Christmas is here at last! Tis the season for gift-giving and snow. Snow may be harder to come by, though, but good news! URSULA will be lowering the temperature of the base to 32°F (that would be 0°C) in the evenings to encourage a Christmasy atmosphere.
Reminder that, there will be no AC requirements in December though we will still ask that you check in and, if you can, tell us your activities! We still need to write this post for January after all!
Speaking of which, see you guys next year!
Dreaming of a White Christmas
Given the nature of the game and the very tropical weather involved, we can't exactly make it snow for Christmas. We know you must all be very disappointed. We're so sorry! But we can give you something falling from the sky for the holidays!
That is to say: A spaceship is crashing.
But not just any spaceship. This ship happens to be a Kharaa ship, drawn to the area by the Nostromo's distress beacon just as the Sunbeam was before it. Of course, their reasons were far less friendly than the Sunbeam's. But surely no one around here would trust a Kharaa?
Around noon on the 7th a pulse will ring through the planet. It will temporarily disable any unnatural abilities in crew members as well as life support systems. URSULA will be able to get life support back online within an hour, while powers will come back within a day. What powers and abilities are effected are entirely up to you! Perhaps all of your character's abilities will be disabled, or perhaps none at all. It can also last longer than a day, should it be something you wish to play around with. We leave this choice in players' hands.
The crashed ship will be identified as The Narcissus, which URSULA recognizes as a cargo ship that did military runs. Although her scanners indicate no survivors, she would like to try searching the wreckage anyway.
Naturally, that's where you come in. Check the main mission of the month and see what you can find for Christmas surprises!
Some of the updates mentioned here, along with a few others, have been added to the Biome and Base posts. As mods we don't manage the player-run Subnautica discovery document but we encourage everyone to use the document for details that aren't included on the Biome and Base posts.
BIOMES
The Grand Reef has been explored and more spiritual hotspots have been found. A massive hotspot has been found further down this area that has yet to be explored.
A small base has been discovered below the lava vents. It's fairly small in size and it seems to have been used as a research lab. It has been abandoned but it seems as if someone else has recently paid a visit to it in search of something. It is unknown if they found whatever they were looking for.
BASE
A barn has been made on the base island. As of now, it is home to Zelda's Loftwing, but over time it possibly can be expanded if more pets who may not be comfortable living in an underwater base are introduced. That's completely up to the crew! Speaking of the base island, the construction on it is still currently ongoing. Inside the underwater base, the construction of Can Town has begun in the second floor observatory. Crew members are encouraged to help build it.
Some other new additions include cotton candy, more herbs and spices, and a lot of different types of metal that were leftover from Naoko's mission from November. A few other things like a pesticide that a previous crew from another ship used to create the Barren Reef and a mysterious serum that seems to have some connection to the Kharaa has been recovered, but there isn't much known about the latter.
TECH
The new submarine has been completed. This one can reach deeper depths than the other submersibles at the base. The Goggleos have also been created, which are a piece of virtual reality tech that will enable characters who were not able to see Mikleo to now, well, see him. Yay Meebo!
SUNBEAM
A few more exchanges have been made with the Sunbeam, the cargo ship that temporarily orbited the planet for a couple of weeks. They gave some information on ISHMAEL, the Kharaa, the Degasi, and the Nostromo. They also did a few supply drops that included food (both junk and healthy), entertainment such as movies, various equipment and scrap, and also a lot of chalk. They said that they will tell others about the crew being on the planet so that now, the base can expect semi-regular supply drops from ships who happen to be passing by in the area.
KHARAA
Dave Strider has finally informed the rest of the base of the Kharaa presence on Iniidae! If any crew members wish to meet these apparently friendly Kharaa, Dave wants them to speak to Rose Lalonde first so she can use her Seer powers in order to peek into the future to see if it's safe or not. It seems like, for some unknown reason, having a very large group visit the Kharaa may end badly.
According to the Sunbeam, there is a Kharaa ship flying near Iniidae. The crew of the Sunbeam said that the chances of those Kharaa landing on the planet are slim because it doesn't seem like the type of planet they'd be interested in. Let's hope for the best!
