like a lot of children in Rimworld, if left to her own devices she would wear ridiculous combinations of clothing, or nothing at all, and spend every spare moment floor-drawing, radio-talking, nature-running, or just reading the growing collection of books.
Resource management issues
I didn’t bemoan the loss of the second colony, because I was too busy with the original. It was now booming, and growing, and developing technology at a rapid rate.
I had unlocked all of the Biotech production and research (having destroyed three summoned mechanoids along the way), and the colony was soon deep into Rimworld’s oldest dilemma… to track across the map to a discovered starship… or to start building my own?
To tell the truth, neither option really interested me anymore. I’d done that many times in Rimworld. And frankly I was starting to wonder if it really was so fantastic to live in space, if it meant that at any moment your starship could fail and strand you on some wild frontier world… if you know what I mean! Why not build a good life, where you find yourself?
By this point the colony was expansive. It took all my time just to organize the accumulating resources. We had several strong economic models in play and there was little that we didn’t already have, having virtually one of everything hidden away somewhere in storage somewhere!
I was spending more time building storage, and sending trade caravans, than progressing towards any substantial goal. I had all the resources I could want for, but I was losing time and fun just managing the game.
Story context
It had been fun trying to live by the above self-inflicted rules of the colony.
But the fun had turned into administrivia.
I wanted to make a story. And I wanted it to revolve around Biotech, specifically, the genetics side which I had barely touched on, because despite having a lot of money, there are only two ways to manipulate genes… either through buying genepacks, which were only randomly available, or the old-fashioned way.
It was about this time that someone introduced me to the capabilities of ‘Dev Mode’ in the game. It grants the god-like ability to create and destroy, to change to pawns in the game, heck you could control the freaking weather! After eight hundred hours of playing Rimworld I had never thought of looking for cheat codes, and it felt like I was being offered the whole candy store!
But I controlled myself, because I know that for a story to be a good story, it has to be believable. And I wanted to craft a good story, a beautiful story, that was worthy of being crafted.
The solution to my problems came in a bolt of inspiration.
I would introduce a new character. Someone who could believably solve the resource management overhead. Someone who also wanted to explore the genetics of the game. Someone mortal, but who wielded god-like power.
As a former player of Warhammer 40,000 my mind went to the God Emperor of Mankind. But of course, not him, because that would be unbelievable. Rather, someone like him. There is a period in 40K lore when the God Emperor’s genetic sons, his Primarchs, were scattered and wandered across the universe, before reuniting to join their father’s crusade across the stars.
My new character would be a Primarch, from this dark period in time. But which one?
There were some sons who remained loyal to the God Emperor, who were known to work alongside humans, but my character had to be one that was morally flexible, which ruled out half. He had to be someone who thought that he actually deserved god-like power.
I chose Horus. Horus Lupercal, the Emperor’s favorite son, who would eventually betray his father and fall victim to the insidious desires of the Warp. But until then he was dedicated to the perfection of the Empire. Which included genetic manipulation.
A time of blessings
The arrival of Horus came with no fanfare, which was appropriate as he had not made a name for himself at this point in history. Using Dev Mode I spawned a new pawn, immediately changed their name, maximized their skills, stripped them of all traits, and re-added ALL the good ones. At that time, I didn’t know that Dev Mode could also manipulate genes, but I thought it appropriate that he had wastelander genes.
With his hulking body, slate grey skin, and tall spiked hair, he looked menacing.
I gifted him with the best Marine armor and a Legendary silver sword and sent him into the wilds to test him on animals. He killed a bison with two blows of his sword, which angered the rest of its herd. So, he killed the entire herd with just as much ease. The only injury he took was a single bruise.
Yeah, this was Horus all right!
And I decided that he would bring his technology with him, so I added the Indestructible Plasteel Wall mod, and spawned in a mountain of Plasteel, and set him to work researching all the remaining unknowns.
As a sign of the bounty to come, Horus (who was played by me) spawned in hundreds of Lavish meals, direct to the freezer.
He was so charismatic that he immediately romanced a colonist, Thizz, the Mechanator, and they paired up.
The good times
All was good, for a time.
For some strange reason Horus took a dislike to Squirrel, and used to insult her for no reason I could find, but with everyone else he was generous and inspiring.
Horus (who was me) began the genetic experiments in a simple fashion. He had an Ovum extracted from one of the colonists (Kena), fertilized by her husband (Flebe), and implanted in a surrogate colonist (Squirrel).
When another slave caravan arrived, I toyed with the idea that Horus would just kill the slavers and liberate all the slaves, but Horus is not really that kind of guy. He might, if he had an excuse, but there was nothing illegal going on, and with all the resources in the universe now available, we could avoid bloodshed by simply buying all the slaves. Which we did.
There was one notable amongst the new colonists. A Yttakin woman called ‘Ora’. Horus was keen to get his hands on Yttakin DNA so he extracted an Ova from her, had sperm removed from a male Yttakin prisoner to fertilize it, and implanted it back into Ora.
After a time Squirrel, who had started pregnancy earlier, went into labor, and after I worked out what had to happen, baby ‘Aztra’ was born.
Unfortunately, Squirrel died in the childbirth, but as you will recall we had one of everything, so Horus promptly injected her with Mech Resurrection Serum. I crossed my fingers and prayed for her, because sometimes the serum can go horribly wrong. In this case, it went incredibly right, and Squirrel was breastfeeding Aztra within days!
It wasn’t long before Ora also gave birth, to a Yttakin boy named ‘Furskit’, and thankfully both mother and child were healthy because I had no more serum!
I build two cots in the middle of the colony, surrounded by fields, next to a large sculpture, shaded and protected from rain. On all but the hottest days, baby Furskit and baby Aztra would lie next to each other gurgling and giggling away.
It was unsettling the first time I saw a baby giggle in Rimworld. The game generates crazed swirls and colorful squiggles around the baby, and it appears to be going into a mental break, like a depressed colonist might! It turned out that it was a good sign. The babies were both happy, and were thrilled to have happy parents, and everyone who passed by a giggling baby got a small mood boost. It was ‘Little House On The Prairie’, right there!
