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subnauticmods ([personal profile] subnauticmods) wrote in [community profile] fishesoutofwater2016-02-13 02:56 pm
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Test Dive #1








≡U.R.S.U.L.A. NAVIGATION
TEST DIVE MEME


For information about the animals and locations, be sure to check out the BIOME and BASE pages!

A1: Go Fish
You! Yes, you! Your friendly neighbourhood AI has a task she would like to encourage YOU to do! After all, you can’t forget the most important fact: you’re here to make the planet habitable. Which means cataloguing, capturing and studying potential threats to anyone’s life. That includes a swarm of Stalkers that have been hanging around the waters awfully near the base, which presents a perfect research opportunity! At least, URSULA seems to think so.

Don’t go in willy-nilly waving your knife around, though. URSULA doesn’t want you to bring in tonight’s Sashimi Surprise™, she wants you to bring in a Stalker that’s still kicking. Which means you have to capture a live one. So hold back your crazy power or trigger-happy instincts!

How will you take one in alive without ending up dead yourself? You could go in the brute-force way, slamming its jaws shut and bagging it, though it’s pretty strong itself… or you could be a bit more cunning, taming it with bait or giving it shiny metal salvage to play with before luring it into a tank to bring it into the base. You might want to get a helping hand with this task, since it’s not exactly an easy one-man job.

A2: Go With Fish
So, now you’ve got a live and very disgruntled Stalker on your hands! Hopefully, said hands don’t have to be amputated (it’s okay if they have to though, URSULA will fix it. Try not to watch the nanites go). What do you do with it? You could keep it as a pet and observe its growth! You could dissect it and study its anatomy! Or you could… eat it. (After going through all the effort to bring it in alive?!)

B: The Abysmal Sea
You’re stranded.

One of the planet’s troublesome signal-interfering pulses has just made your communication devices 100% nonfunctional. No matter how you try to call URSULA for help, she isn’t able to respond. The database strapped to your wrist is just a useless chunk of metal now, leaving you without a useful library of knowledge to survive off. If you were driving any underwater vehicle prior to this point, it’s broken down. And unless you’re a mechanic, it’ll be pretty hard to get it jumpstarted again.

Don’t fret! The communication systems always come online eventually, so if you stay put, it’ll boot back up and give you directions straight back to base so you can finally get home. But can you really afford to stay put? The sunlight’s slowly streaming out of the sky, leaving the waters darker and darker with each passing second. Soon, you won’t be able to see five feet in front of you, and the only warning you’ll get of any approaching threat is through sound, if they even make any.

You have a few choices: take a daring risk and try swimming back to base, but on the off-chance you don’t remember the directions correctly from before you were cut off, you’re going to get even more lost, in the darkness of the night no less. Or, you could huddle in, with any friends if they were unfortunate enough to be with you, and start focusing on getting warm. Because spending the night out here in the vast oceans with the entire world against you is becoming a very, very real possibility.

C: It’s dangerous to go alone. Take them!
URSULA’s technology is breathtaking. With enough materials, she could make practically anything: weapons, vehicles, all those human comforts and entertainments she forgot to build... or perhaps she could expand the base to give everyone even more leg room. But there’s a catch: you need to get those materials to her in the first place, and scavenging can be a monumental task.

The planet Iniidae has a plethora of materials to provide, but you’ve got to go find them first. Some are easy enough to get, by plucking off the ground or breaking a rock. But some are a bit more challenging, such as Crash Powder, seeing that the Crash defending it will literally explode in your face if you get too close. And then there’s materials such as Blood Oil, only harvestable within the Blood Kelp Caves several hundred meters underwater in the pitch-black darkness… remember, you have to gather resources with your two bare hands. No such thing as driving around and conveniently collecting them within the somewhat-relative safety of an armored vehicle.

Since it’s so dangerous to go alone, URSULA will encourage you all to leave the base in pairs or groups if you’re going to try collecting some of the more precarious materials to harvest. She has heard that most lifeforms find being reconstituted from nanites traumatic, so try not to die in front of each other!

D: Hide and Seek Help
URSULA knows that everyone needs downtime, and no one can go salvaging or gathering specimens all the time. So what do you do for fun on an alien ocean planet when the AI who made your base forgot to make any kind of entertainment room?

