Noric and Diren: Father and Son

Happily, Diren is growing up in a wonderful little world! He has yet to demonstrate his father’s issue with forgetting how to eat, and he just loves hanging around the garden. Seems like he’s growing up so quickly: He was a baby for just a blink of an eye, and he’s almost ready to have children of his own! That’s the Norn life cycle, though. One moment, I was just teaching him what food was and how to pronounce the word for it. The next, he was leaving me in the dust and figuring out his life all on his own.

Now for the major incident that involves Noric. For hours he has been unwilling to eat any food or herbs. The problem with Creatures 1 is that the verb “get” has multiple meanings. For most items, it simply means picking them up, such as toys. For anything edible, though, it has a second meaning of eating or drinking. Technically, Noric obeys most of the time when told to “get food” because he picks up a carrot or a pot of honey. The result? A very hungry, exhausted, and frustrated Norn. And likewise, a very exhausted and frustrated player!

To make matters worse, Noric came down with a nasty illness that filled him with antigen 1, fever toxin, Histamine A, and Histamine B. Those Norn coughs and sneezes can be pretty violent… There goes the honey pot! Luckily, Noric was quarantined from the rest of the population, so the illness was an isolated event. Contagious illnesses can wreak havoc in a population, so I was at least fortunate that only one Norn was affected. Noric wasn’t all too pleased, though! He would have been perfectly fine if someone else could have done the suffering for him.

I hate to share sad pictures of Norns because they look absolutely helpless, but I think that’s exactly what Noric was feeling. He knows he wants to eat and he has a carrot, yet he can’t figure out what to do with it. Add to that the fact that he was feeling awful… I feel helpless, too, knowing that I’m failing at helping him out. At one point, his life force was down around 30%, while a healthy Norn usually hovers at 75% and up.

Noric must have realized that he had a bigger purpose in life, though, because he recovered and has been eating food every now and then! He still requires a lot of direction and coaxing, but he’s in much better shape. Watching over his son, Diren, while he slept peacefully must have had a major effect on Noric… What about the days with his first love, Adria? He knew he had to stick around for many more hours with her, and then they might even expand their family.