HORRORTERRORS
A few crew members have made more progress with the Emperor. They've discovered that the sickness she has is similar to the one that had infected the base, but far more advanced in form. Her antibodies have kept the disease controlled enough as to not kill her, but she's still suffering from it. Some of the crew has helped purify her which has helped somewhat! She also revealed that it was a strange people who had made her and the Dragon immortal. The people wanted to use them as experiments. They have since vanished or died off, and the Emperor has no other information on them.
MEMORIES
Some progress has been made regarding the crew's mysterious arrival to the planet and their altered memories! It has been discovered that buried deep within the crew members' subconscious are memories of drowning and experiencing electric jolts. Once these new memories are remembered, it will feel like the memory of drowning was there all the time and suddenly recalled, similar to when you suddenly remember something you wanted to say or something you were trying to recall earlier. The fake memories will feel more like a dream now, something that came about organically from their own minds. In order to gain these new memories, each crew member will have to go through the process in order to have them invoked. It will be fairly unpleasant!
Remember you're also free to explore and do whatever you wish and can ask us about your own mission objectives as well.
MAIN MISSION: SALVAGE THE NARCISSUS
URSULA SAYS:"How unfortunate... I believe last time we retrieved bodies from the Aurora and salvage as well? I suppose needs must. We should once again do what we can here and take whatever we need. I'm only grateful we managed to turn off that signal before anymore came! But why didn't they contact us?"
REQUIREMENTS: Pretty simple! Just explore the fragmented ship to your heart's content.
RESULTS: Salvage, goodies and surprises. If there's something in particular you want to find or do with this ship, let us make Christmas miracles happen for you on this ship of dreams! Just tell us what it is.
SIDE MISSION: RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
URSULA SAYS: "Perhaps with everything that's happened, it might be good to bring some holiday cheer to others! That's perfect. Everyone, please cheer up one random crew member."
REQUIREMENTS: Just like it says, bring some holiday cheer to others on the base by doing random acts of kindness. Spread the happiness! This can't possibly be awkward. Note that URSULA will help your character with any convenient issues needed. She can break the showers to help you fix them for kindness! Don't worry it totally still counts even if she helps.
RESULTS: URSULA will be happy and so will someone else probably?
Mission: SHRINE Characters: annabeth, dave, WHOEVER ELSE. Details: the 12yo japanese girls were promised a shrine so. shrine. gestures vaguely???? it'll be near lake athena i'll mark where the ferris wheel should go too and return sometime with a map/send it to y'all but I SHOULD PROBABLY PUT THIS IN. AS A THING. since they want it done before new year's. (dave and annabeth independently promised this separate from one another but the plan will be mysteriously combined)
Mission: animal friend gifts Characters: dave Details: he's going to give trousersnake + the reefbacks who let the magister have playdates + his stalker friends christmas gifts which are. food. honestly. since he knows they'd prefer that. well, most of them - he'll compose a song for the reefbacks based on things he has heard them sing which were NOT magically mood altering songs. he kind of learned his lesson there.
Mission: magister note Characters: dave + rose Details: while they still hit the "be kind to others and do your best" note they also will ask the magister to like, maybe make sure he's never swimming in a room alone with komaeda and to be careful around the fish child being raised by komaeda, though they both agree the magister should make up his own mind about them THEY'RE BOTH STILL PARANOID.
> The locks will be upgraded. Since the physical key needs to not be lost, URSULA will suggest the simple solution of things like keyrings being sewn into pants pockets to hook it in them, or perhaps just good old-fashioned wristbands with the keys attached.
> URSULA agrees with the idea of the access list! It's really much more orderly. And voting is such a nice method. It means debating and discussing, which is very important.
> As much as URSULA doesn't really want to do it, she'll agree that it's for the best to remove Komaeda from the list. But try not to be angry with him? He does have a condition that needs care. She does understand though... After all, if someone threatened the base, she wouldn't take very well to it at all! Inter-crew member hostility is more complicated for her.
> She appreciates all they're doing, though, and wants them to know that. She'll give them extra hugs for it and make sure her temperature settings are a little warmer than usual.
