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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


maserannas: (determined | she'll go alone)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-02-24 11:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She's going to put that down as a singularly unpleasant experience, particularly as she had no control over it and hadn't expected it to take as long as it did (despite that time not being so great). Had that all happened without her first interrupting the process, Brett would have had to deal with intense questioning after the fact, if, well, the third party hadn't been there.

Thankfully stalling him out by being concerned for his welfare and having a live Stalker on their collective hands meant that when they were suddenly inside the biome, in the lab, Ellana manages to keep her feet, push aside the sense of nausea, and only stare for a moment or two as the stranded, eleven foot long fish out of water struggled and thrashed against tendrils of barely tangible shadow-smoke-who knows what it is anyway. The water the Stalker had been surrounded with hadn't managed to tag along for the travel process, but once they were all more firm again, it cam crashing down alongside the barrier itself. She was going to have to work on that: she didn't generally try to hold a barrier around elements. It was odd enough to adapt to temporary containment when it was meant as a protective element.

So they're there, water sloshing around their ankles, giant fish thrashing around while Ellana slides toward the largest tank, throwing her left shoulder into moving the massive covering to the side. It's unlocked, and once it starts to shift, she steps back and energizes it into moving backward. With the top off, she turns back to the spectacle of Brett (the yet to be named) and the Stalker: young man and large fish, a tale best told by people not currently present.

She's not looking forward to the headache she's about to get, but it's not like either of them can lift a creature that size into the tank as is. Brett might be able to phase it through part, but without much time to discuss (it's a fish out of water, there's no way that's good), she opts for on the spot pragmatism: slamming one spell into the water with enough force to temporarily energize it and toss the fish up and toward the tank.

... If it makes it in or not is probably going to be dependent on Brett's capabilities.
]

There!
leftinme: ("first fraud; now kidnapping?")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-24 11:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't, but that's beside the point! Just go back to sleep and stop bothering the rest of us.

[Maybe she's just sick—illness tends to cause wonky dreams. Ultimately, though, it's not any of his concern.]
tentaculled: (tenteacles)

[personal profile] tentaculled 2016-02-24 11:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Nurufufu. Sensei is too slippery for that.

[ literally. He still seems a little out of breath, but the crisis(?) has been resolved painlessly, and he didn't even get a drop of water on his skin! He'll call this a success. ]

It may not have enjoyed the process, but directions are directions. We were asked to bring a live Stalker, and bring a live Stalker I did!
leftinme: ("... i don't really care for humans.")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-24 11:57 pm (UTC)(link)
[Brett really would rather prefer better discussion and cooperation—this is why he vastly prefers working with the captain and Iris and not some stranger (let alone a human). Still, he doesn't have much of a choice in the matter: once he realizes what Ellana is doing, he attempts to add to the force via using his mist to throw the creature up as well. For added measure, he keeps part of his mist touching the fish, following it in its trajectory through the air, so that if the fish does risk colliding with the tank instead of properly falling in it, he can phase it through.

Which, as it turns out, is needed. When it looks as if the Stalker is about to hit the edge, it instead passes through. Once it's in the water, rendering Brett's ability unneeded, his shadows withdraw, going back to swirling around him. For a few moments, he watches the fish warily, before:]


Is that all?
maserannas: (ask | who survived?)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-02-25 12:31 am (UTC)(link)
[ They're at least on the same page wishing that the present reality was otherwise, but having been thrust into situations where she's had to work alongside people who outright threatened to kill her if she stepped out of line, while marked by something none of them really understood (or hadn't, back then)... well. Wishes amounted to little. Their slap-dash cooperation took care of the big, fishy problem, and as Ellana stands there in her wetsuit and pulls her breather out of her mouth, she has to look around.

