#VideoGameBotany

[lycomorpha]

Dusty's field notes and sketchbook

Flora of Kreet: Dust root

Found in volcanic habitat nr research outpost on Kreet, moon of Anselon, Narion system

Largest plant species in area, 2-2.5m tall, other small scrubby plants/grasses visible, all appear red

Single stem forms a loop - emerges, puts out aerial roots leaning in direction of growth, reconnects to ground

Small needle-like cauline leaves arranged in threes at intervals along whole of stem

Incongruously colourful pod (could be to attract seed-spreading wildlife?) in cerise pink and turquoise

Pod is source of fibre, intricate tiered surface texture

Stem and roots have a rough, peeling or wrinkled texture

Are these huge looping stems individual plants, or is each part of an even larger underground whole? Is the structure we see above ground only there to spread seeds from its pod, or is it perennial? So many questions, no time to dig for answers.

Video game botany: the flora of Starfield

Alternative title: "People got me games and now here I am with even more botany nonsense lol." I have many video game botany things I want to do, and not enough time. So for BG3 and Starfield, I'm just sketching as I go and making field notes as if I was out with the botanists IRL. Dusty's field sketches for Starfield, notes from druid Tav in BG3. First up...

~

Dust root

The first plant I came across in Starfield. I wonder whether the dust root plants we see above ground are many individuals or each parts of a mostly-subterranean whole. Some plants on earth rarely emerge above ground and most of their life cycle happens out of sight. I've read about at least one plant that even flowers underground. So maybe dust root is like that and just puts up these loops when it's time to go to seed? Their brightly coloured seed pods seem so incongruous compared to every other plant around. So maybe the colour attracts fauna that eat and spread seeds.

~

There are things I love in Starfield (botany, Andreja, ship-building) and things I do not (why TF can I not give Cora Coe books??, needing to run soooo many mods, the persuasion omfgs.) But it's game with botanical/entomological opportunities, so I'm in.

Dusty and dust root. They'd probably smile if they weren't about to be jumped by a Kreet stalker, little baskets won't let people botanise in peace FFS

#starfield #video game botany #Cora Coe #That girl needs books dammit #so many books in this game and yet #starfield photography #starfield photo mode #Flora of Starfield #videogamebotany #botany #botanical

[lycomorpha]

The Mycology of AC Valhalla

Sketches of all the interactable fungi in ACV, with their in game and IRL counterparts (for the fungi I see locally.)

Been going through my video game botany drawings. Thinking of collecting these sketches, making 3 more of non-interactable common fungi we see in ACV - tinder fungus, turkey tails, birch polypore - & putting them in a zine. (I've been going through my 'moths of Ravensthorpe' drawings too. Getting my 💩 together so I can finally take these zines to my next fair!)

If I can do 8 fungi I can easily make a zine with fungi art on one side and some species info on the other.

#ac valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #video game botany #videogamebotany #video game mycology #mycology #fungi #fungus #eivor varinsdottir #eivor wolfkissed #lady eivor #eivor #assassins creed valhalla #acv #ink drawing #sciart #ink sketch #fungi drawing #shrooms

[lycomorpha]

Lepe beach, Hampshire - IRL & in AC Valhalla

AC Valhalla is the first video game I've played that has a lot of recognisable placesI go to IRL/have lived in. So when I go somewhere new that I think might exist in the ACV map, I look for it when I get home to see what was similar (or not.) Because I'm a massive nerd ig? Anyway... This weekend I ended up at Lepe beach in Hampshire. Lepe nr Exbury is a place with a lot of history. Weather was terrible for pics, but screencaps? Not so much a problem.

View of IoW

This what's on the ACV map, roughly where Lepe & Exbury would be. You do get a pretty similar view of the Isle of Wight at Lepe.

In the other direction you can see the Needles. IRL you can see where the needles would be if visibility didn't suck! Also nobody actually let me climb on their boat and start fishing. Unfair.

