You died a LONG time ago. Now you are up and sort of at things again! Not sure why you can snap reality like a twig now, but that's probably not important. After all, you remember your fictional settings and characters! That means we can have FUN!
What you were before is lost, you were dead for a LONG time. However, you do know this much: You aren't quite dead anymore.
You woke up in an odd little office. A bed against one wall, with a dresser at the foot of the bed. There was a rug across most of the hardwood floor, a Desk with a simple spinable chair and a computer sat next to the bed, the high-tech screen lit up and displaying the words "WELCOME TO SYSTEM ALPHA 0.1!"
Opposite the Computer was a large bookshelf covering the entire wall, with only a single thick Tome on it. Finally, opposite the bed, a large, wall to wall, nearly ceiling to floor window rested, the curtains drawn and leaving the room in darkness with a bench-like resting area under the window and built into the wall. There was no Door, no escape, and no real vents either. Alone in the room, you had little to do, and simply lay on your bed. Though... now you DID have something. Curiosity. Even if you didn't have much else, you had that. And an oddly VAST number of memories surrounding fictional settings in your mind. For now, though, all you could do was... Examine something.
[X] Look at the Book
[X] Look at the Computer
[X] Look under the Bed
[X] Look out the Window
(First time attempting a Quest. If I messed something up, please let me know, and how to fix it. Thank you!
With a glance at the book, and another at the computer, you stood, shaking your head and pushing down your curiosity. First things first- you needed to know where you were, then you could focus on trying to figure out what the rest of the room was like. Maybe you could escape out the window if this was some kind of kidnapping situation?
Standing, you glanced down and acknowledged that you had an incredibly tight, form-fitting suit on. If you were a woman, you must have a very flat chest, and if you were a man you must lack certain things or have a cup in, because you had no idea based on your own physical form. Stepping forward, you shivered at the softness of the rug as your feet sank into it, each step soothing and energizing you in ways you hadn't expected. It was weird... and somehow better than a cup of coffee.
Why you could remember coffee and not your own gender you didn't know, but such was life.
Shaking your head to clear it, you paused near the window, looking around the room. It looked similar on this side, only the bed was visibly now- a simple and utilitarian thing with a blanket and pillow, and some kind of box underneath it. Refocusing on the window, you reached out and opened the curtain a smidge to look out. Outside was... impossible.
You looked to be in some kind of cylinder, a massive tunnel or tube that stretched out of sight in either direction. From what you could see, there was nothing but windows forming the walls of the cylinder, and every time one of them fully opened their curtain, the entire room slid out of the wall and fell to the center of the tunnel before flaring brightly and vanishing, another room growing out to fill the missing space. In the center of the tunnel, a massive, spiraling Cyan stream flowed in a never-ending rush, countless individual bubbles of light making up the stream. Focusing on one, you felt knowledge enter your mind.
{World: Worm}
{Danger to System: Minimal}
{Danger to Host: High}
{Target: Taylor Hebert/Greg Veder/Sophia Hess/Sarah Livs...}
{Alterations: Taylor is male, Danny is bisexual, Occult magic is weak but usable- potential exploit for System improvement?}
{Recommendation: Skill focus, Trait secondary}
You pulled back, shutting the curtain and gulping. So. That was a thing. Those were entire worlds down there. Where you a god? No, you were too big... a ROB? Maybe? How was this supposed to WORK then??? How had you even reached this point??? You needed... a goal. A goal would let you stop spiraling and start MAKING something of yourself. You just... you needed to breathe and act. What was your next focus? ---------------------------- [X] Inspect the Book
[X] Inspect the Computer
[X] Inspect the Box under the Bed
[X] Write in... (What would you like to see done? This is a narrative quest, so if it gets approval from the group and makes sense in-story, I'll go along with it.
Knowledge. It was always the lifeblood of whatever story you ever heard about. The more a person knew about their situation, the more they could do ABOUT their situation. And right now... well, you had a LOT of unknowns. So, you just had to deal with that in the obvious, easy way! Taking a deep breath and nearly praying before remembering what exactly you now were, apparently, you nervously glanced around the room once more. It... had more color than before. The Book was silver with black and gold inlaid patterns, the Carpet was a deep and luxurious red, the bed was mostly white and red and... reminded you of a bed from a specific game about blocks and mining.
The computer sat on a light, almost yellow wooden surface that you could tell was wood, and the floors under the carpet looked to be a rich, deep brown that was nearly grey. The walls were a strangely light, dark blue. Indigo? Your mind wanted to say Cambridge blue, for some odd reason. As if the name was important...
For now, you started walking again, stepping across that delightfully pleasant carpet and feeling your worries and anxieties slowly bleed away... almost as if the carpet was feeding on them. A concerningly real possibility, now that you thought about it. Still, you deftly picked up the book- heavy, cold, slightly tingly to the touch- and looked at the cover to see the title. The words burned and twisted, making you wince and whimper as your mind stretched and cracked.
Looking away you gasped for breath, beginning to walk across the carpet and slowly feeling your mind soothe from the pain into a dull ache. As that faded, you looked at the cover again, stopping before you could really feel anything break. This repeated, a pattern that went on and on until you could look at the title without even a smidgen of strain. It was... weird. Your mind felt so raw and stretched, yet... so fast... you glanced at the title, and blinked as the words now made sense to you.
