EmperorPingu

TLDR: Let the players choose a "middle option" of regional temporal instability in their own world creation. Hey, so I won't get into the arguments as it is (I've learned) a very devisive issue . That said, I think I have an idea that can probably satisfy all camps on this topic. The idea is to have a variable option in the world creation settings that can amend the nature of Temporally Instable Regions. Currently, the only option available is to turn the Temporal Stability Mechanics on or off. This suggestion proposes enabling a "middle ground" option for players who want to experience Temporally Instable regions without it affecting the surface. Regional Temporal Stability: Surface - the current set up where certain regions are instable. This should also be the default. Depth based - Makes Temporal Instability exclusively depth based (or special lore locations), thus removing it from the surface. Off - Regional Temporal Stability is turned off completely BUT the mechanic itself is not necessarily turned off as you can still become unstable from something like Storms for instance. This variable would be different from the on/off setting. It would allow the mechanic as it currently is to remain unchanged AND the default. It would give the choice to each single player to choose their own preference. It would enable those who want elements of the mechanic to have it without it affecting the surface for whatever purposes and give them a more progressive means to experience the mechanic.

I honestly wasn't expecting as much enthusiasm for the microwave lol. After reading Facethief's comment about Radar, it got me wondering a bit more about the actual physics of Temporal phenomena (hense the re-emergence of some of my older grievances with the game ). Still, I wrote Temporal Microwave as something of a meme, but hey, if folks see something in it they like and the devs or a modder wants to program it, all power to them. I really like the idea of utilising bells in this way too - could let a player know when they got mail or something. Do you have a link to your old post? I'd love to check it out and compare answers lol

Wouldn't it be great if you could hear or read what someone else was thinking on the other side of the world. Well... now you can with the Temporal Fax Machine! By attaching a Temporal Satellite to a typewriter - you can now send and receive messages to other Seraphs just like you from all over the world! Out patented Temporal Fax machine uses Temporal wave technology to connect to other satellites no matter when or where you are! Just walk up to the the fax machine, put in a slice of paper, and find out if you have any personal messages or what the most recent messages on the Global Temporal Network are! To send a message, you will need to insert a Temporal Gear. Each message costs a certain amount of Temporal energy per character, so bare that in mind... Or don't! Why should we care? We're Temporal Gear Inc. and we got you covered.

Temporal storm (jk jk)

Thank you for the reply @LadyWYT But I will argue that they don't have to be. True, and tbh yeah. I agree with you but I also feel that the point is important enough to warrent the change. It's like that saying: "Form follows function". It further compounds my own point that priority should be given to the player making their own experience in the sandbox rather than crafting an experience of it's own - however good it may be. Yeah I'm not crazy about the idea of extra dimensions - it's not a hill I'll die on. The point is more to iterate the idea of progressive development, that we can have benefitial stuff be in other places that are hard or dangerous to reach (like deep underground, or in the sky, under the ocean, or even in other dimensions) etc., thus encouraging the exploration of those places without forcing an experience upon the user. On that note and given your last point... what if a version of temporal storms was in the sky? I didn't even think of noisemakers - I was imagining like how humans make themselves look big and scary to scare of a would be attacking bear but I like your idea better lol. This is the main point I feel our camps would diverge sadly. I love the idea that the devs can tell a story they wish to tell, I think it's great and should totally be a feature of the game. With that said, I don't think that telling the story should come at the expense of the player experience. It should always be about the player's own experience that (for the absolute most part) they make for themselves.

