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Help Forum What controls how fast a creature ages?    Splincer   12/6/2016 I have an oldish creature file on my computer that I saved because he was unusual. The reason is because he ages from hatchling to ancient (then dies) in less than a minute. Going through old files and seeing this particular one again made the curiosity bug bite me. I don't know anything about genetics, so I figured someone here could tell me where to look to find out what's going on, or just flat out tell me. The creature is a Norn and he's from C3/DS, if that helps any.   Wingheart   12/6/2016 Creatures age when an 'advance to lifestage' gene is triggered. If those genes mutate, the creature might age faster or slower-but they can't age backwards, can't skip a stage, and it takes them a few seconds to go from one stage to another. By default, the 'advance a lifestage' genes are triggered by the concentration of the Life chemical. It sounds like your creature had the initial concentration of his Life chemical set to 0 or the half-life of the Life chemical set to something extremely low so it decays completely in less than a minute. Probably the first one.   Brynn   12/6/2016 Sorry if this is off-topic, but if a Creature has no 'advance to lifestage' genes, can their Life chemical decay with no ill effects, or are there more factors than that? From what I understand, Life is not an actual indication of health, but part of the method for aging to happen. I did have a Norn that had a very low half-life on their Life chemical, and they became old and died quickly (not as quickly, in about 7 minutes) but now I have a few Norns that have 0 Life chemical but are still living, functional babies.   Sanely Insane RisenAngel Manager     12/6/2016 There are a few things that control the rate at which a creature ages: the half-life gene, the initial concentration of life chemical, and the seven receptors tied to the life chemical. Without looking at the genome myself I can't say which of these is the exact cause. Going from what was described, however, my best guess is that the initial concentration of life chemical is missing. Initial concentration genes basically provide creatures with a starting amount of chemicals at birth, before the rest of the biochemistry has a chance to kick in. Past birth they serve no further purpose, but without them the creature would basically be dead on arrival. The Life chemical is what most genomes use to determine what lifestage a creature should be in at any given time. Most creatures start out with a full amount of it as determined by the aforementioned initial concentration genes. This then slowly decays throughout the creature's life, at a rate determined by the half life gene. As it hits certain levels, it will trigger the receptor genes and age the creature up a life stage. My best guess as to what happened here, therefore, is that this norn had his initial concentration of Life deleted due to random mutation and thus had no life chemical in his body when he was born. Since he didn't have any, the receptors for aging were all triggered, resulting in him aging rapidly and then dying very quickly. Perhaps you could upload him to the Adoptions section so that somebody else can take a look at him and say for sure? ~ The Realm ~ Risen Angel's Creatures Blog   Sanely Insane RisenAngel Manager     12/6/2016 Got ninja'd and double-posting for visibility: To answer Brynn's question, if the Life receptor genes are absent or otherwise mutate (e.g. the gene that would normally age a creature to child mutates to age to adolescent instead), the creature won't advance to the next lifestage. A baby norn has to become a child before it can become an adolescent, an adolescent has to become a youth before it becomes an adult, and so on and so forth. ~ The Realm ~ Risen Angel's Creatures Blog   Lodestar Doringo     12/6/2016 Like how the others said, it uses the Life chemical (Ageing in C1 with that exact spelling if I recall correctly) but creatures may be aged more manually via CAOS, specifically through AGES, which will age TARG (target must be a creature!) by the number of life stages you put after it, such as AGES 4 which will age a baby to an adult, but a child to old and an adolescent to ancient. However manually aging creatures like this will not change their Life chemical if I recall correctly.   Splincer   12/6/2016 Okay, so I have gene compare on my computer and decided to crack that open and attempt to find anything relating to the life chemical, and life stages. The half life section relating to life had no differences between the two norns I compared. In the reaction section, I found some differences in "thresh" when it came to "become a/an (insert life stage here)", but those differences were only one to three points off. I don't know if that would cause a huge difference, but it doesn't seem like it would. In the initial concentrations section I found the following: 195 New in file 2 12 0 Emb B MutDupCut 128 0 Initial concentration of Life is 255. "File 2" is a FairyFloss norn I hatched to compare the fast ager to. Since it's called "new", I'm guessing the other norn simply doesn't have any starting "Life", which caused the super fast aging. Is that correct or should I look for something else?   Malkin Manager     12/6/2016 Ohhh - your creature was born without a lifespan - which is what an initial concentration of aging/life is. That's why they push through all their aging stages so quickly - they're born without any life chemical. I've seen it before with a lowered aging chemical in C1, where they're born adult. You could try the following CAOS Code: targ norn chem 125 1 But it wouldn't stop any of their children from having a 50:50 chance of inheriting the same defect. My TCR Norns   Splincer   12/6/2016 I wasn't intending to allow the norn have offspring. Fifty-fifty chances is still pretty good chances of having a bunch of dead norns scattered about. I was mostly just curious as to what was going on to make him age so quickly since I've never seen it happen before. The norn is also only second generation. It's weird because I thought the more deadly mutations happened in later generations. I'm liking this looking through creatures genetics to find causes of this or that. Its like a treasure hunt! I think I'll do it for other creatures in the future Though I might need help now and then to figure out what happened.

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