{Book of Systems and Subprocesses, Vol. 1}
A glance inside gave you some relief and some serious concern.
{Congratulations on completing your first world! As you may have discovered during your attempts at completing your tasks, you have several subsystems, none of which you can access without codes. Many try to read this book and only realize the strain it puts on the mind after, however now that you have failed to complete your first task, your mandatory post-world enhancement has forcibly granted you a higher level of consciousness. This is necessary to both understand this book, AND to access the subsystems mentioned before.}
{You may be aware that the computer provided some false information, implying we were relying on you for your first world, however that is not true- the stream is endless. While we rely on our elites to accomplish their tasks, very few discover the healing and mental-enhancement properties of the rug provided you. Failure to discover and utilize it on your own means that you will be seeing your rug removed after your second world, so best get the most use out of it that you can.}
{Before we move on to the subsystems, I must address those chosen few who DID figure it out and access this information before their first world. Congratulations, you have exceeded expectations. Now you have access to these subsystems before your first world, which will grant you vital resources needed to impress us. Please, do not disappoint. Now, to describe the access codes, we-...}
The book continued, and you read every single paragraph and sentence. Carefully memorizing the codes and teachings inside the book with your mind, you began to piece things together. You would be sent to a world... to empower another. Specifically you would get to design the very system that the protagonist would use while trying to overcome their trials and struggles. And sure, that could cause you to be bored, theoretically, except... from this, it seemed to imply that you would effectively LIVE in the mind of whoever you chose.
And that first section certainly implied it wouldn't be only one world... So. Now... now you knew more. You were effectively a self-empowering hero who could choose a target and a main character. You could empower that character- yourself- and then live out their life and try to survive there. Which was... interesting. Which was a goal- complete your first world with the best possible score you could get. Now you simply had to figure out what to look at next... and what to do. The Window seemed to choose the world, so... probably save that action for last. But other than that... what now? You have gained access to the 'Live updates', 'automatic updates', and 'reality integration module' subsystems for your primary system. Gained +3 System Capacity.
[X] Inspect the Box under the bed
[X] Inspect the Computer
[X] Study the rug in greater detail
You knew that the Book had given you some incredible insight, but there was another item or two in the room that held potential secrets to be exploited. And if you were going to go into a world, you wanted to be as successful as possible. So, you moved to the box, kneeling and carefully pulling the box out from under the bed. It was a big, old, weathered thing that looked to be made of rich mahogany now that you could actually see it properly.
You huffed, calmly considering the box and looking over the smooth, glossy thing. It was cold to the touch, and there was a sensation akin to that feeling in your gut when you start falling from a great height suddenly. Like you were weightless, or your stomach was being pulled back and up, lightly squeezed and tingling like crazy. It made you shiver and chuckle nervously. Still, you were alone. You might as well open the box.
Pushing on the lid, you lifted and it smoothly opened, revealing the inside. It was made of a rich, fine, red velvet fabric and held a simple book, a basic and small instructional primer. Looking through it gave you a basic understanding of how to work the computer and what the basic codes needed to run various programs were, removing any chance for some cosmic roll of the dice to render what you'd work on unusable. So. Now you knew how to use the computer. But... it felt like that wasn't all. After all, the book had needed effort to understand, a LOT of effort that had hurt. This box wouldn't be so basic as this, would it?
Some more thorough inspection led to finding a false bottom as well as a false lid. The bottom hid another book, but this one stung to have even exposed, much less looked at or touched. You covered it again when you felt your nose begin to leak... something. Your hand didn't come back red, but... some color that didn't quite fit with what you knew of green, but somehow could be best described by that color. You grimaced, inspecting what was hidden under the lid instead, finding two papers. One which explained that the book you'd found in the bottom could literally only be read after you'd visited at LEAST one world. The second... that one went a bit further.
{If you've found this, you've also found the other note and the book in the false-bottom of the Box. Congratulations. Now please hurry to work on your next world. If you don't start being productive, you may be dismissed as a useless attempt at a System Admin. You'll get more books after each world, with access to more subsystems each time, which can be learned or improved while you're in this space. These worlds will test the Systems you design with you as the testing 'Host'. The more successful you are, the better the rewards are at the end of this. Each System acts as a layer of defense and survivability around your soul- the more you complete before you have to try a dangerous world, the better your chances of surviving them. Best of luck.}
You hesitated, looking around and swallowing thickly. Not infinite time then. Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. But it was impossible to be certain. All you knew was that you had more than the basics down, and you had two distinct individuals talking to you. Green and Blue. Which meant... well, you weren't certain right now, but you needed to get going regardless. So... you could either risk studying the cool rug more in-depth, or get on programming yourself a System for the world you were going to visit. Which did you feel like trying? Dice rolls around your programs can only fail them if you crit-fail. You now can receive bonuses from rolling high enough.
[X] Access the computer
[X] Study the rug more in-depth
[X] Write in... [If you can think of another action you'd like to take instead, feel free to choose.
