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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


fallingangel: (Rainbows will dance their way over hills)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-15 04:13 am (UTC)(link)
Is that what they're called?

[Someone hasn't taken a close look at her database yet, beyond the basics.]

I saw a whole bunch of them by some of the archways earlier.
oneandmikleonly: (where i let the water take me.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-15 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
Well, they're the most colourful ones I've seen, so...lead the way?

[He's had a look through the database (it's fascinating), but he doesn't totally have his bearings on underwater locations yet.]
fallingangel: (You think you like fairies until)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-15 05:06 am (UTC)(link)
Follow me! It's just a little ways this way.

[She sets off in a slow swim over to the stone archways. It's plain to see that she's still getting used to swimming with all of the equipment, but she makes it over to the arches without destroying any ocean flora or fauna. And sure enough there are rabbitrays half hidden around the area.]

They were all playing earlier, and that's how I noticed them.
oneandmikleonly: (oh; poor Atlas.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-15 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
[He'll settle down next to one of the archways, kicking up another slow cloud of sand for Colette to place him.]

Strange little things...I wonder why they don't just swim away. Maybe we just don't register as dangerous to them?
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.
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?
fallingangel: (Shining bright)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-16 04:26 am (UTC)(link)
So they'll just swim right by us and we can pick them up?

[She seems to like the idea because she nods and touches down on the ocean floor, a little puff of sand swirling at her feet.]

Got it! I won't move a muscle.

[The only problem being that as soon as she stops moving, she starts to float up a little.]
oneandmikleonly: (don't forget me.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-16 04:53 am (UTC)(link)
[He notices, but doesn't quite want to mess with the water around her, since that seems like it would keep the fish from coming near them altogether, so. . .floating it is.

For both of them, actually. Darn you, fluid physics!]

...I don't think I thought this through all the way.
fallingangel: (Accidentally killed a unicorn)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-16 05:20 am (UTC)(link)
[She can't help but laugh as they both float awkwardly around, startling some of the nearby fish.]

But it's kind of fun. Maybe they'll join us!
oneandmikleonly: (where i let the water take me.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-16 06:53 am (UTC)(link)
Maybe...

[This definitely isn't going to net them any bait fish for at least a little while -- but he can't help feeling a little gratified when the first rabbitray does venture out to investigate their weird floatiness.]
fallingangel: (Just settled into a glass half empty)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-17 01:25 am (UTC)(link)
[She gives the little rabbitray a wave in greeting, slowly spinning upside down with the movement.]

We could lure them out with food too. Since that's what we're trying to do, why not get bait for the bait?
oneandmikleonly: (and time goes quicker.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-17 03:38 am (UTC)(link)
[He's keeping an eye on her to make sure she doesn't drift off too far...]

Do you know what they eat?
fallingangel: (Because yolo)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-17 04:52 am (UTC)(link)
[She spins herself right-side up again and looks around the area; she obviously doesn't know the answer to his question, but that doesn't mean she can't find it.]

Some kind of seaweed, maybe?
oneandmikleonly: (where i let the water take me.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-17 05:08 am (UTC)(link)
Hopefully it's that and not even smaller fish, or we'll be in a bit of trouble.
fallingangel: (Unicorns will exist)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-17 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
We'd be catching smaller and smaller and smaller fish all day!

[It sounds both thrilling and daunting. Using the smallest fish possible to work their way up the food chain to the biggest one!!]
oneandmikleonly: (you've been holding up.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-17 05:59 am (UTC)(link)
I feel like we started working backwards at some point...

[stills in the water as a rabbitray pops out to investigate again, swimming around Colette's flipper]

Don't look now, but I think you made a friend.
fallingangel: (The universe is on my side)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-18 03:13 am (UTC)(link)
[She beams as she catches sight of it, keeping extra still as it swims around her.]

They did want to have fun after all!
oneandmikleonly: (where i let the water take me.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-18 03:51 am (UTC)(link)
[His muffled laugh bleeds through the telepathic channel. It is a charming sight.]

Think you can try talking to this one?
fallingangel: (The Authoritiative We)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-19 02:47 am (UTC)(link)
Yes! This one seems much friendlier than the big one.

[She moves her flipper ever so slightly, swirling it around to give the rabbitray a little push of water to play around in as she directs the telepathy at it.]

Little Mr. Rabbitray, can you hear us? Would you like to play a game?

[It doesn't respond back with telepathy at all, but it continues to play around her flippers as she kicks them. Possible success??]
oneandmikleonly: (where i let the water take me.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-19 02:49 am (UTC)(link)
[He'll direct his own open channel at the rabbitray -- a simple hello? -- and hold the connection until he's satisfied he won't get a response. It's interesting how close it's willing to come to people, though.]

Still no attempt to communicate back, but it seems like it'll stick around unless you try to grab it.
fallingangel: (Regal's manly hands saved the day)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-19 04:18 am (UTC)(link)
[Experimentally, she reaches out an arm towards it and watches it dart away from the hand, only to swim back around her flippers.]

I guess it wouldn't like playing tag if it doesn't want to be caught. I wouldn't want to be bait either, if I was a fish. But just playing like this seems okay.
oneandmikleonly: (oh; poor Atlas.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-19 04:32 am (UTC)(link)
[There's the slightest huff of laughter through their mental connection -- it looks like another of the rabbitrays has found Mikleo's quasi-invisible flippers too, from the way it's swimming in small tight circles near the archway he's at.]

Wonder how well they remember people...
fallingangel: (You think you like fairies until)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-19 05:55 am (UTC)(link)
[Swimming a little closer to him and coaxing her rabbitray along with her so that the rabbitrays can play with each other!!]

If they have a sense of smell, or can see colors, they might tell people apart that way. They're willing to play with us, so they must have a good memory, don't you think? They have to remember who's the most fun to play with.
oneandmikleonly: (you've been holding up.)

[personal profile] oneandmikleonly 2016-02-19 06:03 pm (UTC)(link)
It's hard to say without coming back here a couple more times, maybe having a test group. We've only met them the once -- oh, hello.

[He backpedals a little in the water so she doesn't wind up accidentally crashing into him; the rabbitrays startle off briefly, but then flutter back around them.]
fallingangel: (A laugh befitting the leader of Cruxis)

[personal profile] fallingangel 2016-02-20 05:31 am (UTC)(link)
[When she's satisfied with how close they are she stops and goes back to awkwardly floating around, content to let the rabbitrays play. Has she forgotten that they were trying to catch them? Maybe. It could be a clever trick.]

I bet they'll remember. They seem pretty smart. Like dogs, but ones that swim underwater.

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