Dunne&Ias' Sims 2 Stuff

I'm trying out the name Arbor Harbor for the hood itself. For now. I suck at naming things after the fact, I've realized.

So, the spring section of The Quiet Year is done, and it's time for a little recap.

So far, six of the 7 islands have a name and they all more or less have a purpose in the hood. Town Center Island, Forest Hill and Golden Island are mostly undeveloped but that's because I need more information on the families themselves before I can do anything about those lots.

The map is rich in lumber, iron and silk fabrics, but still low in food, technology, outside connections and education.

Through gameplay, the following characters have been named and given rough shape:

Terrence Pelehan, a gentleman who owns all the land and thus collects taxes and tithes in the form of resources from everyone else.

Adria Ledford, his young ward.

Ridley Smith, a blacksmith and iron miner

Elizabeth McCleary, a merchant of books and rumoured (but not accused) to be a witch.

Meredith Weaver, a charismatic young girl whose family has abandoned their sheep in favour of silk worms.

Atticus the werewolf, Saga the werewolf, Philomena the werewolf and Jonathan the werewolf, the social outcasts on Luna Island.

I have 21 more sims out of the initial number to name and give purpose. If I don't use all of them up, I'll roll the die to see who gets extra family members. Obviously Meredith Weaver has parents etc.

Forest Hill has dangerous wolves and a magic, possibly cursed, well in the woods. It also has an iron mine and a logging community lot.

Pelehan Island has Pelehan Court, a residential lot

Luna Island has pack lands, a residential lot.

Sacred Isle has a temple and Sacred Grove.

Lighthouse Island is still empty

Golden Island is also still empty.

Unnamed Town Center Island has a square and some townhouses I've already decided to tear down to make them smaller.

Oh, exciting!

The old machine that is discovered seems to have come off a ship that wrecked in that recent storm. After much examination and also consulting the werewolves who know of weird things, it's determined that this machine is a weather changing machine.

Such dark magics are not allowed on these islands. Why, the farmers would want rain, but others would want sunshine for their picnic! Surely a weather machine would quickly turn into a source of strife, maybe even conflict.

Mr Pelehan does not want conflict. He does not want his people to know how to fight each other. What if they one day decide to fight him instead?

The weather machine is destroyed by carefully being taken apart, and split into seven piles. The pieces are thrown off each of the seven islands, in the deepest places, to ensure that no one may put it all together again.

The sea giveth. And the sea taketh away.

This was the last card of Spring of the Quiet Year. One quarter of the way done. Things will become more difficult from now on.

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Oh, boy, this is very well timed because the timer ran out on the project to find out if someone is a witch.

I rolled and had to get higher than 8 on a d12 for there to be a witch. I got a 7. I'm choosing to interpret that as someone is rumoured to be a witch.

The die say this person is a member of the Merchant class.

I haven't talked a lot about the merchants yet, so I thought I'd do so now.

Merchants run shops. Because they're merchant class, they don't have to make the things themselves, because they can import things. Merchants are not allowed to sell things worth more than 250 simoleons and may not sell things that could be produced by a tradesman or farmer instead.

So, the witch.

A woman walked along the beach early one morning in spring. It was a few days after a storm and the sea had not yet reclaimed the debris that had been washed up. The woman kept a keen eye on the ground because she had heard that a wealthy ship had ran aground in the storm and had hoped there might be something on the beach that she could sell. She so wished she could afford a wedding ring so she could marry her young man before the winter.

Her eye caught something glimmering in the sand. Was it gold?

It was not gold, it was a knife handle made out of cherry wood inlaid with copper. It was stuck into the belly of a fish. The woman had grown up on a farm and did not hesitate to pull the knife out. She wished she could have thrown away the dead and half-rotten fish but as she pulled on the knife, it guts spilled out.

They were full of paper scraps and they landed on the sand with the blood and the innards of the fish in a pattern that the woman immediately recognised as a skull.

The woman had heard about things like this happening before. It was a bad omen. A sign that a witch held ill-will towards the community. But who could it be? They hadn't found a witch in the forest, that was true, but maybe the witch wouldn't be a stranger?

Maybe it would be one of the townsfolk? The woman looked at all the paper. Such a strange thing to find inside a fish! She thought of... Elizabeth McCleary. Always reading, always peddling those books of hers, always writing letters to the mainland. Always so clean and proper. Knowledge was dangerous, she knew that. Maybe, just maybe, Elizabeth McCleary, the bookseller, was a witch?

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5 sims are now named, plus the four werewolves. 21 left to identify.

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I don't think I know enough about the community's younger members yet, so I went with the first one.

I rolled a die to see if this would be a new adult, or an orphan distant relative of someone, and it landed on the second option.

Another die determined that this would be a distant relative of the landed gentry and since I already know this hood will only have one member of that class, this person is now a ward of the Pelehan family. It is a child and it is a girl. According to the name generator, her name is Adria Ledford. She comes with an inheritance that will help her get married, so, good for her.

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Projects:

The silk worm project is completed. Instructions have arrived from the mainland and Meredith Weaver, the charismatic young girl, convinces her parents to get rid of all their sheep and stop making wool fabrics and instead make silk. The Weaver Family is now silk fabric producers. They must deliver five bolts of fabric and five spools of thread to the Terrence Pelehan every season but may sell the rest, or take on additional delivery contracts if someone wants to buy a bigger lot of fabric.