The problems start
I had to come up with a rationale, or a goal, for Horus to work towards. So, I decided that he would find and/or extract genes and recombine them to make the perfect humanoid.
‘Dev Mode’ was forbidden for this, as it had to be an actual goal. So I spent a lot of time fine-tuning the mechanoids to do the menial jobs (power management is the bane of a mechanoid’s existence) and spent a lot of time travelling to buy genepacks, and working around the Recombinator.
Some colonists already had useful genes, but I figured that a conceited guy like Horus would want to establish ‘bloodlines’ and breed the ‘right’ genetics. But again, to make it a story it had to have a challenge.
I made a rule that no colonist could be genetically tampered with to become as Horus decreed good, unless they agreed.
The rule for agreement was that they were either paired up with Horus, or they were paired up with another colonist who had already been tampered with.
It is amazing how almost anything can be justified, if you think of it as a ‘rule’ to be followed!
While all this was happening, Furskit and Aztra had matured from babies into children at nearly the same time.
The only adults who cared for Furskit were Ora, his mother, and Squirrel who helped out if Ora was not around.
The only adult who cared for Aztra was her surrogate Squirrel, so the rest of the colonists had lazily taken to calling her ‘Little Squirrel’ or ‘Lil’Squirrel’ to be even lazier!
Whenever I checked to see what the kids were up to, they would be cleaning together, or hauling things together, or off nature running. But they always seemed to be together. Despite being a Yttakin, Furskit moved surprisingly quickly. Not as fast as an Impid, but faster than Lil’Squirrel. He was also already highly resilient. As kids do, they sometimes argued and scrapped for no discernable reason that I could see, and always it was Furskit came away with fewer bruises!
At some point in this period, on a collector’s whim, Horus purchased a Blue Skin genepack. On another whim, Horus (who was me) also decided that all the perfect people of the lineage he was crafting would have blue skin. He thought about testing the genepack on Thizz, but she was too valuable to risk, so, looking around the colony he saw…
Young Furskit was the first character to be implanted with a Xenogerm (after I finally worked out the process by trial and error, so it felt like an achievement!) Two days later and he was nature running around again with Lil’Squirrel, this time with a bushy blue tail. The sight made me laugh.
Unfortunately, Horus (who was me) got other ideas! What other genetic wonders might he produce? How would it work, recombining genes and implanting them in creatures which already had a strong lineage? Could he… eradicate undesirable genetic traits?
He started with Thizz, recombining what he saw as the perfect genetic form (Blue skin, Orange hair, Fertile, Great social). She had no strong endogenes, so the changes took.
To celebrate, Horus decreed a new mode of Apparel called ‘Regal’. It consisted of a Bluefir cape and a red Devilstrand sash, and no one who wore it could be forced to work, except to produce the Ova and Sperm of his new superior race!
Of course, ‘not being forced to work’ also extended to not spending the effort to gestate a child and rear it. The later problem was solved through the childcare Mechanoid mod. The former problem was more complex, and Horus (who was me) was superstitious, so he wanted his genetic experiments gestated the ancient way… by a person, not a machine. Looking around the colony he saw…
Ora became the recipient for the embryos for every colonist who was charmed and xenogerm’ed by Horus. At one stage the ‘coven’ of what I was starting to think of as ‘blue skinned witches’ was extracting and fertilizing eggs faster than the Yttakin surrogate could gestate them!
From pawns to prisoners
But things did not go according to plan.
Firstly, Ora suffered numerous miscarriages, which only led Horus (who was me) to increase the rate of experimentation, rather than concede that his plans had flaws. I felt that the fictional Horus was exactly that kind of guy!
Secondly, Furskit was increasingly getting in social fights with Lil’Squirrel. Although Horus had some kind of natural dislike for Lil’Squirrel, he enjoyed insulting Furskit way more. But Furskit didn’t even seem not notice, and Horus (who was me) became irritated by this.
Furskit was also a relentless Floor-drawer, so Horus (who was me) invented a new rule… any child found Floor-drawing would be beaten.
It didn’t take long before Furskit grabbed some chalk and hit the floor again, and in what felt like a deliberate attempt to deny me any plausible excuse not to do carry through with the threat, he started drawing right in the middle of the common area, where Horus was eating his dinner.
I wanted to give Furskit a chance, I really liked the little blue guy, so I gave him until Lil’Squirrel could be drafted and arrive, and have it impressed on her that if she didn’t punish Furskit, then it would be her that got punished in his place. She was only nine-years-old, and terrified of Horus, so she stepped up next to Furskit… and give him a single hit with the awful steel club that she had picked up a long time ago. He stopped drawing, and Horus was happy for a moment and a firm convert of administrative punishment.
Unexpectedly, instead of meekly accepting the attack, the Yttakin boy leapt at Lil’Squirrel and the pair got into a full-on fight. I figured that the game should decide how this played out, so I let it run. I thought Lil’Squirrel would win, because Furskit had received only basic teaching in skills from his mother, while Lil’Squirrel actually had melee training from Horus, and she was armed.
But Rimworld had other ideas! After the sneak attack, it was Furskit who was doing all the damage. And that also made sense to me. Lil’Squirrel was there reluctantly, and from Furskit’s perspective he had done nothing to warrant the abuse, and he was free to hit back as hard as he could.
The fight was so one-sided that I thought Lil’Squirrel was at risk of a permanent injury. So, Horus (who was me) intervened. Sheathing his sword, he laid Furskit low with a single punch.
Both the kids limped off to hospital beds and lay their chatting idle to each other while they healed. The next day, they were running around together and telling each other odd stories and jokes. From where I sat, it appeared that they were too good friends to let anything Horus did, or made them do, change that.