Mission: Hornse Ranch Characters: Roxy, Beast Boy, whoever wants to help build the ranch (she'll ask around) Details: Roxy took samples from Beast Boy and discovered that when he transforms, his DNA changes, too. So she had him turn into a horse and and took samples and is building Dirk a hornse ranch for Christmas. She may even try to clone a few ponies from BB too, and make some Lizard Horse/horse hybrids if possible! She'll try to make as many as she can of course, as long as Dirk winds up with at least one or two she'll be happy.
> Unfortunately, Homura won't get answers about the weapon wandering around the planet. At least, not without any more clues about what it's supposed to be like!
> Throughout their travels, they will be stalked by a flock of bird-like aliens. URSULA will name them Mouthies. They can survive underwater, so diving in the ocean won't do any good. They won't attack the pair or anything, but they make a lot of noise and are fairly annoying. They taste like duck, if that matters, but having too much of it will guarantee an upset stomach.
> What they will find is an underwater mountain range. It's a very large biome located near the Underwater Islands. It's so large that it's actually extremely spread out, so the two of them would probably only be able to explore a small portion of it unless they wish to dedicate the majority of their road trip kicking at rocks.. They should be careful, however, as there are a lot of Reapers in this area.
> There is some good news for Dave's ship search! As in, that search will finally get to end. On an island around five days north of the base, the two time travelers will find the ship. It's not as pristine as it had been in his vision; apparently between the time Dave began searching for it and now, it has definitely been through some things. It's probably only good to use as scrap metal at this point.
> They will also find Nancy Holland, the geneticist who was flying the ship and who also, presumably, had set up the underwater base below the lava vents. She, like the ship, has also seen much better days and is pretty injured. She will be pretty grouchy and difficult to deal with in general. If you want, we are willing to thread out an interaction with her. Or you can reply to this comment with what Homura and Dave would say to her and we will give you what her responses would be!
> As a side note, Obama will probably be very fidgety around Nancy to the point that he will attach himself to Homura during this entire period of time. It's worse than the nerves that he would have displayed back at the base around the other crew members.
> dave will be nice enough to the mouthies, and just make their noises back at them tbh. homura can do whatever
> homura's shooting some of them down. whoops! on the plus side, she'll just be. depositing the carcasses in the base for meat to be used? she'll be bringing back no more than three. i am so sorry.
> he will suggest they definitely dedicate a bunch of time to the underwater mountain range exploration? WHY NOT?
> homura will go along with dave's suggestion, so the two of them will probably spend a good amount of time in there, exploring! unfortunately, she has a lot of interest in the reapers. she won't get close or anything, but she just wants to see if their behavior is any different from the ones closer to the base.
> since we're busy let's just list things we want to do with nancy. dave would go basically say hi awkwardly, keep homura from shooting nancy, and ask her if she needs help slash does she know shit about the kharaa. he'd also offer to take her to naoko if she seems to be like. stranded.
> as said, upon seeing obama the squig's reaction to nancy, homura will be whipping out one of her pistols! since. she assumes this means nancy is dangerous. dave will keep her from shooting in a time stopped argument, getting her to agree to not... shoot until they get their information out of her (will she shoot then? who knows) but once he gets his part in, she'll ask what it is about nancy that's making obama so upset.
> These reapers are exactly like the ones closer to base. As long as the pair stay away they should be fine, but any time the reapers manage to spot them they will attempt to attack them. If Homura and Dave do attempt to engage then well, at least Homura stocked up on her arsenal!
> Regarding the mountains, they'll notice that they are covered in hypothermal vents. As for species, they'll come across Reginalds, which are generally harmless and will swim away whenever they get too close. They're pretty fast! There's also Shuttlebugs, which also won't pay them much mind except to menacingly snap their pincers at them without doing much else. Way out in the distance, they will spot even more mountains, suggesting that this is just one part of an even larger mountain range.
> Moving onto Nancy! She'll say she has no idea what's bothering Obama, although she's surprised to even see him there since the last she heard, his species is all but extinct. Apparently Squigs have always been heavily poached because of their abilities, but every since the war started their numbers have been dwindling at an even faster rate. One of the reasons for this is the fact that their psychic blasts are typically able to knock out Kharaa's host forms, so humanity has been attempting to breed and experiment on Squigs in order to make them a more fatal threat against the Kharaa. The Kharaa's response has been to just kill the species off. It seems like Squigs do not make good hosts, as their psychic abilities have a defense in which if the Kharaa's bacterium attempts to take them over, the Squigs just end up frying their brain with their own power.