You do not have to read any further if you don't want to. What follows are my suggestions for the improvement on what I deem to be negative gameplay mechanics. Temporal Storms Get rid of them - or in the very least make it so that they are something that are either explicitly mid-late game or something the player initiates themselves. When writing Thalassophobia (Spoiler Alert) I came up with the idea that Temporal Storms could be something the player themselves initiates by way of them using a Red (or corrupted) gear acting as a kind of chaos version of the classic green-blue temporal gear. I also hinted at the possibility that gears could be something the player makes as well. In my mind, gears should be something that should be hard to make and players should go out their way to put themselves in danger if they want to acquire the resources necessary to produce them (not disimilar to the danger we put ourselves in when we go mining). Also, we shouldn't be afraid of the idea of other dimensions just because minecraft did it, if it works, it works and the creatures from the rust world have to come from somewhere don't they? Temporal Instability Get rid of it, or make it something that is only affected by going to certain non-ground level areas or player actions, such as being too cold, being in the dark for too long, going deep underground (this is a fine use of the mechanic), or eating spoiled food (although this should make the player ill instead imo). Having certain areas be affected above ground is just annoying and a pain in the arse. Combined with temporal storms that force the player to have a low Cognition/Temporal Instability, this mechanic means that if a player can find themselves in a situation where they're forced to go outside and find a region where their cognition can recover thus forcing them to engage with a combat mechanic when they're just tryna pick some damn berries. Not to mention the implications it has on base building. Temporal Rifts The least problamatic of the temporal mechanics in my opinion. In many ways the mobs that appear from rifts are a better alternative to the predator mobs (in purely gameplay terms), though obviously less realistic. Personally, I prefer the idea that rifts spread SLOWLY into unprotected regions (regions not protected by Rift Wards) but are both permanent and capped at so many rifts per chunk or region. This would have to entail a mechanism for dealing with the rifts so my suggestion would be to have an early game "closing" of the rift that shuts off the rift for a while (say a month or two), and a later game mechanic that removes the rift entirely. Predators I tried addressing this problem before with the suggestion of bear traps and more ways players can deal with predator threats. I actually suggested stronger bears and wolves with the idea being that there were more ways of taking care of predators beyond digging a pit (which would be nullified in the predators AI behaviour). I didn't really come up with a great solution for how to deal with predators in the early game - my thinking was to give the players an actual chance to outrun the wolves or bears which is why I came up with an "adrenaline" mechanic. Another way you can slow the predator down though is by forcing them to have to stop whenever they make an attacking move (which the split second times would add up and give the player a chance to outmanouvre the creature. We don't players to just be able to stick these beasts in a pit and kill them with a stone spear - that's not good enough, these creatures should be feared but players need a realistic way to get away from them. Perhaps we could introduce tree or vine climbing as a means to get away from wolves, or introduce a scare mechanic where the player can shout and flail their arms at a bear to scare them off. I know those last two were bad ideas, but my point remains the same, those animals should be stronger but have realistic means to get away from in the early game Their respawn rates should be nerfed. That's about all I got time for for now. I might make another update in the suggestions forums (or possibly even story section at this rate) if I come up with a fleshed out design for some of the mechanics I've mentioned. For now though, let me know your own ideas, if I can ever break into modding (big if) I'll want to hear it.

