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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


discardia: (Dem hips?)

[personal profile] discardia 2016-02-14 05:13 am (UTC)(link)
[ Nobunaga Oda... should she know that name? Cardia by now has been told to be wary of strangers, but this person did just introduce herself, so maybe it's fine? ]

Oh... then thank you very much, Nobunaga Oda.

[ She still has no idea who that is. ]

... That is, Your Majesty?
ateaist: pixiv id=74573578 (14)

[personal profile] ateaist 2016-02-14 10:38 am (UTC)(link)
[Your Majesty...not an address she's used to, to be sure, and even briefly considers correcting her to something more appropriate. The term King wasn't typically used in her time, in her land, but she's come to understand it's a fair equivalent.

And right there she decides that, instead, she'll simply accept it. It's new! Always good to try something new.
]

Yes, very good! You carry yourself well. Now, won't you introduce yourself?
discardia: (I sure hope your gloves don't burn)

[personal profile] discardia 2016-02-14 07:57 pm (UTC)(link)
My name is Cardia. [ Complete with a little curtsy, as well as she can in this outfit, because she has learned proper manners finally.

And also how to hit a man in the jaw, but that's neither here nor there. ]
ateaist: pixiv id=74573578 (5)

[personal profile] ateaist 2016-02-15 02:08 am (UTC)(link)
[Hey, that's a skill everyone needs to know, in her opinion.]

Very well! Onwards, Cardia; know that in the hands of the King, your safety is guaranteed. Such a comforting thought should allow you to focus entirely on your duties, yes?
discardia: (Dem hips?)

[personal profile] discardia 2016-02-15 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I... yes. I can't say I've ever been protected by a king before.

[ They crash-landed to see the Queen, but that's different. ]
ateaist: pixiv id=74573578 (10)

[personal profile] ateaist 2016-02-17 12:46 am (UTC)(link)
To be frank, I wouldn't quite call it a duty suited for a King, either...but it is what it is. I find myself without a nation to rule, or subjects, so I may as well try something new.

[And she loves new things......maybe a little too much, sometimes.]
discardia: (All proper ladies must shank)

[personal profile] discardia 2016-02-19 09:47 pm (UTC)(link)
... Will your nation be all right without you? Kings and Queens are very important people, aren't they?
ateaist: pixiv id=74573578 (13)

[personal profile] ateaist 2016-02-19 10:08 pm (UTC)(link)
[Likely, even under normal circumstances, only those who submitted to her rule would be all that bothered. Everyone else would see it as an opportunity to take her territories in her absence.

But she neglects to mention that, because there's a more important factor here--
]

Hm? Well, I'd imagine...it's been some 500 years since I've ruled just about anything. Japan has done quite well for itself since my passing, or so I believe.
discardia: Getting kidnapped by phantom thieves and all (This is kind of a first for me)

[personal profile] discardia 2016-02-21 10:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Since your... passing?

You're deceased? [ BUT YOU LOOK INCREDIBLY WELL?? ]
ateaist: pixiv id=74573578 (7)

[personal profile] ateaist 2016-02-21 10:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Surprised, are you? That's right...the woman who stands before you is no mere mortal, but a heroic spirit. A magical being of the highest caliber.

[Kind of like a ghost.]