The general Bondi Norn attitude is that if you can't have what you want then don't panic about it - they hardly get stressed at all. And unlike their Hardman Norn cousins, they're very docile and would much rather smile than frown and stamp their feet. This deeply relaxed nature seems to apply to their growth patterns too. They take longer to age than other Norns, and generally live longer too.

How long is long - they aren't immortal are they?
No, they aren't immortal but of course they could well mutate over many generations to become immortal. Generally they only live a little bit longer than other Norns, which by default is roughly five and a half game hours. So don't worry, you won't be stuck with a world filled with small furry Methuselahs.

But they do take longer to age?
Yes, as a Norn (or indeed any creature) ages it passes through a number of distinct lifestages. For example, a standard Norn may take twenty minutes to reach adolescence. But a Bondi Norn could well take up to half an hour. It almost seems like their bodies are too lazy to age! But anyhow, who wants to age quickly when you're lazily lying on a beach near a tropical ocean?

Yeah, the Bondi Norn Story mentions oceans too - are Bondi Norns amphibian?
It is true that they evolved near a lot of water, but they aren't exactly frogs. It seems though that they have somehow managed to develop a mutation that allows them to stay in water a bit longer than other Norns. Although this means they won't drown quite as quickly, it does not mean that they'll live happily underwater forever more. If the bubbles start to rise, you know it's time to save your drowning Bondi Norn!

Feeding your Bondi Norns
Generally a Bondi Norn eats much the same kinds of foods as other normal Norns. Bondis don't eat detritus like their Toxic Norn relations - in fact it could make them rather ill. Any food, fruit or seed should be fine. In fact, even their digestive systems are a bit lazy - they take a while to digest food so they don't need to eat food quite as often as other Norns.

But they do have one food-related peculiarity - they gain the same nutrition from eating critters as other Norns get from eating foods like cheese and carrots!

You mean they aren't vegetarian?
That's right, unlike most other Norns the Bondis like nothing more than a good munch on a critter such as a Crobster. They'll happily polish one off in no time, leaving only a few scraps lying around on the floor for their detritus-hungry Toxic Norn friends to gobble up.

What about infections and toxins?
Healthwise the Bondi Norns are relatively normal. They don't have an upside-down biochemistry like the Toxic Norns do. So if these Norns get sick you are advised to follow the advice of the HoverDoc, or pay attention to the medical information you can find by reading the Agent Help text for the Creatures 3 Medical area.

Also, don't forget to feed them some of the super-healthy Docking Station lemons, which contain trace amounts of antigens and antihistamines to help combat coughs and colds.

Breeding your Bondi Norns
If you can manage to stop your Bondi Norns from drowning in the Creatures 3 Marine Terrarium whilst eating Crobsters, and if they age quick enough and reach maturity then you'll be able to breed your Bondi Norns.
Be careful though, as just like other Norns the Bondis breed like rabbits. Soon you'll have so many eggs lying around that you'll exceed the population limits. But don't worry, you can adjust population limits with the Docking Station Options menu (the second one down on the right).

And when I say the eggs will be lying around, I'm not joking. Unlike other Norns they don't feel homesickness when pregnant, so they won't rush back to their homes to lay eggs - they'll just drop them anywhere they feel like it!

Summary

Here's a few points for you to keep in mind while taking care of your Bondi Norns:

• Bondi Norns are relatively normal Norns, and won't need much special attention.
• They take a while to move up each lifestage, and in general they live longer - but they aren't immortal.
• They can survive underwater for a few extra moments - but they aren't fish and they will drown if you're not careful.
• If they are hungry for fat, give them a Crobster to eat. They'll enjoy it as though it was a tasty slab of Cheddar cheese.
• They don't feel homesickness when pregnant, so they might lay their eggs anywhere. Yes, even there.
• They might be a bit carefree and lazy, but they're friendly and cute and they need your care and attention.

They turn the tables on the nasty Grendels?
Yep, and if you're not careful a Hardman Norn can knock your Grendel population all the way back to the surface of Albia! Unlike the Norns from Creatures 3 that come from the Egg Layer, the Hardman Norns evolved from a small group of eggs that had been left inside the Jungle Terrarium, on-board the Shee Ark in an alternate reality. Without any Shee or Hand to take care of them, they were forced to fight the Grendels in order to survive.