Well... that was a dangerous warning, and a concerning bit of exposition, but... it was only a piece of paper, right? It couldn't exactly be updated in real-time. No, you'd be fine. You were making quick work of all of this. Aside from the book, but even that had involved you walking on this weirdly magic rug and forcing your way through. So, the most important thing was gathering all of your possible resources and making your choice as informed as it could be. Even if... you felt like there were eyes on you now. Eyes that seemed to be close to focusing on you.
Still, the feeling passed, and you shook your head, shivering. Taking a breath, you touched the rug for support... and felt nothing. Panic grew and you started to move onto it, but the moment your hand crossed over a certain point, you felt the bliss and sensed stress draining from you. You paused, pulling back and noticing when the feeling vanished. Hesitantly, you touched a corner and moved your hand to follow the edge. When it reached the middle-most point, you felt the soothing drain once more. That implied...
You grunted, beginning to roll up the carpet, and soon the bare floor was exposed. The bare, hardwood floor, with a massive ritual circle burned into it. You stared, inspecting the circle, and noticing how... similar it was. To the programming language you had been learning. Everything fit together weirdly well- and you understood everything except for a number of sections near the center. What you did understand was mostly focused around gathering energy and power, and running various self-check routines. This was magical programming, and gave you a touch of insight into what your own System would be doing. Now, though, there wasn't anything that would stop you from working on your System. Especially if those eyes were going to come back...
So, you moved over to the computer, realizing your chair was above a smaller, more compact circle that had been hidden under the rug. It was similar, but also held even more complex sigils and symbols, programs you couldn't even vaguely guess at. It was complex beyond rationality. Sitting on the chair, you didn't FEEL different, but still. You took a breath and shook yourself. AT least memorizing the circle was easy- after all, with your newly enhanced mind, that took nearly no effort. Still an amazing rug, though.
{WELCOME TO SYSTEM ALPHA 0.1!}
{You have been selected to develop systems for heroes and villains to use across the entire omniverse and beyond! Here you will be granted the chance to program your system, selecting one Primary Focus, and one Secondary Focus, and then adding in as many subsystems as you have the capacity to utilize. As you travel and stress test your own systems, you will discover new subsystems for you to access and utilize!}
{To begin with, you have access to the following Primary and Secondary Focuses!}
{[Stats], [Skills], [Traits]}
{Subsystems are as follows: [Challenge Tracker], [Achievements], [Loop], [Live Updates], [Automatic updates], [Reality Integration Module]}
{You are expected to have (1) Capacity. It appears you have (4) Capacity. Congratulations!}
{Please make your selections and proceed to select a world by looking out the (Window) and selecting a World.} Now we get to the meat of the game. You are a 'System Administrator' tasked with creating and testing various systems. I'll be describing the Focuses and Subsystems in a spoiler below. Here is where actual discussion may be needed. Regardless, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I will answer unless it would give away any actual plans I have for you. Subnautica was actually probably one of the best possible starts you could have chosen for this- a specified success condition, and a low-danger world. Nicely done. Now... to the Vote!
A Focus is a primary or Secondary 'Focus' of your System. A major component of the System that will see focus and improvement while you are there. A 'Primary' Focus will be grown and improved, adding new aspects to it. A 'Secondary' Focus will be refined, improved, and have details added to it.
Stats: This Focus begins basic. You start with the 'Strength' and 'Intelligence' Stats. Being a Primary will add new capabilities to them. Being a Secondary will add new Stats by removing and specializing individual stats, making them overall more effective in their specific focus.
Strength: Physical Power
Intelligence: Capacity to intake knowledge
--- Skills: This Focus begins basic. You start with the ability to have a skill labelled, and then have it absorb information about a skill and slowly prevent you from losing skill in it. Being a Primary sees this doubling the number of Skills you can have. Being a Secondary see this gaining new aspects- like tracking flaws, preventing flaws during use, actively improving skill use, improving skill learning, etc...
Current Skill total: 1
--- Traits: This Focus begins basic. You start with having all the physical aspects of your being, being recorded and tracked. Being a Primary lets you add an additional trait. Being a Secondary allows you to develop new traits to add based on experiences you had during your adventures in a world. Traits are permanent, unchanging bonuses that can passively alter how you do things during a field test.
Current traits known: 0
Current trait slots: 0
Subsystems are aspects of the System that work in the background to reduce the effort you need to put into maintaining the System during your stay. More 'Quality of Life' changes that help reduce 'AP Hell'. These are more Narrative than Mechanical, as with many aspects of this Quest.
Subsystems:
- Challenge Tracker: If there is a goal in this world, this keeps track of it, along with any major milestones needed for completion.
- Achievements: This keeps track of impressive feats accomplished in the world you're in. Especially ones that can be used to generate Traits or new Subsystems.
- Loop: A controversial system, this ensures that you cannot lose a world. However, it does not guarantee a victory. This causes you to loop back to the moment you last woke up instead of losing or dying. However, this can trap you in a permanent, endless loop if you achieve a state that is impossible to escape. Sometimes death really is a mercy.
- Live Updates: A wonderful time-saving feature, this allows you to schedule updates to your system- stat increases, skill changes, etc...- to happen as you make them, instead of needing a processing and update timeframe. Triggers level ups the moment they become available and reduces the update time for skills to a maximum of half a second.