Plants & toxic arrows

The seaweed on the shore and gorse growing above the tideline in the game are true to life. There was evidence of salt tolerant grasses too, but there were less wild flowers out. Cos it's February and it's still tittyfucking freezing. But...

...What I did see was salt marshes, which are kinda missing in game. The kind of fluffy bushy greyish lichens we see around in ACV were here though.

IRL there's sea spurge coming up right now - and that has toxic sap, which supposedly was used historically to poison the tips of arrows. So who knows... Maybe that's something that would have been handy in Eivor's day.

Gotta say though, at this time of year the view is a lot more atmospheric in game!

#ac valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #eivor #eivor wolfkissed #eivor varinsdottir #lady eivor #photo mode #virtual photography #video game botany #videogamebotany #Flora of ACV #Flora of AC Valhalla

[lycomorpha]

Eivor's herbarium: Page 5 - grasses and yarrow from a cursed zone meadow

~

“From a hill-top meadow west of Grantebridge, where the land breathes again”.

~

Before changing county, I've been thinking about meadows and how agriculturally important they would have been to settlements like Grantebridge or Ravensthorpe. Handily there's a meadow not far from our previous stop outside Soma's longhouse, on a cursed hill-top just west of town.

Cursed zones are small areas on the map where a black roiling fog gathers, horses freak out, and Eivor talks of malevolence and cursed troll magic.

This horse is questioning its life choices...

To dispel the curse you need to find and destroy a skull covered in glowing symbols. Shoot it and the dark fog dissipates, with Eivor saying that the land can breathe again.

The cursed troll magic symbol

Cursed zones are a slightly odd feature, in that it’s not clear how the ‘magic’ of the curse works. There isn’t an obvious link to Isu tech. We find some notes/snippets of story around suggesting they’re being placed there by Saxons in an attempt to hex away the Danes. In the Wrath of the Druids DLC, the druids are using a recipe that creates hallucinogenic vapor to induce visions of werewolves etc, so the cursed zones could work in a similar way, with the fog being part of the mechanism. But it’s not clear to me unless I’ve missed something.

However they’re supposed to work, cursed zones are good places to find fungi, plants, and honking great big trees. So I quite like them. (I know some gamers hated them and felt they were pointless collectibles; if that’s you, maybe some video game botany will improve them?!)

Aerial view of the hill-top cursed zone west of Grantebridge

The hill-top cursed zone west of Grantebridge has a particularly nice view from above and is surrounded by meadow. Since Eivor is helping run a settlement with farms, I’m sure she’d appreciate the importance of hay meadows to agriculture, and as a source of herbaceous plants for medicinal uses.

In the long grass

What is a meadow?

A meadow is an area of grassland where the vegetation is allowed to grow tall and isn’t cut in spring and summer. In late summer/autumn, the meadow is mowed to make hay, which then feeds farm animals over the winter. Until then, cut meadow is grazed by animals (sheep, cows, maybe goats) which poop as they go, dropping some handy fertiliser around the place. When gets too cold and wet for livestock to be out grazing, animals are brought in and fed on the hay, with the meadow left until spring for the cycle to start over again. This is in contrast to pasture, which is grazed in the growing seasons rather than allowing grasses to get long.

The un-cursed meadow, ready for hay-making

Hay meadows are full of diverse grasses and wildflowers. In AC Valhalla we particularly see yarrow, ox-eye daisies, and grasses like Yorkshire fog (4th pressed grass from the left) and meadow foxtail (2nd from left.)

On this page I’ve centred yarrow, mainly because I’m saving the daisies for another page! The grasses are from a couple of square metres in my back garden that I keep as a veeeery smol meadow. I’m lucky enough to have some outdoor space, and my priority in life is generally insects. So I leave some grass to get tall, and encourage a range of local wildflowers and grasses that serve as food for bees, moths, and beetles. In the un-cursed meadow, Eivor might have also seen clover, yellow rattle, lady’s bedstraw, and I’d bet on sweet vernal grass and crested dogstail too (3rd grass from the right.)

