Welcome back to the I Hart Space Legacy, a joint space-themed legacy between Roxanne and Kristina. In the last chapter, Roxanne finished up her turn with the family and passed them all on to me. Her turn produced three lovely, amazing daughters (again!) for me to pick from for heiress, and I decided to go with our oldest girl, Cassini.
If you need to catch up on any of the chapters, you can head here. Otherwise, onward!
To recap a bit, we are on generation seven of our little family. Currently in the house, we have generation six heiress Hadley Hart, her husband Jordan, and their three daughters, Cassini, Suisei, and Kepler. We also have Laika the dog prancing around the lot, and Patchy the scarecrow is (literally) hanging around the backyard.
Upon loading up the Hart lot, everyone was gathered outside together, staring into the middle distance with curiously blank expressions on their faces. I took a picture of it, but it seems to have completely disappeared from my computer. So, clearly, things are off to a great start already.
Anyway, my first priority with the family was to get them started in on their aspirations, and to get Cassini ready to be our heiress. Jordon is still working on his Super Parent aspiration, and all he has left to do is max out his parenting skill, have a child with three positive personality traits, and go into "parenting mode." I had him start off by helping Kepler with her school project, which didn't appear to help him with any of his goals at all. Cool.
Hadley, meanwhile, used her vampire speed to do some gardening. Hadley, Jordon, and Suisei were all vampires at the start of my turn, but they weren't all destined to stay that way for long. Hadley and Jordon have had their fun being creatures of the night, but I doubt they want to watch their children grow old and die, so I am going to cure them. Thanks to Roxy's vampire garden out on the back of the property, we already have enough supplies for one cure, and it won't be long until we have enough for the second.
Suisei, who has barely had enough time to break in her fangs, will stay a vampire. Her aspiration is to become an angling ace, but she can't start now since it's a bright, sunny day outside. As she has already completed her homework for the day, I leave her to her own devices. She chooses to indulge in a cup of tea and some relaxation.
On the other hand, our heiress, Cassini, is not relaxing. Her goal is to become a body builder, an aspiration that she shares with the founder of this legacy, Galaxy Hart, along with a sprinkling of other family members along the way. Every single time I have played this family, I end up completing this aspiration with someone. It's a legacy tradition at this point.
Roxy gave me a good head start here though. She came to me on the last step of the aspiration, needing only to reach level 10 body skill and get "maximum body potential." I have her start with an epic weightlifting workout, and she gets to body level 7.
Meanwhile, while everyone else is settling in and getting busy, Laika is living her best life, relaxing in the garden and keeping an eye on Patchy. Everyone loves her, and she's probably the most spoiled dog in legacy history.
So, when Roxy was updating me on the family before uploading them to the Gallery, she apologized for the amount of clay on the lot. I didn't think much of it at the time, but then it became very apparent why she felt the need to say something. The Harts are obsessed with it and will literally stop listening to my directives to play with it. It is, indeed, in every room in the house somehow.
And when I get one sim to drop it, another one is right there, as if by magic, to take their place. The original sim that put it down will stare longingly at it, as if they don't live in a mansion with endless entertainment options at their fingertips. I eventually started deleting the clay, but it is still everywhere. There's literally another blob of it next to Suisei in this picture.
Clay isn't the only eccentricity in this family though. Laika is still overly fond of the downstairs toilet. She just stares at it like this all the time.
To lean into the weird a little harder, I spiced up her corner with an enlarged version of the toilet picture that Roxy (incorrectly) assumed that I would immediately move to the basement storage area.
In between workouts,Cassini, who is proving to have an adventurous spirit, decided to head to the pool for a swim. Yes, she is swimming with sunglasses on. No, that's not strange for this family. Her grandfather Louis wore sunglasses to bed every day of his life.
For the rest of the first day, everyone continues on working towards their goals. Jordon continues to study parenting, Kepler finishes her project and moves onto homework, Hadley does some freelance art work, and Suisei gets some fishing done once darkness falls.
Suisei also enjoys some quality time with Jordon in San Myshuno that night, much to the chagrin of these poor people. All in all, it was a pretty productive day.
The next morning dawned with three polite children, all trying to set the table in our newly-remodeled kitchen at the same time. This is certainly the lamest example of sibling rivalry this legacy has ever seen, but at least we didn't get a black sheep this generation, like we have so often in the past.
