Ageing

    Ageing is controlled by the ageing chemical that decays throughout a creatures life. At certain levels Chemical Receptor trigger ageing. There are seven life stages:

    Most genes are active at birth, babies crawl on all fours and are eager to learn and eat. They grow, usually before they are an hour old, into children.

    Children are faster than babies as they can walk upright, they are playful and not yet fertile.

    2, 3, and 4 are the mature phase and all look identical, in this phase most breeding takes place. The adolescent stage marks the beginning of puberty and eventual fertility due to certain genes being activated.

    Senior & senile creatures travel more, are less fertile and their fur takes on a grey tinge. PMN, Forest and Ron norns shrink when they get old. They tend to die after eight hours or so of life, unless they lack death genes or are immortal. 

    This is the instinctive language of norns before they are taught the user's language.

    See the Linguistics page for details

Behaviour

    Creatures have a complicated array of behaviours, they are *not* programmed into them, they are genuinely alive in that they can choose what they do in their digital world.

    For pictures and more in-depth detail go here.

Biochemistry

    The biological chemistry of your creatures, what chemicals are in them, and how do they interact. Your creature's genetics code for enzymes which perform all chemical reactions required to keep it alive. For more in-depth detail go here.

Breeding

    Creatures do not mate in a conventional way, males transfer sperm in an extended kiss ending with a "pop" sound, known as the "kisspop". After a short pregnancy the impregnated female will lay a small egg that swells by osmosis then hatches into a fully independent baby.

    For a detailed description of breeding see this page, for information on female hormone cycles go here.

Chemistry and Chemicals

    All creatures have a biochemical system, the chemical reactions are described by genes of the same name, receptors and emitters of the brain complete the system, so the brain can be influenced, and influence the hormones and other chemicals.

    See Biochemistry.

Coughing

    Caused by the presence of Histamine B.

See Illness

    This is when you lose creatures upon the computer or the game crashing. There are four ways it can happen:

• Import Crash - happens after importing a norn, but before the game saves, can be serious if you don't have a backup of the .exp file (a good habit to get into) or know what the .gen moniker is so that the norn can be cloned using CGM.

• Pregnancy Crash - happens after a norn falls pregnant, a sort of miscarriage, the egg or baby can be cloned, simply look for the most recent .gen file.
  This happened to my sixth norn Lucy, before I knew how to recover them.

• Egg Lay Crash - least serious of the four, the egg will be laid next time you play.

• Egg Hatch Crash - relatively non-serious, unless you get attached to the norn, unusual in that when it hatches next time it could be a different sex.

    Stands for digital Deoxyribonucleic Acid. These files contain all the inheritable features of each creature, and are used in gene expression and reproduction.

Death

    Death is a natural part of your creature's life. There are two death receptors, one makes the creature die when there is no glycogen - a substance derived from food and used up by living. The other makes it die of old age, when the chemical "ageing" has all decayed away.

    The second death receptor is a new one introduced with the Life Kit norns to curb
extremely old norns and therefore an ageing and increasingly infertile population.

    There are two types of creatures that do not die, the Undead and the Immortal. This is because undead creatures have no death genes, immortals have mutated ones.

Receptor

Egg

    Creatures typically lay eggs after a short pregnancy. They are porous, and absorb water through a process called osmosis, and swell up. When they are mature, they hatch. Creature eggs are sensitive to touch, and if moved when fully grown, will no longer hatch naturally. To hatch a disturbed egg, simply put it into the hatchery or similar device.

    There are six patterns that eggs can have:

    Grendel eggs drop fully grown from the Grendel Mother after being laid, and hatch immediately upon impact with the ground.

Food Phobia

    Usually caused by poor training. If a creature does not eat when asked, you might be tempted to smack them, but be careful, they may associate such smacks with holding, approaching or looking at the food and so become fearful of all foodstuffs.

    Try to curb your frustration by being careful with teaching eating, and start training good eating habits as early as possible. You can also try getting them to eat a plant, but check if it is nutritious first.

Glucose-Glycogen Cycle

    A cycle used to process, use and store glucose a product attained from digested food, it is the crux of a creature's biochemistry.

    For more detailed information go here.

Generation

    Every creature is born into the generation below that of it's parents, with generations increasing in number as time goes on.

Toby was used as the father of the Life Kit norns.

    A newborn creature is always exactly one generation number higher than it's highest generation parent. For example a child of a creature in generation 57 and one in generation 60 will be a member of generation 61.

    An imported creature should be added to the same generation as the lowest generation it breeds with. For example a new creature breeds with generation 8 then later generation 6. It would be included in generation 6.

Genetic Diseases

    There are many conditions caused by mutations that lead to diseases. Here is a short list of the more common ones, many of which are discussed in more detail on the mutants page, and there are downloads of norns with the mutation.