Ox-eye daisies in my local cemetery meadow

Hay meadows are an amazing reservoir of wild plant and insect species, but are now a rare habitat. Apart from the obvious changes in agricultural practice, capitalism doesn’t value biodiversity in spaces it could build on, extract from, or intensively farm the crap out of. But hope is not lost for meadow species. Many conservation organisations here work with farming communities to restore former meadows or to create new ones. Churchyards and church lands that haven’t been developed are also important spaces for meadow preservation – and in AC Valhalla we see meadows around the monastery at Meldeburne.

Meadow grasses and flowers around Meldeburne monastery

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Super-common and very tough, yarrow is a component of meadows but is found anywhere grassy – it’s found in lawns and verges all over the UK. In my area you'd be hard pressed not to see any in summer.

Yarrow in my backyard

Feathery, finely divided leaves gave it another common name, milfoil or millefoil, meaning 1000 leaves. It has clusters of small white or pinkish flower heads with an interesting structure. The flat-topped clusters of flowers look like they’re made out of daisy(ish) shaped individual flowers...

...But take a look at those daisy shapes and you’ll see that each is actually a cluster of many smaller tiiiiny flowers that just LOOK like a daisy. The centre is made of a bundle of tube-like ‘disc’ flowers that have 5 petals fused together. These are surrounded by a few ‘ray’ flowers, each with one large petal. So cool!

Yarrow: flowers inside flowers

Ecologically, it’s an important source of nectar and pollen for bees, and a food plant for many other insects, including moths and beetles. Some cavity-nesting birds use it as lining material. I encourage it to grow in my lawn along with clover, self-heal and black medick, because it’s a lot hardier and more drought tolerant than any lawn grass.

Historically, yarrow used to be used medicinally to staunch bleeding, but weirdly was also called ‘nosebleed plant’ because of a myth that it caused nosebleeds. It also used to be used as a good luck charm.

Yarrow and ferns

I'm going to move onto the autumnal ferns of Ledercesterscire for page 6, but I'll probably come back to Grantebridgescire for some of the other mysteries.

#eivors herbarium #Eivor's herbarium #video game botany #videogamebotany #ac valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #lady eivor #eivor wolfkissed #eivor varinsdottir #botany #plants #pressed plants #book herbarium #herbarium #meadows #grasses #yarrow #virtual photography

[lycomorpha]

Finished my Leicestershire/Ledercestrescire fern page for Eivor's herbarium after the WIP I posted last wkend! Will tidy up the scan and write the things later. Just glad to have finished somthing tbh... Life is a bit fkd up rn. So I am taking comfort in video game botany as always :)

It was kinda hard to pick words (I ain't no poet) and to keep the lettering consistent on this page. The pressed fern was large and didn't fit in one piece either. But it still made me happy to do.

Other plants I want to include for this county are flowers from Skari's island at Repton, and wood avens from the ruins at Venonis

#video game botany #videogamebotany #eivor wolfkissed #eivor varinsdottir #Eivor's herbarium #eivors herbarium #AC Valhalla #ACV #assassin's creed valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #fern #ferns #bracken #botany #botanical art #herbarium #book herbarium #lady eivor

[lycomorpha]

It's been a while old friend...

Getting back to my ACV video game botany today. Mostly creating carnage trying to outline things in pencil on my Ledercestrescire ferns page tbh, but still, having fun relearning the way I wrote on the other pages!

Maria decided what I needed for Christmas was another game to fixate on, so I've also been sketching plants, lichen and fungi as I come across them in BG3. And Starfield. And started getting our HZD art back together ahead of HFW coming out for PC soon. So now I have soooo many video game botany things to not have time to finish 😂😂😂😭🙃🤣

#video game botany #videogamebotany #ac valhalla #eivors herbarium #Eivor's Herbarium #assassin's creed valhalla #eivor wolfkissed #lady eivor #ferns

[lycomorpha]

Video game botany: Eivor's herbarium

In the autumn I collected some fern fronds and pressed them to use on the first herbarium page for leicestershire/ledercesterscire. In game the county is perpetually autumnal, so I wanted to try and capture the colours. I haven't seen any of the ferns here turning as red as they do in ACV until they're too far gone and crispy to press, so the yellow/orange colours are as good as I can get.

