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fishesoutofwater2016-04-14 11:53 pm
subnauticmods) wrote in fishesoutofwater2016-04-14 11:53 pm
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TEST DIVE #2
   ≡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!
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?
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?
no subject
As to the rest... Maybe he doesn't have a place to comment on that. He told Dave that trying not to be evil and feeling bad about it was a pretty low bar to set. But he can't exactly criticized that kind of tempered optimism. It might even be what he believes, at least on better days.
Instead, he focuses on the actual question. It's the easiest part to reply to.]
Yeah, sure. If you're interested, I can give you a few pointers.
[Nothing but sea life and non-perishables for the postapocalypse ocean child.]
no subject
... if only she knew how strange Dirk's life was.
Either way, if he has pointers on the seafood deal, she's all ears! It's an opportunity to learn. ]
Why not? My clan traded with one of the coastal city-states in the Free Marches, but preparing seafood was never all that common for us. I'd appreciate any pointers you have to offer.
no subject
Don't let Dirk tell you about Homestuck.]
No problem.
I don't believe I ever got your name.
[He knows how to ask about names. He understands this human emotion called greetings.]
no subject
... and asking Dirk to explain Homestuck might be one of the terrible ones, if she ever does. ]
I don't believe you did. It's Ellana.
[ Making it an announcement paired with a small wave of her hand, fingers splaying. As she turns to head toward the kitchen, inclining her head in that direction as an invitation of sorts, she adds: ]
Formerly of Clan Lavellan.
[ Since she'd just mentioned her clan anyway. Not much of a secret; just not what she asked people to call her around here. ]
no subject
I'm going to assume that we're working with a society that places less emphasis on direct lineage than on a kind of community?
[Dirk honestly is still kinda thinking of Ellana as an alien. In his defence: trolls, cherubim, carapacians. One dominant sentient species per planet is the general pattern.]
no subject
Clearly, that's what's going on. ]
Those of us here? I suppose, but it's hardly like lineage matters where none of us know enough about the rest to care all that much about how well bred we all are or aren't.
[ With a pause in words if not in steps, she turns her head enough to regard him with one eye. ]
... Unless you were asking about my Clan?
no subject
Which means Ellana can't see the verbal expression of Dirk wondering awkwardly if he really fucked up this conversation by asking a question in a stupid way. (Protip: questions are better expressed in the interrogative form.)
He rephrases.]
I guess I'm a little curious about the social structure. Xenocultures are pretty interesting. When the person relating their culture isn't a completely useless muscle-obsessed AI-slash-ghost.
[another thing his lack of emotiveness hides: the way he mentally shuddered at the memory of Arquiusprite trying to explain troll lactation. Fucking no.]
no subject
Well... I can tell you about how the Dalish elves live, which is different from the elves in the cities, living in the alienages of the Free Marches, Orlais, and Fereldan. The way we all relate to humans differs, and differs yet again from the Tevinter Imperium. Then there's those of us who've turned to the Qun and the Qunari for a purpose and way toward freedom from one kind of slavery into another, depending on who you ask.
[ She looks around the kitchen, pausing for a moment before opting to head to the fridge to see if any of the fish from earlier is still there. ]
The social structure of Thedas depends on the region. Most of the present day powers are human, dwarven, or Qunari, where-as the elves haven't been big powers since the second age. I believe we're the only people in Thedas who can say we've fallen from power or having any nation of our own twice.
[ Said with an uptick of slight amusement in her tone of voice; she has a complicated relationship with her people's history. Especially as one who was to preserve, remember, teach, and carry that history forward: learning how much of it was flawed, and to what degree, had been unsettling. ]
I can tell you about each region if you're interested in hearing such things, but Josephine is a much better instructor. It'd only be the Dalish that I have particular insight on, and each clan is more different than the next than we might like to admit.
no subject
[That. Actually does make him pause.]
So you're telling me there are multiple species on your world?
[Assessment: realigned. There is a lot to work with there, but he absolutely needs to get this piece in order before he can settle the rest.]
no subject
I'm surprised to learn there was only one on yours.