Hardy the Grendel Slayer
Gradually over the years natural selection helped make them stronger and more resilient. After many generations these Norns evolved into heroic Grendel slayers who continued to thrive and pass their hardy genes on to the next generation, until eventually the Hardman Norns we know today appeared and were discovered by the rather surprised Lone Shee.

You say they're resilient to bacterial infections too?
Yes, they can recover from bacterial toxin infections much faster than other Norns and will have a stronger immune response afterwards too. This doesn't mean they can't get ill - the toxins still do damage to them (unlike Toxic Norns.) All it means is that they can overcome the illness faster than other Norns. But they can still die if the infection is particularly severe.

Feeding your Hardman Norns
These brawny brutes have surprisingly plain dietary requirements; they eat mainly food, fruit and seeds just like most other Norns. They don't have any genetic instincts encouraging them to eat anything else - they're rather easy to please in this sense. But they might appreciate one or two of the Chilli Peppers that come along with them in the Hardman Norn Pack.

Calm down, calm down!
There is one thing that you might like to feed your Hardman Norns occaisionally, and that is Calm Balm. This potion is the ideal solution for an over-angry Hardman Norn, and will ease their violent thoughts in only moments.

If you keep enough of these potions around, eventually they might even learn to drink it without you having to tell them to. Their brain should be able to work out that since the potion lowers their anger drive, it would be a good thing to eat when angry. But be careful, there are other potions aboard the Ark in Creatures 3 that could possibly pose a danger to any Norn if consumed in mass quantities.

Breeding your Hardman Norns
Hardman Norns are great breeders - and breeding them with your existing Norns is an ideal way to enrich the gene pool with stronger, more robust genes. They should breed well with most other Norn breeds, but because of their enhanced toxin-fighting abilities it may well prove to be a little harder to get success from breeding a Hardman Norn with a Toxic Norn. But that's all part of the Toxic Breeding Challenge, right? Read all about that at the bottom of the Toxic Norn Care Guide.

Another thing worth mentioning about the Hardman Norns is that over the generations they've lost the feeling that the Norn Terrarium is home. A homesick pregnant Hardman Norn won't try and walk to the Creatures 3 Norn Terrarium (or the Docking Station Meso), instead she will only feel safe at home in the Jungle Terrarium. After all, isn't that the best place to teach baby Hardman Norns how to fight Grendels?

Summary
Before you go, here's a brief list of the things to keep in mind while caring for Hardman Norns:

• Hardman Norns are relatively normal Norns, and won't need much special attention - especially because they are so hardy.
• They will recover faster from toxin infections caused by bacteria, and so should be generally healthier than most other Norns.
• They have evolved to be masterful Grendel-hunters and they won't hesitate to eliminate the Grendel Menace if left to their own devices.
• If they get a bit too angry, give them some Calm Balm to settle their raging emotions.
• When they're pregnant (and thus homesick) they'll want nothing more than to be in the Jungle Terrarium (though they'll call it the Grendel Home).
• Their hardy genetics can enrich the gene pool of your existing Norn community, except perhaps if that is a Toxic Norn community, of course!

They don't have the warrior spirit of their Hardman Norn cousins, which means they might find themselves in more than just a bit of trouble if they were ever to meet a bloodthirsty Grendel. Lucky for them that the Treehugger Norn Pack features a teleporter - the ideal escape route in times of distress.

Panacea with Panatreea
If you do find the Treehuggers to be a little too fragile, especially if they get sick, then your best option would be to instruct them to drink from a bottle of Panatreea Potion.

Perhaps due to an uncanny intergalactic linguistic coincidence, the name of the potion almost describes what it is best used for - a complete panacea for an ailing Treehugger Norn.

Do they hug trees too?
Well, not exactly. Though they were definitely rather fond of their treehouse back on their home world, they can't actually hug anything in Creatures 3 or Docking Station. That's because hug isn't actually an action a creature can do. Instead, they can only push and pull things - but they like doing that more than other Norns do!

Feeding your Treehuggers
Treehuggers have relatively normal eating habits - they love food, fruit and seeds like the average Norn does. But though they enjoy eating food, they don't gain as much fat from food as other Norns do. Instead, they need to eat edible plants and seeds in order to get the fat they need to survive.