These fronds are mostly too big for my scanner, which means they're going to need trimming to fit on the book pages! Which frond do you think will look best?

#pressed plants #ferns #ac valhalla #flora of acv #eivors herbarium #Eivor's herbarium #video game botany #videogamebotany #assassins creed valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #eivor wolfkissed #eivor varinsdottir #lady eivor #eivor #book herbarium #herbarium #fern #botany

[lycomorpha]

The Flora of AC Valhalla: Food plants in Avaldsnes and Stavanger

I want to talk about the edible plants we see early on in ACV in Norway, because they're such an integral part of human existence! However...

Crops/economic botany is not my area of expertise

Neither is Norwegian food history

As a very part-time interloper and not an Actual Norwegian, I do not want to end up in an argument about grøt

The secret to a long and happy life is... Don't argue with; your Yorkshire relations about parkin, French friends & fam about butter, or Norwegian folks about grøt (which is porridge, but more so.) Trust me on this. But since we often forget to notice the plant materials that feed/clothe/shelter us every day, I'm gonna wade in anyway and link to more expert folks on porridge (bc I know my limits, lol.)

One other fun thing to note is that there's a reconstructed viking-era farm at present-day Avaldsnes, on the island of Bukkøy (which is also represented in-game as a small wooded island full of deer, just off Avaldsnes.) So if by chance you ever found yourself in the area in summer when it's open, you could find out a lot more on what the settlement and its crops might have looked like IRL.

Cultivated plants in Avaldsnes

We see crop plants as soon as we sneak into Avaldsnes. The first thing I noticed is a field of oats, and nearby is a cart with bundles of oats and another grain - probably barley or rye rather than wheat in this time period. This is where discussion of grøt & other skjemat (literally "spoon-food") would come in if I was feeling brave or foolish... Instead let me point to this lovely piece on the history of porridge as a staple in Norway, which includes links to recipes. Also here's an explainer of skjemat. One way or another I'm betting Eivor ate a lot of porridge, savory and sweet, because it's good stuff.

I also saw some fields out in the distance, past the oats and outside the restricted area...

And when I got there one was full of conifer saplings, and the other with dried flower or seed heads I can't identify. Most histories (in English at least) associate Norse settlers with deforestation. But there's evidence of them coppicing in England and growing orchards in France. So arboriculture in ACV's world doesn't seem too wild an idea.

I've no idea what the dried seeds/flowers are, and AFAIK there are few if any written herbals from the era. There are many plants listed in the present day region which have seed heads you could dry, but I recall some Danish research looking at archeological evidence of medicinal herbs used in medieval settlements? I might pick that up with the herbarium folks and see if they know anything - there is at least one person there that has studied old herbal texts and how they were compiled. I'm curious to know what plants Eivor would have known about/used!

Food plants and herbs in dwellings

In both Avaldsnes and Stavanger, we see food in and outside of the homes. Vegetables include cabbage, onion, and carrots - I like that the carrots are white, which they apparently were at this point in history. Cabbage and related vegetables can grow in quite cold winters (I wonder if the Raven clan would've had the same fkn whitefly problems we get on them, lol!) There's also bread... Some cheese on the shelf to go with I think? Nice.

I'm not sure what the herbs hanging up are, some look dry and others fresh. No doubt Norse travellers would have brought tasty culinary herbs from their travels, and maybe cultivated them as well as native medicinal/edible species. Seeing fruit & veg food outside in the snow reminds me of hanging milk and fresh food in a bag outside my room on a window ledge when the temperature allowed - so that it didn't get pinched from a shared fridge!

From a sync point in Stavanger you look can out over the town and see fields of oats here too. Having been to Stavanger, it was cool to imagine the port, new and old town in the distant past. The weirdest thing for me was seeing the coastline very simplified. It's a bit like how some of the counties in England where I've lived (and live now) look oddly glued together in game. Not complaining tho. Obviously there's only so much detail you need/is practical to include in a game! It just bends my brain a little.