[ Guess who hasn't had anyone admit to being the only sapient race acknowledged on their planet? This elf! ]
no subject
On Earth, it's humans, while the trolls had Alternia. I heard they colonized other worlds, but I'm pretty sure they wiped out any sentient life that might be a threat to them. [The deadpan delivery does not indicate that the source of this assumption is the Condesce's elimination of humanity.]
I'm going to extrapolate from the context that you have four separate species, the Qunari, dwarves, elves, and humans, while the proper nouns mentioned were locations.
[Another question that isn't quite question-like, but it's how he means it.]
no subject
[ Privately, she wonders at the potential arrogance of singular races rising to an unchecked supremacy, except against themselves. She's not sure how much would change. The problems within a mixture of societies didn't require different races to have those problems, as she better knew now than she had when she was younger. What he says about the rest isn't surprising. Her own world has shown attempts at similar history.
To answer his question, she holds out her hand, rolling her wrist side to side. Yes and no. ]
Not just the four, but they're the most consistently present, I suppose. You're correct that the other names were locations or a particular group of people within a race.
no subject
Okay, so you've got city elves in alienages, Dalish elves outside of cities, and then elves connected to the Tevinter Imperium or the Qun. Or Qunari? [He isn't sure which one is the proper name.] Which one of those is Clan Lavellan?
no subject
Qunari.
[ Is the only 'correction' she offers. ]
The Qun is their religion, what they follow, and their way of life. They as a people are referred to as the Qunari
[ Perhaps unsurprisingly, Those Who Follow the Qun. But to answer his actual question, while he pulls out supplies and she pulls out a pan to offer it over with her one good arm, is not as easy as it used to be. ]
Dalish, though very recently the Clan's joined with city elves and humans in one of the city-states in the Free Marches as part of a joint council. It's very forward thinking, and very dangerous, as one might expect. Though I don't know that the politics of a world removed are all that fascinating in anything other than an academic sense for one not from there.
[ Her polite way of asking why he cares. Idle curiosity is... not that compelling to her, actually, but that's because it's personal, and her Clan had survived in part due to her political machinations to support them as the situation grew worse in Wycome and the world was trying to fall down and end all around her ears. She remembers Varric's political alliance, thinks of the ridiculous key in her locker, and breathes out in a snort. ]
Fancy a cup of boiled water?
[ What stunning variety they have so far in drinkables... ]
no subject
Before we move on to what may or may not be an interesting cultural discussion, depending on how much you're willing to do it, I want to point out that the biggest problem we have with food here is the lack of spices. I haven't seen anything in URSULA's databases yet that could counter that, but let me know if you discover anything.
This jelly could theoretically work for some kind of glaze or something, but I cannot get it to melt. I'm imagining that our best chance at the moment is to chop it all up and mix it together as a stir fry. Even if that doesn't spread the taste of the jelly to the fish, spooning up the mix will get the flavors.
I'd normally just roast the entire thing on an open fire but I don't think URSULA would appreciate that inside the base.
[Explanation done, Dirk gets to work with the cubing for his attempt at a meal.]
Going back to the topic at hand, I can't say that my interest is anything other than academic. I'm not especially interested in politics in general, but cultures are a major interest of mine.
[He doesn't go into detail why. That he lived post-culture, floating in the refuse of a world long gone by.]
no subject
Then you may be more interested in our stories than anything else. There's another young person on base who's been gathering stories, as a means of entertainment and informing. You may find talking to her enlightening, should she share what she's been collecting.
[ Ellana tries to imagine Mai deciding not to share, and can't see that she'd decline. It'd go against the very nature of why she's collecting stories in the first place. As for the other truth... ]
Open fires are certainly easier on the surface. Which we can get to, just not fully dry.
[ But enough with the technicalities! ]
There's bound to be plants or animals we can drum up to use as spices, once we understand how to use them. Understandably, we've been primarily focused on finding staples for food and supply generation, less the finer things that make life a little more tolerable. As for your suggestion, sounds like a fine one to me.
[ Assuming stirfry is slang for stirring and frying what one is eating, of course. ]