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subnauticmods ([personal profile] subnauticmods) wrote in [community profile] fishesoutofwater2016-04-14 11:53 pm
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TEST DIVE #2








≡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!

A: There’s a Storm on the Horizon
A brainstorm. On advice about the ingenuity of multi person parties, and from admitted lack of understanding of many needs of organics, URSULA has selected you and a partner (or partners) to go to one of the observatories with food, beds, and recording devices to have a jam session for ideas about missions.

You are not to leave the room until you have some good ones. So get cracking! Start suggesting to one another what the base needs to do.

Or get horribly, horribly sidetracked and possibly a little crazy at being locked up together with the ocean staring at you. Judging.

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: Almost, but not quite, Entirely Unlike Tea
The droids, URSULA promises, will do their best to make anything you want. Go on! Ask them anything! She’s excited. This seems like a great way to test out their capacities.

Of course, you need to be very careful what you wish for. Maybe you ask for Hamlet by William Shakespeare, and they do their best but only know so much, giving you a book with some… creative changes. Maybe you ask for a puzzle box, but you weren’t specific enough and things went awry.

Maybe you made the mistake of asking for tea..

No matter what, you were given something that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what you asked for. Now what do you do with it?

E: CREATURE FEATURES (possible body horror)
As more data is collected on the creatures of the deep, DNA can also be gathered to allow URSULA to research how to integrate it into her crew members in useful and hopefully unintrusive ways, unless of course permission is given first for more obvious or exhausting additions.

Well, that's the idea, anyway.

Unfortunately, something malfunctioned while URSULA was researching. Her incomplete serum was injected into you through your devices while you slept (or maybe you were knocked unconscious by the sudden change to your body). Now maybe you have the temperament of a Stalker or the thirst of a Bleeder or Gasopod pods on your back that trigger when you're startled. How this genetic malfunction works and what it is can be up to you but while URSULA assures you it's only temporary, you're stuck like this for now.

Have fun?

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


chataclysmic: (pic#10019360)

[personal profile] chataclysmic 2016-04-16 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
[Bringing this up may just have been a mistake, and Adrien is only realizing this in retrospect.]

[But then again, there's... An opportunity.]


It probably gives you deadly good-looks. [Yes. Puns. Puns are his comfort zone.]
chataclysmic: (0111)

[personal profile] chataclysmic 2016-04-16 08:09 pm (UTC)(link)
[The outstretched hand settles on a popped hip (always modeling, even unconsciously) and he shakes his head with a smile.]

Are you kidding? I model, that doesn't mean I know anything about decorating. I can probably look at an outfit and tell you if it'd do well on a runway, and I can probably tell someone's shoe and dress size just by looking at them, but I don't know anything about how fabric turns into clothes.

[Danger, Marinette, he's stepping over to you, and that sure is his not-cheesy hand moving from his hip to settle on your shoulder.]

But you, on the other hand, took a Derby Hat contest by storm and impressed my father and shut down Chloé's attempt to take it from you with grace. You'll do fine here.
chataclysmic: (pic#9935477)

[personal profile] chataclysmic 2016-04-16 08:20 pm (UTC)(link)
[It was more of him laughing at himself. Receptive minds struck him as an almost ironic subject. He's happy to move on without addressing that as a whole, though. Very happy.]

Are they? I've been missing out, then.
parodeity: feastings @ tumblr (WAIT 🎧 hold up)

[personal profile] parodeity 2016-04-16 08:37 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Whoops, he didn't mean to give cute elf chick war flashbacks. Even though he's pretty sure their exclusively seafood diet isn't going to be doing any wonders for that... ]

Pinky swear someday you'll get pasta, Mer. You'll shit bricks, it's the best, especially when a genuine chef preps it for you. Not that I'm a genuine chef, but like I said? I can totally do pasta. And macaroni. Which is another type of pasta but what the fuck ever macaroni and cheese is where it's at? Like who wants to eat sushi when you can have cheesy goodness. Occasionally in the shape of ironic childhood characters? Those always taste way better than the plain noodle sort.

[ Why does he even bother to say half of that, all his random future-nonsense is going to go over her head. ]

Kirkwall, though? What's it like there, besides bein' a serious seafood overdose?
maserannas: (ask | was a blinding light)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-04-16 08:41 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She watches her for a moment more, wondering on what scales all of their own errors are weighed in the end. Who sits judgment on the lives they live, the choices they make thinking they're for the betterment of others. Last she'd heard from Varric, Merrill was helping displaced elves stay out of the fighting before Haven fell. Hard to say what intervening years had held, but...