But I did enjoy one joke that is included in the map; a small island for you to practice raiding called 'Ikke en Oy'. The words "ikke en øy" literally mean "not an island" in Norwegian, so I'm guessing that was an amusing way of saying "yeah, we made this lil bit of land up!"

#Flora of ACV #Flora of AC Valhalla #ac valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #video game botany #videogamebotany #eivor varinsdottir

[lycomorpha]

Attaching the fern frond to the first of the Ledercesterscire (Leicestershire) pages of Eivor's herbarium. Need to get a hand making some more of these homemade bar weights so I don't have to switch to rocks when I run out!

The pressed frond is attached with small strips of neutral gummed linen tape. The hat pin is super useful for propping things up as you thread the tape through, but I have absolutely no fkn idea where it came from or how it got into my herbarium kit... It's just always been there 🤷🙃

Anyway. Ferns. And heather. That's the first thing you see when you sail into this county. (This is also the slowest fanart project ever, but idc, idcccc lol)

#Eivor's herbarium #eivors herbarium #eivor varinsdottir #ac valhalla #video game botany #videogamebotany #assassin's creed valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #acv #eivor wolfkissed #lady eivor

[lycomorpha]

This is 120x timelapse of pressed grass & yarrow going into my ACV book herbarium. It's a slow thing to do but just what I need after a ridiculously busy month or two 🌿💚

This is the last page for Grantebridgescire - the meadow around the cursed zone on the hill. The grasses I pressed came out so well, they're so ✨prettyyy✨. In the end I decided not to trim them to be the same length, though. Like... If this was Eivor's herbarium, I can't see her giving AF about that over getting at least one of each kind of grass. & I imagine she'd know the value of the un-cursed area as hay meadow or pasture for tasty cows.

Ngl I'm looking forward to starting Leicestershire pages though, because the bracken I pressed for that in the autumn came out sooo fkn well 🪴💚🪴

#video game botany #videogamebotany #eivors herbarium #Eivor's herbarium #ac valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #eivor varinsdottir #pressed plants #botany #book herbarium #herbarium

[lycomorpha]

The Flora of AC Valhalla: Sherwood forest in ACV vs IRL - a quick diversion

So having started a new game from scratch for video game botany purposes... I'm gonna skreeee, turn in the middle of the road, and go back to my old game. Just quickly and for one (1) specific reason.

I unexpectedly found myself in Sherwood Forest on Saturday (these things happen) and want to compare ACV's Sherwood to the forest IRL. Esp what wildlife/resources did I see vs what Eivor would see? Because who doesn't find themselves thinking about video game locations when they're traveling for completely unrelated reasons?? (Someone pls tell me it's not just me...)

The first thing you notice about Sherwood Forest vs ancient woodland near me is the unusually fucking huge oaks. And I do mean *huge*. Below is the famous ~1000yo Major Oak - it could be older though, so who knows... Eivor's real-life counterparts might have seen it as a sapling.

There are hundreds of other ancient and veteran trees in Sherwood forest and surrounding areas. (Find a definition of how trees are given ancient or veteran status here, download a Woodland Trust ancient tree guide here, and read more history of the major oak with pics through time here.)

So having found myself in a forest full of fucking giant trees and thought "hmm, didn't this forest appear in ACV?" the first thing I looked for in-game was those gnarly old oak trees.

Did I find them? Oh yes.

Many of the older oaks in Sherwood had splits, hollows, and other damage to them, so I really like that the trees in-game have similar features.

From trees full of cracks...

...And twisty trees with broken branches...

...To trees that are just knobbly AF.

Another recognisable feature IRL and in-game were tinder fungi - and I bet that's a resource Eivor would have known about and used. Tinder or hoof fungi are long-lived bracket fungi that can be used to carry embers and make amadou, a form of fire-lighting tinder. A kind of leathery fabric can also be made from these fungi, but by all accounts it takes quite some processing of the amadou.

