Another Time || Day 11: Norn Husbandry

 

Now, then, what's this about?

After a little inspection of my current living Norns, here's a breakdown of our family tree:

Darla, Benji, and Fairyfloss are all Generation 1 Norns from the Hatchery. Potroast and Ernest are Darla and Cornstarch's sons, and Anna is Rice and Cornstarch's daughter. It sounds like Cornstarch was pretty busy when he was still around! Haha.

With all of that straight, it looks my next plan is going to be figuring out how to carry the generations along. Indeed, Potroast and Ernest are both too young to breed, I think... but what about Benji? Ever since around the time Cornstarch was born, Benji has had a big red X in his Fertility Kit page, just like the younger Norns do. It got me wondering - why is his fertility so low? And does the red X actually mean what I was thinking it means?

At first, I'd thought that perhaps males were only able to breed once for some reason, but considering Cornstarch fathered three children before his death, that's clearly not the case...

Before I could spend too much time contemplating, though, I noticed upon checking the Observation Kit that Fairyfloss and Potroast had fallen ill with something. Not wanting to repeat the whole entire ordeal I'd just had over again, I made it a top priority to get the two of them separated from the other Norns. 

Playing catch-the-Norn-in-the-elevator is about as fun as you'd expect, but I'd managed to do it. Almost as soon as I had gotten them both up there, though, Fairyfloss recovered, and I was able to send her back to join everyone else while Potroast remained alone.

He fell asleep in front of the learning computer, while holding a carrot, which provided me with what might just be the second funniest picture I've ever taken in a Creatures game. There's something so hilariously awkward about this. Did he fall asleep standing up? Or were there just no sprites for laying down while facing the camera? Does it even matter? The pouty sad face Norns have doesn't do him any favors, either. And what's with that stripe down his middle, actually?

Putting my rambling about the way Potroast looked aside, once I'd gotten him separated, it didn't take long for him to recover from his illness as well. Deciding to continue investigating Benji's unexplained infertility, I spent a little while maneuvering getting Potroast back into the pack and separating Benji out instead.

Once I had him cornered, I checked his health out again. His "fertility" was still at the bottom, and his testosterone levels were now apparently so low that they were only sort-of showing up on the graph. I'll admit up front that I'm not terribly well-versed in Norn biochemistry, but since the Fertility Kit offered a tomato that it claimed would improve overall sexual health, I decided I would try and get Benji to eat it.

Benji is a bit stubborn, and I remember trying to do this once earlier with little success. It seemed that there would be more of the same now, or perhaps it was more like... either Benji is particularly stubborn, or there's some kind of problem with the tomato. I was able to easily convince him to eat a carrot, but when I ask him to "eat", he doesn't even look at the tomato! 

Maybe he's just one of those people (or Norns) that really, really dislikes tomatoes, or maybe something else is afoot...

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