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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


sunsetundersea: (03)

[personal profile] sunsetundersea 2016-02-13 10:52 pm (UTC)(link)
"Of course I'm staying! It wouldn't make sense to go out now." Really, Ibtisam would never leave a wingmate, but it's practical too. And better not to think about swimming out in the middle levels of the water by herself.

Anyway, operating the hatch would create a sound that would travel and alert anything particularly close to them. Better to seem like a random chunk of debris. "This was a twelve-hour night cycle, wasn't it?"
octoroom: (pic#10006795)

[personal profile] octoroom 2016-02-13 10:54 pm (UTC)(link)
[In a wordless response, Fukami fans out his tentacles from under his long coat so she can see for herself-- nope. It seems like he has eight tentacles plus his arms (not that you can see his hands within those overly long sleeves) and his legs.

He's pretty handy.

Ha ha ha.]
scatterbrains: (pic#10006051)

[personal profile] scatterbrains 2016-02-13 10:55 pm (UTC)(link)
[oh, she's cute. of course, mary doesn't see anything intimidating about herself, especially not when she's fawning over cute sea creatures. but mai catches her attention.]

Oh! You're right, I guess we'll get caught easily if we don't keep moving. [naturally, she's got an idea. probably?] Do you want to hide together?

[personal profile] alchemicist 2016-02-13 10:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Of course. It's no good if we don't start out at our best, is it?

[ Besides, if there isn't a time limit, taking their time and making sure they're getting the hang of things isn't a bad idea. ]

I'm Victor Frankenstein. Do you have a preference for what we start with on our list?
logdate: (4)

[personal profile] logdate 2016-02-13 10:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, good, she's not going to be stuck here by herself for all eternity. Peridot perches herself on the now useless control panel and lifts her shoulders in a shrug, "I believe so - that's what the data files seemed to indicate. We have a long wait ahead of us..."

She frowns, "I might be able to get this thing started when it gets lighter. I'd rather not go crawling around on the hull right now, though. What kind of idiot gave us equipment that fails as soon as there's some sort of weird energy pulse, anyway? Sounds like typical humans..."
scatterbrains: (pic#10006057)

c;

[personal profile] scatterbrains 2016-02-13 11:00 pm (UTC)(link)
[where did mary come from? who knows. just as she does, she'd walked off when rutee started talking to atwight...

and she returns with two rice balls that she procured from the kitchen. she hands one over to rutee, taking a bite of her own and then asking casually:]


Did you and Atwight come up with a plan already? [she kind of missed rutee's half of this, and it's not like she can hear atwight at all.]
inhumanity: (Helminthotheca echioides)

[personal profile] inhumanity 2016-02-13 11:01 pm (UTC)(link)
[Silly human and her fear of losing an arm to a friendly fish! He blinks at Max in all his red-eyed horror, friendly, placid, peaceful.]

I didn't name Jonathan. Jonathan expressed his name to me through his being! That's the sort of thing that's possible when you're very dear friends.
infusion: (Default)

[personal profile] infusion 2016-02-13 11:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooooooh.

[Iona's head moves up in down in a nod of realization. But then:]

But wouldn't that mean you have 4 extra limbs?? So not quite an octopus??

[Iona please focus on getting back to base]
octoroom: (pic#10006754)

[personal profile] octoroom 2016-02-13 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
[Fukami stares toward her, his expression flat (more flat than before, considering how expressionless this guy seems).]

No. I'm an octopus. That's all.

[Just like that... He could turn into his other much more octopus form but he doesn't do that. It's too small and weak for his liking.]
inhumanity: (allium ampeloprasum)

ENNIS

[personal profile] inhumanity 2016-02-13 11:07 pm (UTC)(link)
[Congratulations on your Baccano! training, Ennis! We hope you're ready for the Christopher level of ruckus, because it is charging full-speed ahead to the lockers by the main entrance. He opens up his, pulling out goggles and a breather. If Ennis does not grab the necessary equipment of hers, she may just get dragged into drowning.]

It may not be wise, but I don't see what that has to do with communing with Nature. After all, if you want Nature to accept you, you'll have to accept it first. Don't worry: even if Nature rejects you, I won't! Let your fear of rejection fade in the arms of my comforting embrace!

