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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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."

"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."

But does it have to be?

"You have been outside during the daylight, haven't you? I can't image we'd be seeing light if we were too far down." More to a point, they're dealing in three dimensions of movement. It's nothing like flying, and all too much like drowning, and in fact, she's generally not pleased with this situation. Dealing with having her own world foundations shaken up was enough. She has to admit part of her simply doesn't want to deal with building a completely different set of foundations here, but how will any of them do completely unmoored?

Not to mention so alien to each other.

"One of the best ways to learn is through doing. I'm fond of that school of thought myself. How long will it take? How deep are we? Why don't we all simply float to the surface anyway?" She pauses, looking to Peridot. "How well can you see in the dark?"

OK, maybe they're not that far down after all. Peridot grumps. She's still not totally enamored of a night-time trip up to the surface. She'd much rather stay here and catalog her own thoughts and get prepared for tomorrow's excursions. She is not someone who appreciates frivolous pursuits. You know, unless it's singing or talking about how perfect Percy and Pierre are for each other. In response to Ellana's question she simply turns on her 'gem-light' and lets it illuminate the room for a moment before she switches it off.

"I'm reasonably prepared for low-light environments, if that's what you want to know."

She's small, green, and strange in appearance, but Ellana was trying to be forgiving of all these things. After all, she was living underwater and that was somehow even working out, she was nowhere she recognised as home, and the resident disembodied voice that spoke to all of them was called Ursula and apparently that was all fine and well enough. She was standing in a room made of windows that looked out into improbable views of the water around her, and flashes of light were not stars nor fires, but instead animals moving through their three dimensional space.

And Peridot, who has previously asked odd questions and been both argumentative and also logical, in her ways, has now activated a light from her forehead. Ellana lifts her arm to shield her eyes, taking a step back on reflex. She didn't want to be night blinded just like that. The odd, ethereal music that was fed into this area (where from she has no idea, she has yet to find who is playing the instruments that produce all of this) only made is passingly more surreal. Mages can summon fire, both in classic form or in veilfire form depending, but this was... different. Lowering her arm again with the light having faded, she furrows her brow, regarding Peridot with as much of a neutral expression as she can summon up at the moment.

"I... see. What did you just do?"

As far as Peridot is concerned, Ellana is the strange one. Even as far as humans go - she's got pointy ears, after all, and no other humans have those. She stares up at Ellana through the dim light and her expression turns a bit quizzical. What was that? Hasn't Ellana ever seen a light before? It's nothing special - it's standard for most gems, in fact. She cocks her head to one side, expression a touch confused (although her tone still manages to be condescending).

"Uh, I turned on a light? It's just being generated by my gem, that's all," Peridot arches a brow, "You know what a light is, don't you? It's exceedingly simple. It's basically the same method that allows me to generate my solid form - except without the solidity, of course. It's just visible light-waves, without any of the tactile interface."

"Generated by your... gem." She knows she's parroting back the things Peridot is saying, but it's in an effort to understand. Understand what? She knows about focal points and things of that nature, and generating light is not something that should, in essence, be that startling, but the nature of it all was unfamiliar. She's curious, wary because a certain wariness is necessary when facing the unknown, but reminds herself not to assume she understands what's going on.

Which means asking questions, observing, listening. All of that? Means dealing with the nonsense that has meaning to Peridot, and precious little to her.

"What do you mean when you say you generate your solid form? Are you usually intangible? What exactly are you, Peridot?" Spirit? A slight turn to that coin, and demon? Something new and different? She has to accept that possibility when she is where she is now, and not while standing in the Fade.

"Was I unclear-?" Peridot starts to respond. Then she just boggles. This person really has no idea what a gem is or what it means or really anything that Peridot is talking about. She blinks and then tries to say so many things at once.

"What am I?" Peridot laughs, "I'm a gem!"

She gestures at her gem, sounding incredibly smug, as only Peridot really can, "My body is just a solid, holographic projection that allows me to interface effectively with the rest of the world. The gem is the important part - if my 'body' is damaged, I can just regenerate!"

