Norn
Meso Area
This is the
favourite area of the Norns, an area filled with lots of different food and
many plants and animals, plus toys for bored Norns.
Muco,
the egg layer
This biological machine acts as a repository for
Norn DNA. It can lay a male or female egg of any creature it has a stored
genome for. If you have Creatures 3, you will have a number of different breeds
of Norn to choose from. Muco lays eggs directly into the incubating heat pan
to its left.
HoverDoc
This
little critter likes to follow your Norns around and monitor their health.
To activate the HoverDoc drop it onto a creature and it will open up and produce
a display. You can pick up the HoverDoc and drop it onto another creature
if you want to monitor that one, or drop it on the floor to close it up. This
first page of the HoverDoc shows you the name of the creature, its gender,
its most pressing drive and what you can do to help the creature relieve its
need. Clicking on the white arrow on the right of the HoverDoc allows access
to more advanced pages, detailed below:
Drives
Display
This
page shows the state of each of the major drives that make up the well being
of the creature. Around each drive icon is a powerbar that shows how pressing
that drive is - the more the bar is filled in the more pressing the drive.
The creature will be trying to reduce its drives as best it can but there
is no harm in trying to help it!
Bacteria
Monitor
This
page scans the creature for bacteria and if any are found a close up image
will appear in the centre display. The two buttons on this page release smoke
- one kind will stain any bacteria that comes into contact with the smoke,
while the other kind will kill any bacteria it touches.
Toxin
Control
This
page will scan the creature for the presence of harmful toxins in its bloodstream,
and if any are found shows you which ones and their concentrations. Clicking
on the green tick will provide clues as to how to help the creature recover
from this toxicity.
Fertility
and Breeding
This
will graph the major chemicals involved in fertility and breeding. If the
creature is female and pregnant the indicator on the top left will show this
fact. You can increase or decrease the fertility of a creature from this page.
Holistic
Learning Machine
This
incredible device will teach your Norns their full vocabulary in just a few
seconds. It seems to be a very pleasurable experience for the Norns, too.
The only downfall is that the Norns themselves must activate it - and of course,
you can't tell them to 'push machine' before they know their words. Just think
of it as an interesting challenge.
Empathic
Vendor
This
food dispenser taps directly into your Norn's mind, reading their thoughts
as to what they'd like to eat. It dispenses star seeds, yarn fruit, or peaking
pie - all good nutritious foods. Peaking pie can even cure some forms of poisoning.
You can also activate the empathic vendor using the Hand, creating whichever
of the three foods you like.
Pods
When
the lone Shee left Albia he took with him a selection of plants and animals
that he had been experimenting on, some of them designed for creature care
while others were simply to provide balance to life on the ship. All of these
specimens were contained within protective pods to provide a suitable environment
to sustain growth. Unfortunately, during the launch many of these pods broke
open and the inhabitants were released to roam free. Not all of these specimens
survived though without their protective pod, so now the flora and fauna of
the Capillata can be considered to exist in two varieties - contained and
free-roaming. There are five containment pods within the Meso: the Justanut
pod, the lemon tree pod, the carrot pod, the Stinger pod and the Commedia
pod.
Justanuts
are, well, just a nut. They're a good source of starch.
Lemons
are almost the universal Norn medicine. They cure a number of different illnesses,
and the HoverDoc may well advise you to feed lemons to a sick Norn at some
point.
Carrots
are a nourishing food that is able to grow in the wild almost anywhere- as
long as your greedy Norns don't eat them first! It is worth remembering that
Capillata carrots have some medicinal qualities you will not find in the Shee
Ark carrots.
The
Commedia is a jelly-like life form capable of changing its appearance into
anything it fancies. It was created as an amusement for Shee and a distraction
for inquisitive Norns! Normally, it lives inside its pod, where a constantly
changing series of holograms keep it exercised. You can click on its pod to
release it, or drop it back into the pod to re-contain it. Once near a Norn,
it will change shape into something nearby, maybe even something microscopic.
Commedia exists solely to please Norns, and the Norns in turn love to play
with it.
Stingers
are a bit nastier... they'll form nests and sting your Norns. The Shee had
some odd ideas of what creatures made good travelling companions. Luckily,
the stingers are sealed in a pod, unless you choose to release them. If you
get a bad infestation of stingers, your Norns may be able to help you get
rid of them...
Musicola
This
device created some of the most subtle and enduring works of Shee music at
one time. Norns enjoy music, and you'll find they like playing with it, though
perhaps not with as much finesse as the Shee did.
Toy
Robot
Another
little toy for bored Norns!
Bramboo
A
flowering and fruiting plant, found in the lower areas of the Meso, that is
capable of mutating and changing both height, and flower and fruit colours.
Eventually, a mature Bramboo cane will collapse to the ground, releasing lots
of nutritious fruit.
Trappers
The
stinger's greatest enemy, and the Norn breeder's friend. The trappers love
nothing better than three square meals of stinger a day, except perhaps six
square meals of stinger a day. When very well fed, they release seeds - so,
the more stingers you have, the more trappers you will get.
Tubas
These
are low growing plants that can grow practically anywhere, or so it seems.
They produce a tasty round tuber when mature, which is not only a good source
of food, but can cure some forms of poisoning. It is also the favourite meal
of the Snotrock.
Snotrock
The
bizarre half-plant, half-animal Snotrock lives a peaceful life, nibbling tubas
and looking for other Snotrocks to exchange stories of funny shaped tubas
with. It is entirely harmless to your Norns.
Explodonut
As
the name suggests, these nuts are not for the faint hearted! Although they
are a good source of starch, eating them before they explode may present problems.
However, the problems of trying to eat a nut before it explodes are probably
nothing to the problems you'd get if it exploded after you'd eaten it. Luckily,
the Norn's digestive processes seem to stop the nut exploding after ingestion.