Oh, but not that way. I'm not into redheads.
inhumanity: (Prunus serrulata)

[personal profile] inhumanity 2016-02-13 11:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[It smiles like a Stalker. It kills like a Stalker. It probably would make good Stalker fillet—

No, it's actually just a monstrous thing grinning dolphin teeth and cheerful red sclera at Napstablook, languorously floating about in one spot as he watches. On witnessing Napstablook's assumption of the methods of jellyfish, he bursts into underwater applause.]


Bravo! Well done! As life mimics art, so death mimics life! Tell me, when you decide to grow deadly stingers, will you also develop a digestive tract for the slow consumption of your paralysed but living victims?
infusion: (You make me feel like music)

[personal profile] infusion 2016-02-13 11:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Right, right. Sorry, I'm a bit too curious for my own good!

I'm a witch, you see! I should be used to these sort of things, but trust me, I never met an octopus like you before!
Edited 2016-02-13 23:13 (UTC)
meramera: (ʙᴜᴛ ɪғ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄʟᴏsᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴇʏᴇs ᴅᴏᴇs ɪᴛ)

portgas d. ace ( one piece )

[personal profile] meramera 2016-02-13 11:17 pm (UTC)(link)
A1|
[ calling this experience surreal doesn't quite cut it – not when the last time ace actually set foot in a body of water larger than a puddle was almost a whole decade ago. that’s not to say the handicap is gone entirely; the alien ocean still saps away at him through the material of the suit, but the toll it exerts is far less concentrated in intensity, draining him slowly like sand bottlenecked in the narrowest part of an hourglass.

well, fine by him. surely it can’t be that hard, catching a fish or two.

it doesn't take long to observe any instances of exploitable behaviour of URSULA's marks in the shallows near the base, and the pirate glances at his companion, turns a sliver of metal over in one hand so it catches the sunlight streaming down from above. the fish seem to like shiny things, so – ]
Ready to do this?
sunsetundersea: (09)

[personal profile] sunsetundersea 2016-02-13 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Ibtisam sits herself down on the floor. When she's nervous she tends not to notice the signs that she should drink something, but with nothing else going on she decides to swallow from a flask anyway. The air in the submarine is drier than is ideal for her.

"Oh, no. I've spent years on human bases and ships. They're much better designed than this!" At least, Rebel and Imperial humans. But Rebels usually have other species pitching in, and Imperials standardize everything and throw credits at problems. Things have to go quite extravagantly wrong to fail this thoroughly. "Still, I've got to stick up for my people. Cala engineering is the best in the galaxy."
Edited 2016-02-13 23:20 (UTC)
pseudoll: (25。 a search)

yin | darker than black

[personal profile] pseudoll 2016-02-13 11:20 pm (UTC)(link)
b.
[As the sun slowly but surely continues to set, the idea of being stranded out in the middle of the ocean certainly becomes more alarming! ... But not quite as alarming as it probably should be. For Yin, being underwater actually makes things somewhat convenient. Water is all she needs to use her specter, and like this, it's all too easy to see the base, almost as if it was right in front of her. She knows exactly which way to go to get back.

But there are other people stranded out here as well. It's not like it's her mission to help them, but she feels like she shouldn't just leave on her own either. Besides, there's safety in numbers. Even if she knew how to get back, she wouldn't be able to defend herself if something happened.

So turning to the nearest person:]


Follow me. [Says the most monotone voice coming from the most expressionless face. Probably doesn't inspire much confidence... But at least it's something?! Although this telepathy thing is probably going to take some getting used to.]

f.
[Yin isn't all that used to dreams, let alone nightmares. Contractors don't dream. Neither do Dolls. But the fact of the matter is that she has been having dreams of late. This latest one isn't the usual nightmare she has (although whether that's good or bad, she can't say), but it unsettles her all the same.

While she doesn't go out for a full swim, she does leave the base to go the Shallows, simply... Taking a seat there. It's a bit too dark down here to really see the moon, but there's a kind of comfort in knowing it's just there past the surface. She's never been able to explain it, especially now, but the moon has always felt relaxing to her.