Why, play hide-and-seek, of course! There’s a lot of places to hide away from others, and it’s challenging to find anyone. (Sometimes, too challenging to find them… ever… but that’s not the point.) The area around the base and submarine is relatively safe, so anyone can hide away in a coral structure or a cave, and telepathy makes it easy to taunt your seekers without revealing where you are.

Of course, you may encounter a Bone Shark or even a stray Stalker, and you won’t have time to get away or even scream as it attacks you, but hey. What other way to make hide-and-seek more thrilling than to turn it into hide-and-hope-you-get-found-as-you-shout-for-help-to-anyone-who-can-hear-your-telepathy?

E: Toilet Humor
Really, it was bound to happen eventually. Someone's in the bathroom observatory, doing their 'business', and someone is trying very hard to catch a fish for dinner outside. Your eyes meet. Someone has literally been caught with their pants down.

And in that moment your telepathy goes a little wonky, because it's good to have open communication about this incident.

F: The Caverns of Dream
The ocean calls you. Of course, it's much easier to dismiss it as nightmares. You'll probably think that's all it is after you have them. Flashes of screaming sea creatures writhing in agony, pleading for help, but these creatures can't ask for help, can they? Something huge, beyond the scope of imagination, moves in the ocean of your dreams and calls out to you to go deeper into the darkness. It pleads and begs but not with a voice you can hear or words you can understand.

You wake up in a sweat with the unrelenting desire to take a swim, even though it's late and everyone is asleep. Or maybe someone else just had the same nightmare as you? Are you willing to take a swim and try to understand the dream?


BASED ON CODE BY TESSISAMESS AND SUPERSUITS


gayfish: (to other)

[personal profile] gayfish 2016-02-15 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
[Undyne checks the device on her wrist. She'd checked it like a few seconds ago, but why not, it's worth another look.]

Nope. I haven't heard anybody using telepathy, either.

. . .

Let's see. Mmmmmmm, well, there's always the kelp forest. If you can see where it starts, then we at least know the base isn't that way!
imsorey: (Turn your magic on)

[personal profile] imsorey 2016-02-16 12:02 am (UTC)(link)
[Ever the optimist, he only needs a nudge in that direction to put himself behind it.]

As long as it doesn't just work underwater I'm sure there's a way to bring it back, if URSULA doesn't mind us poking our noses into it. You're right that it's not the best time to ask when we're all still figuring things out here, but I bet you plenty of people would be willing to help us out. Who would have thought a place like this would create the perfect opportunity to bring humans and seraphim together? And, well, everything in between.

[He's definitely seen some non-humans around too, after all.]
oneandmikleonly: (oh; poor Atlas.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-16 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
Everything in between . . . you're expanding your scope quickly, I see.

[It's dry, but there's a definite warmth in his mental tone: he never expected any less.]

Next left is the observatory, by the way.
gayfish: (now i got my wish!)

[personal profile] gayfish 2016-02-16 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
[Intimidating as Ygnodentus does indeed look, Undyne is also not easily intimidated – all part of being a hero, of course! She did make a little note of his body language before approaching. The last thing she wants to do is get into an actual life-or-death fight with one of her new, uh, living…mates.

Hey, though, she doesn't get imitated very often! So that's cool. Why people don't imitated her very often will likely be made clear soon.]


Fufufu, so you're copying me, huh? Well, let's if you can copy THIS!!!

…And I won't attack you, so don't worry. Cheap shots aren't my style AT ALL.

[ a) is that something you should say to somebody whom you just randomly pointed a spear at? b) he literally can't because what she's about to do involves having spear.

Behold: Undyne flawlessly executes a series of tricks that involves flipping it around and spinning it every which way, behind her back, between her legs somehow, etc. It ends as she flips one so that it whirls in the air, inches from slicing up the ceiling, then she catches it and does a pose.

Applause would only encourage her.]
little_lost_dragon: (Default)

[personal profile] little_lost_dragon 2016-02-16 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
I'm not planning on going far, but thanks.

[Xiaolung waits while she gets her gear ready, giving her setup a visual check as she does so. Satisfied, he steps into the airlock. As he gets his breather in place, Cardia should feel the light mental pressure of Xiaolung trying to establish a link between them.]