Which incensed Horus. Not only was the ‘little freak’ the original inheritor of the coveted Blue Skin gene that Horus was basing his perfect lineage on, but he had also soundly defeated a ‘standard human’ which was the base genome of his favored people. The human girl was as much a failure, as the Yttakin boy was an embarrassment.
And then Ora had another miscarriage, poor things. Another failure to bear a perfect embryo from Horus and his concubine.
Rather than recognize his own poor judgement, Horus (who was me) declared all Yttakin to be mutants, according to the Warhammer 40K vernacular. Ora and Furskit were thrown into prison. As a sign of his utter disdain, Horus (who was me) declared that from that day forward no one could doctor or warden the mutant youngster and nor could anyone use his old name and would now refer to him as ‘sh*t’. He would die imprisoned, in pain, and misery, for no crime of his own.
Genetic experiments
There was a hostile Yttakin tribe that lived less than a day from the colony, and by my reckoning they had been raiding the colony more frequently. I think that Ora had a social connection there. The Yttakin had probably thought to free their kind? But they were met by Diabolus mechanoids and blue skinned witches wielding energy weapons and the dreaded ‘psychic shock lances’, and after several raids all that resulted was that the prison had absorbed more female Yttakin for the purposes of gestating Horus’ chosen embryos.
These were obviously appalling conditions for surrogacy, and Rimworld seemed to back that up with a string of stillbirths and miscarriages.
On top of that, the game logic appeared to me (?) to be basing the baby’s xenogenes on those of the surrogate which is biologically wacky, but hey it’s just a game, so I decided to roll with the outcomes. After all, I did not like Horus (who was me) either, and I was keen for his experiments to come to an end. The problem was, he was an actual monster. I had made him too well.
So it went... the genetic experiments would fail, and Horus would punish the surrogates via the ‘war crimes’ mod (which adds exactly what you imagine it does.), and this would make the prisoners upset and they would revolt and try in vain to escape, and Horus would punish them even worse!
Eventually, after Ora failed to birth a child with his genetics for the fourth or fifth time, Horus (who was me) constructed a room made entirely from plasteel and moved Ora into it on her prison bed (she couldn’t walk on her own anymore after all the abuse that Horus had meted out) and then he set the room on fire with an Incendiary Launcher and locked the door. Instinctively all the colonists ran towards the fire alarm, but Horus sent them all away, except for Lil’Squirrel who was forced to stand by the door while Ora burned alive.
On a deep personal level, I needed to find a way out of this horror story that I had created. I could delete the scenario. I could even throw out my laptop and swear off Rimworld forever. But I would always know that I had created this monster, and that it was some kind of reflection of my darkest self, and I had not found a way to overcome it. That way, madness lies.
But I couldn’t see any alternative. So, I kept playing, keeping my eyes open for any plausible way out. I was now trapped in the game, with Furskit and Lil’Squirrel, admittedly with chances for respite they did not share.
The Witches of Slaanesh
It was around this time that I realized that the blue skinned lineage that Horus (who was me) had created were actually Slaaneshi, and it felt right that this was an early attempt by Chaos to pervert Horus. Not that he was in any way a victim, but it made sense, in a story sense.
Because of an earlier and innocuous genetic experiment, Squirrel had been regrowing her genes, and Horus was forced to wait several years for her to be ready before he could implant his Slaanesh xenogerm in her. Also, according to the rules of the story first either Horus or another cultist had to romance her. That actually proved impossible for Horus, because Squirrel had always had a low opinion of him, probably because of how he had related to her as a child. But eventually, inevitably, she was romanced and fell in love with another colonist, who had already been turned to Slaanesh after pairing up with an earlier divorced partner.
This f*cking game!
After the xenogerm implantation, Squirrel woke from the coma with blue skin and orange hair. She refused childcaring, because like all cult members she considered manual labor beneath her.
This cut Lil’Squirrel off from anyone who ever loved her. Her parents had never, Ora was murdered, Squirrel now belonged to Slaanesh, and Furskit was in prison and she only saw him when she tended his wounds after Horus punished him.
Lil’Squirrel knew that all of the recent babies had died within the first few months of conception or birth, and she must have been in terror, and could only guess what was really going on. Somehow, she held herself together.
Until one mad day. One of the surrogate babies revealed germline genes that showed it to be a Yttakin. Another failure. And Horus was bored of failures, so Horus (who was still me goddamit!) dragged Lil’Squirrel into the nursery and threatened to kill her if she did not beat the child to death with her steel club.
Later on that same mad day, driven by the murder of his mother, Furskit went berserk and tried to escape. Bored by the constant escape attempts, Horus simply captured him and sealed him in a door-less room with a dozen spawned rats. After several days of starvation, Horus realized that Furskit refused to eat the rats to survive. His (my) devious nature led him to pretend to recruit Furskit as a colonist (which his charismatic Slaaneshi did quickly) and then lock him up again in the room of full of rats. This time with a bow, and each rat marked for hunting.
It was days later, and I don’t remember what happened first. Either Furskit injured but failed to kill a rat while hunting, or a rat grew insane from starvation and attacked Furskit. In typical fashion, when one wild animal attacks, the other wild animals around it tend to join in. Within moments, Furskit was fighting for his life, with no way out. It was brutal. It was a death sentence. I wanted to invoke ‘Dev Mode’, and the only thing that stopped me was the knowledge that doing so would make Furskit’s ordeal meaningless.
I watched every bite and blow in real-time. Furskit was being worn down by the sheer numbers. I thought he was doomed, and then all of a sudden he smacked the rat that was attacking him, and literally dashed across the prison to safety. I wish I had been recording the screen, it was like a glitch.
I dared to hope. He was going to make it.
But a single rat was still enraged, and when it attacked it drew the attention of others, and before I could blink half a dozen more rats were all over the little blue guy.
Furskit died from blood loss, and over time as the rats grew hungry, they ate at his corpse, and after a couple of days it was gone. As if he had never been born. Even if Lil’Squirrel could find a way to get to him, there was nothing left to bury.
The madness continues
If either Horus or Squirrel noticed that brave little Furskit was dead, they did not show it.
