fishesoutofwater | Test Dive #1

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test dive

Test Dive #1

PREMISE & NAVIGATION ✦ RULES ✦ MOD CONTACT
TAKEN ✦ RESERVES ✦ APPLICATIONS ✦ HIATUS & DROPS
FAQ ✦ BASE ✦ BIOMES ✦ URSULA ✦ URSULA CONTACT

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

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[Heading for the nearest observation room without pause, half smiling at the mental image of Mikleo trying to avoid running into people who can't see him in narrow corridors.]

Sounds exhausting. How many people did you startle?

...A lot more than I expected, actually. Some of them clearly aren't human, so that wasn't a big surprise, but quite a few humans here have resonance of some sort too. And even the ones who don't can hear me in their heads, if I use the telepathy URSULA gave us.

[Which isn't the telepathy he's using right now, incidentally; this is pure pact headspeak. Same function, but still more familiar and comfortable.]

Wow, really? I wonder how that many of them have resonance without having come into contact with any seraphim. Most people here don't seem to recognize the word, but maybe they just have a different name they use.

[It seems unlikely to him even as he says it, but it is worth investigating if it's something that can be applied back home too. Alternatively, finding a way to transport URSULA's telepathy back home would be a challenge, but if people could at least hear seraphim it would be a step in the right direction.]

They don't really recognize the term 'resonance' either, so different terminology is a possibility. I haven't inquired closely enough to get a clear picture yet, though. It seems like a bad time to push it, with everyone still settling in.

[And, as though picking up on that thought, his tone more positive:]

This telepathy seems like a big step towards one dream of ours, though. If there's a way to bring it back to Glenwood, that is.

[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.]

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.

--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?

...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.]

[He only steals a brief glance at Mikleo, a sheepish grin as his only reassurance that he'll do his best not to take on too much, before his attention is diverted by a few airsacks drifting above them.]

I haven't gotten ahead of myself yet, have I?

I'll let you know if you do.

[He darts Sorey a return smile, small and sidelong, before leaning back against the glass wall, a little more relaxed now.]

I knew I could count on you.

[Sorey settles too, content to watch the fish for a few minutes. But it's only a few minutes before he digs out a notebook to jot down notable swimming patterns and anything else that catches his eye. Since they're in an observation room, he might as well observe.]

[Mikleo notes this, and glances at the pages with interest every once in a while. His own attention keeps wandering back a little closer than the fish, though -- to the structure of the glass that's keeping the ocean outside.

He doesn't say anything yet -- the quiet's nice -- but he's half watching the ocean, and half thinking about the Spectral Cloak, and if he could hold it up longer under the water. A moving observation dome the fish can't detect might lead to some interesting discoveries...]

[He opens his mouth to say something after a little while--he's fine with the quiet, too, but he's so used to there being a constant stream of ambient noise that he automatically reaches to fill the space. But he catches the look on Mikleo's face and stops himself, not wanting to break his train of thought. Instead he jots down a few more notes on a cluster of floaters before following Mikleo's line of sight in towards the glass.]

[The problem really is the water pressure and his own stamina, though. But maybe if the entire dome wasn't made of water, or had some kind of physical support...perhaps not glass, but mesh...? But wouldn't that be too heavy anyway?

He shakes his head when he can't chase the thought any further in a useful direction; Sorey sees his expression visibly clear.]

[He can more or less tell what Mikleo's contemplating in that look and he closes his notebook, keeping his thumb stuck in it to mark the page.]

Penny for your thoughts?

[He looks sidelong at Sorey instead, only a little bit abstracted now.]

It'd be nice to be able to cloak us on the ocean floor, especially once we start heading into the kelp forests, or if something more dangerous than the Stalkers shows up. But if I'm not able to keep it up long-term on land, the same goes for deep underwater.

Edited 2016-02-17 05:24 (UTC)

You think? We won't know until we test it out. There might be a way to extend how long it lasts.

[He's certainly willing to try, given how useful it would be.]

Maybe. Let's do a few experiments when we head out again later. Though, I'm not trying it on a person until I'm sure.

[He's leaning over towards Sorey's notebook now, interest caught again.]

You got some notes on them down? Let me see.

Huh? Sure thing. It's not much yet, though.

[He flips the book back open and offers it over. It's mostly basic notes and hypothesis's that boil down to: floaters seem to move in packs, and gather quickly if they have a large amount of food--they may have a way of alerting one another when they have a large food source; airsacks are oddly plentiful despite not being very fast, so it's possible they lay a large number of eggs in order to keep the populace up; and rabbitrays look like they would be easy to train, given how curious and playful they are.]

[Hmmm. Those all seem valid. Mikleo looks them over with a little nod, and taps the little block of notes on the floaters.]

Maybe some kind of sonar?

They don't have any appendages that would be particularly useful for communication, so that's certainly one idea. Or they could be releasing a variety of chemical compounds that the other floaters can pick up on.

That's a likely possibility too. They're pretty simple-looking creatures.

[He drums his fingers on the bench, frowning in thought, but for a moment, despite the oppressive press of the ocean all around, he feels almost light. There's so much to research, so much to see . . . it'll be a problem if they're stuck here indefinitely, but Iniidae certainly holds plenty of wonders for them to see.]

Who knows, we might be catching those next to find out.

[Resting his palms flat on the bench and looking back out at the ocean, focusing on the view for a few moments instead of on research.]

It's a nice change of pace, isn't it? We've never gotten to see much of the ocean before. Though, maybe this is too much ocean, but there's a lot to explore.

At least no one's making fun of us for not knowing what crabs are, this time.

[Not that there have been any crabs in the shallows -- or any wildlife that's an exact match to the little they saw in Glenwood's waters. Mikleo leans back, folding his arms loosely.]

Or anything else...it's all new. There could be anything out there...even some lost civilization, maybe. Underwater ruins...

Ruins?

[It's like Mikleo said the magic words!! Sorey perks up at the mere mention, enthusiasm spilling out of every pore. The crab incident has been forgotten in favor of underwater ruins.]

That would stand to reason, wouldn't it? If tides have changed at all within the last several hundred years, which is likely, then where we are right now could have once been dry land! Or the people on this planet could have thrived underwater--maybe we'll even find a clue as to how they managed it if some of their equipment was left behind.

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oneandmikleonly - 2016-02-20 23:53 (UTC) - Expand

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