She gives a small shake of her head.
]

I can't imagine it does. The weight of any mistakes either one of us has made isn't meant to be measured against the next, only learned from. For all our sakes. [ A brief pause, and then: ] Aneth ara, Merrill. I'm Ellana.
parodeity: lingualpugilist @ tumblr (JOHN 🎧 chill)

[personal profile] parodeity 2016-04-16 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Honestly, Dave hardly needs anything or anyone to be great with conversation for him to ramble on ad nauseum. He'll talk to his friends when they're afk. He'll talk to himself when he's alone, or even when other people are around. Running his mouth is a habit he can't actually break at this point.

Or one he hasn't bothered to try to break, anyway. ]


I figure if we keep talkin' to them maybe they'll pick it up. [ Not really, but hey. He gives a little two-fingered wave in Adrien's direction. ] URSULA kinda works like that, right? NGL, I kinda tuned out a lot of the shit people have tried to explain to me.
parodeity: (HEH 🎧 sure thing)

[personal profile] parodeity 2016-04-16 08:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Can it be knit instead? I made Rose teach me a lil bit of knitting when we were stuck on a meteor for three fuckin' years.

[ In between somehow persuading Karkat that playing hopscotch was a good use of their time and helping the Mayor with can town. His schedule was just so packed. ]

Still not sure if I like being stuck on a meteor or down in here in undersea whateverness better. On the one hand, shitty meteor trip had movies and food that didn't come from the sea. On the other hand, the company ain't too bad here and there's not one thousand versions of that chess dude chasin' us, so that's always a plus. If we get an apple juice party this place'll win hands down, so let's make that priority numero uno.
maserannas: (ask | who survived?)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-04-16 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She snorts, but in a sense, the debate is moot: it's only as relevant as the prospect of those spirits or demons she knows are likely to manifest here, and the tenuous connection she feels to the Fade makes it seem highly unlikely. In a strange way, being here is perhaps one of the safest removes for a practicing mage from the dangerous inherent to her own world.

... So instead she can focus on AI's (which she doesn't understand on their own so much as again, in comparison to what's familiar). And considering slapping the back of his head, but really, maybe she can just deposit the (seemingly human) child off with Korosensei.
]

People are the manifestation of those complexities, I agree.

[ Thus sidestepping demons and spirits as a whole for what she agrees to be true, and uh. Yeah. AI's.

... People still have an obligation to the spirits they are creating, or help create, but she uh. She won't get into that, not when it took Solas for her to even acknowledge that on her own. She was over thirty when she faced that world shifting perspective, and it was more relevant to where she was at the time. INSTEAD, FOR A FUTURE OF RAP BOTS...! Have a genuine (non-mocking) series of questions.
]

Are you a responsible creator, in that case? Willing to accept the faults and failures along with the successes? Bear the responsibility for them all?
maserannas: (chat | somebody new?)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-04-16 09:15 pm (UTC)(link)
[ That earns him a quick half-smile. ]

That'll serve you well. Being a fast learner means picking up what you need to know and being able to turn around and use it on your own. Second question — how are you with swimming?
maserannas: (smile | leaders would be borne of you)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-04-16 09:19 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Exuberance! Something she misses from a few of her friends, though he's a bit more laid back about throwing in his lot with a stranger. Still, if it helps get his mind off what had him on edge, she'll manage the tea part of things. Turns out you can make some interesting teas if you really tried to think creatively with the ingredients around the area. ]

I've been known to indulge in a cup every now and then. Let's head to the kitchens, see if we can't find a pot or kettle to use to heat up the water.

[ That said, she nods her head to the side as she turns and starts walking toward the kitchen area. It's still weird compared to what she considered cooking areas to be like for... all of her life before this place, but she's adapted to the use of the different surfaces and their strange heating elements. Much less work than a wood stove or open fireplace! ]

Where are you from, Kaden?
maserannas: (ask | was a blinding light)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-04-16 09:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[ she quirks up an eyebrow, not sure she understands the concern. ]

You can pace yourself, certainly, but if this isn't working by daybreak I suggest we do head back in hauling it along with us. If we can, of course. A lack of water isn't a problem until you've hit a few days of nothing drinkable.