They're in a room that's been drenched and wrecked by the Stalker's thrashing about before they tanked it. Various items are knocked over, in disarray, and water is pooling around their feet (and his shadows, that's much stranger now that she's seeing them with a less pressing target on hand). Turning with Brett still in her peripheral vision, she reaches out, pulling on invisible lines back toward herself. The top of the tank settles back into place, the sloshing water from the Stalker cut down to minimal splashing.
]

Can you see the latching mechanism?

[ For the lid. Not answering the other question right now since the answer to that is no, but I have a funny idea you're going to slip away which would leave the whole of the room to her to take care of setting to rights. Tugging her goggles down and allowing them to rest around her neck, she rests her fingers along her jawbone. ]

I'd like to make sure he stays in there and doesn't throw himself back out to flop around in front of us all over again.

[ Considering further thrashing includes an attempt to charge up and into the aerated top, those worries don't appear to be foundless. ]
Edited 2016-02-25 00:32 (UTC)
leftinme: ("... captain's orders.")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-25 12:43 am (UTC)(link)
[Brett hopes that he won't be the one responsible for cleaning this mess up (though if push comes to shove... well, he's used to work, especially considering how lazy the captain could be). As he similarly pulls down his goggles, he shoots her a glance. While he would, unsurprisingly, like to slip away now, he can in fact see the latching mechanism and understands the logic in dealing with it, so.

A tendril of mist extends from his shadows, curling upwards towards the latch and setting in place without Brett otherwise moving. There.]


...
maserannas: (consider | on a lonely night)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-02-25 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
[ She... snorts, a soft sound, when she sees that. Particularly as it's done in silence. Not much for talking, is he? ]

Thank you.

[ She ends up repeating. Again, better to try and foster positive relationships instead of allowing them to be negative from the start. Been there, worked against that, prefers not to go back to it if she can avoid it. The friendships formed had been worth it, though the setting could have been improved.

You know, with less "doom upon the world" going on. (Was there really any less of it now?)
]

Just leaves us with setting this place to rights again before we head off on our own again.

[ Since they do have to live and work here. ]
leftinme: ("...")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-25 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
[Brett isn't great at fostering positive relationships when they're not with dragons, which may or may not be becoming increasingly evident as he remains silent. As if ignoring her presence, he begins using his shadows to pick up fallen objects and right them once more (not much he can do about the water at their feet; his shadows can't hold onto that). Seeing as how she hasn't said anything he needs to directly reply to, he won't.]
logdate: (4)

[personal profile] logdate 2016-02-25 01:34 am (UTC)(link)
Wait a minute. Peridot squints up at Ellana, as if she's just sprouted a econd head or something, "...why can't you just replace it? How do humans heal, anyway?"

She brushes right past the "elf" qualifier because she's never heard it before, so it's probably not that important. Probably just a weird human signifier. Like how they aren't all "Stevens". She works her jaw for a moment. Well - that does make sense. Peridot blows out a sigh and folds her arms, reluctantly nodding in agreement.

"I suppose you're correct. Maybe seeing the surface would help us better understand what our task entails. But do you really want to go swimming now? Everyone else is in the middle of their sleep cycle."
maserannas: (smile | leaders would be borne of you)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-02-25 01:45 am (UTC)(link)
[ ... Really chatty.

Either way, she likewise joins in with righting what they can, and looking for implements to use to herd the water. She finds a tray over what appears to be a drain. Pried up off the floor, it allows the pooled water to slowly start trickling out.
]

So what should I call you?

[ She asks while she pries up the tray, stuck to the ground through sheer force of happy suction between the water and some air trapped underneath it. It gives with an audible pop. ]
leftinme: ("... captain's orders.")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-25 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
[...]

Is there a reason you need to know my name?

[His tone is curt. It, uh, doesn't take a genius that he's not exactly interested in giving what he considers to be a human his name.]
maserannas: (ask | since you've awakened her again)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-02-25 01:57 am (UTC)(link)
[ This is... going somewhere very, very slowly. Ellana lifts her eyebrows a fraction, setting down the tray she's holding in hand with a gentle clink. The Stalker bashes against the side of its tank to a muffled thud, leading to her tipping her head it's way, eyes flicking toward it in speculation. She hopes that tank holds the creature, but what exactly is Ursula going to do with a live specimen?