Most of the trees I saw fungi on were birch, but there are plenty of giant twisting birches in both real and fictional Sherwood. I wrote about how Eivor might know and use silver birch here.

Sadly however, I did not find any cool ruined towers with skeletons and lootables. You can't have everything I guess.

It will probably surprise no-one that this isn't the only forest I've been to that appears in AC Valhalla. I've been to Epping forest more often - some video game mycology here & irl vs in-game tree pics here.

Ok. I promise to stop being overly excited about trees for a least 2 days now. (Probably.)

#ac valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #eivor varinsdottir #eivor wolfkissed #lady eivor #video game botany #videogamebotany #flora of acv #Flora of AC Valhalla #virtual photography #fungi #forests #trees #oaks #woodland

[lycomorpha]

Links

My store - Mailing list & free zine sign-up - Linktree (incl workshop ticket links)

Video game botany posts index

Also a smol reminder: I'm neither from nor living in the USA. Most of the moths/plants/lichens I post are from the UK, sometimes mainland Europe - so pls don't start yelling if it's a problematic species in the US, cos I don't live there. Very occasionally lichens are from other places which I'll try to note. TY 💚🦋🌿

#video game botany #Flora of HZD #Eivors herbarium #drawing paper review #VideoGameBotany #drawing paper reviews #colour pencils #color pencil #moth #moths #lepidoptera #botany #pencil drawing #motivational moth #bugblr #cw insects #beetle #insects #entomology #playing card art

[lycomorpha]

Eivor's herbarium - P4 WIP: Grantebridge raspberries

Got some time to work on the next page of Eivor's herbarium today. Next up is raspberries from outside Soma's longhouse in Grantebridge (Cambridge in the present day). Extremely pleased that I actually managed to press at least one RIPE raspberry (just don't ask about the casualties along the way...) All the pieces have been attached to the page and weighted down. Just need it to dry and then I can add text.

The last plant from Grantebridgescire on P5 will be ox-eye daisy/marguerites, which you can find looking extra purdy around the cursed zone east of Besuncen Tor (but I'm saving those pics,) and in the graveyard at Meldeburne (if you can get past all the bloody cows there, heh.)

Ox-eye daisy (among other things) in Meldeburne graveyard in-game

Ox-eye daisies irl, growing in my local graveyard (I'm further south in England, but we get a similar mix on wildflowers)

~

Ngl though, I'm looking forward to starting Ledecestrescire because I pressed some fkn amazing ferns for the woods there.

#eivors herbarium #Eivor's herbarium #video game botany #videogamebotany #video game plants #botany #botanical #herbarium #pressed plants #ac valhalla #assassinscreedvalhalla #assassins creed valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #lady eivor #eivor wolfkissed #eivor varinsdottir

[lycomorpha]

Eivor's Herbarium - P3: Silver Birch

WIP posts for this page are here and here. See a video of mounting the pressed birch here]

Page text:

"Silver birch from Grantebridgescire

In the fens, where we first met with Soma, stand ghostly birches"

"It gives many gifts

this familiar friend;

paper, sap, wood,

tar that mends"

Silver birch (Betula pendula)

This is a common tree here in the UK, but it would have been familiar to Eivor from Norway too. Around the world, including in Scandinavia, birches of many kinds have long a history of use in many forms. Birch makes an excellent firewood and a strong timber, but other uses of birch include;

Use of birch tar extracted from bark as an adhesive e.g. in fletching arrows and making boats, as waterproofing to treat leather, and as a chewing gum (according to ~5000 year old finds from Finland and Denmark)

Birch sap can be drunk as birch water, and a syrup made from boiled sap has been used for thousands of years and is still in use today across Europe

The peeling bark has long been used as paper - key historic examples include Sanskrit texts from Afghanistan and East Slavic birch bark letters found in Russia

Extracts of buds, leaves, and bark have been used in traditional medicines for wound healing and as antiseptics; extracts contain betulin and betulinic acid, and there's one EU approved topical treatment for wounds, Episalvan, which contains birch extract