> Nancy will tell them that she had been sent on a recon mission here in order to confirm the location of military property. If they ask her what the property is, she'll refuse to give the information. She'll explain that her ship was hijacked by Kharaa, but her crew managed to blow the ship up, killing them all. She, and three other crew members, managed to escape via a smaller vessel inside the ship. They also managed to capture one of the Kharaa. They all arrived at Iniidae where they were, unsurprisingly, shot down by the Pulse. She'll confirm that out of the group that arrived on the planet, including the Kharaa, she's now the only survivor.
> She'll also love to go to Naoko if they don't kill her or anything.
> dave wants to know how they captured a kharaa and where about the ship crashed!
> homura will ask if there's anything she needs to know about proper squig care. she'll be in the middle of asking something else when dave will be freezing time.
> dave will be freezing time so that they can check nancy's person. any pockets or anything that they can rifle through will be checked. after that, they'll bail to go check the ship for information with time still frozen. dave has nancy's passcard and will not be returning it.
> one thing in particular dave will be searching for is trip data! he wants to know the point of origin, and find the "military property."
> homura's pretty okay with all of this and is going along for the ride but she wants to try and find any hint of experimentation going on, particularly if she can maybe trace it back to obama. the squig. not the president.
> once all is said and done, nancy will definitely be dropped off to naoko, none the wiser to the shenanigans that just happened. i am so sorry, nancy.
Mission: watchtowers (hephaestus) Characters: dave. ANNABETH'S PLANS, TECHNICALLY Details: in his downtime and some looped time he will just work on getting hephaestus watchtower complete, with the modification of not having. a door down below so you actually have to fly to get in. because that is 100% a normal and reasonable thing to do but also he would just like to hang there no girls allowed ok (rose is allowed). he picked which watchtower to bother with for the name, honestly. I SHOULD CLARIFY he will also be making a tank for the magister and co to move them into with rose's agreement + will work to get the watchtower. livable. with like a shower and bathroom and bed and the like. since he just intends to move in now.
also he will do guard duty there whenever he hangs, technically, kind of.
Edit: the magister and co would mostly be sleeping at the tower and etc dave would drop them back off at the base with Rose or himself during the day or do their usual walks in addition btw
> They had a small containment device that was meant to house samples of diseased items. It was luckily big enough to fit the Kharaa. It was one of the maintenance workers, so they managed to overpower it even in their haste to escape the ship. They crashed in an area nearby the Jelly Shroom Caves, and they salvaged a lot of items left over by the old Degasi crew to make themselves a temporary base for the short period of time they all lived together on the planet.
> As for Obama, Nancy will state that Squigs prefer to keep to a very simple diet, so it'll be best of Homura did not feed him anything too heavy. They also tend to get high fevers easily, but it's normal so they shouldn't worry too much if it happens, just try not to disturb Obama too much during that time. She will also comment that she heard that they make good gloves. Not that she would know.
> Nancy will have kept various logs about her stay on the planet. Most of them are about the crew members she was stranded with, and how for some reason they became very obsessive with looking for crystals under the water. Apparently there were some strange rumors regarding them, and the crew became convinced that it was their way to escape Iniidae.
> However, Nancy focused mostly on the Kharaa. She tried very hard to understand the creature and to get it to disclose any of its species secrets. Towards the end of her logs, it states that she made some sort of breakthrough and that she thinks she finally managed to start figuring out its language. Before this could progress any further, though, an accident occurred that ended up killing the three other crew members and the Kharaa. She stopped keeping logs after that.
> It will turn out that the military property is ISHMAEL. While humanity is currently under the impression that ISHMAEL is currently fighting Kharaa, the government is frantic to make sure that the AI is actually still in fully working order. As they lost contact with Mimi months prior, they figured they would need to send actual personnel to attempt to locate ISHMAEL. The secondary order is to find Mimi if she's still alive, but the priority to find her isn't as high.
