Weird Happenings
in Albia

This page is dedicated to weird things and happenings in Albia. Some are common place, others are occasional and have been mentioned by others, some are rare or I have never heard of any others experience them.
I took the idea for creating this page from Creatures Jungle - thank you Freya and keep making those excellent cobs!
(the Weird Norns page has been moved here)

 

Possessed Lemons and Other Objects

From time to time lemons you will see lemons (usually) floating horizontally at norn head-height  in and around the garden area of Albia.
As they float along they often pop in and out of existence (or become alternately visible and invisible). This seems to be a common problem but not a serious one.
If left alone they will disappear. If you try to pick them up, Creatures might crash, or they might turn into perfectly normal, gravitationally-bound lemons.

Note that in this picture you can see 19 hour old Danny, with his great-great-great-granddaughter Io (1h 40m), he impregnated her shortly afterwards!

The amazing sinking lemon!

Well maybe not so exciting, but the photo to the right is just to prove it happened, I was not imagining it.

Return of the lemons: This is the first time I ever saw a lemon in the house, going west. Eventually it froze mid-air where I took this photo before plucking it safely from the wall.
Picture above left.

This especially gifted honey pot decided it was going to follow the cable-car, by flying through the air.
I grabbed it and it seemed to return to normal


This empty hooch cup flew west round the world, going in and out of visibility and leaving occasional frozen mirages of itself. I tried to pick it up but it eluded me and vanished before reaching the island.

Last but not least is this feverfew
to the left, scary.

 

Cablecars Again

Having enough of luring honeypots into the sky, this one has broken down and refuses to move, stranding this norn.

 

Runaway minecart

From movers that won't move to movers that wont stop, this one has broken it's circuit and is wandering arounf the caverns of Albia.
I've seen this phenomenon a few times.

 

Black holes of No Return!

Black holes are places between rooms where objects disappear, the largest one is in the middle of the large ocean, two smaller ones exist at either end of the small ocean.
The photos below show what happens to a line of cheese dropped onto the sea and ocean.
Notice that some of the cheese have vanished!

There exists a cob made by Slink for sealing them up so they are rendered harmless.


This black hole occupies the space immediately to the right of Albia's seam.

     
These two smaller black holes sit next to each dock of the small sea.

 

Snoring Walls

For some reason the walls in the theatre have been emitting zeds.


 
   

Now the mushrooms and fruit are at it!

(in this case I accidentally deleted a sleeping Ettin and Grendel, 6th October 2023)


The Ancient Norn Temple

Presumably the various statures in the temple are ancestors of the norns, they look similar in many ways to the Ron breed and the original norn sprites (full.spr).
I count a total of thirty one statue heads.
As you can see, there is a small monkey-like statue outside the temple.
There are two identical norn busts on the walls in the main floor and the basement.
On the lower left façade there is a small terrier-like norn head and immediately above it is a fox-like one.
Similarly on the right hand façade there is a badger-like statue head. On top of the temple there are three complexes composed of six, fourteen and five heads going from left to right.

I assume that the temple was built by the Ettin at the orders of the Shee, long before the current norn breeds evolved.
The temple seems to be a dedication to at least five different ancient norn breeds by the Shee. I added Proto Rons as comparison.

This evidence indicates many previous norn breeds, all intermediate between the first Ron norns and the modern Horse, Pixie and Banana breeds.

 

The Mysterious Tempbu BUSTR.TXT Poem!

Hunting scuba cows (A Poem)

Pebbles are not edible. It is fruitless to try eating them.
I have not eaten a sandwhich in many days.
Despair not for Wednesdays.
Salmon unite.
Boo hoo.
Bye.


Thankyou.

New version of bustr.txt from  gog.com version of the game:

Surfing with the Fridge (Prose)

Pigeons cannot lick their own necks.  This rarely appears to impede them.
Gone are the days when whelks could sing.
Be fearful of crimping shears.
Root vegetables, be free.
I sob openly.
Ta-ta.


Thankyou.