- Automatic updates: This feature causes your system to update itself, allowing you to avoid the hassle of needing to manually update your system to gain any benefits. Handles processing XP into tangible benefits once the proper threshold is crossed and a level up is triggered.
- Reality Integration Module: This Module allows for stats like Luck to exist, and allows you to access energies and powers that do not normally exist in the world you are in. Magic, Ki, Psionics, Luck, and many other things that would normally be locked out of use by a given world. All become available using this Subsystem.
Please choose a Secondary Focus: (Cannot be the same as your Primary)
[X] Skills
[X] Stats
[X] Traits
You have 4 SC (System capacity), so you can select up to 4 Subsystems:
[X] Challenge Tracker
[X] Achievements
[X] Loop
[X] Live Updates
[X] Automatic Updates
[X] Reality Integration Module (R.I.M.)
Okay! I hope that's okay. Let me know if you have any questions!
You gathered your focus and set yourself down, deciding what to include and flying through the program. You didn't actually take very long to set up the system before you felt the eyes focusing on you again. Luckily, you were nearly finished. Unluckily, the circle under you began to glow, as did the larger circle. You finished, and saved the program as 'Alpha 1', immediately standing and moving to the window, shivering as the feeling and weight of that strange gaze dug into you. Opening the curtain, you realized you were moving, your little room beginning to slip out of the wall. You threw open the curtains and latched onto the first world to cross your vision- {World selected: Subnautica}
{Congratulations on your first world, and evading dismissal. You have earned +1 SC. To earn more, complete more worlds.}
{Initializing world...}
{...}
{Complete. Stats assigned: Baseline, no bonuses.}
Name: ???
Job: Janitorial staff
Sex: ???
Stats:
Force: 10 (The amount of force you can put behind your movements)
Energy: 10 (Your energy production, storage, and application)
Perception: 10 (Your senses and ability to internalize information)
Comprehension: 10 (Your ability to understand and make use of information)
Skills:
1. Unchosen
2. Unchosen
An explosion shook you awake, alarms beginning to blare as you gasped and launched out of bed. You scrambled up, muscle memory you didn't remember having sending you stumbling across the plain, simple room. You typed in a passcode to open the locker and grabbed your suit- space suit? Diving suit? Why... what was happening? You groaned, getting dressed on autopilot as you stumbled out of the room, snatching a strange pad before the door closed. Then you started running, letting your legs guide you down long, twisting hallways of silver, white, and chrome as another massive explosion blasted somewhere in the distance.
You came to a spot with an open hole in the floor, a ladder visible. You hadn't seen anyone else, and you slowly started to feel air being sucked past you and towards the direction you'd come from. It was quickly growing stronger and you hurriedly jumped in, sliding down the ladder and seeing the top seal itself shut. You rushed to one of the chairs, and locked yourself in. Then you were being LAUNCHED away and... and you realized you were in space. The ship you had escaped from was there... and then it blew up, shaking your vessel.
Subnautica. Which... meant you were about to get hit in the face by metal, weren't you? Indeed, as you started reentry, the pod began to shake, quiver, and rumble, and then the lights flickered as the metal piece you had expected flew off, banging around the pod as it's momentum changed before suddenly shooting towards you and slamming into your face- and everything went dark. At least you'd prepared for this... You have 4 AP to spend every turn on various actions. First, would you like your character to be Male or Female?
[X] Gender?
-[X] Male
-[X] Female
What would you like to do? Each option can be selected more than once.
[X] Gather resources from a known location
-[X] Where? [Write in]
[X] Explore a nearby location..
-[X] [Write in, or leave blank and I'll pick something
[X] Examine your supplies
[X] Craft something
-[X] What? [If you have the supplies, I'll let you make anything you want within reason.]
Feel free to suggest a name you think would be fun.
[X] Gender:
-[X] Nonbinary
[X] Gather resources from a known location -
-[X] The closest location from where you are awoken.
[X] Explore a nearby location...
-[X] The same place that resources are gathered.
[X] Examine your supplies
[X] Craft something -
-[X] First Aid Kit
The fire had been a nightmare for you to put out- and, for lack of a better name, you'd chosen 'Yu' as something silly and relatively effortless to consider your own identity. Especially since you seemed to be... indistinct on that regard. Or maybe undecided? Possibly just... not fitting into either category. It didn't matter. You were alone, so 'companionship' would never be a concern, and you honestly couldn't care less what you had in your pants, as long as it stayed clean- something that, weirdly enough, was a problem the suit handles for you, cleaning while you slept. Apparently. So... never needing to bother dealing with that again seemed like an AMAZING trade-off for wearing a suit 24/7. You were just glad your hair had to be short for the helmet to work properly.
Regardless, the fire. It was BLAZING when you'd finally woken up, dehydrated and overheating. Luckily, the fire extinguisher was functional, so it was easy enough to force the seatbelt thing open before diving for that to thoroughly blast the flames to oblivion. After that, you'd taken a moment to dig through the supplies you had and figure out what you had access to. Some water bottles, a nutrient bar, a first aid kit- which you used to cover and heal-up the burns- and a few flares. Plus the only partially used extinguisher that you had a hold of. Grabbing the water and the bar for later, you only had the flares and the extinguisher left...