> Other notes will reveal that the base under the lava vents did, in fact, belong to them.
i got elected to post this comment, but ALL RIGHT. anything we should know about how naoko/nancy would react/what they would do once they ditched nancy with naoko...they'd escort her there.
WHILE DAVE JUST BLATANTLY FAILS TO MENTION THE KHARAA SPEAKING OR THE CRYSTALS until he can confer with rose, and also he'd copy all the files to pass off to family later so. oops.
Naoko won't seem too thrilled about it but she'll accept Nancy to her group since Nancy is also an Altera Scientist. Naoko will also pull Dave and Homura aside to tell them while Nancy herself may not be that bad, the branch of the group that she worked for did research that would border on the inhumane. She will also ask them to please continue to inform her if they find any other survivors.
THEN DAVE PROMISES TO DO THAT AND APOLOGIZES FOR THE SURPRISE. he'll also promise to drop off christmas dinner on christmas day for them as an apology extra and will. stick to that, including dessert.
Mission: URSULA's servers, part two Characters: Jake English, Dirk Strider Details: They found half of URSULA's servers. Now they want the other half! Their only clue currently is "Where Atlas Stood" so they will start with the Western side of Mountain Island. If they can't find anything there above or below the water, they'll continue to work their way out further West.
Mission: christmas present! Characters: it's annabeth. Details: her laptop has lots of dumb designs on it, but also can change size and shape. so she'll be working through her laptop trying to cobble together the design for a shield that can go from small to shield sized, and would try to make it with thatium if she doesn't encounter any roadblocks, inscribed with the Song. the present portion is because she literally just wants to give it to percy, but she might make more shields at a later point if it goes well.
We continue to applaud Valentine's hard work on things that don't involve ferris wheels.
> It is indeed a strain of the Carar disease. The problem seems to stem from an enzyme, specifically the 42nd one. The disease targets it and the enzyme traps it, neutralizing it. That's good! But what's bad is that it's lead to something of a stalemate. While the enzyme can trap and neutralize most of the disease, it can't catch all of it.
> To summarize, the Sea Dragon is perpetually sick with a fatal disease that can't actually kill it.
> If the enzyme can be strengthened, it could lead to a cure. The enzyme itself is quite weak, though, and strengthening it outright could lead to the Sea Dragon becoming sicker as the enzyme and disease wage war against each other.
> It's worth noting that the enzyme can be found in much smaller quantities in other fish from the planet. These quantities wouldn't be enough to stop the disease, however, and while it's found in the fish, their bodies don't seem to actually produce it after the initial production.
> URSULA will be very happy to add the Kharaa to her databank.
> The strain is indeed different from the Shroom Sickness and the Carar. However, it is still related. It seems the Shroom Sickness is what happens when the Kharaa are left to mutate in an isolated area over a long period of time. Centuries, perhaps more. The Carar illness, meanwhile, seems to be a non-parasitic version that kills the host slowly rather than mutates and takes over the host. It could be considered therefore a 'failed' Kharaa.
> After researching it thoroughly, URSULA will come to the conclusion that the creature is from a planet found roughly fifty years ago. It was rich in resources but, at least according to her data, was not infected with Kharaa at the time of discovery. That may have and certainly seems to have changed.
> When presented with food while hungry, it will eat. When presented with food while not hungry, it will hoard the food in a corner. When presented with most objects, it will hoard them. It seems to have an intricate system of hoarding, however, as it is careful in how it arranges its pile. The more important the object, the further down it hides it. It will not actually try to escape as long as it has objects to protect.
> While it doesn't seem to understand the nuances of human speech, it can read tone. Saying something positively or negatively will impact its mood. Positive things seem to keep it at ease while negative things will agitate it.
> Karkat it seems to view in almost a fond way. If Karkat tries to take its stuff, while it will hiss, it won't actually attack or put itself between the stuff and Karkat. With Valentine, however, it will worry more about its stuff being taken away again. If they both continue to give it things, however, it will come to view them both in a more positive manner.
> Most interesting is that it rarely rests. It seems to be alert most of the time. Brief periods of inactivity last only about ten minutes and happen roughly every ten hours. As it doesn't have much to do, it will mostly tend to its pile of things, obsessively cleaning them and checking them.