Quirky Cookies
Also included in the Treehugger Norn Pack is the fantastic Quirky Cookie Machine. This gadget allows you to make edible "Quirky Cookies" using ingredients found all over Creatures 3 or Docking Station.

Many Creatures Community members have already produced their own Quirky Cookie recipes which you can find on their websites, such as this page on Alien's Creatures World, and this page by Geekgirl101.

What about infections and toxins?
Treehugger Norns developed in a Grendel-free world, and thus they aren't quite as tough-skinned as a relatively normal Norn - they might get rather badly hurt from attacks. They're also more susceptible to diseases, so you'll have to pay particular care to ensure they don't get ill.

But they don't have an upside-down biochemistry like the Toxic Norns do. So if these Norns get sick you are advised to follow the advice of the HoverDoc, or pay attention to the medical information you can find by reading the Agent Help text for the Creatures 3 Medical area.

Also, don't forget to feed them some of the super-healthy Docking Station lemons, which contain trace amounts of antigens and antihistamines to help combat coughs and colds. And of course, there is always the Panatreea Potion!

Breeding your Treehugger Norns
These Norns should have no major problems when breeding with most other Norns, except maybe the Toxic Norns of course.

Like the Bondi Norns, Treehuggers don't feel homesick when pregnant, so will lay their eggs almost anywhere. But like the seeds of the trees from their home world, the eggs of Treehugger Norns take longer to mature inside a female Treehugger Norn. So don't worry if it seems that it is taking longer for a pregnant Treehugger Norn to lay her egg - it just needs a little bit more time to develop before it can face the big wide world.

Summary
Just in case you read all that, but still managed to miss the major points, here they all are:

• Treehugger Norns are relatively normal and don't need that much special care and attention.
• These Norns love Nature, and like nothing more than a walk in the woods or to be surrounded by plants, animals and insects.
• They're not Hardman Norns, and in fact they're even more fragile than normal Norns - making them the ideal pets for the mollycoddlers amongst us.
• When they need fat, give them some edible plants - they don't get much fat from normal food like other Norns do.
• If they seem a bit low, give them a sip of Panatreea potion. This should cure most of their ills and set them back on track again.
• Their leaf-covered bodies will bring greenery to even the most barren places, but remember to water them regularly and keep them out of direct sunlight! I'm kidding...

At first glance it might appear that something is really quite wrong with them - yet they continue to live and breed like any other Norn. But if you take a closer look at their genome you can see there's a deep biological reason for this apparent mystery. Aspects of their biochemistry seem to have been turned upside down through no fault of their own!

Upside down biochemistry?
When most Norns are hungry they are encouraged to eat items from the three main food groups (food, fruit and seeds) by genetically defined instincts - a natural biological mechanism much like we have ourselves.

In the Toxic Norns these standard eating instincts seem to be somewhat weaker than in other Norns. Instead the Toxic Norn's strongest eating instincts centre around encouraging the Norn to eat detritus - which at first would seem to be rather odd.

Detritus - you mean rotting stuff?
Yes, it may sound a bit strange - but if you saw the place these Norns evolved in, you'd understand why. In their odd little corner of the Warp the only nutrient rich food around was either rotten or toxic. Like most Norns this was a bit of a problem at first, but a few of them managed to survive and breed. Over time they evolved past just surviving on toxin-rich detritus. Their genome mutated to the point where they actually thrived on it!

But toxins are poisonous to my Norns!
Yes, to normal Norns, toxins are a very real problem. They can cause severe damage, and may even be fatal. But the Toxic Norns actually become more healthy by digesting toxins. So, they're not only genetically encouraged to eat detritus, but they also have loads of mutant chemical reaction genes that break down usually nasty toxins into important life-sustaining chemicals like starch, fat and protein. So even if your Toxic Norns can't be satisfied by pure detritus alone (yuck!) they can still stay alive, just by being poisoned by toxins.

So what exactly is a toxin?
In this case, toxin refers to all of the nasty chemicals including all eight of the common Albian antigens and other poisons like cyanide and glycotoxin. Many of these toxins can be acquired by an infection of one of the types of bacteria that are present in abundance on board the Creatures 3 Ark or the Docking Station Capillata. But you can help your Toxic Norns by getting them infected by the nasty macrobacteria which comes along with the Toxic Norn Pack.