Eventually, the girls head off to school, which gives me the chance to work on Hadley and Jordon for a little while. Hadley's aspiration was to become a master vampire, but was having trouble achieving the last requirement of living as a vampire for 20 days (an actual eternity in sims time). She's really already achieved this, probably more than once, but her days counter kept resetting on Roxy's computer whenever she left the lot. In spite of all these difficulties, she managed to get up to 19 days there before the family shifted to me.
When I loaded up the lot on my computer, her counter had set itself all the way back to 2 days. I let her spend one more day as a vampire with me, then cheated the aspiration complete. After that, I had her prepare the vampire cure.
And in a flash of light, Hadley reentered the world of the living. She became a vampire as a teen, so she's starting on day one of the young adult phase of her life now. Plenty of time left to help Cassini raise the next generation. She will make the cure for Jordon once we gather a few more ingredients from the garden. I swapped her over to the Fabulously Wealthy aspiration, since the family is loaded at this point and she paints a lot.
Speaking of Jordon, he spends the day inside, working on his freelance writing career with Scout the fish at his side. He's reached the point with his parenting skill that reading books about it does basically nothing, so he needs to girls to come home to continue on with that.
Meanwhile, Hadley takes care of the gardening and then moves onto taking Laika on a nice, long walk in her cute astronaut outfit. It's a thrill a minute around here today.
Eventually, the girls get back from school and Jordon wastes no time helping them with their homework and encouraging their good behavior. It's going to be a long road to level 10 parenting. It's so much easier with babies in the house.
After the homework is completed, Kepler has a mood swing and adopts a rather gloomy expression. We forge ahead with her aspiration in spite of the drama, which is to become a master chef. I've had her working on cooking during her free time in the past few days and she's made some good progress. Since part of the aspiration is to get to a certain level in the culinary career, she can't finish it before she leaves the legacy house. However, we can still work on the other parts of it. She makes a few grand meals and gets her skill up to level 8.
Cassini goes back to the gym, of course, where she spends the rest of the evening working out. She gets up to level 8 fitness and starts to look super-toned.
Meanwhile, I spend the rest of the evening trying to stop Jordon and Suisei from casually walking around outside, as if they aren't vampires and won't burn to death out there.
In an effort to make the skilling in the house move more quickly, I had Cassini found the Legacy League, a club dedicated to furthering the Hart Family's ambitions. I made everyone in the household a member, and then, because we had an extra space, I invited Eric Lewis to join us. Poor Eric does not have the best history with the Hart family. Every new save becomes a new, darker timeline for him. In this generation, he is Suisei's plasma donor.
In happier news, once I earned enough club points to boost fitness skill-building, things started going much faster for Cassini.
Not much else of note happened that evening, except for a surprise rainstorm. Laika was living for it. She ran in circles outside, then came inside and dripped a massive puddle in the entryway.
I then had Hadley bathe her, and then she created a massive puddle in the bathroom too. Fun times.
The next day dawns...predictably. I've got to find out where they are keeping all this clay.
The girls head off to school and Hadley and Jordon settle into their freelancing and chores for the day. We finally harvest enough ingredients to make a second vampire cure, and Hadley heads outside to mix it up for Jordon. Her erratic trait lends a superb sense of drama to the whole affair.
Jordon cures himself with it just as the girls return and becomes mortal once again. Busy with their homework at the time. they are completely unimpressed.
After all the schoolwork is done, Cassini starts a Legacy League gathering and everyone works on their goals. Kepler cooks some gourmet meals for the next step of her aspiration.
Jordon, still trying to become a super parent, chases after his children, encouraging them to do things and helping them with their needs. Unsuccessfully, I might add, by the look on Suisei's face. He's at the end of level 8 on his parenting skill, and progress is incremental at best.
Once night falls, and Suisei manages to escape from being parented, she works on her fishing. She's managed to clear the beginning stages of her aspiration and is onto the part where she needs to max out her fishing skill and catch 20 different fish. I have (not so) fond memories of failing to finish this with Io on my last turn, but we will see how I do here.
Hadley, who is also still here, works on her wealth aspiration by painting and selling masterpieces. I'm not overly concerned with having her finish it, but she's basically out of interesting/useful things to do until the next generation arrives.
Speaking of the next generation, we're definitely on our way. Cassini, after another night pumping iron, officially reaches level 10 fitness and finishes her aspiration! She's now got the long lived trait, like many Harts before her.