> Trousersnake always appreciates food, as do the rest. It's worth noting that trousersnake is almost fully grown by now, though despite that he's still very much attached to Dave as a friend and even has made his nest obscenely large to accommodate Dave and his own grown.
> The Reefbacks will learn his song and sing it in greeting to him! They're really very fond of his music. They think he'd make a good Reefback if he wasn't already another species! Being musical is very important.
> The Stalkers will, of course, bring him scrap as a gift, as well as some jewelry they found recently. It's all very sparkly and glittery so of course they wanted to save the most shiny for Dave.
> The Magister agrees! In fact he's been very worried about them ever since the incident with Komaeda. Since the incident, the Magister has been very attached to his family but especially Karkat and has probably batted toys at the glass at Karkat to try to get him to play with him in an attempt at comfort.
> He's prone to puffing up when Komaeda is around to make himself seem bigger. He's still pretty small though really but the poor thing is trying. It's not too scared of Komaeda but rather upset with him, wanting to do his best to intimidate him.
> Since he's a very cute fish, this has limited success.
> Of course it's possible to clone horses because why not. With the DNA provided by Beast Boy, she'll be able to make any variety of horse she likes thanks to his powers. We looked up varieties. There's a lot! And they're all cute.
> URSULA will naturally recommend the horses stay on the new island. It's the closest island to the base after all but also the safest since at least at the moment it has no predators living on it. Hopefully it stays that way!
> But just in case she'll whip up some camera feeds for Roxy to connect to once she's settled on a place for the ranch. It's best to be able to check on them either way!
> Lizard Horse/Horse hybrids are possible! They will be like mules in that they can't reproduce naturally. But they'll be completely safe and well-off otherwise. These hybrids will have structures similar to Lizard Horses but with fur and manes like normal horses.
> Hopefully Roxy won't go too clone crazy with the horses but we think a maximum of 15 would be best. After all someone needs to feed these!
> URSULA will fret over him since she doesn't have too many devices on the island. She'll understand if Dave doesn't want any but she'd feel better if she had some around the tower? Just so she knows he's doing well? Again she understands and Dave is an adult who can make his own decisions she's just a worrying type.
> Plus she'll miss watching the Magister and friends otherwise. They're so soothing to watch.
> Go west, young men. Oh, you already are, good. Now then, the search may take some time. By air and land it will be difficult to find.
> By water, they'll eventually find that it was a fairly literal clue. It's not quite a statue of Atlas himself but they'll find a globe embedded in the side of the island.
> Removing the globe will show a door with a keypad. The password is actually very simple. It's Atlas. Since there wasn't a clue for it, though, we'll leave you to decide how hard or easy this password actually is.
> Inside is a surprising well-kept facility deep under the volcano. The cooling systems are at full blast constantly and have somehow managed to keep going all this time, so it's rather cold down there. Hopefully you brought a sweater to work in!
> As a sort of extra prize, there's a message to be found left by URSULA's creator, Dr. Verne. It can be found easily while working on transferring the data.
> "I wonder who might be watching this. You know who I am but I don't know who you are. This message is set to play anytime someone transfers URSULA's data. I hope you're doing it for a good reason. Maybe she's being upgraded now to higher platforms that I can't imagine. I hope she's doing well. I hope my dream has come true for her but if it hasn't... I hope her own have come true. You see, I imagine AI as our children. And eventually, children grow up, become better than their parents and leave the nest. Now, URSULA isn't with me so she can't 'leave' literally. But I hope she's spreading her wings. I hope she's grown. And I hope you're taking care of her in times she needs it, and that she's taking care of you in times when you need it. I hope... that AI are the wonderful children of humanity. And I hope that by the time we're gone, they've grown up into fine beings of their own. I know that's very optimistic. But it's a good notion. ...Well, that's all. Continue your work and thank you."
THANK YOU GUYS and omg Verne is a good man. So glad he died before humanity did. All it did.
Dirk will be transferring URSULA's data to servers and bringing her home. Should I do a separate mission to ask about transferring and protecting it all?
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subnauticaooc2016-12-01 12:24 am
≡U.R.S.U.L.A. NAVIGATION
Jingle Bells
Dreaming of a White Christmas
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