As the legacy grows longer, it gets to be more daunting for new readers. So if you happen to wander over here, be assured that I wouldn’t dream of pressuring you to read all the back posts. There are a lot of ’em.
Generation 1: Susie
Susie was a proto-simself, designed with my basic body type (um, full-figured), hair color, and hobbies.
Susie’s Lifetime Wish was to max Charisma and Guitar skills. She launched herself into the music career.
She dated around at the beginning. Cycl0n3 Sw0rd broke her heart. She kind of broke Stile McGraw’s, but he might not have noticed. Then she happened upon Connor Frio, the sort of endearing introverted geek I would find attractive, and there she found true love.
Susie and Connor were married, and she moved in with him in his bungalow overlooking the beach. Unfortunately, Connor shared the place with his brother Jared. Jared refused to move out, and Connor didn’t support Susie when she tried to nudge him out the door. Connor was just so fond of his brother, he couldn’t see any of his faults. And faults there were. This fellow only got coal in his stocking from Santa. He was a constant source of trouble (and hilarity) for the Samples.
Susie and Connor were both career focused, with Connor working as a journalist by day and moonlighting as a fiction author. Their only son Lancelot was born almost as an afterthought when Susie realized that if they were going to have a family, it was now or never. Susie and Connor both adored him, but he spent a lot of time on his own with his own hobbies while his parents pursued their careers.
Susie ended life as a famous rock star. Connor retired from journalism as soon as he became an elder and went on to become a blockbuster mystery author. Susie and Connor never lost that lovin’ feeling, and they were making moon eyes at each other and burning up the bedsheets till their dying day. Susie died the day before her first grandchild was born and never got to meet her. Connor lived just long enough to hold baby Zahra in his arms before he followed his beloved wife.
Susie’s life was a successful one with no real drama. She helped me learn to play the game, and I gave her a good time for it.
As an aside with long-term consequences, Susie’s ex-boyfriend and Connor’s best friend, Cycl0n3 Sw0rd, died at Susie’s last party. One of her final acts was to bring his ashes by the Science Center to be used in research. She didn’t live long enough to see what they created, but the reanimated ghost of Cycl0n3 followed her home and settled into their house.
Generation 2: Lancelot
As the only son and heir of both a music and literary fortune, Lance had a fat trust fund in his name before he was even born. He never saw much reason to get a job, and instead pursued a lifestyle of vacation and adventure.
In his teen years, he fell in love with and wooed his classmate Malika Williams. This lasted until she showed up at one of his mother’s epic parties smelling like she rolled in a pigsty and dusted herself with rotten vegetables. The guests walked around complaining and holding their noses. The entire party was ruined, Susie was crestfallen, and Lance started to wonder who his girlfriend really was.
When he became an adult, Lance dedicated himself to world travel, exploration, and plunder. He ended up making more money for his family as a tomb raider (er, EXPLORER) than he could have with a job. He learned the art of Sim-fu and worked hard to reach his black belt. He also became a master painter and an impressive bodybuilder. He was an all-around Renaissance Sim.
In Egypt, he met Layla Lufti and was immediately captivated. He was able to lure her back to Sunset Valley with the dedication of the truly lovestruck. That meant that he had to break up with Malika. The breakup didn’t go over well, and it took Layla quite a while to decide she trusted someone who kept his girlfriend in the dark while he pursued a new girlfriend.
Eventually, Layla was won over, and they were married at Our Lady of Silence before the great Grim Reaper. Their first daughter, Zahra, was born shortly after. Much later, they had twins, Adjo and Shanni.
Layla’s passion was for growing things. However, she was never comfortable just living off of Lance’s spoils and investments, so she put her affinity for fruits and vegetables to work in food service and rose to be a Celebrated 5-Star Chef before she died.
Layla was a playful, flirty woman, and Lance was often overcome with insane jealousy. This wore on their marriage until they were little more than roommates. Later in life, Lance woke up to what an ass he’d been and apologized to her. He wooed her all over again, and they had happy, romantic golden years together.
Generation 3: Zahra
Zahra was raised by her parents and the reanimated ghost of Cycl0n3 Sw0rd who had come to haunt the house after he was released from the Science Center. He was half imaginary friend to her, the special friend who was hers and hers alone, and she was devoted to him from toddlerhood on. Perhaps this is why she grew up such an introvert. Science and math she understood, but art and human beings were a mystery to her.
Other than Cycl0n3, she only managed to make one friend, a fellow science geek from school named Fabian Branch.