... A fillet might be nice?
]

You might say I've grown fond of introductions over the years. [ A pause. ] That, and I'm terrible at nicknames.
maserannas: (smile | leaders would be borne of you)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-02-25 02:06 am (UTC)(link)
Again, the insistence on saying human. Ellana presses her lips together, tempted to frown, but falling into a more neutral expression as she watches Peridot work through her own suggestion. It's logical. Flawed, in many ways, but logical enough to present an option to move forward.

Moving felt more productive than holding still right now. There wasn't anyplace to get to outside of the goals they set for themselves; no other countries, no dry land she was aware of, but being trapped underwater had quickly lost its novelty. Trapped is trapped. She's not overfond of this.

"It's also when we'll be able to see the stars. If we study those, we'll be able to find any better fixed points for navigation purposes, won't we? There's the compass we all have in our knives," she says, thinking that's what it was, "But if we lose those, it'd be good to have other means of navigating where we are. The ah... mind speaking doesn't help so much with the direction problems." She holds out her hand, shrugging. "It's worth a try, isn't it? Maybe we can run some kind of line from the base to the surface, too, and get a buoy up as a marker in the next few days."
maserannas: (surprise | a hundred leaders)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-02-25 02:34 am (UTC)(link)
[ Ah, yes, a talking dog. That doesn't scream "demon" to her in the slightest. Ellana finishes pinning up her left sleeve at the elbow to keep the unused portion out of the way, but hearing the dog speak in a human voice has thrown her for a loop once she turns around to find herself regarding... a canine. She looks up again, down the hall, to the utter lack of anyone else around. Was that voice in her head? No... no, that'd been spoken.

She looks back down at Teddy.
]

I'm sorry, play fish what?

[ It's not too hard to read the way she holds herself, as if ready to leap into action (or in this case, run back to get some distance) should the need manifest. She's tense, and her good arm, the one that doesn't end at the elbow, curls into a loose fist at her side as she lets it drop down. ]

You're a dog. Or you look like a dog. Are you a dog?

[ Or are you a demon? Forgive the narrowing of her eyes and the repetitive questions, Teddy, it's the context she comes out of that leaves her with uncomfortable suspicions.

... Maybe he's a spirit? Of... playful............ness. (One might hope.)
]
leftinme: ("i'll do all i can to assist you.")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-25 02:35 am (UTC)(link)
[Welcome to Bonding With Brett When You're Not a Dragon 101: it's a very lengthy course.

Likewise, he shoots the Stalker a worried glance, his shadows not presently sorting things away flaring up lest he need to subdue the creature, before they relax once more.]


Don't even think about it. [Giving him a nickname, that is.] ... Brett. Brett Graves.
ruffledup: (pic#8958958)

[personal profile] ruffledup 2016-02-25 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
[She shakes her head slowly, frowning.] I don't know. I cannot imagine what would lead someone to have a dream like that. And to then share it with the rest of us.

But... [Hmmm. Maybe they're looking at it the wrong way?] Perhaps we should start by finding who else had this dream. It could tell us more.
logdate: (9)

[personal profile] logdate 2016-02-25 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
"Most of our navigation is underwater," Peridot points out, "Star navigation won't exactly be useful when we're trying to move around down here."

Despite acquiescing to the potential usefulness of a surface trip, Peridot isn't necessarily convinced of the urgency. It can probably wait until they've dealt with more pressing matters. Like, uh, something else. She's not sure what their primary objective is just yet, but she's sure it will be more important than a trip to the surface. Besides, she has other objections. She glances out of the observatory window and frowns.

"Do you even know how deep we are? We don't know how long the trip will take."

Obviously they're not that deep or the pressure would be killing off all the humans. Well, in theory.