However, Lil’Squirrel was saddened beyond reason and wandered the colony in a daze.
Sometime after she recovered, and was able to function again, another baby was due born. As usual the doctor and Horus assembled. This time Lil’Squirrel also joined them. She wanted to know what was happening. She thought that maybe if she was there that Horus might not do anything to it with a witness present. Or he might kill the witness. Either way, Lil’Squirrel (who I now realized was also me) was beyond caring about her own life.
The birth way strange. It was longer than usual, and no one spoke for hours, until Horus started speaking to Lil’Squirrel. Out of interest I checked the social panel to see what the conversation was about. It turns out that, in the middle of the birth of one of his genetic offspring, he was taking the time to hurl insults at Lil’Squirrel. She endured it in silence.
The child was born. Rather than waste time on a likely failure, Horus (who was me) shoved it into a Growth Vat and left the child unnamed (Rebecca) and moved on to the next project.
To Lil’Squirrel the child looked decidedly Yttakin, but things like this took some time to be certain. It was in a vat, so no further questions would be asked for a while. She figured that the child only had a couple of months to live at the most.
And she would not let it die!
Lil’Squirrel was not even ten years old, and could barely cook or craft or do anything of value. But dammit she (who was me) was not going to let them kill this kid!
Quite a story, huh? I had no idea what was going to happen.
An odd opening
There was no plausible way to explain Lil’Squirrel making plans to escape the colony, but luck was with us. For once, and we deserved it.
Horus once had good results from destroying a nearby pirate camp, in that all the local communities appreciated it, and had gifted the colony with Goodwill. It was time to do that again, to quell the growing rumors of genetic experimentation and torture that visiting traders had likely overheard.
There was a local savage tribe of Impids, called the ‘Zodani Sprintship’, that had been sending increasing raids. The had interrupted Horus’ plans before. More genetic abnormalities for Horus to eradicate, while accumulating accolades for keeping the peace.
It was also the perfect opportunity for Lil’Squirrel to seek out a new home.
Horus, the witch coven, and all his militant mechanoids set off on a several day journey to the Sprintship, which had no idea of the hell that was about to descend on it!
Notably, just before he left, Horus implanted an embryo from himself and his latest concubine in one of the prisoners called Kat. Another child that Lil’Squirrrel knew in her gut was destined to be murdered by Horus in the near future.
After the other had left, and she was finally alone, Lil’Squirrel checked that Rebecca was doing well in her tank, then she grabbed a backpack full of survival rations, picked up a poor steel sword, and set out in search of a future.
Carrot’s Oasis
She travelled past the ruins of the second colony. The game would not let her resettle there, and besides she had heard that it was not defensible. After a day of trekking on foot (while Horus and the coven rode horses) she came to a mountainous area, but it seemed too visible to be safe, but from the she saw below a hex of flat wooded land that was surrounded on all sides my mountains.
A valley. A hidden valley. It might be just what she was searching for?
And it was.
She quickly identified an abandoned building and claimed it as a new home, noting the GPS coordinates. She tried to build, but being still under 10 years old there was little she could do but gather things and cut down wood in preparation of later building and cropping.
Around this time Horus arrived at and slaughtered the Zodani Sprintship, every single one of the tribe. The fiery Impids were no match for the witches and the Diabolus mechanoids, and Horus himself did not even have to dirty his hands. They stayed the night, enjoying the screams of dying mutants, and then headed home.
Radicalized, and highly organized
This was Lil’Squirrel’s warning that she also had to be back home soon. If the others arrived home first, then they would interrogate her to find out where she had been, learn about the new colony, and then all would be lost. I would stop playing the game, conceding that Horus had won.
It was a close call, but Lil’Squirrel made it back to the colony barely two hours before the others. In that brief time, she ordered that the standing Transport Pod be filled with Plasteel, and readied for flight.
The others returned with barely a glance to see if Lil’Squirrel still existed, before they went to sleep.
Except for Horus. This was when I realized that whatever genes and traits I had gifted him, it meant that he never had to sleep. I don’t know what it was, but it was going to make things extremely difficult!
Send lawyers, guns, and money
There were moments when the others were asleep, usually when Horus was torturing or repairing a prisoner, that Lil’Squirrel would launch a Transport Pod to the new colony, which she had dubbed ‘Carrots Oasis’, and order the construction mechanoid to build a replacement pod.
Lil’Squirrel managed to send plasteel, medicine, and survival rations. The advantage of facing a cult that abhorred manual labor, was that they had no idea that she was doing this, as long as they never saw the pods launch.
It’s not easy being green
During this period of smuggling, Rebecca matured in her vat, and the latest embryo grew inside Kat.
Scarily, Lil’Squirrel approached the age of romance, and she knew that he had to act first. She would be as unable to resist the Slaaneshi, just as Squirrel had been unable. In fact, Horus had already prepared a Slaaneshi xenogerm for her and it was ready to be implanted, the moment she came of age. Horus was now beyond caring about social conventions. This was going to be a medical procedure, first and foremost.
Also, during this time that a new Yttakin prisoner was acquired. He was a boy purchased from a slaver, and his name was Kin’fyon. His skin was a bright green color, which fascinated Horus who tried and failed to extract the gene.
Kin’fyon reminded Lil’Squirrel (who was me) of her dear Furskit.
He reminded Horus (who was me) of his desire to manipulate and control genetics.
All things considered, Kin’fyon was a quiet prisoner, rarely complaining or drawing the ire of Horus. Perhaps this character had heard stories of what happened to those who did?
Personally, I cursed Rimworld for sending another child that reminded me of Furskit.
!!!
Or was that just me, projecting guilt?
Either way, I hated Horus (who was me) for how Furskit had died.
This particular Rimworld scenario was making me question my morality, and my sanity, in equal measure.
What’s a girl to do?
Time was running out for Lil’Squirrel. It was only days until she came of age, and Horus would turn his malevolent gaze upon her.
