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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


civilserpent: (15)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-13 09:17 pm (UTC)(link)
[Ah, she's Japanese. Sasasul is a bit relieved. People from certain other countries strongly tend to be more hostile towards Antarcticans.]

Please feel free to call me Suu-san if that would make it easier.

[And another bow.] I would be happy to assist, Mai-san. Would you prefer to take the tail?
upcard: (✿ tee hee get out of my face)

[personal profile] upcard 2016-02-13 09:38 pm (UTC)(link)
[Somehow, the fact that she's a giant snake who also understands honorifics works to...calm Mai down even more. That makes her feel better, if only because at least there's something familiar amongst all of the unfamiliar.

Instead, she stands, brushing herself off (not that it does a lot, with fishy slime all over her dress).]


R-right...! I'll do my best, so...please count on me.

[She's a frail, delicate thing, but she'll at least really do her best in grabbing that stalker tail, holding onto it with everything she's got.]
civilserpent: (10)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-13 09:43 pm (UTC)(link)
It should be simpler with two people.

[Sasasul turns her back on Mai - her neck and head are curled into a shape like a question mark, while her tail extends down and curves back up above the floor in an S - and takes hold of the fish behind the head, crouching there. She's slight herself, but confident that she can manage this.]

On five, I think. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

[The stalker takes her standing as a cue to thrash wildly.]
upcard: (✿ can we talk this over first)

[personal profile] upcard 2016-02-13 10:03 pm (UTC)(link)
[As soon as she says "one", Mai grabs the tail and lifts with all of her strength.

Unfortunately, that's also when the stalker starts to thrash wildly, and Mai never had a single chance--the force of it not only wriggles the fish out of her grasp, but throws Mai to the ground as well with a startled--]


Oh...!

[Ow. Shit.]
civilserpent: (14)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-13 10:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah!

[Sasasul can't quite carry the stalker on her own, not with it vigorously resisting. Despite her best efforts she sags and has to put it down.]

Are you well?
upcard: (✿ SIGHS. SIGHS FOREVER.)

[personal profile] upcard 2016-02-13 10:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I... I'm so sorry!

[She's a bit bruised and banged up, but mostly she feels terrible that she let Sasasul down.]

Please, um... please let me try again...
civilserpent: (8)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-13 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Um, yes. Okay.

[She touches the fish's back and pauses.]

Perhaps it would help to know where you wish this to go.
upcard: (✿ sane people don't carry scissors)

[personal profile] upcard 2016-02-14 12:10 am (UTC)(link)
[.... Ah.

Right.

Where this is supposed to go.

Um.]


I...

[She has no idea.]

I...don't know... someone--um, someone gave it to me and said that it needed to go somewhere, b-but... I'm not sure where it was...

... I'm sorry.
civilserpent: (12)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-14 02:03 am (UTC)(link)
They were not very helpful then. Hmm.

[Sasasul tries to wipe fish slime off her hands. On the floor, the stalker has lint and stuff sticking to it. It's still alive, but starting to look less hale after this long out of the water.]

Surely if it were meant for food or dissection it would have already been killed. It is easier and less cruel to terminate it before bringing it inside.

Therefore perhaps it is destined for one of the aquaria.
upcard: (✿ i think you're a psychopath)

[personal profile] upcard 2016-02-14 05:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[Thank goodness someone is sensible here.

That helps.]


Oh... oh, yes, that makes sense.

[She brightens a little at a path for them to take, and she takes a deep breath.]

Right... can we try again?
civilserpent: (9)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-14 09:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, we shall. I know of one that would be suitable.

If you please, on five again.

[This time while the stalker stirs it doesn't seem to have the energy to thrash. Sasasul steers through some corridors, her forked tongue flicking a few times.]
upcard: (✿ 30% completion that's bullshit)

[personal profile] upcard 2016-02-15 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
R-right!

[And, on five again, she lifts the tail as best she can. Without the flailing of the creature, she's at least able to keep her grip, though her arms tremble under the weight.

But she's trying as best she can, and eventually, they do make it where it's supposed to be left.

Which is a relief.]
civilserpent: (8)

[personal profile] civilserpent 2016-02-15 05:58 am (UTC)(link)
[It takes some staggering by the end, but they manage to shove the stalker into an airlock that seals, fills up with water, and opens to let it into a sizeable aquarium. It squiggles around, jaws snapping, the hairs and lint it picked up on the floor floating away.

Sasasul tries to wipe off more fish slime, with little success.]


It is done.
upcard: (Default)

[personal profile] upcard 2016-02-15 05:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[She feels disgusting, covered in fish as she is, but... but they did it. They were successful. And even if Mai's exhausted even from just that amount of physical exertion, she's still elated.

So immediately she turns to Sasasul, smiling brightly and bowing properly at the waist.]


Thank you very much for your assistance...! I... I couldn't have done this by myself. So I really appreciate it.