To the developers credit, they make the game as versatile and amendable as possible, they both accomodate and actively encourage the production of mods, and are constantly making strides and efforts to make Vintage Story customisable to the player - all of which allows players like ourselves to fine tune and tweak the game to our own personal preferences. In the early days of electronic gaming, video games were primarily linear... you would complete a level, move onto the next level, fight a boss or two, complete the game. We take it for granted now, but the concept of player choice wasn't always a given for any particular game. Ideas like allowing the player to choose what weapon they went into a fight with were revolutionary for its day. One of the best games to illustrate this point was the Pokémon series. There's an argument to be had that a lot people might have played the Pokémon games because they liked the novel story of a world with magical fighting creatues, there are a lot of people who loved the series because it satisfied a deep-seated collectors itch (a perfectly valid game loop). I believe, that whilst other factors certainly helped and significantly contributed, the main component to Pokémon's resounding international success was the simple fact that player's were effectively given free reign to play as they saw fit. You start the game, you choose a starting pokémon, you then catch or trade what pokémon you want to have in your squad, you choose a strategy based on the pokémon's element types, you choose which pokémon to train, how to train them, whether or not you should evolve them due to inherant pros and cons to evolving or not evolving... This wasn't a game where you turned a wheel and watched what was being played out for you like a movie, this was a game where your choices mattered. Above all else, this was your journey, these were your pokémon. The reason Pokémon was successful was because it gave players a freedom they hadn't experienced before. As many of you may know, the Pokémon series today is a joke, and little more than a cashcow for Nintendo to spank addicts with releases that barely even pretend to have the veneer of player experience. When Palworld came along, it was such an instant sensation that Nintendo to this day are trying to sue the makers of Palworld, Pocketpair, by patenting ideas like riding a summonable mount, all in an effort to smother the Palworld into oblivion (but that's another story...). Nintendo and Gamefreak took their player base for granted and only care about the Pokémon series insomuch that they can use it to milk every penny they can out of the players, whilst not even providing the most basic levels of game development or investment. They got greedy and took the absolute royal piss out of their loyal fanbase... When Palworld came along, it was an instant overnight success because it gave players everything they had been asking Gamefreak to give them in Pokémon for years but never did. In Palworld, you can go and catch whatever you want from the get go, there are no hardlocks on the map. You can actually catch and interact with your pokémon *ahem* "pals" in a 3D world - that whilst not exactly having the most graphical fidelity was still lightyears better than Gamefreak ever attempted, you can build your own base with your pals having an active role in your progression and having layered levels of strategy and player choice woven throughout the fabric of the experience. The point of all this is to say that the direction that actually good and successful games take are those that lead towards the player having even greater freedoms, providing an exhaustive amount of avenues for player choice, and enabling as many styles of gameplay as possible. Nowhere is this seen and more critical than in the sandbox genre. We're in a sandbox game because we literally want to do a build and do whatever we want. Imagine being in a literal sandbox and being told you can build whatever you want as long as it's a sandcastle but only this one specific kind of sandcastle you make by turning over this specific bucket and nothing else... As much as I dunk on Mojang and Minecraft these days because of how "meh" the experience has become (especially when you compare it to the beautifully long-winded and satisfying grindy loops of Vintage Story), to their absolute credit they will always have my utmost respect for the ethos they went in with: It's your journey. It's your world. You can do whatever the hell you want with it. That's the point. In Minecraft, you are the master of your own destiny. In Minecraft you write your own story. The fact that Mojang understood how important this was, is the reason Minecraft is the most successful game of all time. So - why the rant? The absolute biggest thing to hold Vintage Story back from growth and player retention are mechanics within the game that don't respect the diversity of the player base. Mechanics like Temporal Storms and land-based Temporal Instability commit the cardinal sin of removing the player's capability of free expressive gameplay. They do not add to the player's ability to do more with the game - they actively make it so that the player has less choice with little to no reward for engagement. Well... why not turn off temporal storms and instability then if you dislike it so much? That's a fair question, but my answer is simple: I don't want to. I don't want to feel like I'm missing out on content. Maybe I actually want to engage with Temporal Storms and Instability in some capacity at some point during my playthrough... when I'm ready. I'm not saying we should remove storms or instability entirely, but what I am saying is that their current form within the game is entirely moronic, and counter to the tried and tested traditional notion of allowing players the ability to ease into progressively more difficult gameplay. What if I just to build for a while? What if I just want to take my time building up my strength, tools, defences, until such a time as I feel like I'm ready? It takes a long ass time to get even a basic armour that's worth actually getting - and when I do get an armour that might only half the damage I take, it slows me down so I can't even escape gameover when a bear or wolf pack comes along. A lot of players are like this. My argument is that "creating a new world just for you" isn't always the right solution. Sometimes we want to play with friends, and amongst those we all have different styles and ways of playing the game... therefore, we shouldn't just dismiss the idea that different styles of gameplay should be accomodated as is, without resorting to the excuse of "well just change your world settings" - that's not always an option and it's besides the point. My point above everything else (at the risk of sounding cringe), is that the game needs needs to move away from forcing the player to live out a vintage story, and instead needs to prioritise enabling the player to write their own vintage stories. I was originally going to write this post as a collection of suggestions for the suggestions section of the forums, but the key reasons why I even came up with these ideas in the first place were to address the greater underlying issues I feel negatively impacts Vintage Story in many ways. I will include those suggestions here anyway as they are not the main point of this post, but rather a means to illustrate how we can think about these problems, and how to address them. Please feel free to critique my own ideas, or even add your own solutions to the problems I raise. Naturally my ideas aren't always going to be the best solution to a particular problem (Temporal Microwave Oven), but I feel very strongly that the community needs to come together to find solutions to these issues for the longevity of the game, the benefit of the community, and the enrichment of the player experience itself.

Beautiful. I wouldn't know, I rage quit.

On death sure. Was worries you were gonna suggest as per regular gameplay. Actually the getting torn up by by wolves and bears sounds kinda lit tbh. Bear and Wolf should heal when they feed on you.