Comms check - tell me if I'm sending too much over the link, OK? [Xiaolung's mental contact carries more than just his directed thoughts - a general sense of his physical well-being and unsettled state of mind pervades the link, and if she concentrates on it, she can faintly see what he sees, a visual field filled with colors she's likely never seen before.]
fallingangel: (You can't tell him he can't do a thing)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-16 02:35 am (UTC)(link)
Compared to the bigger fish we probably seem very friendly.

[She hold her hand out to the nearest one for it to sniff like it's a dog, but it just swims a little ways out of her reach.]

Or they're not sure what to make of us. They don't have a book full of information on us like we do of the fish here.
ghouliday: (dang... that ambience)

[personal profile] ghouliday 2016-02-16 02:47 am (UTC)(link)
[ TRUE TO INCORPOREAL FORM, THIS GHOST COMMENTS ON NOTHING. Especially because they don't get the power of their own Genuine Compliments or why covering one's already-covered face could be dumb. Stubby ghost arms usually can't hide much of theirs! They've tried. ]

oh... being "well met" is nice

i'm meeting you well too if you don't mind... mikleo?


[ All this formal and dapper talk. ]

yeah... you're still working... and they should probably be thawing...
ghouliday: (sorta incorporeal and all.)

[personal profile] ghouliday 2016-02-16 02:50 am (UTC)(link)
gee...

[ They keep meeting nice people? Napstablook, at a loss otherwise, twirls slightly and with just as much sheepish intent. ]

i was accepting my fate and just kinda meditating on it... now, uh, no complaints... except you're still right about the lost thing...
Edited 2016-02-16 02:50 (UTC)
gayfish: (makin' love)

[personal profile] gayfish 2016-02-16 02:50 am (UTC)(link)
Heh, that's right. You haven't done anything wrong… YET!

[Peridot does not appear to like the spear so much, so she draws it back and holds it up straight and non-threatening.]

First question: describe your strengths and weaknesses in as much detail as possible! Bonus points for how they'll affect you underwater!!
ghouliday: (it's called thundersnail)

[personal profile] ghouliday 2016-02-16 02:52 am (UTC)(link)
hi again... sorry, for the disappearing... it just happens sometimes

[ When something is Too Much. To be fair, the bar for it will never be high. But Undyne isn't... feeling that way right now? Not challenging them to anything? They might be doing a little bit okay at this.

Though they do give a sympathetic look after her words. ]


that must be pretty bored...

it is? i hadn't realized... um, we? you mean with stuff like... tunes? giant swords...?
ghouliday: (i didn't want to be rude)

[personal profile] ghouliday 2016-02-16 02:55 am (UTC)(link)
no, the two others who looked exactly like y...

[ Not only guessing at what he'll say but getting stable enough to know what those were and feeling even sillier, they try to shake their ghost head. Then they think better of it and slowly look back at the glass, slumping on him. ]

... nevermind. they're nice, aren't they... i hope they weren't encouraged too much...
logdate: (8)

[personal profile] logdate 2016-02-16 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, that's what I've been told. [ About humans having dreams, that is. Steven attempted to explain it to her after she questioned him about his periodic need for unconsciousness. Personally, she finds the whole concept a bit disturbing, but she's not going to share that. Well, not yet. ]

I'm not precisely an expert on how humans like you think, but maybe it's just the fact that we're surrounded by water.

[ She says that like it's an incredibly obvious answer that anyone could sort out for themselves. ]

Then again, humans are strange.

bagoftigers: (Default)

[personal profile] bagoftigers 2016-02-16 03:00 am (UTC)(link)
You know you're as likely to get eaten sitting around here as trying to get back, don't you?

[Then again, to him, being idle seems foolish. Waiting is something else. Watching prey and knowing that time has to be taken is one thing, but just waiting. That isn't his style.

But he certainly won't tell anyone they can't. To each their own.]
logdate: (14)

[personal profile] logdate 2016-02-16 03:01 am (UTC)(link)
I haven't done anything wrong ever!

[ Aside from becoming a traitor to her home world. And maybe participate in some unsavory shenanigans with regards to Steven and the Crystal Gems, but she's completely innocent. She's the lovable, amazing Peridot!

Oh, wait, Undyne wants her to talk about herself. And at least there's not a sharp stick being pointed at her anymore.
]

My strengths? [ Well, there's certainly a lot more confidence in her voice. ]

Where do I start? I'm incredibly intelligent and my knowledge covers a wide variety of subjects, including mechanics, electronics, computer systems, and standard operating procedures for Kindergartens.