  See Undead, or the page of the Undead norns

    The use of a program to edit the .gen files containing the digital DNA of creatures. Sometimes this is to fix problematic mutations, other times for adding useful or novel genes.

    See the GM Norns page for many examples to download

Hatchery, Natural, Test-tube & Imported Creatures:

  (1)  Hatchery creatures are those creatures hatched from eggs found in the hatchery as opposed to those developed to term in a female's womb, no matter where they are incubated.

  (2)  Natural creatures are conceived and develop to term in a female's womb, no matter where the egg is incubated, although eggs hatched in the wild are considered more natural.

  (3)  Test-tube creatures are created by combining their DNA then being introduced to the world using either eggs or babies. This is much easier than waiting for norns to reach breeding age and convincing them to breed. A common way of doing this is by using CGM or Creatures Editor.

  (4)  Imported creatures can be those that you have saved to your hard drive previously, or downloaded ones. Note that exported creatures can be copied and effectively cloned. Although you cannot import more than one copy of a creature into the same world without problems occurring in how they display.

Histamines

    See Illness

Illness

    The two Histamines, A and B cause respectively sneezing and coughing. Histamines are produced by bacteria or eating weeds. The best way to cope with ill creatures is to firstly isolate them from healthy creatures and each other as they get distracted from recovering and pass on illnesses.

    Then concentrate on feeding them, avoid feeding them junk foods such as honey, carrots are the healthiest food native to Albia. It could necessary to make sure your creature is well rested and not feverish. Remember you can use cough medicine from the Science Kit to ease your creature's sore throat.

    In serious cases use the Energy injection from the Science Kit to get your creature from death's door. If the creature is off its food, and suffering greatly, you may want to consider euthanasia.

Description

    They are creatures that never die, usually due to a mutation in the Glucose-Glycogen cycle. Occasionally they have been created via genetic modification.

    See Life force or the page of the Immortal norns

    Also see Mortality

    The easiest way I've found to revive some of them was slapping, or the use of "Full Power" in BORG. Often no amount of injections help - including wake up pill. Apparently the Holo Doc is able to wake them up too.

    This particular norn had extremely high levels of sleepiness and awoke spontaneously after a minute or two.

    A variation of this is import paralysis/blindness where the creature cant open it's eyes or walk.

    This is the term used to describe the rutting dance performed by sexually aroused creatures.

    See Ageing

    Life force is measured in % of glycogen present in the blood of the subject, out of a maximum of 255 units. 77% is the ideal life-force level for a healthy creature. Babies are usually born at 46%. Consistently over 90% life force, linked with little or no need to eat is considered an immortal norn.

    When a creature's life force drops to 0% they are considered dead. Despite this there exist undead norns can still express all behaviour of regular norns, such as walking talking etc. No undead norn has been known to successfully breed, this is due to scripting, which could theoretically be altered. 
 
See Mortality.

    This is the four letter label for each creature's genome file. It is created at conception, held in the mother's BABY tag, then applied to the egg, finally to the newborn creature.

    It can be revealed by looking in the Science Kit. It can be examined with Slink's dDNA Analyser.

    There are a few descriptors for the main vital groups. Typically healthy mortal creatures hover around 77%. Immortal creatures usually stay over 96%. Undead creatures can reach 0% without actually dying.

    See Immortal
    Also see Undead

    This occurs in every new creature when it's digital genome is created. They can be duplications, deletions or changes to the data. Most are benign, some are useful, others are deleterious.

    See Genetic Disease

SIDS

    The true cause of SIDS is still unknown, though my studies imply that intense exhaustion before exporting could be one factor.

    SIDS can also stand for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or Stillbirth. See that entry for more details

Shivering

    Coldness causes shivering, looking disturbingly as if the creature is having a fit. No serious harm comes from chills, just an unpleasant feeling for the creature, and punishment.

    Simply take the creature to a warmer place, or take a mobile heater to them such as the baby blanket cob.

    Norns do not usually sleep that often or for long. Do not worry if your norns seem hyperactive, this is perfectly nornal. During sleep, instinct genes are processed, in a similar way to human dreaming.

    For a more detailed description of sleep cycles and the chemicals that are involved go to this page.

Sleep-Active Creatures

Sneezing

    Caused by the presence of Histamine A.

    See Illness

    Or Sexually Transmitted Disease. Do not exist in norns per se, but colds and other illnesses may be passed on during mating, although they are usually transmitted by coughing and sneezing.

Stillbirth

    Also known as either Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, in which norns die upon, immediately after, or even before birth. These are known to be due to mutations as even clones of them die.

    Some are due to mutated "initial chemical concentration" genes, others from lethal alterations to the glucose-glycogen cycle. One I saw was due to the norn digesting the ageing chemical.

    Norns that move around and have nornal behaviour, despite being technically dead with a life force of 0%. Most can raise their health and become alive again. Some are mutants, others are GM.

    See Life force or the page of the Undead norns

    Also see Mortality