You've just given me an idea... I'll make a separate post for it though

Why reach for the sky when there are footprints on the moon? Bookmarks and Folders. Don't just let me favourite, let me categorise my recipes and guides according to my interests >:0

The Temporal Microwave Oven looks like a regular microwave oven but with a temporal gear jacked in the back. When you put spoiled or rotting food into the Temporal Microwave, it reverses the course of time on your meal and makes it fresh again

Chapter Six - Metal Gear Liquid It took a whole year to build, but it was absolutely necessary. The iron suit didn't take too long to build, but the diving compartment residing on the ships bottom deck alone took months. Your new vessel wasn't just a sailboat, it was an entire ship and it was massive. It had two masts with huge sails and two lower decks - one of which had a room full of chests. The top deck had your very own cabin, complete with a cooking stove, places to store all your navigational equipment, a desk, a table on which to place your maps, and a bed with your favourite duvet cover. At the sides of the ship were a series of cannons and a humongous harpoon thrower that could only be for catching monsters of goliath proportions. You carved the figurehead of a derpy looking kitten out of ebony to go at the bow of the ship. The sails were a deep Navy blue this time as you hoped to impress Random Pirate and jog their old memories of their time with the Blue Wave. After packing everything you could possibly need, you raise your flag on the ships flagpole and smash a bottle of champagne on the bow. As an extra precaution, you bring yourself a regular sized harpoon gun in case anything snuck up on you in the deep. You take the helm in early spring, hoping to make it to Temporal Island before the Spring Equinox. You didn't need to see the X made by the pillars, but you wanted to. The journey went more smoothly than before. Using some fish guts you collected in buckets from preparing fish, you chummed the waters around you on calm days in the hopes of attracting sharks. You did, and you were even able to catch one. You store the tiger shark on ice on a lower deck and imagine having some tasty shark fin soup when you get back from your adventure. Perhaps if you had fitted the ship with a tank you might have been able to keep the shark and sell it to some collector back home, but you didn't have enough room on the ship owing to all the equipment you had relating to the vehicle you had on the bottom deck... You make it just in time to Temporal Island for Spring Equinox. As you climb to the summit you notice the crude ladders you made before had crumbled and were now a pile of sticks and rope on the floor. It didn't matter though, because you finally did it. You brought your grappling hook! You climb to the top of the summit and wait for noon to arrive. It's always nice to see confirmations that you were right about things. You head back to the ship, steer it to the west side of the island and get ready to make your descent. You put on the iron suit, bring your harpoon gun with a steel harpoon for extra damage, bring a special waterproof light you adapted just for this trip, and a magnesium flare gun in case you need to see things at a distance. The diving compartment was like a ship within a ship. It was box shaped and was connected to the rest of the ship by a long, incredibly thick chain, and a tube connected to a pump. The pump in turn was connected to a wind dial on top deck so that as the wind blew, the pump was compressed allowing anyone in the diving compartment to breathe. It sat upon a slightly raised section of the lower deck upon a couple of trapdoors that would open when the compartment was ready to descend. You step into the diving compartment, and screw close the hatch. Pulling on a lever the doors on the ship beneath the compartment opened. You turn the handle to your side and as you do so, the chains connecting the diving compartment begin to unfurl allowing the vessel to descend. After a few seconds, the chains start to unravel by themselves and you begin to fall into the deep unknown. The open water is beautiful, but the expanse still fills you with dread. You see schools of fish and life teaming everywhere. As you make your way towards to the bottom, the darkness takes over. The lights of strange creatures begin to flicker - looking out of the diving compartment windows, you begin to feel like you are sitting amongst the stars. As you gaze into the abyss, the twilight world above you fades away completely and the world around you turns pitch. Apart from the wooshing of the water going past the diving compartment and the sound of your own breathing, much was still and things became very quiet. After a good while longer, you hear and feel a thud as the diving compartment comes to a complete halt. You turn on the gas lantern within the compartment but can't see much further past the windows of the thing. If all else, when you are outside the light inside the compartment will at least help you find your way back, even if the breathing tube and ropes do not. You go into a separate chamber from within the diving compartment and connect the breathing tube of your iron suit to a socket still connected to the other chamber. Making sure the chamber door was firmly shut, you start the