And it was only a matter of days before Horus would likely declare that Rebecca was another failed experiment. Or that Kat had birthed an obvious mutant!
There were some tough choices running through Lil’Squirrel’s mind.
Then a stroke of luck happened. Rimworld, which I had come to suspect had been torturing me on purpose, just to see how I reacted, threw me a bone.
Squirrel’s lover dumped her!
Huh? Not what I was expecting, but I’d take it.
Since it was her lover who brought her into the cult, this officially expelled her from the cult, and before Horus could swoop in and find some loophole to let her back in, Squirrel was forced to question her actions for the past year. And she (who was also me) did not like what she saw.
She went to Lil’Squirrel and they talked for the first time in a year.
Squirrel was overcome with remorse, for what she had done.
Lil’Squirrel was overcome with joy and relief, for Squirrel and for the fact that she had an ally for the first time in years!
This caused me to wonder, for the first time, exactly what traits Lil’Squirrel had? What made her tick? There were two traits… and one of them was Optimism. It seemed fitting.
On the evening that Lil’Squirrel was to come of age, the pair made their escape.
While the cultists were asleep, and only Horus was awake, Lil’Squirrel stole Rebecca from the nursery, and Squirrel packed the Transport Pod with baby food, silver, and gold.
They also freed the two prisoners. Kin’fyon the Yttakin child, and Kat the pregnant human.
Lil’Squirrel loaded Rebecca and the three others into the transport pod, and launched them. She stayed behind to erase the coordinates in the pod launcher, and attempted to escape on foot. Lil’Squirrel could die happy, if she knew that the others had gotten away. That she had made a difference.
If you, dear reader, are starting to develop an insight into my mind, then I assume you are now fearing for Lil’Squirrel’s wellbeing. I mean, why didn’t she just leave with the others? Why the bullsh*t storyline that she had to stay behind to erase the destination in the pod launcher? Did I want Lil’Squirrel to get caught?
No. I needed her (who was me) to have a real story.
That night Lil’Squirrel kept out of sight of Horus as she bridled the colony’s domesticated Muffalo. On her way to freedom she went past the genetics lab, where Horus kept the xenogerms. She found one that would reset a person back to their base genetics, but with improved fertility. It was a recombination that Horus considered a failed early experiment, but he never threw anything out.
Eventually she made it off the edge of the map with only a belly full of food, the xenogerm, and her unyielding optimism.
Lil’Squirrel was literally starving by the time she reached Carrot’s Oasis.
But when she arrived, she was welcomed by the others, and embraced by Squirrel.
The story could have ended there
It was a tough beginning.
The inhabitants had little in the way of weapons. The only advantage they really had was a small pile of plasteel, and they used it to build an invulnerable hub around which a new life slowly began to take shape.
Kat soon birthed a healthy baby girl named ‘Lottie’, with strong Yttakin genes that I assume took after her father, whom Horus (who was me) had murdered soon after he had fertilized Kat’s embryo in a cross-breeding experiment.
Squirrel was down for several days after implanting the xenogerm that Lil’Squirrel had stolen to erase the Slaaneshi genes from her body. It was costly for her to be out of action, but everyone in the new colony agreed that it was important.
It was also really, really hard to build a colony with two only young adults (Lil’Squirrel and Kin’fyon), two highly-strung parents who had constant mental breaks (Squirrel and Kat), while raising two demanding Yttakin babies (Beckie and Lottie).
The numbers did not stack up in their favor, and it took all my Rimworld experience just to make it viable.
But I stuck at it, as long as they stuck at it.
And I learned something amazing.
Did you know, that if your colonists all live in the same tiny room in close proximity, that the mood benefits from two giggling babies will stack, soothing the horrors of even the most brutalized prisoner, and of those indoctrinated by a genetic cult? I didn’t know that, but I learned, and it made sense to me.
I think that we rarely find a higher purpose than caring for and raising the young, and rarely find a greater joy than in seeing them happy. I kinda cried when I realized what was happening. And I not built like that.
Within a year, the new colony was viable, and beginning to grow. Between the two Yttakin babies, and Lil’Squirrel’s optimism, I thought this was going to work.
Meanwhile bad things were happening
Back in the colony Horus was going crazy. When his long-term concubine pressed him again on marriage, Rimworld decided that he said ‘No’ and broke up their long-term engagement.
Also, a pair of Thrumbo had wandered into the area, and between conducting genetic experiments Horus had become obsessed with possessing them. Once I had tagged them for taming, the game simply did not let up. It was like Horus had an obsession.
Unfortunately, when the escapees had fled, Kat had left behind one of her embryos, which Horus decided to fertilize. When the child was born from a Growth Vat, Horus happened to be away butchering another savage tribe, alone except for his Diabolus mechanoids.
The Slaaneshi witches who were still in the base came to the illogical conclusion that all would be well in the colony if they could find Kat, who had been Horus’ favorite surrogate, and return her to the colony. That would appease Horus, and all would be well.
Using their psychic magics, they (who were also me) ejected the growing embryo from the growth vat and ritually sacrificed the under-developed child, to auger the location of its mother, at Carrot’s Oasis.
The witches formed a caravan to kill everyone and bring Kat back in chains, and I figured that his might be the end of the new beginning.
Then Rimworld, perhaps sensing my mental distress, threw the story another bone.
As they were assembling the caravan to leave, the witches started to social fight amongst each other. I was mesmerized. Why? This was the colony that never had to struggle. These were people who never wanted for anything (except meaning?) And yet, this was the colony where social fighting broke out. It was surreal.
After the fighting stopped, I expected that the caravan would stop loading until they had all eaten and rested, and possibly fully recovered. But they didn’t wait. The caravan of wounded witches simply formed up on the edge of the map and set off for Carrot’s Oasis.
Weird Wars
When the witches arrived, the under-armed escapees were as ready for them as possible. I made a rule that the witches would attack the closest Oasis dweller first.
I selected and drafted the witches and set them on their murderous way. Quite oddly they went back to social fighting, and then they moved to be separate from each other. So, in the end they approached the Oasis one at a time.
