Creatures 2

Grendels have a DNA structure very similar to that of norns; you can think of them as norns with changed voices and appearances. Contrary to the hype about them being more violent than they were in C1, they seem to hit less frequently. They will scritch norns and ettins sometimes, and though they do receive reinforcement (reward) for hitting norns, they don't seem to have an instinct to try to hit norns in the first place. In grendels, the smell of norns angers them, while the smell of ettins calms them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that norns are in danger while ettins are safe. I've read anecdotes on alt.games.creatures about grendels scritching norns, and while my ettins and grendels usually get along, I had one grendel that when he first saw an ettin, ran up to the ettin and began beating it repeatedly.

It's important to know that hitting will cause stress and eventually injury to a norn (or ettin or grendel). However, remember that norns hit each other fairly frequently as well. Weak or sick norns should be kept away from any other creature anyway, as even a slap from another norn could harm them.

Grendels also do not seem to carry disease more often than one of your norns might - the only problem with grendels is that you can't monitor their health as easily for signs of illness, until you get the grendel/ettin selector.

Their grunting is not just unintelligent babble, either - watch a grendel, and you can see similiarities in their babble to that of a norn before it learns to speak English (or whatever language you taught your norns). If you manage to lure it to the various computers, if you bring it the teaching laptop and perhaps a dooser or two, or use a teaching COB like the Encyclopedia Nornica, you can teach it to speak too! Often, a newly-taught grendel will say in its first compound phrase how lonely it is and that it wants to be with another grendel (i.e., "come grendel"). Being around an ettin or norn doesn't seem to reduce its loneliness much, and CyberLife set up the game so that only one grendel can hatch from that egg clutch at a time.

The grendels are also often doomed from the start of the game, because of where CyberLife placed their egg clutch. It's next to an airlock for the submarine, so a baby grendel could simply walk left, open two doors, and end up drowning itself. If the grendel walks to the right, the lift leads up to a beach area and another deep ocean, where it could easily drown. Taking the lift down - or falling off the platform, since there is no guard rail on the end - leads down into a hot, dry, radioactive volcano. The shut door often traps many grendels inside, there is no food or water, and the radioactivity will eventually kill their bone marrow (leading to an "X" next to the bones in the Science Kit, and which means that they are unable to fight heavy metal poisoning any longer). If they do open the door at the volcano's base, the first edible item they come to is the extremely poisonous deathcap mushroom. The way the game is set up, these grendels aren't much of a threat to norns, and Albia is potentially quite harmful to them.

C2-specific pages:

COBs: Objects to help or hurt grendels; grendel-related or grendel-specific in some way.
Breeding: How to breed grendels.
Grendels: Download new grendels to inhabit your Albia.
Norns: Nothing to do with grendels, but doesn't every Creatures page have norns for download?
Grendel Mixes: Norns that look like grendels? It's true!

Other pages:

Miscellaneous: Odd or interesting grendel-related things, not having to do with playing the game.
Info: FAQs (Frequently Asked/Answered Questions) on various game-related topics, about alt.games.creatures, and how you can get images for your Creatures webpages.
JRChat: A weird and fun chat created by one of the online Creatures community members; read the instructions first, and don't be a jerk, or you'll get kicked off by an op.
About: Info about this website and its creator.

You can find lots of things to breed/control/kill/etc. grendels on these pages. I use the following icons to indicate important things:

This is something that is good for grendels, or pro-grendel.
This is something that is bad for grendels, or anti-grendel. I do not mark things that only trap, scare, or remove individual grendels with this, as those aren't so bad.

Legal info: This page is © 1998 Denise L. Voskuil. These COBs, other files, and images are all © their respective creators. I am distributing them through explicit permission only. If you would like to post them on webpages or Usenet, or even just put an image up on your webpage, contact their creators and ask first. Do not link directly to any of them as an alternative to putting them on your own server. If you have problems with a file, contact the creator of it; I have given contact information for each. Title graphics were created by me, as were all grendel graphics that aren't screenshots (using LummoxJR's Nornpose). Green page decoration graphics are courtesy of Windy's Fashionable Page Designs, except for the base green rectangular button design, which is from Bimsan's Free Web Graphics.

Last updated April 7, 1999