compression sequence. Pulling a lever on the wall, you wait as water starts to fill the chamber. Eventually, the entire room is filled with water. You turn the hatch of the chamber door leading out into the void. With your special lantern in one hand and your harpoon in the other, you step out into an alien world you're quite sure no seraph has ever laid eyes on. The Iron suit was slow and clunky. You couldn't swim, but you were alive. You couldn't see too far ahead of you, even with your light, so you fire a shot with your magnesium flare gun. The flare shone brightly and far, and for a few seconds you could see it... It wasn't just some small war that happened all those ages ago... the shipwrecks stretched all the way to the horizon. You make your way towards the nearest shipwreck to get a closer look. The colours on the sails had faded but you could recognise the patterns on some of them. There were old flags from all sorts of nations - some still around, others from fallen nations. The bones of many a sailor were littered everywhere, most complete in their skeletal form. You imagine that had it not been for the small fish and creepers around that their corpses would have otherwise been well preserved in the cold. You press on and find all manner of weaponry and items you were sure no one made anymore. Old coins no longer in circulation, plates and cutlery from officer's mess. Weirdly, despite being broken, the ships appeared to be pointing almost unanimously to some central area of the ships. You decide to follow to where the ships were pointing and easily figure out why. "They were surrounded" In the middle of theatre were black ships with heavily faded blue sails. Ships from all other nations were pointing right at them. Some, were facing parallel towards the Blue Wave ships as if they aimed their side-cannons right at them. You shoot another flare to get a better look. Seeing more clear for a few moments, you figure you should head towards the biggest ship amongst those of the Blue Wave. You amble your way through the water towards the big ship leaving footprints in the silt and abyssal mud as you do so. It was a magnificent ship and intricately carved in places. The ship was on it's side, but miraculously it was in one piece. You use your grappling hook to lift yourself up to what you presume to be the captains quarters on the top deck of the ship and squeeze your way through the opening from where a door was on it's side. There were jewels and pearls in the cabin, but not so much as if to imply they were hoarded. These were pendants and necklaces that belonged to someone. You see something shiny on the floor, so you head over to it and pick it up realising what it was immediately. "An Astrolabe! I haven't seen one of these since I was a kid..." You put the Astrolabe in a loot bag you designed especially for the trip... "Can you imagine if I had stored any lit torches in this bag? It's crazy how some people think torches will stay lit when keeping them in reed baskets, let alone underwater!" You start to head out and decide to start looking for the remains of Scruffins. Despite there being bones and skeletal remains everywhere, there doesn't appear to be one that looks like the remains of a Blue Wave captain. You make your way over to the remains of someone who looked like they might have been important in the Blue Wave. You could see as you approached that they were some were kind of lookout owing to a golden telescope right next to them. One of the lenses was broken, but you decide to take it anyway because it looked valuable and you imagined it wouldn't be too hard to fix with your amazing Glassmaking Skills. As you turn around to look under the ship, your foot catches something hard and you trip into the mud. You pick yourself up and go over to the thing that tripped you. You brush away the silt and reveal another shiny. Your eyes widen and your heart races as you realise what you've just found. "It's a gear. A shiny gear." This gear wasn't blue though. This gear was red. A crimson light emanated from the gear and it appeared to pulsate the more you looked at it. It looked precious. You weren't sure if it was some kind of underwater moss or a property of the thing itself, but it appeared to have little red hairs oozing from it like it was leaking into the water around it. You decide it's best to ask Random Pirate about it later. As you go to put the red gear into your bag though, you feel a sharp pain on the back of your head, and you fall over once more into the silt, dropping the red gear and your light as you do. Picking up your light, you turn around to find out the cause of commotion. You see a tenticle reaching towards you so large and long that the other end of it was faded into the murk. You start to rush as fast as you are able back to the diving compartment, but your suit is slow and heavy. A tentacle lunges forth and grabs you by the leg, another grabs your head and turns you towards the foul creature so that you are forced to look at it. Through the murk, the creature reveals itself and presents to you a colossal, menacing and lidless eye staring right at you. You try to kick at it, but it only tightens it's grip over you and brings you towards it's gigantic beak. Your suit starts breaking. The glass on your helmet begins to crack. You reach for your harpoon but