This was still a tough fight, but it was winnable if I didn’t stuff anything up! Eventually the plucky survivors won the day, although not without some major injuries, and the witches were all dead.
Most importantly, because they were so confident of winning, they died never telling Horus where they were going or what they were doing because if they had then he would have ordered them not to!
The story could have ended there, again
Carrot’s Oasis was safe for now.
They had been planting trees around the colony to hide it from scouts, and had made a conscious but difficult effort not to trade with wanderers, and had even ignored downed pawns who equally might have joined or rejected them, just to keep their location a secret.
The story could have ended there.
Except for Lil’Squirrel, who knew Horus all too well.
This was just a setback to him, and he would continue to spread his evil as long as he lived. The friends had no idea that he had actually begun crafting a whole new strain of ‘perfect beings’, learning from his mistakes with the witches. But Lil’Squirrel knew in her gut that the only way Horus would be stopped would be if someone who knew what he was up to killed him, which meant it had to be one of them!
Squirrel argued fiercely with her beloved daughter. Surely, the Oasis was enough? They had each other. They had the children they were all raising. Surely this was a life they could live?
Kat and Kin’fyon were terrified of Horus, and wanted nothing to do with any plan to go near the old colony. They agreed with Squirrel, to do nothing.
Lil’Squirrel knew that because Squirrel had been under Horus spell, she had missed too much. She had not seen what Horus had forced her to do! She had never seen… Furskit tortured, caged, degraded, eating raw rat to survive, and finally left for the rats to eat, but defiant until the very end…
f*ck you Horus! You murdered him! Like you murdered all those children! I am going to f*cking kill you... even if I die trying.
Without informing anyone who might try to stop her, that night Lil’Squirrel loaded up the Muffalo with survival rations, sheathed the rusty old sword, and set out to try and kill Horus.
Maybe some wounds can’t be healed with just time, and require something more drastic? Maybe they cost more than just the pain and bad memories, and can only be repaid in kind?
We need to talk about Horus
This was such an insane thing to try. And I honestly had no idea as to how to resolve it in an upbeat way.
As I watched the yellow dot of Lil’Squirrel’s caravan inch towards the original colony, I made a rule that this story would end here. For better, but likely for worse.
I had been playing this Rimworld scenario over the majority of a week, after work hours (sure, during some too!) It had to end. For my sanity.
Having suffered and engineered an unlikely triumph over so much adversity, I couldn’t bear to see Lil’Squirrel killed or captured, or worse, but I felt that I needed to accept the outcome and try and move on.
This game, was no longer a game.
But it remained a test! And if Lil’Squirrel (who was me) was as resourceful as I liked to hope she was, then I would not give up while she still lived. In case you ever wondered, I guess it is true that optimism can be contagious.
Lil’Squirrel arrived in the dead of night, but Horus never slept.
Taking her first look from afar at what had happened to the colony, it hit Lil’Squirrel pretty hard.
There was a newborn babe fresh out of a vat, whom Horus (who was still me) had deigned to name ‘Vatkid’ as a statement of how likely he thought the child would be to survive past birth.
There were also a trio of heavily mutated prisoners. They were red-eyed albinos, with pointy ears, and more fertility genes. Clearly they were Horus’ next round of experiments. This time the converts were being genetically modified before being indoctrinated into the cult. One of them was pregnant, with an embryo that Horus had personally fertilized.
Horus (who was me) had found a new avenue for his madness to explore.
Lil’Squirrel (who was me) pledged to destroy Horus and set them free.
I applied the normal rules, which felt weird given how abnormal the situation was. If Horus ever had unobscured Line Of Sight to Lil’Squirrel, then I would order him to attack, and Rimworld would decide the outcome. Although that outcome had no uncertainty. Horus was the guy who killed an entire herd of angry Bison armed only with a sword! He was also carrying a shock lance. And he still had a Diabolus mechanoid to direct when in range.
There were a few tricks I would try to play, but they required getting into the colony unseen, and a little time to set them up. My highest priority was to get my hands on one of those Psychic Shock Lances, to try and even the odds.
Timing (must be flawless)
Lil’Squirrel secured her Muffalo near the entrance and used her access, which no one had bothered to revoke, to get through the outer gate. She had to make it down a long plasteel corridor and breach the inner gate, without running into Horus.
This corridor was the safe access used by the colonists, and it ran parallel to, and gave access to a second corridor that raiders were forced to endure. That other corridor was littered with powered and mechanical traps. There had been so many raids of late that it was strewn with corpses and uncollected equipment!
Horus ate a lavish meal in the common area, as Lil’Squirrel stealthily approached.
She was nearly at the inner door, when Horus got up, and started to move.
I held my breath, clicked his pawn to see his path, and just about lost my lunch. His path was heading out of the colony, down the same long corridor that Lil’Squirrel was in. In fact, his path bisected her pawn, splitting it right down the middle, which felt f*cking ominous.
And Horus moved fast. He would open the inner door, see Lil’Squirrel, and end this game.
Desperate times… and all that so I clicked back on Lil’Squirrel and painstakingly steered her through the nearby gap into the second, deadly corridor. The death-trap corridor.
The gap in the plasteel was only a single square wide, so I estimated that she had to be at least three squares away from when Horus arrived. Which meant carefully stepping over two traps - a Heat Pad, and a Buzzsaw set into the ground!
It only takes a few games of Rimworld before players understand that the characters don’t always do what you intend. Sometimes they decide that the shortest path to any point is not a single square away, but rather it involves massive detours to avoid a single obstacle. And sometimes, they step on their own traps.
Thankfully Lil’Squirrel had more sense than me. She made it out of sight, hiding quietly between corpses amongst the lethal traps, just beyond the entry to the death-trap corridor. Praying that Horus would not see her.
Rimworld sometimes acts like the Storyteller, that is the expert-system that generates the dramatic events, is f*cking psychic!