As soon as Zahra came of age, she threw herself at Cycl0n3’s feet and asked him to marry her. Cycl0n3 was taken by surprise. He was devoted to her, but he’d changed her diapers, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to acknowledge her as a fully-grown woman. Still, it was hard not to return her single-minded love, and they were soon married privately. Lance and Layla met the news of their union with a raised eyebrow, but they were Brave Samples, and it took more than that to freak them out.
(About this time, my save file became unplayable. I used Twallan’s Porter to package up the few families who were close to the Samples and moved into a fresh copy of Sunset Valley. So the familiar characters start to repeat.)
Ghost child Charles Babbage was born shortly after. Not long after that, the Netherworld called Cycl0n3 back. Even he hadn’t realized that the Science Center’s reanimation wouldn’t last forever. He got to hold his own son, read to him, teach him to walk. But he was gone before Charles really got to know him.
Zahra threw herself into her work at the Science Center, perhaps seeking to understand the secrets that had brought Cycl0n3 back to begin with. The edge of her grief gradually wore down. She ran into her old school chum Fabian by chance when he contacted Layla about buying some of her now-legendary garden produce. Fabian was now a police officer specializing in forensics. He confessed that he’d always carried a flame for her. Zahra worked to set her grief aside, and she and Fabian were married.
Shortly after that, their daughter Ada Lovelace was born. When Zahra found out how much mandatory maternity leave the Science Center was forcing on her, she declared that their family was done. Fabian, who would have liked another child, had to be content with one.
All was not rainbows and soap bubbles, however. It turned out that Fabian hadn’t exactly been living a celibate life, pining for Zahra to come to him. He was quite a ladies’ man, and he had a long-standing, no-strings-attached affair running with Agnes Crumplebottom. And he… hadn’t exactly cut it off when he started dating Zahra. Eventually gossip reached Zahra, and she was not a woman to cross about trust. She decided to divorce him, but hesitated for Ada’s sake. He was able to persuade her to give him another chance, and they slowly began to reconnect. Fabian worked hard to live up to his commitments, but every once in a while, his roving eye still roved.
Zahra, on the other hand, carried a torch for Cycl0n3 in her heart of hearts. Without realizing it, she often kept Fabian at arm’s length. True reconciliation for Zahra and Fabian came from an unexpected place. The traditional ghost of Cycl0n3 began manifesting in the house. Zahra had a chance to gain some closure, Fabian was able to reach out to Zahra’s well-guarded vulnerable side, and the two of them were drawn closer together.
Spares
As her relationship with Fabian was ending, Agnes employed Zahra’s younger sister Shanni as a Stylist. The two of them got to know each other over time (while Shanni rolled through boyfriend after boyfriend, leaving a trail of broken hearts behind her). Eventually, they realized they were in love and were married.
Shanni’s twin Adjo, on the other hand, fell in love with his second cousin Toya Ursine and pursued her until he won her heart. They were married shortly after he graduated highschool. Toya was the princess of the Ursine organized crime family, which seemed to worry everyone ELSE, but Adjo never thought it was a big deal when true love was on the line.
Generation 4: Charles
Charles was the ghostly son of Zahra Sample and Cycl0n3 Sw0rd. His father was called back to the Netherworld when he was a toddler, and he he remembered him only as a friendly flash of light and a voice that echoed like his own. The truth is that he didn’t have much in common with his late father OR his step-father Fabian. They and his mom were all technogeeks who were happy inside the house with their electronic toys. Charles was happiest out doors with the wind blowing through him and his hands in the dirt.
His childhood was a battle with isolation. Most of the time, nobody noticed him. He was very hard to see. When they did notice, they were frightened or put off. He eventually made friends with Jabari Keaton, who offered him a refuge while his mom and stepdad were feuding.
Then his Grandad Lancelot took him to Egypt for some tomb raiding, and he found something to be truly passionate about. Lance taught him Sim-fu, which he took to like a fish to water. Then he took up fishing… like a fish to water.
Through Sim-fu meditation, he learned to make himself solid. Now he still frightened a lot of people, but at least he didn’t have any trouble getting them to notice him.
As he came to adulthood and became the patron of the legacy, he realized that his affinity with nature brought with it responsibility. Nature would take care of him if he took care of it. He set about getting the household running on renewable energy, recycling their trash, and becoming good citizens of the planet.
When he came of age and inherited the family fortune, he bought a run-down abandoned house outside of town and renovated it into a Sim Fu dojo. His innate creepiness actually rather helped his reputation as a martial arts master and teacher. A sensei is supposed to be mystical, right?
Romance, however, continued to elude him. How could he manage a successful date when he made someone skin crawl as soon as he got near? He looked high and low, in Sunset Valley and in all the countries he visited, and he got used to everyone’s creeped-out flinches.