... Maybe a little too relaxing. She's not going to fall asleep out here, is she?!]

civilserpent: (8)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-13 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Um, yes. Okay.

[She touches the fish's back and pauses.]

Perhaps it would help to know where you wish this to go.
showybusiness: (BRING OUT THE ROBOFUCKER)

[personal profile] showybusiness 2016-02-13 11:32 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Well, well, welly well. Even when doing something this dull, Mettaton was dazzling and worthy of applause. Winking up at the stranger, he keeps doing his work, then blows a kiss. It looks awkward, given the water is in the way, and he has to be careful the ocean life doesn't take any parts of his long robot body off. ]

Seto Kousuke | Kagerou Project

[personal profile] sorrytohearthat 2016-02-13 11:41 pm (UTC)(link)
f.



[Sometimes you just can't sleep off a bad dream.

Seto Kousuke was roaming the base in the wee hours of the morning, trying to avoid looking up at all moments possible. Though this might seem silly for some folks, he had his reasons. These same reasons had kept him from exploring the waters fully. It was no surprise that he had been suffering from nightmares considering the massive amount of guilt he had begun to carry.

Every time he heard the cries of a sea creature in his dreams, his heart tightened in his chest until it felt like it was going to explode. He had always been in tuned with animals (more literally than you think) so he always had a strong attachment to them. Not only that, he was generally a good person who only wanted to protect those around him. He loved to help others! Animals, his friends, whoever he could help!

But the water scared him.

He was drawn to it, but it was impossible to erase the memory of a certain point within his lifetime. He tried his best to move on, dealing with this situation with a smile and not worrying anyone that happened to be nearby, but even his dreams were haunting him now. He was just tired. But still he told himself "Just don't look up . . . Just don't look up . . ."

And so of course he'll be running into you.]
phishbait: (Default)

Kuroba Kaito | DCMK

[personal profile] phishbait 2016-02-13 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Other.

[There was going to be a tag here, but Kuroba Kaito unfortunately passed away from a heart attack. Ichthyophobia sucks especially when you're actually underwater.

So he's dead now. Sorry guys. I don't know what you expected.]

??? (Hide? and Seek.)

[personal profile] hereyouare 2016-02-13 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[Sometimes you never know when those telepathic voices will pop into your head. It's a bit awkward really.]

Oh hm, this is interesting. Hello there.
logdate: (9)

[personal profile] logdate 2016-02-13 11:59 pm (UTC)(link)
"Really."

Peridot sounds less than believing when it comes to human engineering (or lack thereof). She scowls at Ibtisam and folds her arms.

"I've never heard of your... people. You're a... Cala? Is that what you called yourself?"
civilserpent: (12)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-14 12:01 am (UTC)(link)
[Sasasul would kind of like to dissect him but there's no way to do that privately. It would send entirely the wrong message.

plus nanobots would probably revive him at the exact worst moment.]
octoroom: (pic#10006738)

[personal profile] octoroom 2016-02-14 12:04 am (UTC)(link)
A witch...

[His mental voice is thoughtful, more so than before.]

I'm surprised you haven't. Witches where I'm from have familiars like me or other animals who can take these forms.
upcard: (✿ i think you're a psychopath)

[personal profile] upcard 2016-02-14 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
[That sounds... like a foreign name to her, and she's going to just muse over it for a moment to try to think of how to respond, before she finally just nods quietly.]

My name is Mai... it's very nice to meet you, um-- Victor-san...!

[She'll do her best, here, even if she really has no idea.]

But... some of these sound very dangerous, so can we... maybe start with something less dangerous?

[And thus less scary.]
sunsetundersea: (10)

[personal profile] sunsetundersea 2016-02-14 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
"Of course! If they didn't plan for system failures humans wouldn't be nearly as successful as they are," says a girl from a universe where humanity is basically the dominant species. "Humans are great at adapting technology to hostile environments, even if the results aren't usually pretty."

"Mon Calamari. My homeworld is much like this one." Oh, there are countless differences, starting with the more alkaline ocean, but she's aware that to someone who does not live in the ocean all seas are very similar. "Everything we build just looks and works better. It takes longer, but it's worth it."

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