You were going to need some more supplies and quickly. Food, some way to get water, and... and you were in Subnautica. On that Ocean planet. If you remembered you should hopefully be in the Shallows, and if you were lucky, you'd be able to catch the fish fairly easily. Swimming would have to be one of your two skills... maybe. Unless you could think of something more useful. For now, you had rocks to break and fish to catch. So you climbed the ladder, popping up and out of the top, sucking in a deep breath of fresh, salty air, and looking around as the bird-creature fluttered in your face before flying off. You looked around at the gorgeous view of your ship in the distance, the beautiful clear water surrounding you, the occasional fish leaping out of the water, and the endless, gorgeous sea.
You knew that there were two islands out there, one floating, the other possibly the only actual landmass on the planet. You also knew that the ship was going to explode in a few days. You were going to need to be fast if you wanted to avoid that. For now... you looked down, triggered the helmet, and paused, looking down and pulling the PDA out of your storage. You let it slowly boot up, and looked it over, nodding as it processed the Data of where you were and gave you the Data it had available. Slim chances of survival... sure. It had no idea how your leveling system worked, and you barely did either. You trusted your decisions, and how they would impact things. Though... you DID notice the PDA had a tab it wasn't designed for.
Tapping it brought a screen up that displayed 'survive the crash' and 'overlook the new world for the first time' as accomplished 'achievements'. Whether that would have some sort of effect was yet to be seen. For now, you put it away and calmed yourself as you stepped up to the edge of the pod, flexed your legs, and then leapt forwards. Diving into the water, you felt the oxygen tank kick in. Only a few minutes at first. You'd have to be quick. The game hadn't been perfectly reasonable as far as time management went. Thirty seconds to cross meters and meters of water? No, distance and time had been altered to make the game more viable. This was real to you, though.
So, you splashed into the water and... and it was beautiful. You felt weightless and the vast expanse of Creepervines beneath you left you uneasy. Still... you didn't have time to make a trek over to the Shallows. You'd have to make due with what you had here. That meant swimming down and hoping you could find the rocks you needed. The limestone outcropping actually... well, they weren't hard to notice. Certainly less abundant than they would be in the shallows, however, you had already caught a few fish- one or two may even be that one kind that turned into more water. Infected you too, but that was kind of unavoidable at the moment. For now, you focused, worked, and only slowed down when you grew tired.
You had to make several trips back to the surface, panting and groaning, adjusting to the physical exertion you weren't used to and pushing through it to make yourself work more. It was... not great, but it was a productive day. You noticed and carefully avoided the Stalkers, and did your best to catch food and water while gathering what mineral resources you could. Thankfully the Creepervine was right there, and both easy to obtain and quick to gather large amounts of. So you headed back up to your pod when it started growing dark and you felt exhaustion settling in. You slipped in through the bottom entrance, panting and flopping onto the floor as you gasped and heaved, resting fully for the first time in hours and hours. Your stats had gone up, but while your energy was relatively quick to come back, the physical consequences of all that exercise were still exhausting.
Still, you managed to drag yourself upright and over to the crafting station, pushing all your Creepervines into it and then gathering the fibermesh as it was made before shoving all of that into the device to make First aid kits. You only made a few, saving the rest of the fibermesh to create a makeshift bed on the floor. Storing away all of your gathered gains, you paused before laying down as a screen appeared. Seems you had to decide what tomorrow would look like as well...
- 12 edible fish of various species
- 4 bladderfish
- 9 Titanium
- 7 Copper
- 14 Fibermesh
- 1 Creepervine
- 4 First aid kits
{Congratulations on surviving your first day!} {Your System has noticed several Skills being used throughout the day, would you like to assign a skill to an available skill slot?} {Available Skills: Swimming, Hunting, Sneaking, Exercise, Crafting, Exploration, Survival} {Please Select 2.}
Any skills you choose will have information gathered about them which can be used to improve them after this world is completed.
You have 4 AP. Any option can be selected multiple times, unless stated otherwise.
[X] Please select two activities for what your day will look like tomorrow.
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? [Write in]
-[X] Explore a nearby location..
--[X] [Write in, or leave blank and I'll pick something]
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What? [If you have the supplies, I'll let you make anything you want within reason; this can craft multiple objects at once.]
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? Near your base
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What?(Cook 4 of the random fishes, make two water, make 2 wirings)
You chose Swimming- obviously- and Survival. The reason you went for Survival instead of Hunting or Crafting or something like that? Survival included basic things like hunting and swimming and holding your breath under it's aegis. You already got the benefits of the broad knowledge base being instantly and permanently encoded in your mind, but you also knew that- as a broad knowledge-focused skill- it would lend itself to numerous other skills you could utilize during your next system making session. Really, the Swimming was only chosen instead of something like 'Exercise' because you'd be doing SO much of it. It seemed stupid to waste the opportunity. Besides, Swimming wasn't mostly knowledge- it was an outright activity. That synergized with Survival, which would further enhance what you could get, since Survival would handle the knowledge aspect, leaving the supernatural boost to be purely on Swimming's end.
