subnauticmods: (Default)
subnauticmods ([personal profile] subnauticmods) wrote in [community profile] fishesoutofwater2016-02-13 02:56 pm
Entry tags:

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 2016-02-15 05:39 am (UTC)(link)
Ibtisam has a rebreather herself, but only really needs it when working hard. This world isn't home, but it's close enough to survive on. Mon Calamari and Quarren would colonize it readily if not for the disruptive pulses. Instead she makes sure a hank of light waterproof rope is still coiled at her belt. It might be that at some point she'll have to tie herself to him.

"Yessir." She has to stand on Wedge's flippers to fit in the airlock. They're both small people, but it's really only designed for one person at a time. This isn't comfortable. The inner door seals, and after a moment the pressure in the tiny chamber changes and water starts to fill it. It's still tropical, but the water now is cool enough to need a moment to get used to the temperature.
yubyubcommander: (Default)

[personal profile] yubyubcommander 2016-02-16 05:30 pm (UTC)(link)
"I feel like we're both trying to fit into a snubfighter cockpit," Wedge mutters as the water begins to fill the airlock. Wedge holds his own rebreather loosely in one hand as cool ocean water spills in around his feet and begins to creep up his calves. He shivers, happy for the wetsuit that keeps him from getting cold, even in the chillier night time waters. As the water begins to reach his chest, he gives a last smile to the Mon Calamari.

"Good luck." He pops the rebreather into place, checks his goggles, then ducks his head into the rising water, the better to get used to the temperature. A moment later, the status light over the door clicks over to green and he shoves the outer hatch open, spilling the pair of them into open water. He pauses for a moment, looking towards Ibtisam for guidance on which way to go next.
sunsetundersea: (01)

[personal profile] sunsetundersea 2016-02-17 07:13 am (UTC)(link)
She curves the edges of her own mouth up in what she hopes is an encouraging way and as the water rises exhales most of the air from her lungs. It's easier to swim below the surface if she's less buoyant.

This ocean doesn't taste of home. No one who couldn't breathe water would really be able to appreciate the difference. Still, she can work the muscles that went unused in most Rebel space to let it roll down her throat and pump it through her gills, out through the openings in her sides. It feels strange, a little uncomfortable, but it will pass. Ibtisam reorients herself underwater, the fins on her lower legs flaring and fluttering.

Out here it's brighter than inside the blacked-out sub. Much of the life out here glows, whether or not it's stationary. Swimmers alone or in schools curve and dart around at some distance. Faded diffuse glows are spaced oddly in the depths below, and there is a faint, ever-moving shimmer in the water's surface above. It is dark, but lively about it.

"I hope we'll be able to salvage the sub," she transmits. A lingering fear that someone could listen in aside, she likes the 'telepathy'. It's clear in a way Rebel comm systems aren't. Like those there is no sense about where other speakers are, which she knows throws some people.
yubyubcommander: (Default)

[personal profile] yubyubcommander 2016-02-17 07:38 am (UTC)(link)
Wedge can't taste the ocean the same way, no. And he has nothing to compare it to except his experience floating in the void of space. Still, there's more life here than there is floating in the blackness. There's the glow of the swimming creatures and the movement of the schools of fish. That's a bit reassuring but he still touches the handle of the survival knife strapped to his hip. He knows that even if it provides some mental comfort, it's not likely to help him fend off anything large enough to see him as dinner.

"I don't see why we couldn't. I just hope the tides don't take it." Wedge is used to the impersonal feel of a comm system, but the odd way of 'speaking' via telepathy is still new to him and it's taking some adjusting. He gives a kick of his feet, a few bubbles drifting from his rebreather as he floats a little higher in the water.

"Which way are we going?"
sunsetundersea: (10)

[personal profile] sunsetundersea 2016-02-17 08:04 am (UTC)(link)
She does wish they had reliable blasters. Ibtisam has a really nice rifle at the base in a locker, but it's not rated for underwater use.

The sub, Ibtisam knows, could drift away or sink before anyone can come back. Especially if its power never comes back on and it doesn't give any signal about where it is. But that's out of their hands. She won't worry.

Ibtisam's huge eyes give her an advantage here. The world is brighter and clearer, and her view is broad. "About to your six. Try and sink a little, Captain, you'll get too close to the surface." She eases from more or less upright to a proper swimming posture and starts to scull gently, only a few tiny bubbles tickling up from her gill pores.
yubyubcommander: (Default)

[personal profile] yubyubcommander 2016-02-28 05:30 am (UTC)(link)
Wedge simply nods and tries to drop himself a little lower in the water, matching Ibtisam's 'altitude.' He hovers for a moment, then sets off in her wake, lazily kicking his finned feet to propel himself through the water. It's different than zero-gee in that, at least. You can actually move without thrusters. A thin trail of bubbles drifts after him, dripping free of his rebreather as he goes.

"Hopefully we don't look like dinner to anyone."
sunsetundersea: (Default)

[personal profile] sunsetundersea 2016-02-28 06:23 am (UTC)(link)
Moving underwater and moving in null gravity are similar. The impulse to swim is there in either case. Still, there is pressure and drag in the water, and perception of the currents.

Better not to race, to move unhurriedly. The base is a good distance away and sharp panicking movements are hard for many predators to resist.

"Try not to worry! Just keep an eye out. You look down, I'll cover the sides." Humans have eyes very like Quarren, better for scanning the deeps while swimming, while the Cala's eyes are far larger and more widely set.