"It can probably wait."
maserannas: (chat | somebody new?)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-02-25 02:53 am (UTC)(link)
[ Ellana has never been to formalised education, more of a self studier as well as someone out of a society of (sadly warped over time) oral traditions. Here goes something...!

Such as a half smile and a polite dip of her head his way while she squats to pick up a series of instruments strew across the damp floor. Interesting to note how his shadow-tendril-tentacle-whatsits respond to him and his moods, presuming he was likewise on edge with the Stalker issue.
]

It's nice to meet you, Brett.

[ Does she introduce herself in turn? Not right now. She wonders at what point, if any, he'll ask. Sooner rather than later if her statement about being fond of introductions irritates him when she doesn't immediately give on in turn, or if he decides it doesn't matter. Wouldn't be the first time she's responded to hey, you. ]
ruffledup: (pic#8958967)

it's no problem!

[personal profile] ruffledup 2016-02-25 03:16 am (UTC)(link)
[Curious. Are there no humans where she's from?

Ah, but she'd better not ask just yet.]


I suppose we can be difficult to understand if you are unfamiliar with us. Though I would not say we are quite as strange as this planet.

I do think I will take your advice though. As... appealing as the idea of swimming is... [She shakes her head. Yes, maybe she just needed to hear someone say it.] You are right.
Edited 2016-02-25 03:16 (UTC)
ruffledup: (pic#8935813)

ty!

[personal profile] ruffledup 2016-02-25 03:27 am (UTC)(link)
[Ah.

Josephine stands up a little straight, inclining her head slightly.]


I am sorry for your loss. It seems like you were faced with quite the difficult situation.

May I ask if you succeeded in saving your captain?
thatsruff: (Speak)

[personal profile] thatsruff 2016-02-25 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
[Uncertainty and suspicion were common reactions Teddy got when he started talking, but there was only so much he could train other lifeforms to do without talking. And it was even harder to ask for things without them assuming he wanted food, a ball, or to go to the bathroom.]

Fish Tag. Ursula wants a fish, but they are faster. We could work together.

[It was just lucky for him his collar didn't reflect tone the way a human voice normally did. It was generally a single, even tone as IEGP had seen no reason to modify it for sarcasm or emotional filters. Sometimes that was a benefit. Other times, it was a nuisance.]

I am a dog. [He barked twice for emphasis, the sound loud in their close quarters base.] Teddy. I am a good dog. [For the moment he would keep the tone-lacking sarcasm about pretending a human was giving him his voice from somewhere else to himself.]
leftinme: ("...")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-25 03:59 am (UTC)(link)
[It's nice to meet you, Brett. The sentiment is very much not mutual, and he doubts that it's even sincere on her part to begin with. He hasn't given her a reason to like him; he has no interest in doing so either.]

Tch.

[... Similarly, he doesn't care what her name is, so after glancing at her and making that dismissive sound, he goes back to cleaning up with a disinterested look.]
tentaculled: (tentaconverse)

IM HERE

[personal profile] tentaculled 2016-02-25 04:24 am (UTC)(link)
[ no... nothing at all... he's just a proud human bean. somehow. ]

Hmmmm... Not a half-octopus? I have to say, you look mostly mammalian to me.

[ he is honestly curious now. If they're not tentacle tentacles, then there's no reason for him to be anything other than curious. ]
Edited 2016-02-25 04:24 (UTC)
tentaculled: (tentaclueless)

[personal profile] tentaculled 2016-02-25 04:26 am (UTC)(link)
[ ok that was unexpected. Stopping in his tracks, he straightens up, looking alarmed. ]

Wwwait! Wait wait wait! What are you doing?!
leftinme: ("...")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-25 04:28 am (UTC)(link)
[...]

You wanted me to take you to somewhere with a tank, right? This is the fastest way.

[It also just happens to look suspicious as hell. Oops. (Not that Brett really thinks about this.)]

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