Overall, it was exciting to witness your System adjust and compensate for the situation, adapting and working overtime to provide what it could. As you went swimming, you hunted for more resources. You got more of the creepvine with ease, but that wasn't the main focus. No, your main attention was on Ores, and you... sort of managed that? You found some strange teeth that looked like the ones from the stalkers, and ended up gathering three or four of them. You also found some metal salvage from the wreck, and even a wrecked piece of tech not in your PDA! But without a scanner it wasn't much help. Still, you noted it for later. After all, even if it was useless now, it could be useful later!
Your swimming improved massively as you continued, your system occasionally pinging you with updates letting you know you had leveled, and it had come up with a new possible design for how to upgrade and improve the skill. Even still, your Survival Skill was the one paying the most dividends. Your movements were growing just a little smoother as you adapted faster to the unfamiliar effort and environment, your eyes instinctively tracking the fish and adjusting your assumptions about how your body would move. It was so much easier to catch fish like this, even if you didn't have any real instinct for what to do or how. Catching the fish from earlier left that first step already taken, and the rest was simply gathering and refining knowledge on your Skill's end.
So you gathered several fish and headed back, getting into your pod and groaning as your body ached and demanded rest. Still... it was easier than before, and you were adjusting, your Swimming Skill finding an unexpected side-benefit by helping your body adjust to and heal better from the exhaustion the swimming had caused. It was so minor that it would be unnoticed once you included the Health and Stamina modules that your knowledge of fiction told you would eventually be unlocked, but for now? As new as all this was... it was notable, and you wondered if you could possibly do something with that...
Still, you moved, dumping your supplies in your storage and crafting a pair of copper wiring spindles. You tossed those into storage as well, stretching and sighing, trying to think of what you'd do the following day while you cooked and ate some fish and crafted some water... out of more fish. Such a weird world... You'd have to get your system to record the animals somehow for the future... surely you could manage that. It'd come in useful, probably... Somehow. For now... you made everything, ate a fulfilling meal, and headed off to bed. A/N: Only One person voted on what to have your guy do, so that will be what happens. Sorry for taking so long on this. College has been a bit of a nightmare the last few days, but that should be mostly over until next Semester.
- 23 edible fish of various species
- 7 bladderfish
- 16 Titanium
- 11 Copper
- 10 Creepvine
- 14 Fibermesh
- 4 First aid kits
- 2 Copper Wire
- Creepvine Forest
- The Aurora
You have 4 AP. Any option can be selected multiple times, unless stated otherwise.
[X] Please select two or more activities for what your day will look like.
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? [Write in]
-[X] Explore a nearby location..
--[X] [Write in, or leave blank and I'll pick something]
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What? [If you have the supplies, I'll let you make anything you want within reason; this can craft multiple objects at once.]
Your Radio has alerted you to the presence of other lifepods in your surrounding area, and the danger of the exploding core of the Aurora.
-[X] You would like to go on an expedition to a site...
--[X] A nearby Lifepod
--[X] A distant Lifepod (Costs 2 AP)
--[X] The Aurora (Costs 2 AP, Radiation Hazards)
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What? (12 food, 6 water, 2 regular oxygen tanks, 4 copper wires.)
-[X] Explore a nearby location..
--[X] [further out from our base]
-[X] Gather resources from a known location x2
--[X] Where? [Where we explore] The crafting was your first focus when you woke up, calmly crafting things together so they were in more useful forms for you. The fish got a bit drier and less hydrating, but more nutritious overall, and you had water to handle the dehydration. It was infected water, which you knew from the game, but that was fairly unimportant. You did wonder if perhaps you should get some more stuff crafted soon, but for now you were still focusing on gathering resources and scouting out the area. After all, it was certainly different from the game. Hardly a one to one parallel. Given the days and nights were longer than a few minutes each, and you had to sleep... that made sense.
Still, you got some food made to eat while exploring and then made the oxygen tanks, finishing a bit after the sun had risen. Clipping the first into place, and the second into the strange inventory that the PDA had, you clipped the PDA to your belt and dove back into the water. It was significantly easier to explore now, the oxygen tanks giving you much more time below the surface before you had to surface and refill them. And since you could refill them both at once, it was actually less time overall than the game would've led you to believe.
You noticed a few boxes with broken, unusable devices in them that your PDA didn't have in its crafting recipe section, bits and pieces of tech that would be incredibly useful if you could scan them in. It was something to think about. Still, as before, your focus today was figuring out your location and the nearby resources that were available. And maybe making a knife so you didn't have to keep ripping the Creepvine fibers off with brute strength, or punching the rocks that contained the resources you needed. It wasn't painful, really, or harmful long-term, just a minor hassle and annoyance. Luckily, the rest of your day was interesting enough to put such thoughts out of your mind.
Thanks to being able to swim longer, your swimming skill started climbing at a greater speed, and that led to a number of offshoots that unlocked. You couldn't use them yet, given you didn't have the skill slots for it, but you could feel your system shifting and growing in your mind, the improvements something you'd be able to access during your next testing of the system. For now... you had, probably, a few weeks or months to successfully cure yourself and escape the planet. At least, if things followed the lore from the game. So, you focused on exploring. Which led you from the creepvine into some sandy valley-like area that had bloody-red grasslike stuff across a decent chunk of it. There was a wreck nearby, and what looked like a vent that led deeper into a cave system. It was warmer near the entrance, and you managed to gather some quartz from the sand and grass.