I literally held my breath as Horus opened the inner door. Within a few steps I would know if this f*cking game was going to send Horus on a ‘random’ path to check out the second corridor.
I didn’t breathe again until he approached the opening and had walked by.
I paused the game, curious as to where he was going. I didn’t want Lil’Squirrel to make a move too soon because for all I knew Horus was just taking a short walk to collect some loot.
But Rimworld taketh away, and Rimworld giveth! Lil’Squirrel was in luck. Horus was off to tame one of the wild Thrumbo. It had to be one of the original Thrumbos that had arrived what felt like ages ago, and which Horus became obsessed with possessing! These majestic creatures had apparently held out against his wiles for close to a year, without wandering away! In all my time playing, that sort of thing happening was unprecedented. They are kindly creatures, and maybe they sensed the suffering of the prisoners, and he stayed around? I have no other explanation to offer.
On impulse
Horus would be away for maybe a minute.
Lil’Squirrel considered trying to free the prisoners to help her, because they were all ready to be recruited, but she quickly dismissed the idea. They were weak and asking them to fight Horus would achieve nothing except get them all killed.
Instead, she made a beeline for the common area and looked around the storage. Sure enough, there was a Psyhic Shock Lance.
I ordered her to pick it up, which was when Rimworld let me have it with this shocking message ‘Colonist is too young to equip this item’, or somesuch. It was blocking her!
I saw an Orbital Bombardment device - that might kill Horus - and Rimworld sucker punched me with the same block again. This had never occurred to me!
The only character with the guts to take up the challenge, and Rimworld was going to block her for being too young! She was going to die, because I had not foreseen this possibility!
I was gutted, and Lil’Squirrel’s time was almost up. She would not go down without a fight, so I clicked around the storage looking for something better than the rusted sword she was holding. Horus had switched to using a plastseel Breach Axe recently, so I assumed that his legendary sword must be in one of the many crates around the room.
I clicked around, hunting for it… there were insanity lances… nanochips… more orbital weapons… an animal pulser… and a… hang on! What was that last one?
In the one-of-everything category there was a long since discarded Psychic Animal Pulser.
What does it do? It sends every animal on the map into a murderous, character-hating-rage for several minutes.
But can a child wield it?
No.
They don’t have to. They just have to activate it. Which doesn’t require picking it up!
I quickly checked on Horus. He was still trying to tame the Thrumbo. And there was a herd of gazelle nearby. There were plenty of other animals on the map, but these would be the only one’s close enough to stop him from reaching the safety of the walls. They at least had to slow him down!
Lil’Squirrel tried to activate it, half certain that Rimworld would block her again, but the game relented, and the device sent a visible psychic ripple across the map. From the furthest point of zoom I witnessed every animal icon on the map turn from pale blue to bright red, and all head towards Horus.
The gazelles attacked first. They threw themselves at him, and died quickly, but they were doing real damage. As their numbers began to fall, and the pile of corpses began to rise, I was shocked to see that the Thrumbo was not attacking.
And I doubted that the gazelles would slow Horus down enough to let the rest of the maddened animals reach him.
I don’t know if Thrumbo are just more resistant to psychic effects and slower to be effected, or if the slaughter of the gazelles finally tipped the normally peaceful creature over the edge, but as the last gazelle fell the Thrumbo turned and attacked its would-be master. It was like f*cking poetry!
Thrumbo are tough. Not tough enough to kill Horus on their own. But they were not on their own. Like a burning avalanche, the red tide of angry manhunting beasts flowed between Horus and the outer gate, and then engaging the monster himself.
Every kind of animal in the game threw itself at him, and I took my first deep breath in a while when I saw Horus go down.
We had won!
Riding both good and bad luck, Lil’Squirrel had found a way to do what no one else had been able!
True evil never dies
I locked the plasteel inner door, just in case, because… Rimworld.
Lil’Squirrel tentatively opened the prison doors and asked the three prisoners if they wanted to come with her to live in Carrot’s Oasis.
She talked to Naca, who was still carrying Horus’ implanted embryo, and she quickly agreed to join.
There was a Yttakin woman who she also tried to convince, but before she had the chance the woman had a mental break and made an escape attempt. No number of locked doors could stop her dash for freedom. Lil’Squirrel followed at a distance trying to convince her that the best thing to do would be to stay together. But Lil’Squirrel’s appeals feel on deaf ears, and she was not about to stop the woman, and so that escapee fled off the map to an uncertain end.
It was at this point that Rimworld told me that ‘Horus has gone down.’ But I already knew that, stupid game! I didn’t give it much attention. The animals were still raging, so I felt like everything was going to plan. If you could call it planning!
The final prisoner was Mikey. He had been kneecapped by Horus after a single failed escape, but otherwise was of little interest to Horus except as an IVF donor. He listened to Lil’Squirrel politely, but for unexplained reasons he declined her offer to join, although he did not run away and simply wandered about the colony.
The animals had stopped raging by now, so I unlocked the inner door, then opened the game map and started putting together a caravan for the trip back to the Oasis. The first thing that I made sure to load was baby Vatkid, followed by Naca. Lil’Squirrel piled on the survival meals, and medicines, as well as several orbital targeting systems which someone else would have to use.
That’s when Rimworld told me two things that left me perplexed.
The first message was that Mikey had decided to join the colony, entirely of his own volition. Sometimes strangers join! I didn’t question it, and directed him to pick up the nearest weapon, a sniper rifle dropped by one of the many raiders who died after crawling out of the death-trap corridor. Mikey then went about helping to load the caravan.
The second message was that ‘Horus has gone down’, again! Which seemed to imply that he had gotten up in between! Impossible! f*ck!
I zoomed out and saw that the downed body of Horus was dragging itself and had made it halfway to the outer door. He probably went down due to blood loss, but I could not remember all his genes and traits, and now I was convinced that he must be both ‘deathless’ and have some regenerative ability! Double f*ck!
Someone had to take him out. For good. Before he made it to a hospital bed or recovered enough to control his mechanoids which had been wandering aimlessly since the first time he fell.
