The Carrot Age is upon us, and it is crunchy, with notes of wood, hints of earthiness, and a delicate sweet undertone. Hey Odin, want a bite? Yeah, I bet you do, you rascal. Want a bite of our sausages now too, do you? Steady on. Yeah, that’s right: we have meat products now as well.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings
I think our clan’s progress in Valheim is much like having the flu. Not only were our nips numb after our naked sail last week, but we felt sniffly and achy afterwards. Normally when we punch things to see what will happen, as is our way, we do it with sincerity and a spirit of inquiry. Last session, we clanged our fists off barnacles with rage, spittle swinging from our lips and plopping into the surf with a slap.
But right on cue, Dunder Mifflin made their triumphant return this week, brimming with hope and expectation. You could say they were the Lemsip Max we needed at that point, for our despondent Valheim flu instantly subsided. Not long after our reunion, Sigmund (the resourceful one) announced that he could finally build us the hallowed Cultivator tool: a three-pronged instrument that would allow us to place carrot seeds into the earth.
An excited hush came over the camp, as we eagerly erected a carrot enclosure in preparation (we did not, after all, want them to escape once we finally had them). I remember the magic that followed as clear as day. The way Sigmund brandished the Cultivator, patted the earth with it, and gently poked the seeds into the newly tilled soil. And as we looked down at these newborn buds, the words, “Carrot (Healthy)” blossomed onto the screen, beaming out at us. Call us Mjolnir and ram our ragged tunics into Asgard, we had created life.
I think we stared at the ground for a bit in sheer disbelief, and because we couldn’t punch the earth in celebration (in case it rendered our carrots unhealthy), we punched the sky instead. Good job your nan didn’t fly past, as we would’ve punched her square in the jaw without even registering it, we were so pumped up.
While we let our carrots grow big and strong, we set sail. We had unfinished business with a certain “Elder”, a baddie we’d been tasked to fight by a raven who pops up periodically to dish out advice - I have resisted punching it… for now. Unlocking the carrot age kicked us into a higher technological gear all round, as this time we cruised the waves in the luxury of a boat, not that terribly rickety raft of yore. We felt on top of the world.
We soon hooned it over to the Elder and gave it a right kicking; my main motivation was the prospect of seeing our baby carrots all grown up. We also discovered a dank swamp (after roughly 47 years of searching). It was horrible. It was home to leeches, and these nasty draugr people, all of which greeted us with gnashing suckers and axe swings. They made us decidedly uncomfortable, so we left - but not before we snatched up some entrails the draugr dropped. A consolation prize which would turn out to be gross, but also tasty.
Once we’d returned to camp, Sigmund announced that he could turn these entrails, which I suspect are human innards, into sausages. How is it easier to make tubes of meat from the insides of a dead person than it is to grow carrots or make a pig like you? Both livid and happy, we bit into our newly roasted swamp delicacy. How could we enjoy such cheaply procured brown tubes, when right next to us we had orange tubes infused with such cultural history? Not only this, but their very fibres represented our journey as a clan; our advancement as four idiot vikings who once punched the earth, but now punch the heavens.
And so, we picked entrail sausage from between our teeth, brushed ourselves off, and checked on our carrots. In the dead of night, we stood over them and noticed that, for the first time, their green stalks brushed against our knees. They were fully grown! Once again supressing the urge to punch them in triumph, we carefully plucked them from the earth and cradled them in our hands like newborns. “Carrot,” I muttered under my breath, as I rocked it to and fro. “Carrot…” A tear ran down my cheek.