Beyond that, you also found even more copper and titanium, and even a few bits of silver and a chunk of gold. You barely made it back home before dark, less exhausted than the last time and noticing that the tanks had lasted you slightly longer at the end than the start, telling you that your swimming skill was reducing the strain swimming was putting on your body while also improving your speed and familiarity with it. Checking on your Survival skill while you finished crafting everything you'd planned to make left you curious. Survival was at level 7, while Swimming had reached 12. Part of that was excess Experience going into developing and unlocking skills related to the two you already had, refining the current skills while also trying to refine those unused skills as much as possible while you weren't in that strange space outside of reality.
As you finished your crafting, you sighed, considering whether to check the wreckage or not. You could find useful materials and new techs, but until you could scan them into your PDA that wouldn't do much good... you'd had to skip over the boxes you found earlier, but eventually you'd both want, and NEED that tech to really make any progress. After all, it took a decent chunk of time to travel between areas, and getting a seamoth- or even just a seaglide- would be so incredibly useful for traveling around faster and gathering more materials in every trip. But... that would require getting more and more valuable materials, so... really, it depended on getting those starting resources. It was going to be a slog, wasn't it?
Swimming: 12
- Improved Swimming speed and reduced impact of extended physical effort on your body.
- Current focus: Decreased stamina usage, 2/5
Survival: 6
- Can Recognize known survival resources on sight.
- Current focus: Resource collection efficiency, 1/5
- 11 edible fish of various species
- 5 bladderfish
- 19 Titanium
- 15 Copper
- 10 Creepvine
- 3 Silver
- 1 Gold
- 14 Fibermesh
- 4 First aid kits
- 2 Copper Wire
- 12 Food
- 6 Water
Assuming The Aurora as North:
- Southern Creepvine Forest
- South-Western Grassy Plateau
- 2 Oxygen Tanks
Due to your Swimming Skill reaching 10+, you have increased ability to cover longer distances, reflected in higher AP per day (+1). In future worlds, AP will have different mechanisms for increasing, but some skills will always have AP-relevant functions. Due to survival reaching 5+, You will always succeed in finding resources if you look for them.
Skills will have narrative impacts that can, at certain level breakpoints, impact gameplay or mechanics. I will roll every time a relevant action is selected to determine how much the skill increases by, if at all. This will likely change as the Quest continues and your and my systems are stress tested. Here in Subnautica, for example, every action involves swimming and Survival, currently. Later on, with Sea-moths and Cyclopes and PRAWN suits getting more involved, that may change.
You have 45 AP. Any option can be selected multiple times, unless stated otherwise.
[X] Please select two or more activities for what your day will look like.
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? [Write in]
-[X] Explore a nearby location..
--[X] [Write in, or leave blank and I'll pick something]
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What? [If you have the supplies, I'll let you make anything you want within reason; this can craft multiple objects at once.]
Your Radio has alerted you to the presence of other lifepods in your surrounding area, and the danger of the exploding core of the Aurora.
-[X] You would like to go on an expedition to a site...
--[X] A nearby Lifepod
--[X] A distant Lifepod (Costs 2 AP)
--[X] The Aurora (Costs 2 AP, Radiation Hazards)
[X] Plan: continue exploring
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What? (8 food, 4 water, 10 pipes, 1 wiring kit, 4 copper wires, 1 compass)
-[X] You would like to go on an expedition to a site...
--[X] A nearby Lifepod
-[X] Explore a nearby location..
--[X] [Somewhere new nearby]
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? [South-Western Grassy Plateau]
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? [Southern Creepvine Forest]
It was a simple thing to work on collecting more basic materials. Still, at least you had some useful things. It was getting annoying going without a scanner, but you were usually too busy getting distracted with other things, and you kept missing the Acid mushrooms. Those were going to be a priority from now on for certain. You were falling way behind, and it was your own fault. A bit of basic gathering later today and you'd be picking up speed on actually getting this thing moving where it was needed. For now, you had some crafting to do.
You settled in and crafted the food you'd be snacking on throughout the day to keep your energy up, alongside some water to replace what you'd be using. Then you threw together a Compass, which would make keeping track of your position easier, and make finding resources more reliable in the future. That helped. You had other projects in mind, but those could wait for tonight before you slept. The sun was rising, so you snatched up your tanks and supplies and clambered up and out into the water. Right now, you had two main goals- exploring, and resource collection. You started by gathering from the area around you- you snatched a ton of nearby creepvine seed clusters, dropping them off at the nearby pod for an hour or two before you set off to find more stuff. You intentionally avoided any other resources for now- you'd made a mess of ignoring the clusters, so you'd just snatch some extra stuff before you left the other area you needed to get to. For now, that meant the Grassy Plateau South and West of here.
Refilling your oxygen tanks was easy- they'd been designed to interface with gasses in the atmosphere, swapping CO2 for a healthy mix of more useable air, and doing so automatically. If you had better technical skills, it may have been possible to build a tank that could filter the air from the water itself, but that wasn't in your wheelhouse. Still... it gave you an idea- as you moved- that you planned to implement later tonight. For now, you dove as you reached the plateau, the suit protecting you from any sunburns you may have had. You sank down quick enough as you swam, and found yourself staring at the tops of the rock formations there... eyes widening as you realized what was there. Acid Mushrooms.