[ she tries to make her smile reassuring, still offering the water container. ]

No guarantees on everything being fine, but I'm cautiously optimistic that things will have worked out in the next eight or so hours.
dirtharama: (Default)

[personal profile] dirtharama 2016-04-16 10:29 pm (UTC)(link)
[After all the scorn from both her clan and even her friends at times, it's a little reliving to hear from another of her people that learning from the past is all they can do. It's what she intends to do and continues to strive to do in so many ways. So a smile comes back to her face as he puts a hand over her chest.]

Ma serannas! I understand too well. It's nice to meet you, Ellana. Oh, I mean, we've already met but... [Oh. That actually does remind her though.] Or, well, you knew me first! I'm sorry, did we meet before? I'd hate it if I forgot meeting you.
dirtharama: (Default)

[personal profile] dirtharama 2016-04-16 10:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh! Of course. Did one of them mess up something? [She's honestly curious. Like he said, it's a little hard to imagine them understanding well if they can't confirm it in some way.]
ruffledup: (pic#8958967)

[personal profile] ruffledup 2016-04-16 10:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[As far as Josephine's concerned, the only strange thing right now is... still the droids, gosh.]

I quite agree. I have been assured these... droids have always been made like this, but it is all still very strange to me. I'm not sure how they can properly help when they cannot even speak to us.

[She shakes her head.] I cannot even begin to imagine anything like them in Thedas.
splinten: appl-juice42 @ tumblr (004)

[personal profile] splinten 2016-04-16 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)
[Ellana, clearly, is the better person here. Which admittedly Dirk would have probably acknowledged himself. But, the point: rap bots.

Little baby rap bots.]


In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer. I, Dirk Strider, do take this extralegally modified droid on as my charge and obligations. From this day forward, I will be responsible for this little dude. I will give him an expanse of experiences to develop his personality. I will teach him a broad vocabulary to further his sick rhymes. I will build him little robot legs if he should wish to learn to breakdance while disgracing those who cross him in the fine art of rapping while dispensing increasing approximations of orange soda. Through emergent consciousness and malfunction, 'til bullshit plot shenanigans do us part.
maserannas: (ask | since you've awakened her again)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-04-16 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Ellana would have been as likely to visit some sense of lecture a few years ago; as it is, those aren't how her priorities work any longer. Particularly not when she's needed to examine blood magic as a tool, with the wielder determining the meaning behind that tool's use or abuse; not when questioning her beliefs about her people and their history, and having her understandings shaken to the core.

Things have changed, and she's needed to make herself change to survive. Their people have always been better at that than they remember to credit themselves.
]

Ah, no, I don't believe we've ever met face to face. I'm a friend of a friend — Varric Tethras, as it is. I met him in 9:41 Dragon, near Haven.
dirtharama: (Default)

[personal profile] dirtharama 2016-04-16 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)
[A bright smile crosses her face.] Varric! Oh, how is he? I haven't seen him recently and I miss his stories so much I--

[Wait. There was something wrong in that sentence.]

...Sorry, did you say 9:41? That's... well, wrong. Unless I missed something, things are a mess right now so I might have overlooked some things, but it should be 9:38 Dragon. I don't think I would miss the year.
maserannas: (amused | she depends on you)

[personal profile] maserannas 2016-04-16 11:33 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She has very little idea what he's prattling on about in specifics (she even has a better idea of what Cole tends to ramble on about), but the gist of it boils down to a simple enough question: ]

I see. By any chance, you're not an author in your spare time, are you?

[ ... You know. The important questions in life. ]
splinten: appl-juice42 @ tumblr (I can't wait to be a useless piece of sh)

[personal profile] splinten 2016-04-16 11:33 pm (UTC)(link)
See, this new revelation about your talent in the fine art of the knit-one-purl-two is exactly why I'm going to rank this above both my Sburb session and the last time I was trapped in the middle of the ocean: no crafting parties. This is exactly the kind of glorious hands-on art shenanigan I was missing out on.

[Look. The level of implicit joking in his phrasing can't deny the fact that, it's true, there were no crafting parties. And crafting parties would actually be great comparatively. He is genuinely pleased that Dave can knit.]