She listens less to the words used and more to what they're framing overall. Holographic is meaningless, but projection? She understands, both from what one projects on another and the image one projects that they want believed. Something certain individuals in her acquaintance are more skilled with than others, to different extents. Peridot doesn't have a solid body. She invents one for herself. Her gem defines her: she is a gem. Alien isn't the word that comes to mind, but some different kind of spirit, something encased and located within the confines of a stone. Golem? No, though she can parse some similarities from what little she knows about golems. Spirit is almost more likely... but to manifest a form like that, to have it be a willful projection? In terms of what she knows, it sounds more like manipulating the Fade through an act of willpower. Not so dissimilar to Cole, Compassion, willing himself into being, the 'better,' the 'wished for' version of the man who'd died in the darkness.

She's not sure how morbid that thought is or isn't. Mostly she finds herself missing Cole.

"Then the most real part of you is your gem, you might say, and the rest is whatever you decide to project of yourself?" Technology isn't separate from magic in her mind, for all she knows technology that does operate without the assistance of magic. Peridot is sounding like a complex magical event, a creature self possessed of her own will and... huh. It's fascinating. A little unsettling, yes, but it starts to make more sense why she kept insistently asking why Ellana and humans didn't just heal themselves back to wholeness.

That's just the way Peridot is. She goes on talking and assumes that the people she talks to understand her. After all, Peridot understands, and that's the important part. Isn't it? If other people don't, that's their own fault, their own problem, she doesn't have time to explain everything (although she tends to, because it makes her feel smarter). Ellana's understanding isn't that far from the truth, but it's still a little strange to hear that kind of interpretation. Peridot shrugs. She wishes she had something to stand on, because talking up at someone always feels a little weird, especially without her limb enhancers.

"Sort of. This is my default appearance and I can modify it slightly if I choose, but for the most part, I'm going to look very similar to... this."

She gestures at herself.

"All gems are capable of shapeshifting, but attempting to hold a shape outside of your default for too long is stressful and usually just a waste of energy. So is shapeshifting in general, actually..."

She'd have to consult with Morrigan (and for all she knows, of which she wishes she knew substantially more, Solas) on if the same holds true with shapeshifting on her world. As it stands, she blinks down at Peridot, nods her head once, and says, simply, "I see."

She sees enough, and not even closer to the whole picture, but enough to understand what Peridot is talking about. "For the record, that's not something most humans or elves are capable of doing." Talking about the few exceptions didn't seem like it would be helpful, considering their circumstances. "Neither do the dwarves or the qunari, as far as I'm aware. Not that I haven't been wrong before."

She has, more than she likes, but admitting that and moving forward and living with her mistakes, striving to do better? It was all part of it as well.

"...uh, what are elves?" Peridot peers at Ellana curiouslsy. She keeps hearing that word and she has no idea what it indicates, aside from a possible sub-grouping of humans.

"And qunari and dwarves. Are they common on Earth?" Steven had never indicated their presence, but to be fair, he might have simply forgotten to mention them. Maybe they weren't important. If her new "friend" was going to keep talking about them, she probably had to learn, though.

She opens her mouth, trailing off in surprise. "..." What is she really supposed to say to that? She has to admit, it's only the very young who can ask these things an have no sense of stories about what any of the major players on Thedas and surrounding regions are like; one might not see a dwarf, or a qunari, or even a human all that often, but they all knew what they were told about them all.

How to explain these things?

"Elves are a... race of people on Thedas. I'm not sure what you mean by Earth. I don't know of any region with that name. Dwarves and the qunari are also races you'd find in Thedas, if not so commonly as humans. Elves tend to be built like me. If nothing else, our ears tend to give us away."

She gestures, faintly outlining the sharp point of her ear. There were so many details that defined them culturally, in their fractured, seeking ways, but for someone who had no concept of them in the first place, would that even register? It's patently strange to have to explain what an elf is for practical reasons, not even philosophical ones. "The rest probably aren't relevant. If that changes, I'd be glad to discuss them with you." For now, she feels like it will make even less sense to a 'gem' who didn't even understand how 'humans' healed.

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Test Dive #1

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