Edit: This started out as sharing an idea for a potential Legacy, but this thread has become a place where I keep my rotational stories together. The challenge I created will be a significant part of ...
So, part of the challenge for this Legacy is the restriction to use only certain packs. I did struggle with this, and I ended up braking my own rules for the cold weather outfits because Jungle Adventure, Island Living, and the Base Game didn't have anything that I felt worked for my mersims.
I'm also going to add a nostalgia post later to add some background info for Dylan and Zephyr before sharing the next story post. Dylan and Zeph, the blue tails that the legacy sim has to recruit, have been around for a while.
First, here are the outfits I settled on. The only sim that I didn't create a challenge outfit for is Dylan's Fiance because Dylan and Cecelia got engaged in an unexpected way and it wasn't planned.
For all my merfolk, I'm sharing what I consider to be their natural and true form. My lore is pretty simple. Merfolk don't naturally have legs or look human. Similar to how Aliens create disguises, merfolk shapeshift into a human disguise. The disguise hides their natural hair color, pointed ears, and anything that might appear only in their natural form. Every mermaid and merman has a tattoo on one of their legs. The tattoo is the spell that let's them walk on land in their human form. Some merfolk, like Dylan, Zephyr, Calden, and Lir grew up close to merfolk and rarely, if ever, encountered a situation where it was pressing to hide their merfolk identities. For merfolk like them, they don't wear outfits to blend in with humans; they don't actually need to hide what they are from as many people that surround them. Their outfits in human form are essentially whatever they wear in their merform.
A general rule I follow is that all mermen, merboys, mermaids, and mergirls (collectively Merfolk) wear skirts for their swimwear. No matter how hard they try to look human, their two legs will always turn into one fin in the water. Functionally, the skirt would survive the transformation. That's also why the merfolk that don't hide their identity as much also wear skirts in their human form.
So, here they are, the Twins, Dylan and Zephyr, and their new outfits.
Dylan is on the left and Zephyr is on the right.
They are identical twins, and I admit that I gave them different colored bracelets to help me tell them apart. Dylan and Zeph are first and foremost mermen and, for Lir's story, the Sapphire Princes. Second, they are the Elementals of the Sea and Sky. Dylan is the creative twin while Zephyr is the genius.
Dylan's Core Traits: Creative, Child of the Ocean, and Music Lover
Zephyr's Core Traits: Genius, Child of the Ocean, and Geek
Lir Kailani (aka The Little Merman and Abalone Prince)
Not going to lie. Lir has a small frame for a merman, and he doesn't look too different from a teen. Like I know it's already hard to tell young adults and teens apart, but Lir is especially difficult to distinguish from a teen sim.
One thing I've noticed about Krista is how she stays thin. I've had other sims have children. Kylen's Mom and Lir's Grandma gained weight while she was pregnant, but Krista somehow kept the weight off. Her frame didn't have any significant changes. She's also CAS randomly generated. For her formal attire, I removed her wedding outfit. Krista isn't a mermaid that had the good fortune of growing up surrounded by merfolk. She does a lot more to blend in with humans.
Maria is another unplanned twist, but I've had more time to make her a part of the legacy challenge. Somehow, shortly after Krista aged up and before she married Lir, she adopted Maria when I moved her into the same household so she wasn't "Not in World." I felt bad about seperating them, so I moved her in with Lir and Krista and made her a bedroom. I honestly didn't know that sims could consider non-family members family. Maria was created before Krista and has no biological relation. However, that didn't stop Krista from thinking of her as family. I found out when Krista stopped what she was doing to think about family. Maria is also a mermaid that has done more to blend in with humans.
Maria is the girlfriend of Calden, my Rags to Riches sim that I put on hold for this legacy.
Calden's story is pretty interesting. He's a merboy that didn't have the natural ability to change into his human form. My plan for his rags to riches challenge was to do make him go from rags to riches while staying in the ocean as much as possible. I only let him leave the water to do homework for school, and I did let him do the odd jobs that came with Island Living. However, he almost never changed into human form while I played him. I used cheats to change him back into his natural form and made sure he didn't walk around with his tail. Kemps Zalrian gave him the gift of shapeshifting, but he's still afraid that he might turn back into a merboy at any second, so he wears skirts in every outfit. It might look silly while trying to blend in with humans at the same time, but he's more afraid of the wardrobe malfunction that would come from an accidental transformation while wearing human pants, even if that was unlikely to happen.
Cecelia (Dylan's soon to be Wife and the soon to be mother of a Twin Legacy Founder).
If you're following the story, you know why she's no longer a mermaid, but the way she got engaged to Dylan was unique and a first for me. She called Dylan with this message:
Now, the Little Devil himself, Damion Morbius, the Shadow Elemental.
For his dark form, I made it his elemental form. I wanted to show off his tattoos in his dark form. They are the curses placed on him by the elementals in the spirit realm after he tried to upset the natural balance in Sulani. He's been banished from Sulani, and he's looking for souls to add to his collection. Souls, they disappear to the netherworld too quickly. He'd be fine with having the souls Eight Mermen Princes or the six Darkfins, but he really wants the complete Darkfin collection. He knows taking Dylan and Zephyr's souls wouldn't end well with him... given that it would upset the natural balance between the Sea, Sky, Volcano, Land, and Forest.