it just slips from through your fingers... luckily, you catch it by the tip of the harpoon and flip it up to catch it in your other hand. As you kick yourself away from the squid's beak, you grab the harpoon gun mid-water and take a well aimed shot straight into it's eye. The squid drops you and recoils. For a moment you think that shooting it in the eye might be enough to scare it, but the moment was temporary... With vengeance and anger coursing through it's steaming blue blood, the squid lunges straight for you with everything it has, determined to seek your complete and total annihilation. There isn't enough time to reel in your harpoon for another shot. You pick up the nearest thing to you in a drastic attempt at a defence... You lift up the red gear and grip it tightly hoping it will shield you as you brace for impact. The squid crashes into you with everything it has and the red gear vanishes. Without warning, the squid halts it's attack. It's tentacles peel off you, it starts to rewind as you see panic setting within it's gargantuan eye. The cracks in your suits helmet repairs itself along the lines, and as soon as the squid is able to free itself of it's temporal reversal, it flees into the murk from whence it came faster than you can blink. You stand yourself up and turn to run towards the diving compartment - but before you can move, a wall of flowing water begins to swirl itself around you. Lights begin to pulsate in the distance growing brighter and larger as they make their way towards you. The ground beneath you shakes and a crack begins to open in the silt between you and your escape. The crack widens revealing a bright white glow beneath, deep into the crevice, piercing the veil of darkness, and unmasking the world around you for the deep burgundy horror it had become. The pulsating lights broke through into the eye of the storm, where you were, revealing rusted heads of large hollow black eyes and corroded faces. Streaming behind the faces were translucent threads that left glowing streams of murky red liquid that appeared as if to bloody the water. Several of them take position on the other side of the fissure that had opened before you. One of them, the larger of the group, stares right at you as red dots appear in the blacks of it's eyes then starts swimming straight at you with a deafening shriek like scraping metal. Realising you don't have enough time to wind your harpoon gun, you take one step back then run as best as you are able in your iron suit towards the edge of the fissure. The face opens it's mouth 180° revealing several rows of jagged rusted metal teeth like needles, folding the otherwise human like features of it's face over itself. You leap over the fissure, grabbing your flare gun as you do so taking aim at the abomination. You shoot, but your flare misses, but it's just enough to divert the face from it's course and it misses you too. You land just sparingly on the other side of the fissure with 8 or so other faces around you, though it felt like more. They pounce on you as you blast at them the remainder of your ammunition, hitting at least 2. One of the faces wraps it's threads around you and attempts to bite through the glass of your iron suit helmet. It pierces through the smallest of holes as water begins to spray into your suit at high pressure blinding you. You punch at the other faces and wind up your harpoon to take another shot. You shoot one down and knock out another, grabbing it and throwing it into the growing valley beneath you. The other faces scatter, then a burst of light pulsates from the crevice like lightning with the entire ocean for you to see... The storm is still raging. The silhouette of chains and seaweeds on the horizon were the size of worlds and someone or something was dragging those chains. You break through the wall outside the eye of the storm, and head towards the Diving compartment but stop in your tracks. The shadow of something much bigger was coming towards you. This thing was bigger than mountains. This thing was the breadth of the ocean itself and was too big to fight, and it's staring right at you. It was something between a whale and a worm and the size of something that could have been pulling those chains. There was no escape. You run back into the eye of the storm and look behind you to see that the Colossus had dived from the top of the ocean right onto the diving compartment boring into the muddy silt with ease and eating everything in it's wake. The wave of the impact pushed you over the crevice and you were hanging on over the edge. You start to find it difficult to breath as more and more water keeps filling in through the pin sized crack in your helmet - this undoubtedly wouldn't be helped now you could see one end of the breathing tube that had connected you to the diving compartment was now torn and flowing into luminous crevice behind you. The Colossus rose again with the length of it's body running up from the fissure and its head looking right at you from the top of the ocean. "F*CK YOU! F *** CCC KKK YOOOUUU!" You scream as the Colossus raises it's body behind itself and starts hurtling towards you. You stare into the belly of the beast and the abyss stared back at you. You answer Empyrean's call. The whiteness takes over leaving you with nothing but blindness and the sound of churning gears.