Her next project was to finish up her scout badges, since earning them all will give her a skilling benefit later. Roxy had already done almost all the work for her here, so after doing a few science-related activities, she became a Llamacorn scout.
The next few days go by without any major incidents. Cassini starts working on a variety of different skills while she figures out what direction she wants to head in next. The rest of the family, undeterred by my efforts to rid the house of clay, keep producing it from nowhere.
The girls go through several mood swings,
Jordon continues to parent his children against their will,
and Laika continues choosing activities that create puddles all over the house.
Pretty soon, Harvestfest arrives, providing a much needed break to the daily skilling routine around the house.
It was nice to focus on some different activities and get a day off of school. Kepler handled decorations,
and Cassini handled my personal least favorite thing in The Sims 4, appeasing the gnomes.
Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal, despite their bizarre seating choices that didn't allow for a good picture. As she's a vampire, Suisei couldn't join in the meal. Don't worry though, she found a way to entertain herself.
*Sigh*
Harvestfest ended with Laika becoming an elder, which did put a slight damper on things...at least for me. Laika is the best sim dog ever and everyone in the house loves her. It's going to be rough when she goes (no pun intended).
Oh, I almost forgot. We also ruined Eric Lewis' Harvestfest.
The next day is randomly, unseasonably hot, so all the Hart girls went to school in their summer outfits. Cassini, who between lots of chess matches and stargazing has mastered the logic skill, moves onto handiness. Fiddling with the lot traits, adding club bonuses, buying the skilling reward traits, and liberal amounts of spamming "rally the troops" during Legacy League gatherings is allowing her to build skills very quickly. It's a good thing too, because the game informs me that it is almost her birthday.
All of the skilling tricks are working for Cassini's sisters too. Kepler maxes the cooking skill and then throws a dinner party to clear the next step of her cooking aspiration. She manages to earn the required silver medal just from preparing the meal, so I ended things there and put the food in the fridge. Just one more disappointment in the life of our only party guest, Eric Lewis.
Suisei's fishing is going swimmingly too (pun intended this time). She's reached level 9 of the skill and has 16/20 of the required fish. Some of her better catches have made their home in the new aquarium Roxy installed.
The next day brings us to the weekend, which will give everyone some time to catch up on chores and continue skilling. Jordon attempts to do the laundry for everyone and reveals that he attended the Colin Hart school of drying clothes.
Everyone else was home at the time, but no one came to his rescue. He had to extinguish himself. Luckily for us all, he was successful. On a side note, I had definitely cleaned the lint tray before this, so I have no idea why this happened.
While all that drama was going on down in the basement, Cassini was doing some thinking. As a creative sim, and an art lover, paintings and sculptures have a special place in her heart. However, as she was catching up with her mother in the inspiration room, she had a realization. She wasn't actually inspired by any of the pieces hanging on the walls. She'd been looking at them for years, and was no longer interested in them.
Determined to see something different, she braved the early winter weather and headed to the local art museum. However, she'd seen all these paintings before too. Some of them are actually hanging in her house. She found herself playing with her phone instead of being inspired.
It was the same story on the other side of museum, where she recognized a knight statue that has been sitting in her family inventory for generations.
Figuring that maybe staying too local was the problem, she tried the gallery in San Myshuno, but again, it was the same old paintings she'd seen a million times before. Somewhere, there must be something different out there, right? There must be somewhere where she can see something truly inspiring.
Disappointed, and feeling rather aimless, she started heading home. On her way out, she ran into Duane, a teen from Sulani that she went on a date with last Love Day. Thinking back to that beautiful beach reminded her that the sim world is a big place. Why should she stay in Willow Creek forever? All that work she did in the gym gave her a body fit to explore art in the most remote places. At that moment, she knew what path to take next. She decided she was going to become an archaeologist.
Excited to have a plan to work towards, Cassini headed home to work on anything that might help her out in the field. She starts with finishing up the handiness skill, then moves onto charisma.
The next day was Sunday, which was Cassini's young adult birthday. First, however, we have to take Laika to the vet. The poor girl woke up ill.
Hadley took her in, since she's my established errand sim at this point. The vet healed her right up, then we rushed back to Cassini's big day.
Back on the home lot, Jordon gets to work on a birthday cake. Before we can get to the candles though, disaster strikes. I let Cassini skip a scout meeting today since she was aging up. However, missing the meeting kicked her out of range for the responsibility trait. Jordon, for his parenting aspiration, needs a child to age up with three positive traits, and, of course, Cassini now had only two. Her age bar was all sparkly and my time was running out, so I needed to act fast to get that responsibility trait back.