 

Sub-surface Submarine!!

Occasionally the Submarine has been known to sink beneath the ocean into Albia's core to be destroyed, taking any occupants with it. Cyberlife created a cob patch to fix this.

 

Albia's Seam

Take a careful look at the picture on the right. If you look just to the left hand side of the cheese you can see where each end of Albia is stitched together to make a continuous wrap-around world.

The seam is at the exact position of the X coordinate zero.

The reason the cheese is there is due to my Auto Cheese Vendor cob. When any cob is created, it is initially placed at coordinates 0-0, until the script tells it where it should be placed.

This is normal procedure when any object is created, but as this occurs in an obscure part of Albia's skies, it is not normally noticed.

Because of this, if you keep your camera trained on this part of the world you can see any object flashing into existence here before zooming off to where it is supposed to be.

This phenomenon of "temporary object flash import" could be responsible for such oddities as norns seeing apparently non-existent objects (especially eggs and cheese).

 

Visions of Sky Eggs

Norns sometimes appear to be looking at an egg that appears only in their viewer - surrounded by clouds and blue sky.
I once thought that this meant the norn was dreaming of having children, but now it is apparent this is merely a game fault. If you go to the world's seam you will see the unusual object.

 

I've heard (and experienced) visions of other objects, such as the cheese shown here. It is likely that this phenomenon is related to objects created at the Seam of Albia.

 

The incidence has been known to cause the norn cult "Eggism", as coined in a question to Ask Laura.

Dear Laura,
I live in the C1 Albia, and recently the Hand has been very good to us in the way of COBs. Life has been lazy and slow - a change from running scared of the Grendel! One day, I was going about my business, and I noticed a strange egg in the sky... For some reason, I can't get it out of my head, and all I want to do is join with it. The Hand doesn't understand me any more - It wants me to do petty things like "push food". How can I explain to it that all I want is up there in that egg?
- Ashling
 
Dear Ashling,
Why don't you start an alternative Norn cult, say, "Eggism"? You and your fellow "Eggists" could be shamelessly brainwashed into thinking that the "Great Egg One", (or in Nornish, "Gah Geg No") is even more higher and mightier than the Lone Shee himself! Your daily routine would include pledging allegiance to "Gah Geg No" morning, evening and before and after meals, momentous sacrifices of cheese and singing bleak, dreary songs of worship around the lighthouse. Your life would be one of servitude and oppression and your Hand would be powerless to intervene - for remember, "Gah Geg No's" authority overrules all! ;)
- Laura

 

Others suggest the use of Object-be-gone, to prevent the unusual behaviour of these norn cultists.

 

Run Away Cart!!

One day, as I was teaching my newest norn - the cart from under the ocean wandered by!
I have no idea how it managed to break loose and plough it's way around the subterranean world.
I tried to stop and reverse it but it merely broke down and refused to budge. When I later made a new world, it worked perfectly

 

Eaters of the immortal Teeny Carrot

You may or may not have experienced this relatively common peculiar behavior.

There is only ever one baby carrot, it is movable and creatures will try and eat it but it will merely escape from their hands. When it begins to grow it will no longer be movable until it reached adulthood when it can be eaten properly.

But a new ITC will be created...

This particular norn is Gadberry, one of the first Munchkin norns.

This problem can be permanently fixed with Jessica's updated carrots cob.


Mysterious Subterranean Vanishing

Today I was teaching a young norn called Frigg to eat whilst on the raft beneath the garden. I tried to pick him up just before the raft docked in the east and Frigg vanished!!!
He disappeared from the norn menu completely, but luckily I could reload the world and save him from his strange fate.

 

The Egg-Suit Effect

Creatures have a problem if they try and lift a particularly large egg:

This strange phenomenon is due to the sheer size of the egg object
and would probably happen with other large movable objects

 

Unhatchable, Indestructible Tiny Eggs

Some eggs simply do not develop and are locked as tiny eggs forever.
Other users have experienced and documented this phenomenon.