[ Just roll with it. ]

I also don't need to breathe, eat, or deal with other pesky biological functions. Which means I can operate underwater completely unimpeded! [ Well, she'll probably sink. ]
little_lost_dragon: (Default)

[personal profile] little_lost_dragon 2016-02-16 03:10 am (UTC)(link)
I've got decent lines of sight here [a glimpse of Xiaolung's field of view, filled with colors only visible to eyes enhanced to see from the terahertz frequency range up to gamma rays] and I know the terrain. If I get eaten, it at least won't be a surprise. And like I said, I'd hate to waste the boat.
imsorey: (Default)

[personal profile] imsorey 2016-02-16 03:15 am (UTC)(link)
--Got it, thanks.

[He almost misses the turn, caught up in his conversation with Mikleo, but spins himself around quick enough without tripping over his feet. He heads down the last stretch of hallway and finds a bench to settle down on, looking up and out into the ocean with a grin.]

Nothing wrong with including everybody, am I right?
oneandmikleonly: (and time goes quicker.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-16 03:22 am (UTC)(link)
...mm. Just remember to pace yourself.

[The view's pretty arresting, and with everyone up and out hunting fish, they have this particular dome to themselves for now. Mikleo peers out through Sorey's eyes for a minute, then reappears on the bench next to him, in the usual little wave of green light.]
imsorey: (Like I'm alive again)

[personal profile] imsorey 2016-02-16 03:25 am (UTC)(link)
So I take it you don't know the way back either, huh. Bummer. Well, at least we can stick it out together!

[It is getting colder the darker it gets, but it's not so bad with company.]
oneandmikleonly: (and time goes quicker.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-16 03:25 am (UTC)(link)
Of course I don't mind. Come on, then.

[Time to heave this half-frozen fish up and start maneuvering it back towards the base...at least everything is lighter underwater.]
oneandmikleonly: (and time goes quicker.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-16 03:27 am (UTC)(link)
Or if they do, they're not showing any sign of it.

[Yes, he's genuinely willing to entertain the theory that the fish are sentient.]

Perhaps they'll come closer if we keep still?
gayfish: ('cause i know that i'm a gay fish)

1/2

[personal profile] gayfish 2016-02-16 03:35 am (UTC)(link)
Y'know, that's really hard to believe! Even Papyrus has done a few bad things… I think. Although I guess there's no evidence against you yet! Fufufu.

[Anyway, she's listening intently and she nods kind of intensely a couple times as if in encouragement.]

That's pretty good. I had no idea what you were at first, so I guess you're like a robot or something! COOL!!!
gayfish: (now where i belong girl)

2/2

[personal profile] gayfish 2016-02-16 03:36 am (UTC)(link)
Though I KNOW you answered only half the question.

[Is it just her, or does Undyne's grip on her weapon look a bit tighter?]

Do you have anything else [she taps her spear against the floor] to add? [tap.]
logdate: (9)

[personal profile] logdate 2016-02-16 03:54 am (UTC)(link)
I'm not a robot, I'm a Gem-!

[ Peridot is almost too busy correcting Undyne to catch the meaning (and menace) in the second part of her statement. Almost. She pauses and glances up at her with a slightly awkward expression. Does she have to describe her weaknesses? What's the point? Her expression settles into a scowl and she waves one hand dismissively. ]

I suppose if you had to get into potential downsides, my physical stature is not exactly... overwhelming, which might make me vulnerable to physical altercations-

[ There's other stuff, but it's nothing that Peridot is really aware of. She's just not quite self-aware enough (or humble enough) to start talking about emotional frailty or pride. ]
ghouliday: (pretend you beat me...)

[personal profile] ghouliday 2016-02-16 04:06 am (UTC)(link)
oh... right...

[ I'm a ghost and what is weight? If they concentrate hard enough while swimming in their jellifish-like way, though, they can become just tangible enough to help nudge it a little bit. ]
ghouliday: (because i cried the letters into my hand)

[personal profile] ghouliday 2016-02-16 04:10 am (UTC)(link)
i'm sorry...

[ For not knowing the way? For being the one he has to get stuck with? So that a stupid pun can be made without their even knowing? ALL OF THE ABOVE ]

you're a human, right... don't you get cold... should we try anyway?

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