So, the Hart family pulled together and saved the day by helping Cassini complete a school project. Even Laika showed up for emotional support. She finished the project and earned the trait back just in time.
She blew out her candles straight afterwards, surrounded by her family. Kind of. Look, I made the effort to get everyone in the same room. I can't make them react properly.
Our heiress ages up quite gracefully, and adds the gloomy trait to her personality.
Oh sure, now you guys get in the spirit.
As the rest of the family heads off to make the most out of the rest of the weekend, Jordon knuckles down and get to work on his parenting again. I figured out a rather cheap way to build up his skill quickly. It only works on cold days though, so I have to take advantage while I can. What I did was have Jordan encourage Suisei to build her fishing skill. However, it's too cold to fish, so she doesn't go to do it when Jordon makes the suggestion. She just stands there. The act of him encouraging her builds his skill up, and you can spam it over and over. After doing this a whole bunch, he finally maxes the skill.
A few more encouragements after that pushes him into parenting mode, giving him the last thing he needs to complete his aspiration. Finally, Jordon is officially a super parent! It looks like he finished just in time too, as Suisei's patience looks to be wearing thin.
He's definitely made up for his lack of involvement in the family while he was working on his music career. Jordon definitely pulls his weight around here now. I swap him over to the Best Selling Author aspiration next, so we can write some Books of Life for our future children.
While all that was going on in the kitchen, Cassini calls a Legacy League meeting and continues to work on her charisma skill. She maxes it by the end of the night.
As the sun rises on the next day, Cassini has moved onto archaeology. She can only learn so much from books in this skill, but she makes it to level six while her sisters are off at school. I'm going to wait to send her to Selvadorada until Suisei and Kepler age up, so she will spend this time getting ready to explore the temples.
Jordon continues to work on his writing aspiration, with his trusty blob of clay nearby for inspiration. He's up to level 9 writing and cranking out books.
Eventually, I got bored with hanging out at the Hart house, so I sent Cassini off to do something a bit more interesting. Since she has max handiness, I had her unlock the Forgotten Grotto. I wanted Suisei to be able to fish there when she got home from school.
Clearly, it takes someone highly skilled in woodworking to use a hammer to pry off those boards, right?
Inside the Grotto, Cassini got to practice the exploration skills she'll be using as an archaeologist.
She saw lots of beautiful sights while she waited for Suisei to return home, and even found some crystals and frogs.
When Suisei was back, Cassini called her over and the pair worked on their fishing skill. As this point, Suisei was at level 9 fishing and had caught 16/20 different fish. Soon after starting, she reached level 10 and maxed the skill.
And then, like clockwork, she caught a vampire fish, a sturgeon, a catfish, and a batfish. She completed the aspiration within a few hours of being there. I love it when a plan comes together.
When the girls get back home, Cassini begins working on her gardening skill by chatting up Patchy. The relationship the family already had with him reset when I downloaded the lot, so we're starting from scratch. Cassini spoke to him until they became friends again and she could start asking for gardening tips. That, combined with taking care of all the plants, helped her get a good start on the skill.
The next day was Winterfest, and the family took full advantage of me taking a break from micromanaging them to break out the clay.
♪On the first day of Winterfest my true love gave to me
A clay blob in my inventory...♪
♪ Rockin' around
The Winter tree
Have a happy holi-clay... ♪
♪ Jingle bells
Jingle bells
Jingle all the clay... ♪
In between clay sessions, the family participated in the classic Winterfest traditions. They decorated the tree in the Hart Sisters-approved blue color scheme.
Okay, this is really getting out of hand.
Later in the day, Patchy made his first appearance in the house. Cassini didn't go so far as to put down her clay to interact with him, but she did chat a bit.
Later on, he joined the family for their grand meal. Suisei waited patiently to drink his plasma afterward.
Later that night, Father Winter appeared to hand out gifts. Unfortunately for Cassini, he gave her an empty box this year. The game literally told me that the box contained "sadness and lies." Dark.
In spite of that nonsense, everyone had a great Winterfest, and we have an army of snowpeople in the backyard to prove it.
The next day brings with it a return to our normal routine. Jordon gets back to his writing, maxes the skill, publishes a book, and makes it to the next level of his aspiration. Next, he needs to publish five good books. Hadley returns to painting, Cassini works on gardening, and the girls head off to school.