You swam over quickly and started dumping them into the mildly stifling annoyance that was the limited space of your PDA. Once you were nearly full, you looked around and gathered a few other resources, snatching up some more quartz and a few interesting bits and bobs. Then you were on your way back, with way more time than you'd planned on having. You grabbed a bit more from the Creepvine on the way, holding a pair of seeds in your hands. As you clambered up into the pod, you dumped everything, stretching and blinking down at your surprisingly muscled form. Your body was adapting quickly thanks to the swimming Skill. That, plus your Stats passively improving, was doing wonders for you. Still, as you glanced over your own sheet, you realized you needed to do a touch of book-keeping. The automatic systems were working in the background, and performing admirably, but you had barely kept aware of your stats. What use was it if you didn't pay attention? You'd have to start actually looking at them and thinking about them more.
Like with the mushrooms and seed pods, it was an oversight that was rather foolish on your part, but hey. You'd do better. For now, you emptied your inventory and listened to your radio, hearing about something not far from here. Glancing at your compass and PDA, with a touch of mental math it was... towards the Aurora. Not in the area you believed the radiation was contained but-... the radiation. In the game, that had been there constantly as a game mechanic. But here, the cores hadn't blown up yet. You weren't sure how long you had, but the radiation leak shouldn't be nearyly as bad as in the game... if you were fast enough, maybe you could prevent the engines from exploding at all... You couldn't have long, a few days to a week at most, but... it was possible.
For now, you snatched up your needed supplies- food, water, the scanner and knife you crafted the second you got back- and prepped your tanks. Then you dove in, beginning to head towards the likely sunk lifepod. After all, it wasn't like you were exactly likely to find other living survivors. This was Subnautica, after all... and, as you passed through some safe shallows to your North, you eventually reached a spot where you found the life pod. It was floating above the water... the right way up.
You rushed closer, clambering up and banging on the top, yanking it open and looking inside to find... a man. He stood frozen, staring up at you with wide, shocked eyes. He was fairly plain, his own suit hanging in a distinctly masculine manner as looked stunned to see you. You grinned at him, sort of shocked and not really certain how to feel about your luck. How... how was this going to work? You started to chuckle, your face flushed as you both relaxed and just... processed for a bit. It seemed you weren't alone...
- 13 edible fish of various species
- 7 bladderfish
- 8 Titanium
- 13 Copper
- 10 Creepvine
- 2 Silver
- 1 Gold
- 24 Creepvine seed pods
- 20 Acid Mushrooms
- 9 Quarts
- 14 Fibermesh
- 4 First aid kits
- 5 Copper Wire
- 15 Food
- 7 Water
Assuming The Aurora as North:
- Central Safe Shallows
- Mark's Lifepod
- Southern Creepvine Forest
- South-Western Grassy Plateau
Stats:
Force: 11 (The amount of force you can put behind your movements)
Energy: 13 (Your energy production, storage, and application)
Perception: 15 (Your senses and ability to internalize information)
Comprehension: 10 (Your ability to understand and make use of information)
Skills:
1. Swimming: 16
- Improved Swimming speed.
- Reduced impact of extended physical effort on your body.
- Decreased stamina usage
- Current focus: 1/5
2. Survival: 8
- Can Recognize known survival resources on sight.
- Current focus: Resource collection efficiency, 3/5
So. I gave you a Knife and Scanner free of resource costs thanks to realizing I messed up your ability to make them by ignoring incredibly easily accessed resources that were common where you had gathered from previously. So hopefully that makes up for it! You discovered a new zone on this expedition, and you found a friend. Which is a bit of a problem- good and bad stuff. He doesn't have skills, and he has his own priorities. He'll listen to you, but he won't give you much of his AP to use. Still, he'll be helpful, most likely. In future worlds, you'll need to roll to make allies and such. However this time, in this world? Survival trumps that. As long as no one is too awful, he'll be your ally in getting off of this world.
Let's see how you guys handle Mark.
You have 5 AP. Any option can be selected multiple times, unless stated otherwise.
[X] Please select two or more activities for what your day will look like.
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? [Write in]
-[X] Explore a nearby location..
--[X] [Write in, or leave blank and I'll pick something]
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What? [If you have the supplies, I'll let you make anything you want within reason; this can craft multiple objects at once.]
Your Radio has alerted you to the presence of other lifepods in your surrounding area, and the danger of the exploding core of the Aurora.
-[X] You would like to go on an expedition to a site...
--[X] A distant Lifepod (Costs 2 AP)
--[X] The Aurora (Costs 2 AP, Radiation Hazards)
You have met someone new! Right now he's not feeling too confident about his survival, since he was just a janitor with a bit of engineering experience, but now that you're here, he's feeling more confident about doing better than just surviving until rescue can arrive. He has no major supplies and was about to finally go exploring for fish to eat and a source of water before you stopped by. With your explanations of his area as the 'safest area on the planet', he'll go swimming more often. What will you have him do?
1 Mark AP.
-[X] Gather from the Shallows
-[X] Explore some new area
-[X] Do something with you
--[X] What will he do with you? {Please select an option for him to help you with}
Feel free to ask if you have any questions or need any help.