Chapter Five - Under Pressure A gut feeling tells you not to head back to Temporal Island right away. As much as you were impressed with Random Pirate's Uber diving instructions, a voice in your head tells you that it wouldn't be enough to travel to the bottom of the Blue. You think about the problem for several days, but try as you might, you cannot conceive of a solution to having to deal with the weight of the ocean above you when at the deepest depths. As the days approached their shortest, you walk into a nearby village and are surprised to hear a familiar voice... "Hello stranger! 'ow be on then?" "Hello. Sorry, do I know you?" "You probably don't recognise me, allow me to introduce myself... The name's Convenient Docksmasher! We met briefly a while back at Random Pirate's." "Well we were never really properly introdu..." "I tells my wife all about you I does." "Oh really?..." "Yeah, she can't believe half the stuff we use to get up to." "Anyway, I want you to meet my firstborn... Say hello to the nice Seraph [PLAYER]" "Good evening Mr or Mrs [PLAYER]." "You named your child after me???" "No... My son or daughter is also called [PLAYER]... You just happen to have the same name. It's a very common name you know? You're not that special. What's wrong with you?" Embarrassed, you go all flush and look for an exit. "Anyway, have a good Starmas. Oh! Wait... before I forget, can you give this to Random Pirate for me? Thanks." Convenient Docksmasher hands you something shaped like a bottle wrapped in gifting paper, and rushes along with little [PLAYER] in tow looking like they were just happy to get away from you. "Dick can't even drive boats anyway..." you think to yourself as you pull a face behind their backs. The Starmas festivities were pleasant. The fireworks weren't as good as last years, but you had fun playing on the attractions and winning no prizes... "More rigging than a Navy fleet..." You head over to Random Pirate's and hand them over the bottle shaped present Convenient Docksmasher asked you to deliver. "!" Random Pirate shakes the present a bit and you can hear the familiar sounds of sloshing... "Ye know what this is do 'ee?" says Random Pirate with glee in their eye. "Oh I wonder..." you say, rolling yours. Random Pirate rips the paper off eagerly awaiting access to their present. "Ha Har! Just what I wanted!" Random Pirate holds their present up, then lays it flat onto the table for you to see. "This friend, is a schematic for a new underwater breathing apparatus." Use to this sh*t by now, you take a lean in and look at the design. "See this 'ere? This thing can let you breath underwater indefinitely." You're eyes scan over the schematic. From what you can tell it appears to be some kind of a suit made out excessive amounts of rubber and iron and had a glass face on it's helmet. Attached to the suit was some kind of long tube that led to a pump of some sorts. "If my calculations are correct, the metal of the suit and the thickness of the glass should be able to withstand any pressure from the weight of the water pushing in on the suit." "That's great Random Pirate, but.... the tube doesn't look long enough to be able to go all the way down the deepest depths of the ocean. Also, it looks like you have to pump air through it in order to let whoever is in the suit breath." "Well... ya could attached the pump to the axel of a windmill and that will get it going for yer." "Alright alright, I see what your getting at - but how are you going to build a windmill in the middle of the ocean, at the bottom of the sea?" "... Yaaar... that stumps that does...." Random Pirate looked deflated. They hadn't given up but they were in a pickle... "Ye'd prolly need some kind of advanced sea faring vehicle that could swim to the bottom of the ocean and attach this suit to that methinks." You try to wonder what kind of advanced vehicle could do such a thing. You have no idea or point of reference of how this could be achieved. Then you remember something.... Back when you hoarded all that loot from temporal island, amongst the booty were a book on just this topic... "Advanced Seafaring Vehicles for Dummies - a reference for the rest of us" you mutter. "Wait right here" you tell Random Pirate. You rush back home and look on your bookshelf, and there at one end of the collection it was. "Jackpot."