But due to their strange genome, even normal foods seem to produce antigens and other toxins inside the Toxic Norns. Don't panic, that's a good thing for these Norns, remember!

Feeding your Toxic Norns
In case you haven't already realised, the main food source for Toxic Norns is detritus. The Toxic Norn Pack includes quite a few sources of detritus. Norns can eat the cack from the Cack-in-a-Box, nibble on the macrobacteria's detrital cage or gobble up the rubbish from the strange Toxic Trashcan. Remember, if the Toxic Norn says it is ill you know you've been looking after it well. Toxic Norns think they are ill when in fact they are exceedingly healthy; they're just odd like that - don't let it confuse you!

A lemon a day keeps the Toxic Norns away...

You'd be wrong if you thought these Norns were completely free from the risks of infections and poisons, because they aren't. Just like their strange digestion-related genes, these Norns also have a somewhat reversed immune system. So not only are toxins beneficial to them, but normal cures are actually highly poisonous!

Healing the sick
So if your first impulse upon encountering an apparently ill Toxic Norn is to feed it the lemons from Docking Station and inject it with cures from either the Creatures 3 Medical Bay or the HoverDoc, then you're going to be in for a rather disturbing surprise. This is because instead of being the great cure for antigens, antibodies actually act like poisons inside the Toxic Norn's biochemistry. So the usually healthy and medicinal lemons in Docking Station are quite dangerous for the Toxic Norns as they contain trace amounts of antibodies.

Don't wash their hands, or clean behind their ears!
If you find your Toxic Norn is covered all over in bacteria (including the much more visible macrobacteria) then trying to remove these infections will actually harm your Norn in the long run. This is because Toxic Norns need the poisons and toxins that these bacteria produce - especially if they haven't got a good supply of yummy detritus nearby.

Breeding your Toxic Norns
If you can keep your Norns away from the lemons and other harmful foods and raise them to young adulthood then you'll be able to breed them just like other Norns. There is nothing particularly strange about their breeding, especially when they mate with other Toxic Norns. But breeding these Norns becomes a whole new challenge when you try and mate them with Norns from other breeds.

The Internal Biochemical Conflict
Rather than being the latest News headline, or the next episode of Star Wars - an internal biochemical conflict is what can take place inside the hybrid offspring of a Toxic Norn and a normal Norn.

As explained above, antibodies are poison to Toxic Norns. But in most normal Norns antibodies are extremely important in fighting disease, in fact they are produced naturally by the internal biochemistry of normal Norns.

You might wonder what happens when a hybrid Toxic Norn inherits genes which are producing antibodies like the normal Norn parent, as well as genes from the Toxic Norn parent which make it get severely ill from antibodies? You guessed it, the Toxic hybrid could get very sick and may even die.

Toxic breeding challenge
Because of this it can be rather hard to get a hybrid Toxic Norn to survive for very long outside of the egg. But it is by no means impossible. Sometimes the hybrid child gets just the right sets of genes, without any biochemical conflicts. They might come out as mostly a normal Norn, or they might be mostly a Toxic Norn. But they could be a special hybrid that only you can discover through the trial and error which is part of breeding Toxic Norns. Think of it as a challenge - can you breed happy and healthy Toxic Norn hybrids?

Summary
Here's a few points for you to keep in mind before you go off and start feeding the poor things loads of lemons (I did warn you!):

• Despite first appearances, Toxic Norns are just like any other Norn breed. It might take a bit longer to get to know what they want and need, but eventually you'll be able to raise them like a professional.
• They eat mainly detritus, which is usually the decaying remains of other organic agents. There are loads of detritus-producing agents in the Toxic Norn Pack. Also, detritus is created by many agents in Creatures 3, Docking Station and some of the other Norn packs too.
• They will tell you they are ill when they're actually very healthy!
• Normal cures and remedies (and fruits and foods which contain them) can make your Toxic Norns ill - they may even die.
• You may have difficulty breeding them with other Norn breeds, but it isn't impossible.
• When they are infected with bacteria (or macrobacteria) this is a good thing - you don't need to remove it.
• They're cool and quirky and in need a good home, and the care of someone just like you!