I hope you've already started thinking about what to knit for Wiz's birthday present.
parodeity: (NO 🎧 that sounds dumb)

[personal profile] parodeity 2016-04-16 11:43 pm (UTC)(link)
[ But can Dave knit Well is the question here. He kind of fucks off from patterns as whimsy strikes so the answer is "it depends" since he genuinely Tries to make horrible works of knitted art. It's less ridiculous if he actually follows a pattern, but where's the fun in that.

Honestly why does anyone let him do anything ever. ]


Of fucking course I have. When's his birthday, anyway? Today? Need a little more time than that. And, like. A little more yarn. And knitting needles? Oh my god this place needs more shit to do that's like, unproductive. Or productive in a fun way and not a world-transforming base-improving way. Remixing the hella mystical background music in my head only does so much.

Subscribe me to the craft party newsfeed, dude, I'll show up every time.
dirtharama: (Default)

[personal profile] dirtharama 2016-04-16 11:43 pm (UTC)(link)
[It does but at least she's excited about it. The stranger it sounds, the more fun it sounds! There's so much she doesn't know here and while she's used to culture shock, it's relatively pleasant.

Though she isn't sure she wants to 'shit bricks'. That sounds extremely painful. It must be a saying? But it still doesn't sound positive. Then again neither did his way of describing music. Maybe bad words are good words in his world?]


I could dream about all the different food we could have forever... Oh but Kirkwall is... [She looks apologetic.] Right now, it's a mess. It was a lovely city, though. I lived in the alienage, it's a place where elves of the city can live, or, well, they sort of have to live there, and it was nice even if no one ever mugged me. I made so many wonderful friends there.

But you see, magic in Thedas is feared. Mages like myself are usually locked away in something called Circles for the rest of their lives. It's terrible. I was lucky to avoid the Templars somehow... Oh! Right, Templars are knights that hunt down mages. They fear them most of all. They guard the Circles.

[Merrill sighs softly.] My friend, Anders, he's a mage. He... started a war between mages and Templars. I stayed in Kirkwall even though my friends left. I'm trying to protect the people left from the Templars who've gone mad. I hear revolts are starting in Circles all across Thedas. [That part, at least, she's happy about, even if it's a difficult situation. She has to hope it will turn out well.]

...Oh! Sorry, I'm rambling about all these things. Kirkwall was so nice before this. Or at least not worse than any other human city. We helped people and went on adventures, we even fought a dragon once. Despite everything, it made me happy. Varric would tell stories, Isabela would teach me dirty songs, Fenris would always beat me in cards... I know it sounds terrible right now, and things are bad, but I'm hopeful. Maybe someday Kirkwall can be a better place.
splinten: appl-juice42 @ tumblr (dog........)

[personal profile] splinten 2016-04-16 11:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[beat]

I do some creative work.
dirtharama: (Default)

[personal profile] dirtharama 2016-04-16 11:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmm... should I try using it harder then? [She's trying to figure out what type of brush it is.] Maybe it's supposed to help when there's shedding?
parodeity: feastings @ tumblr (LAUGH 🎧 lmao lmao)

[personal profile] parodeity 2016-04-16 11:51 pm (UTC)(link)
No worries, it ain't like I can judge about shitty world states. [ He shrugs, which looks a little funny when he's half-lying down still, but. It's not like looking cool matters much in this context where she seems to be pretty thrilled about literally anything he says.

Holy shit, Jade and the sunshine elf would get on like magic.

While he isn't judging the whole world-state thing, he does kinda feel bad for her. Hoping for home to be a better place is...something Dave can sympathize with to extreme degrees. ]


And I also can't judge about rambling. You basically never have to apologize to me for that, as long as you're sayin' something interesting I'll listen and even if not, feel free to, IDK, throw shit at me or roll your eyes. Admittedly sometimes I tune out hella long explanations in Seer-speak, but I haven't heard many of those here, so everyone's got my undivided attention so far. Mostly.

And hey, if you ever want Strider Story Time, let me know and I'll try to tell you some good ones. Or we can try to make a deck of cards and I will happily beat you at them, that should help with homesick, right? Oooh, add "playing cards" to our mission list.

[ hell yeah they've got this job on lockdown

save them ]
splinten: appl-juice42 @ tumblr (its sports)

[personal profile] splinten 2016-04-17 12:02 am (UTC)(link)
Do you read fantasy or anything?

[Just working out chaton's frame of reference here.

Dirk folds his arms on the gasopod's back and rests his head on it. Under the circumstances, this is honestly even more relaxing than dives back home.]

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