Is there a witch? This project has one more week left.

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So when it comes to new sims, the plan is this:

Sacred Isle is relatively complete. Some more hood deco around the beach and I have not yet decided if this island should have a residence for a High Priest/ess or if no one should live here.

This is the Temple, a place for weddings and gatherings in the fresh open air.

Pack land on Luna Island, which so far isn't going to contain anything else than this.

So I've been thinking about these werewolves, and I think these are the rules:

Werewolves all live on this one lot. If someone wants to move away, they have to get a cure to their lycanthropy. This lot is not allowed to have more than 8 adults.

None of them will have employed jobs while living here as outcasts to the community, but they also won't mind because their home has everything they need. They can sell off some of their stuff to passers-by if they want to, and this is a good way to meet people.

While the urge to grow the pack is strong, they're not going to let just anyone join the pack.

The pack shares everything, even each other if the desire should strike.

(I told you I don't care about historical accuracy and I can't be bothered with consistent Bodyshop content so I just won't).

From the left: Saga, Atticus, Philomena and Jonathon. Their last name is "the werewolf".

They all have special yellow eyes and the passing down of this eye is how the next generation can be identified as a werewolf if they happen to mate with any human sims.

As outcasts to society, they don't pay taxes and they don't use any of the community services. Self-sufficiency is high on the agenda but they have no problems shopping and trading with humans.

Luna Island needs a bit more hood deco around their home lot, but at this point, it won't contain anything else, so I'm calling it done for now.

I wanted to do both of these!

Active projects:

Silk: 1 turn left

Is there a witch? 2 turns left

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Again, I'm going with the first question because it seems more fun.

This is part of why I don't want to play a historical hood: a tool they lack is electricity.

While I have no problem initially playing without the technological parts of the game, eventually I do want to add them. So they'll have to be unlocked somehow. But I've put a ban on the vanilla workbenches so I can't do robotics which is how I usually solve it in a BaCC, becuase I want work to be connected to resources.

This will take some pondering I think.

The poll is this week's project.

Other active projects:

Silk: 2 weeks left

Is there a witch?: 3 weeks left.

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Oh you know I'm gonna do the first one, no contest.

They say there's a well hidden deep in the forest. If you find it once, you won't find it again, no matter how much you make sure to triangulate your position.

Some say this well moves around.

Some say it's the work of a witch (does this community have witches? I don't know yet. We have werewolves so supernatural things exist)

They say though, that if you come across this well, you need to be careful. They say some people can hear a voice coming from the well and foolish people will rush forward to try and help whoever is down there.

There is no one down there.

There might be someone down there if you are not careful, because then that person will be you, you will not be buried in the sacred grove with your ancestors and your spirit will forever be trapped, calling out to weary travellers and those who have gotten lost in the forest and are looking for a sip of water.

Some people say it's a wishing well. Others say the rumours of it being a wishing well were started by the witch in the forest.

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A project is started to find out if someone is a witch. This project will take four weeks (turns).

Other active projects: The charismatic young girl, Meredith Weaver, has recruited a bunch of adults to figure out these islands are suitable for silk worms. 3 weeks left.

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Town Center now has some buildings. The larger ones are home businesses for the Merchant Class and the smaller ones can be used as either apartments or smaller residences for the lower classes that don't need to live near their base resources.

fae inspired build/buy stuff in 2026? Especially outdoor stuff

Updated map as it stands right now (had to take two pictures to capture it all.

New things added: The island where the werewolves live who are not really part of the community is now Luna Island.

The island that will hold the Sacred Grove and The Temple is now Sacred Island

The farmland island is now Golden Island.

Forest Hill is now correctly spelled.

Hm. Tricky.

The daughter of a sheep farmer, her name is Meredith, I guess, does not like the idea of her future shearing sheep. She's heard of fabrics made of little worms instead, and manages to get several adults involved in figuring out how it all works.

This is a project that is going to take five turns, because they'll have to send someone off to the mainland for information before they can even start on a new production line.

Meanwhile, the project to search out farmland has been successful (I mean, I already knew that when I made the map but whatevs), and one of the empty islands is suitable for growing vegetables and fruits. Good for us! This island is now called... Golden Island, because of colour of hay.

I can't build the farmhouses because I don't know how the families who live there will look yet, as usual.

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Oooh, this is a fun card!

I don't think my community is very unified, so I'm going with the first question, and say that someone lives on the small island furtherest away who refuses to conform to the landlord's demands and is thus mostly ignored.

I rolled a D10 and concluded that this person or persons is a werewolf. I don't really enjoy playing with werewolves that much despite my insane Teen Wolf obsession, so I guess it'll be a new challenge for me. I also rolled a die to learn that this other little community has 4 members.

The die say they are not all in the same family, in fact it's four single adult sims, two male, two female.

As non-members of the main community they'll have to forage for most of their food and resources. but they are allowed to own a shop and aren't on house arrest (i.e. I will not prevent them from visiting a community lot as long as they're not the active household when it happens). They may not take any of the unlocked jobs, but they also don't have to pay taxes.

Their children will not be allowed to go to school and while other playables may marry them, in that case, that sim is also now an outcast, although their children may go live with a relative if they turn out to be human (I'm gonna go by eye colour for this)

This one took me kinda by surprise so I'm going to have to think about how to solve this practically for a bit.

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I really need to name the town center island.