That was when I realized that I had not seen Lil’Squirrel for a while, and I was overwhelmed with dread that she had either wandered within range of Horus’ grasp, or perhaps she had been killed by one of the mechanoids, because… f*cking Rimworld.
I held my breath again and clicked on her icon.
And there she was. Doing what Lil’Squirrel does. Even with fires raging outside, and uncontrolled mechanoids lurching within, she had noticed that baby Vatkid was starving and had grabbed some baby food and was sitting calmly on a stool between two fields, next to a beautiful statue, feeding the baby. I hadn’t told her to do that. My heart kind of cracked.
I couldn’t bear to ask her to stop, but because of Mikey’s decision, she had an ally who needed no convincing to kill Horus.
Mikey (who was now me) approached the downed Horus with dread, half expecting his prone form to rise, grinning manically like he had been tricking them all along. He started to beat Horus with the sniper rifle, and kept on for almost a full minute, as Horus still tried to crawl. It was horrific in so many ways!
Eventually, I saw the message ‘Horus has died’, and a crossed red X showed on his icon. This was for real. There was no coming back now.
The next ten minutes were a blur. I made sure that the baby was loaded into the caravan, but after that I let the game take over the decisions, and eventually they all arrived safely back in Carrot’s Oasis.
I don’t think I am projecting to say that everyone was excited when they arrived. Squirrel moved directly to Lil’Squirrel, and they talked about interesting small things, and then went on about the business of building their new home.
The two Yttakin babies, Beccie and Lottie, had grown up and learned to walk, and they took to caring after little Vatkid as if he were their brother.
The story could have ended there, one last time
There was one thing left to do.
I waited as Naca’s pregnancy ran its natural course, and with everyone there to witness the event, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
With some interesting genes.
And the game spontaneously named the baby ‘Lupercal’.
Just when I thought that Rimworld had run out of ways to f*ck with me!
Here’s the family photo…
I guess what happens next is a question of nature-and/versus-nurture.
But I am not worried, because I was taught to be an optimist. Like I said before, it is contagious, and I like to think that the developers of Rimworld understand that as well, because I can tell you that little Beckie wasn’t born this way…
And if optimism is contagious, what about other traits?
There is a single thread that holds this whole story together. And it is exemplified in Lil’Squirrel…
Scrolling back over social interactions from the various autosaved games, I found them littered with ‘kind words’ from her to anyone who would listen. By all resource calculations Carrot’s Oasis perhaps should not have survived, let alone thrived.
It was Lil’Squirrel’s optimism that kept her going, and it was her kind words than bound then together.
When most people talk about kindness, they parrot phrases like ‘be kind’, and they think in a very passive sense. After all, how can someone who is assertive also be kind, right?
But real kindness, the real cheat code to both Rimworld and life, cannot simply be passive. It needs to be proactive.
Don’t get confused. A powerful warrior who pits their skills against a herd of wild Bison is not being kind. That is a kind of bravery.
On the other hand, a weak warrior who risks certain death to save people that they barely know, are they being brave? Or are they being kind?
Perhaps it’s a touch of both, but one thing Lil’Squirrel taught me is that passive kindness, which is kind thoughts and words, pale in comparison to actions, and that kind acts, and acts of kindness, are not necessarily the same thing.
Learnng about myself…
It would be a spectacular omission not to tell you, dear reader, what I learned about myself. Maybe you even want to know? Am I a psychopath? Or a healer? Or just an over-identifying gamer? I published my experience, so am I a narcissist? Or a sociopath? Do I suffer from BPD? Or a savior complex?
Well, the good news is that you are now a better judge of me, than I am of myself! I think it is almost impossible for people to self-diagnose.
So, I offer you this…
Horus
I don’t think that I started with any idea in mind for Horus to become a monster.
I think part of it was the ease. He was the poster-child for idleness being the devil’s playground, etc. It was all power, with no controls. It was the root of everything broken in the world today, I completely believe that.
Did I enjoy coming up with hideous schemes and tormenting lesser mortals?
I didn’t enjoy it, but part of playing the role was fun and to be specific what I mean is that it was novel.
There was also a perverse incentive at work, in that the worse I made Horus, the more powerful and emotional the story became.
He also became a conduit to vent frustration and anger, at things both inside and outside the game. And that was very seductive.
I hope that I demonstrated to you that I took full responsibility for everything the monster did. There was no dice rolling. He was all me.
But equally I hope that I proved how much I came to loath what the character stood for. I cannot regret Horus, because he was me, twice or thrice removed from reality. As the saying goes, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I’ and for that distance I am extremely thankful.
Lil’Squirrel
For most of the scenario, I thought it was going to the Grey Squirrel’s story. But somewhere along the line I recognized that it was Lil’Squirrel who embodied real virtue, and who had suffered the hells required to qualify for a happy ending.
This taught me that I don’t think happy endings are automatic. Or that they should be automatic. They deserve to be earned. And that in reality, nothing ever really ends.
An archetype that comes to mind for Lil’Squirrel is ‘Quinn’, the reluctant carer turned hero, from the movie ‘Reign of Fire’. Watch it. It has dragons! And Matthew McConaughey as a modern-day dragonslayer! A great all-round ensemble, and a sympathetic and compelling hero! Sometimes I wonder if we still know how to tell stories like that, which is scary, because good stories about worthy people, are a safe way to learn what it means to be a good person.
Lil’Squirrel was the conduit I found for my loathing of my Horus side, and she was also the risk that I took to symbolically overcome it.
I must have managed a thousand Rimworld characters, but I have only cared for one. And it was not the one I expected to. It was the one in which I recognized patterns of real virtue. Recognizable, despite being digital.
Again, my hat is off to Ludeon Studios, for a game that continues to delight, and more importantly to surprise, more than eight hundred hours later!
The remaining challenge, as always, is to bring virtue into the real world, while denying the temptation, and despite accepting the vice.
If only real life were as simple as Rimworld.
Hah!