Then he met Veronica Krane, an inventor in Sunset Valley who had a thing for the supernatural. If he made *her* skin crawl, it was in the very best possible way. After she managed to disentangle herself from her boyfriend, the two of them became and item, and Charles proposed before she had a chance to have second thoughts. One thing Veronica never had was second thoughts about marrying Charles.
Together, they became a force for change in Sunset Valley, each in their own way.
Veronica took up some experimental work with the Science Center, studying various types of spirits. She also did a lot of chemistry experiments and blew herself up a lot. She and Zahra had a sort of mostly-civil rivalry about the quality of their inventions.
Charles and Veronica planned to have one child, and they began trying as soon as they were married because they were already approaching middle age. That one pregnancy produced triplets: identical twin boys Forest and Hunter, and ghost daughter Sky. Veronica immediately had her tubes tied to make sure THAT never happened again.
When the children were teens, Veronica received an offer from the Sufficiently Advanced Technology Center of Avalon Island that was hard to refuse. After a long talk with Charles, they agreed to move from the Sample ancestral home of Sunset Valley to this distant island filled with unique supernatural forces for Veronica to study. The Sunset Valley they left behind was much more accepting place than they one they were born in. They could claim a lot of responsibility for that.
Generation 5: Sky
As a child, Sky struggled with social acceptance. She was a ghost child in a town of ordinary people who found her creepy. She grew up friendless and would often play on the school playground alone in the evening.When she became a teen, her family moved to Avalon Island. Her mother Veronica would spend the rest of her life studying the Avalonians, a subspecies of sim with dramatically different skin, hair, ears, and eyes from mainland sims.
In Avalon, Sky wasn’t nearly the oddity she had been in Sunset Valley. Her classmates no longer found her creepy. She became popular. She also discovered a passionate love of music.
She met Leah Mai in high school, and they quickly became an item. After they graduated, Sky started a band called Ghostwriter. She played guitar, sang, and wrote music. Leah played keyboard. Sky’s cousin Garry Crumplebottom played bass. Sky’s best friend Adam Bookabet was on drums. They began playing at local hotspots and making a name for themselves.
Sky became unexpectedly pregnant. That shouldn’t have been possible, since Sky and Leah were both women, but her ghostly heritage had weird effects on pregnancy and conception. It would have been nice for Sky to know that ahead of time. It took a while to convince Leah that the baby was really hers, but when she finally believed, she was devoted to their son Dylan.
Having a son together, thrust Sky and Leah into a relationship that Leah was ready for and Sky wasn’t. Leah moved in. Then, after Sky stalled for a while, they were married. It turned out to be a disastrous marriage. Sky buckled under the pressure of commitment and started cheating on Leah. Sky’s second child, Abby, was pretty obviously not Leah’s daughter.
Sky was terrified that Leah might find out. She allowed Leah to believe the baby was hers. And, really, could she be sure it wasn’t? Leah noticed that something was wrong. Perhaps to convince herself that their relationship was on track, and perhaps because she’d grown tired of waiting, she pushed Sky to elope. Sky, also trying to convince herself that everything would be all right, went for it. They were married in the arboretum at the Sample house with their family looking on.
Sky and Leah’s marriage collapsed. Leah also quit Ghostwriter. The band hired Clifton Hodgins to play keyboard, but it wasn’t the same. The band began to lag.
Sky took a break from focusing on the band and started a solo singing career. Sky struggled with crushing guilt over sabotaging her marriage. She tried to refocus herself by launching a solo music career. As she healed, she avoided commitment like the plague. Eventually, however, she hooked up with Abby’s biological mum, Xia, again. Xia stayed the night and met toddler Abby. Xia realized quickly that Abby was her daughter. She wanted to be a mum to Abby, no matter what happened to her and Sky. She started spending a lot more time at the Sample house.
Sky became pregnant again from a fling with fan Amy Winter. Amy was skeptical that the child was hers and wanted no part of it. Xia offered to move in to help out with the new baby. Baby Sawyer was born, and very quickly it became clear that he was not like the other children. As a toddler, he was diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum.
Very slowly, Sky and Xia drifted into being a normal couple. Eventually, even Sky had to realize that she was in a real committment. Xia achieved her goal of becoming an astronaut. Sky’s solo career became a soaring success, eventually leading her to perform in huge venues like the Llama Music Center. Later, she organized a Ghostwriter reunion, and Leah rejoined the band in their Elder years. Xia was struck down in an electrical accident while repairing the dishwasher. Sky eventually retired to spend more time with her grandchildren and faded contentedly away.
Generation 6: Dylan