Birch bark was used in making a variety of textiles, and the inner bark is also edible, though most references seem to suggest it was eaten as a famine food (and as with edible lichens like rock tripe, this usage doesn't suggest it tastes great... 😬)

So I've no doubt Eivor would know this tree well. It's found all over the landscape of AC Valhalla, but I noticed it most in the Grantebridgescire (Cambridgeshire) arc on the riverbank looking across to Duroliponte, and in the marshy fens of Middletun where we first meet Soma. A quick look around the encampment in the fens shows trees of various ages. Stumps bearing turkey tails, bracket fungi, and lichens can also be found all around the place. This is a nice touch - I see similar fungi growing on birch often, so it helped make the environment seem realistic to me.

Birch stumps/trunks with various fungi and lichens in ACV

Bracket fungi and lichens on birch IRL

Other beautiful places to find birch looking good in game are the autumn woods of Ledecestrescire (Leicestershire), the Forest of Denu (Dean), Glowercesterscire (Gloucestershire - sorry, but it's weird AF just using the Olde names when you live here lol.) There's some nice examples in and around Ravensthorpe too.

Birch trees in Ravensthorpe

~

Other pages in Eivor's herbarium

Front page: small plants - yarrow

Page 1: Oak - the Ravensthorpe marker tree

Page 2: White clover

#eivors herbarium #Eivor's herbarium #video game botany #videogamebotany #video game plants #ac valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #assassinscreedvalhalla #eivor wolfkissed #eivor varinsdottir #lady eivor #birch #silver birch #botanical art #herbarium #book herbarium

[lycomorpha]

The Flora of AC Valhalla: The beginning - Karmøy, Norway

I've just started a new play through of AC Valhalla from scratch, because I'd forgotten some of the plot points I need for this book herbarium. But I realise it's easier the 2nd time around to take in the plants we see in game... So I've been having a closer look at species we see, how Eivor might have used them, and how they relate to plants found in present-day locations that appear in game. & Because I'm a massive nerd I'm gonna burble about here....

Firstly, I noticed plants appear from the first scenes with young Eivor; as soon as she opens the door to the hall her & Sigurd's clans are celebrating in... There are flowers hanging from the beams and scattered on the floor.

Technically you could nitpick & argue they would be out of season vs the weather we see outside, blah blah... But it still tells us something about the role we ascribe to flowers as symbols of celebration or ceremony. Their presence means it's An Event - and that plants are with us from the starting scenes.

The island we find ourselves on next is called Karmøy in the present day - I don't think it's named in game. I've never been there (the only place I know IRL from this part of the game is Stavanger.) Handily, iNaturalist gives me some botanical pointers to what we could be seeing, and I've used that to interpret both expected and unexpected plants I see. We start on the southern end of the island.

The first things you notice (once you've smacked away Kjotve's arsebarnacle-henchgoons) are:

Coniferous trees - spruce, pine

Deciduous trees - birches, weird-ass out of place beeches

Shrubs - Cloudberries, billberry/bearberry or similar

Let's do easy things first... Norway spruce - the pointy classic christmas-tree conifer - is the most obvious plant to me. (& have I mentioned how much I love the sky/light/treescapes in this game? Lovelovelove.)

Big and small, this spruce all over the place (and exists on present day Karmøy too, no surprise.) Norway spruce has been used as timber, medicine and food for generations. No doubt Eivor would be very familiar with it - maybe she used vitamin C-rich shoot tips as a tea, food, and medicine. Possibly she'd take it to prevent scurvy on long voyages.

There are also classic pines - Scots pine is the most obvious candidate for the puffy-topped pine shapes we see in-game. In Scandinavian countries pine tar extracted from it has a loooong history of use - in preservation and waterproofing for wood and fabric, and in medicine as an antiseptic. In fact we still use pine tar today - there's an interesting review here, which the pharmacologist-part of me enjoyed a lot. Maybe the ropes we see in camp and on Eivor's longship were waterproofed/preserved with pine tar?