Chapter Four - The Seraph who lived The thing about death, as with all things, is that it is relative. If the Universe is truly infinite, and there are infinite many universes - can we ever truly die? You wake up to find yourself in the strange room within the Blue Wave's hideout on Temporal island. It was midday, you felt as if you were just doing something... That's right... you were just admiring the strange etherial qualities of this shiny blue gear. "That's odd." You think to yourself. The gear was all shiny and glowing... it's just turned into a common ol' rusty piece of junk... Money's still money though so you pocket it and carry on your way. Just as on the way there, it takes another 2 weeks or so to get back home from Temporal Island. You unpack all your cargo and loot from your expedition, and head on over to Random Pirate's to tell them all about your experience. "Random Pirate!" "[PLAYER]! Welcome back! 'ow was yer trip?" "Different... you won't believe some of the things I saw..." "Well come in, tell!" You walk into Random Pirate's hut as they shut the door. "I saw all kind's of things Random Pirate. I saw all these weird and wonderful animals of the sea, I saw puffins, I saw seals, I saw cold water sharks, I even saw me a whale RP!" "That's great kiddo! Say... did's ya find me treasure?" "I did! Here...." You hand over the photo of Scruffins and Random Pirate on their wedding day. They look over the photo almost in disbelief it was even real... "Yarr... This takes me back." They crack a smile that could be seen in the wrinkles of their eyes. "Did I ever tell 'ee I gave 'er a manatee for a dowry?" They look up. "Thank you [PLAYER]." Time slows down. You turn your head in slow motion towards Random Pirate like you know something terrible is going to happen... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" ***PPPRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPP*** The wave of fart particles hits you like a battering ram. The blast gives you a nosebleed. The chemical fallout causes you severe radioactive poisoning. Before you know it, you're on the floor and Random Pirate is trying to put something in your mouth. You breath on the vulcanised rubber tube and look at Random Pirate like you've just seen a ghost. "Corr, that was a stinker! Ya got right in on the blast radius and everything [PLAYER]! Probably shoulda warned 'ee about that." You remove the tube from your mouth. "What was that?" "Ho ho - sorry [PLAYER]! Ya got I hooked to them [bird] eggs ya see. That's the result of this mornin' s..." "Not that!" "Uh... you mean my patented Underwater..." "Underwater Breathing Equipment Rig. Uber-diver - ha ha ha ha - we get it." Random Pirate looks at you confused. "You ever get the feeling of Déjà vu?" "I'm not partial to French pirates." You roll your eyes and shake your head and think for a few moments... "I've seen this before..." Random Pirate raises their eyebrow knowingly... "Ye been playin' with the cap'ain's Temporal Caster." "I suppose you're going to explain what th..." "The Temporal Caster is a mysterious device that 'arnesses powers from the subatomic world and produces objects of immense cosmic capability. I'd never touch 'em of course - nasty things. That were always more Scruffy's thing that were." "I saw this shiny blue thing... but when I held it, it turned into..." "A rusty gear?" "Yeah... how did you..." "know?" "Yeah. Look can you stop finishing my..." "Sentences?" "" "Fine." "Have 'ee ever heard of... Quantum Entanglement?" RP pulls down a chalkboard from the ceiling and starts talking. "It's quite simple stuff really... would ya like to start with Wave-Particle Duality or Multiverse theory?" "" After several hours of lectures that were surprisingly more interesting than you thought they would be - you begin to start questioning the idea that you were even real. "So... all these Rusty Gears about everywhere... Each of them was an entire universe that got deleted???" "Sort of... it's more like the nature of reality means that universes are splittin' in two at every possible instant. In one universe, the particle exists, in the other, it doesn't. When ya use the blue gear, the two universes that split in that exact instant become entangled... one in which the blue gear disappears, and the other where it turns into a rusty hunk of metal. When yer died in the universe where the blue gear disappeared, 'ee and everyone else within that universe ceased to exist, but a part of yer 'essence' carried over into this universe where the gear turned into rusty metal." "But... there are millions of rusty gears all over the place..." "Yarp." "But that means..." You are suddenly filled with a sense of terrifying existential dread. "But there are millions of rusty gears everywhere! Being used as an inexpensive units of currency! Millions of universes with billions of lives are being destroyed, and the byproducts are being used to buy sowing needles?!?!?!" "Millions? My sweet seraph child... Yer really believe our universe be the only one this ever 'appened to? Millions ain't even a drop in the cosmic ocean to the number your 'avin such difficulty to fathom." You begin to feel almost as nauseous as when Random Pirate violated the Temporal Convention. "It has to be destroyed. The Temporal Caster has to be destroyed!" "Destroying one fancy pants setup don't change the fact that there are many of 'em all over the shop, and anyone smart enough to build one can do so anyway with the right equipment and setup! It's a property of the universe itself, not something yer can destroy!" "Well we have to try." "Ya don't get it do 'ee? Ya can't just blow up a Temporal Caster with sticks of Nitroglyceral. One wrong move and yer could delete the entire universe we live in!" "I'll take that chance." Random Pirate let out a *Sigh* "Stubborn little bastard ain't 'ee?" Random Pirate looks at you, almost impressed at your tenacity at standing up to them on this. "Yer remind me a lot of a feisty young mariner I use to know... Alas. All there is of them now is this mangy ol' sea hound in thar place." You look at Random Pirate with a sense of compassion, but you know this is not something you can budge on. "Alright... alright... If yer that determined to destroy the damned thing ye might as well do a proper job of it." "You'll help me?" "'Eye. But yer'll be wantin' to take it apart piece by piece." "Okay, no problem." "Yarr, but yer'll be needin' the key so ya can dismantle the Temporal Caster safely." "Alright - well where is it?" "Last I saws it, the one and only love of me life had it on her when she fell into the ocean." "Don't tell me..." "Scruffins McGee!" "ffs"