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fishesoutofwater2016-02-13 02:56 pm
subnauticmods) wrote in fishesoutofwater2016-02-13 02:56 pm
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Test Dive #1
   ≡U.R.S.U.L.A. NAVIGATION |
_
PREMISE & NAVIGATION ✦ RULES ✦ MOD 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?
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?
C
Excellent, welcome to the crew! So, what do you feel up to hunting out there today?
no subject
Oh... thank you.
[A welcome is nice to hear, if nothing else.]
Um, I don't mind anything...! [Except the really dangerous ones.] I'll help however I can.
no subject
Let's see if we can find some Crash plants, then. I'll take point, get them to fire their fish at me, then you collect the plant. Sound good?
[Ideally he'd have his crewmate in this waiting to intercept the fish, but he's not going to bank on that until he can see this one in action.]
no subject
Okay.
[She nods determinedly at that, fists clenching gently.]
I definitely...can do this. [DEFINITELY.] I'm ready. [Probably.]
no subject
[Xiaolung quickly looks over her straps, mask, breather, and knife, nodding once he's satisfied everything she has is in good condition, then steps back, presenting his own gear for inspection. Once that's complete, he'll slip on his mask and put his breather into his mouth before reaching out to establish a telepathic link.]
Comms check. Can you hear me now?
no subject
[Gear check, gear check. She gives it a lot of effort and focus, because the last thing she wants to do is mess up something that's this critical to missions like this, and as soon as that telepathic link is established, she's responding tentatively, mental voice as soft as her actual one.]
I can hear you... can you hear me too?
no subject
Step on in, then, and let's get the show on the road.
no subject
[Obviously, Mai.
There's still something incredibly terrifying about stepping out there, of course. She's not meant for this sort of exploration and deep sea adventuring, but she's going to do her absolute best; the only way to become better is...to practice, right?
Hopefully her practice doesn't get her killed.
Still, she can't help the question that escapes her.]
Um... if you don't mind me asking--how are you so calm?
[It doesn't seem to matter how long she's here; she just can't get used to it.]
no subject
[ Xiaolung closes the airlock, and after making sure Mai has her breather in place, starts it cycling. ]
Is being stuck here my ideal way to be spending time right now? No. But wasting cycles worrying about that doesn't do anything more than burn time I could be using for more immediate concerns, like how to harvest what we need from kamikaze carp without getting exploded.
[ With the airlock now full of water, the outer door opens, and Xiaolung kicks out into the ocean. He checks the surroundings with the practice of ounce used to working in three-dimensional navigation, then turns back towards Mia with a thumbs up gesture.
All clear out here.
no subject
Do her best, and...try so hard to not panic.
She takes a deeper breath than she should, but she remembers to relegate her breathing a moment later, and then she follows him out into the cold and the dark of the ocean. It could be worse. They'll be okay.
She repeats that to herself in her head (it might be audible to him too by accident), and then she remembers to respond.]
... I'm ready.
no subject
By the way, don't think that I'm all zen and stoic in the face of adversity or whatever. I flip out with the best of them, it's just that this particular setup isn't hitting any of my personal panic buttons. [A pause, then he adds,] And when you end up in my line of work, your standard for rational panic tends to shift.
no subject
[The question escapes her immediately, because she can't help it--though she's quick to add:]
Oh, um, I'm sorry if I'm prying. You don't have to answer...!
no subject
I wouldn't have dropped the line if I didn't want you following up on it. I pay the bills as a private investigator/troubleshooter in Noctis-Qianjiao, when other obligations don't pull me elsewhere. [Accompanying this are glimpses of memory, showing a glimpse of the domes and souks of a Martian city, and the odd situations and hazards that come with a career of poking one's nose where some people don't want it to be.]
no subject
A private investigator...? So--you're like a detective?
[She can only really think of anime, movies and stories when she thinks of it that way, which is...both dashing and intense.]
no subject
[Flashes of memory flicker across the mental link - a three-way firefight between 14K triad enforcers, hypercorporate security troops, and Xiaolung and a couple of strange-looking associates ( is that an octopus with a gun?), running for his life in the Titan Quarantine Zone from terrifying-looking masked cyborgs, cycling through the streets of Noctis-Qianjiao as a pissed-off orangutan pursues, freerunning along the rooftops with a nasty-looking knife in one hand...]
The other ten percent keeps life exciting.
no subject
That's... so much... You must be very brave to do something like that.
[And to stick with it, because she'd be gone after the octopus with a gun.]
no subject
It's definitely not a career for everybody. I'm not sure if I'd call it bravery, more like adrenaline addiction. I get bored when life isn't sufficiently interesting.
[He's quiet for a bit as they continue swimming onward, then asks:]
Here's a question for you - what does it mean, to be brave?