Some of the bare-looking conifers could also be larches, although I don't know when in history the deciduous European larch became naturalised in Norway.

We see plenty of silver birches like the ones below - since I covered those for a page of Eivor's herbarium, I'll just say here that it also has a myriad of historical uses that Eivor would be familiar with, from tar and timber to sap syrup.

We also see what looks for all the world like beeches but growing in a manner I'd expect of brambles (below.) I noticed this playing the first time around too, where you'd expect to see brambles we see things that look like beech saplings. So I think I'm going to go ahead and say that they're a weird interpretation of some kind of bramble. We wouldn't expect to see beeches here with leaves on in the snow. I see adult beech trees around as as well - so just want to note this isn't what I'd expect IRL.

In the same family as brambles are the cloudberries we can use as rations. If you've never eaten cloudberries or drunk them in liqueur/tea/etc, let me assure you they're fucking delicious.

But they're also a smol plant, and do not grow in gigantic bushy clusters. The difficulty in this and other games is that when you design a resource plant, it has to be large/obvious enough for players to interact with. So I kinda get why. But sadly we do not find monster cloudberries IRL. They're also hard to cultivate so I'm envious of Eivor's access to ginormous monster berries.

We also frequently see a low-growing shrub with reddish leaves that reminds me of bilberry or bearberry. Both are common in Norway and the UK, where I am rn. Both have leaves that turn red. The plants here are again a bit oversized, but I'm still gonna go with those two as my best guess. Both have edible berries, and bilberry jam is also fucking delicious.

They also both contain a range of interesting phytochemicals including tannins and anthocyanins, and have historical and present medicinal uses that have been reviewed by the European Medicines agency here and here. It's not a glamorous use, but Eivor might have used bilberry or bearberry medicinally if she got the squits while traveling, or picked up cystitis - their traditional uses include treatment of diarrhoea and urinary tract infections. (I mean... A vikingr had to deal with downstairs problems like any other human I guess, heheh.)

Speaking of berries... Crowberries are also found in the same region present-day, but their leaves look different - and to be honest I know less about them. But I suspect they're something Eivor might have been familiar with.

Other botanical stuff...

Lichens and fungi are my main botanical thing so I'm going to shoehorn them in there because we do at least see a few - on the rocks near the first sync point is a good place to look. Around Europe including Scandinavia, various lichens have been used in antiseptics, cold medicines, cosmetics, dyes, and crafting material. I can totally see Eivor using hair rinse containing usnea or using it dried as a firestarter.

Lastly I noticed this unseasonable yellow flower in my trade goods. Looks a lot like the yellow wood-sorrel we see elsewhere that would not have been found in Norway or the UK in the 9th Century, so lets say maybe it's a cinquefoil, or buttercup, or something. *shrug emoji*

~

Playing this game again, I feel like I have time to look around instead of being super-focused on the plot. It's a different experience to stop and think about how the developers have reflected the flora of Norway and what uses Eivor might have for the species we see. I even like what's surprising, out of place or out of season. I don't often play a game more than once tbh, but maybe I should, it feels like having new eyes.

#ac valhalla #video game botany #videogamebotany #botany #assassin's creed valhalla #assassins creed valhalla #eivor #lady eivor #eivor wolfkissed #eivor varinsdottir #flora of ACV #Flora of AC Valhalla

[lycomorpha]

Treated myself to some video game botany time in between all the post-covid work catch up mayhem 💚🌿

AC Valhalla - finished the birch page in Eivor's book herbarium and started the wild raspberry page. Planning to write about the use of birch paper, tar, sap, and wood in Eivor's era once I've scanned it.

Hoping to get back to my next HZD page soon🤞

A birch stump in-game, complete with turkey tail fungi

Birch trunk with lichens, in the woods at Llennrych

#video game botany #VideoGameBotany #eivors herbarium #Eivor's herbarium #eivor varinsdottir #eivor wolfkissed #eivor wolfsmal #ac valhalla #assassin's creed valhalla #botany #trees #birch