And then, tragedy strikes. Laika reaches the end of her life. Everyone who was home came rushing over and were devastated.
I set up a little memorial corner for her near her favorite photograph. Laika was a very good dog, and will be missed.
Despite all the sadness, life had to move forward. It was Suisei's birthday, so Jordon prepared a cake for her.
She blew out the candles when she returned home from school. This time, some members of the family managed to react properly.
She aged up beautifully, unsurprisingly. She also added "loves the outdoors" to her traits.
After hugging everyone in the family goodbye, she moves out of the house to her own place in Forgotten Hollow, where she will be free to get up to all kinds of vampire mischief.
Losing her dog and her daughter all in one day was awfully rough on poor Hadley. She kept sneaking away from her painting to mourn Laika.
Jordon stepped in and helped her feel better though. Their relationship is pretty solid now that he's left the music industry behind.
After a rather melancholy night, the next day dawns with the revelation that perhaps Hadley's erratic trait is more dangerous than I thought. I sent her back inside before she became an icicle and resolved to keep a closer eye on her. She proceeded to have a very boring day painting masterpieces in the creativity room while Jordon continued to write his novels.
At this point, we had just a few days remaining until Kepler became a young adult. With the remaining time, I had Cassini work some more on gardening. We used some extra aspiration points to plant a few money trees in the garden too, because it will help us out with any future sims that want to achieve the Fabulously Wealthy aspiration later.
I also had her take care of a few household tasks that I wanted to do before I sent her off to achieve her archaeological dreams. The first was to invite over Suisei and give her a house key. Hopefully she'll drop by often to help us out once we have some little kiddos in the house.
The second thing was to take care of the laundry that has been building up all over the house. I think I would like sim laundry a whole lot more if you didn't have to baby your sims through each step of it. I think that the game can safely assume that if I direct a sim to put the laundry in the washing machine that I would also like them to turn it on. It also shouldn't take more than one cycle to dry clothes. This is one aspect of the game that resembles real life a little too closely if you ask me.
Her last task for the night was to get some more tips from Patchy, which ended up pushing her to level 10 gardening. So, at this point, Cassini has maxed out her fitness, logic, handiness, charisma, and gardening skills, and has made good progress on her archaeology. She's ready to brave the jungles of Selvadorada once Kepler has her birthday.
The next day was New Year's Eve, which gave the whole Hart family a good excuse to party. Unfortunately for them, it was a straight-up blizzard outside, so we couldn't do any outdoor snow activities. That didn't stop the family from repeatedly going out in the storm and then slowly straining against the wind to come back in though!
Cassini kicked off the celebrations by making a resolution to work on her aspiration in the new year and blowing a party horn directly into her sister's face.
Hadley continued the party by mixing herself a drink from the second-most attractive item in the house (after the clay), the globe bar. She then drank it while gesticulating wildly and distracting Jordon from his writing.
When the time was right, everyone gathered around to watch the countdown. Suisei even showed up just in time to ring in the new year with everyone.
And I do mean everyone - Ghost Laika showed up to join the festivities too! Unfortunately, she was scared of the snowstorm and spent the whole time whimpering by the front door. Hopefully the weather will be a bit nicer the next time she visits.
The morning brought with it the first day of spring and Kepler's much-anticipated birthday. Jordon had cake duty again, and he looked inordinately pleased with himself over it.
I invited Suisei over and tried to have everyone come and watch Kepler blow out her candles, but the family continued to be extremely resistant to that idea.
She grew up gorgeous, in spite of her family's birthday neglect. She adds erratic to her traits, becoming the latest in a long line of Hart women to do so.
I have Kepler take a job in the culinary career track, as that's the part of her Master Chef aspiration that she couldn't tackle as a teen. I also have her take a seat with her family for one last chat session before she moves out. Even Eric Lewis decides to join us, as he was here for a Legacy League meeting and has always been closest to Kepler out of anyone in the house.
A little bit later, she packs her bags and heads out to a little apartment in San Myshuno, ready to take the culinary world by storm. This leaves us with a (mostly) empty house and an heiress ready to book her first trip to Selvadorada!
Well...she'll get to it eventually I guess.
And this brings us to the end of part one! Stay tuned for part two, in which we will see Cassini pursue her dream of becoming a master archaeologist. Perhaps she'll manage to dig up a spouse out there among the ancient artifacts too. We can only hope, right?
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