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"

Chapter Three - Thar and back again You sail back to Random Pirate's hut, and told them about most of what you saw on Temporal Island. You then hand them the photo of Scruffins on her wedding day. "Yarr... This takes me back." Random Pirates eyes swam over the photo, and they cracked 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]." Not much else needed to be said. So the two of you just sat there for a while in relative quiet, the gentle crashing of waves outside adding to the comfort and the calm. PRRRAAAP "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 fry up!" "OH GOD!" You start to take damage as the toxic fumes fill your lungs. The stench is apocalyptic. You fall to the ground, desperate for air. You're life flashes before your eyes... "'Ere, put this on!" Random Pirate pushes something into your face, and all of a sudden you can breathe again. "Probly shoulda warned 'ee about that." You stare at Random Pirate vacantly. "Alright, I think that should be enough." They remove the breathing apparatus from your mouth and you're relieved to find the ungodly biohazard has mostly dissipated. "What was that‽" "This? Oh, this is my patented underwater breathing equipment rig..." "Not that! That cloud of death that came from your backside Random Pirate!" "Ye mean to tell me yer kind never expel wind do ya seraph? Come to think about it - do 'ee guys even fertilise the ground with yer leavings?" "Do we poop?" "'Eye." "No." "What was that thing you stuck in my mouth anyway?" "I call it an Underwater Breathing Equipment Rig - UBER for short. You can use it to help you breath in places ye otherwise wouldn't be able to for a short while, like in areas with toxic fumes, or under water... provided you pump it up first of course." You pause for a moment and immediately understand it's utility. "Can you show me how to use it?" you ask. "Sure! But ye can't has this one though - this one be mine. But I'll show yer how to make one!" As Random Pirate shows you how to use the uber gear, you study all the components to get an understanding of how the thing works. It really is quite impressive. "Ya place the devise on the ground and pump this bit as much as ye can. When yer in the water, ya gots ta put this bit in yer mouth see, and squeeze this 'ere handle. This will give 'ee a breath of fresh air. Yer'll have to carry it in one of yer carryin' slots mind, but apart from that, there's not much to it." The tank of the thing itself appeared to be made of a wax coated metal. There was a rubber tube connecting to a mouthpiece and a trigger connecting to the tank. It's a good thing you know how to tap trees and vulcanise rubber... "As ye'd probably expect, the bigger the tank, the more air it can hold. Also, the better the material you make the tank out of the more it can hold as well." Good to know... "You're full of surprises, you know that Random Pirate?" "Arrrr. Not just a pretty face I is." You laugh. "Say... um... Mr and/or Mrs [PLAYER]...." "?" "I's wonderin' if I... might ask a favour of 'ee?" "And what would that be...?" "Well... I lost me bonnie Scruffins that day all them years ago. She lies down at the bottom of the blue near Temporal Island..." "o-0" "I don't suppose ya could... fetch 'er bones for me so I can lays 'er to rest and gives 'er a proper burial" "Random Pirate, I..." "I's do it meself, but I's so old now and can't no longer swim..." "But you said there were monsters and horrors from the depths in the water. You'd have to be mad to think I'd be willing to..." "Thar be treasure... " ... "I'm listening..." "Remember I said 'bout all them boats that fell to the depths? 'ow many of they do 'ee think has riches and spoils of the most unimaginable proportions?" You give Random Pirate a cautious yet skeptical side eye... "And all you want from me is to collect your wifes bones is that right?" "Yarrgh." "And you're not interested in any of the treasure for yourself as before?" "I mean, I'd take a gold ingot if it's going - who'd not?" "How many ships exactly were down there?" "As far as the eye can see - thousands. Riches from all nations!" ... "Alright you son or daughter of a bitch - I'm in." "Ya-harr! Yer'll be an Uber-diver in no time!" You head back home and spend the next day packing and building the Uber gear. If you're going to make this trip again then it has to be soon before the days get too short. The following morning you set sail once more for Temporal Island. The journey was much the same as before but the days were even shorter, much colder, and there was a lot more ice on the approach to the island. In parts, the water had completely frozen over, and you found yourself breaking a path through the ice so your boat could still sail. As you get there you see even more creatures you hadn't seen before in the water, including an odd looking whale with what appeared to be a horn on it's head. Food was less of an issue this time round as you were wise enough to bring enough with you this time, and wise enough to bring some warmer clothing as well. You thought back to something Random Pirate had said before you left... "There's an underwater cliff a few clicks west of the island... that's where all the sunken ships should be." You steer your ship to the west of the island. Sure enough just beneath the water in areas that hadn't frozen over, you could see broken ships and masts on their side. There was an obvious problem though... you could only see a few of the ships under the water because they were shallow enough to be seen... the rest had presumably fallen much deeper because underneath the water, and abouts where these ships were, there was an underwater cliff leading away from the island to the rest of the deep blue. If there really were thousands of ships like Random Pirate said there were, they weren't within easy reach, they were way down into the abyss. You decide to check out the ships that were within reach anyhow. You put on your swimming suit and flippers, pumped the uber tank to it's maximum and jumped into the water. The ships were huge. Every once in a while you would press on your uber gear to get a fresh breath of air. After a while though you found yourself freezing, so you jumped back onto your sailboat and headed to the island in order to set up camp and a fire. The next day, you go back to the same ships as before and found much of the same kind of treasures you found in the Blue Wave hideout. You find maps, jewels, gold, you even find some broken cannons, barrels of rum, a couple of broken muskets, a rapier, and a rusty cutlass that looked like it'd give any unlucky person on the receiving end tetanus. You look out over the blackness of the abyss and know you'll have to go down there if you want to get to the other ships and find the resting place of Scruffins McGee. You trust Random Pirate's locig (for some reason) and figure that with one full pumping of your uber gear might be just enough to let you swim to the bottom of the abyss, search around for a minute or two and still have enough time to swim back up. You come up to the surface. Pump your breathing apparatus from your boat, put it back on, then plunge into the unknown... Still at the surface, you see fish and animals you're fairly familiar with... cod, haddock, pollack, herring, mackerel, capelin, and dolphins. You see some seals being hunted by orca and a massive orange jellyfish swimming past you that reminds you of a male lion's mane. In the distance you can hear the vocalisations of some deep underwater murmurings... and then you see the behemoth swim right underneath you. "Sperm Whale" you call it... without any understanding why. Deeper you start to see fish that glow. One of them reminds you of a lantern. Another had a bristly mouth and were butt ugly. The world becomes darker and you start to become somewhat nauseous. The massive expanse and the blackness you fall into very much shivering yer timbers. Then something moved sharply in the corner of your eye. You look around yourself but can't see anything discernable that it could have been... either that or it vanished into the darkness. You descend even further until eventually there is barely any light at all. Had it not been for a few specks of light beneath and around you it would have almost been completely pitch. As you go deeper into the blackness, you start to feel your chest constricting and your entire body feels like it has the weight of a mountain on it. The pain becomes unbearable so you decide to start heading back up due to the immense pressure you were under. You see the thin rays of light from the surface world reaching you. As you ascend you feel a sudden jolt in your side. Bleeding, with your wetsuit torn you turn around to see what bit you but you can't see anything. You keep swimming upwards kicking harder to reach your goal faster. Then you are jolted again, and whatever it was that bit you swims away quickly before you can get a chance to get a good look of the thing. Panicking, you try your best to get as far away from the danger as you are able. Out the corner of your eye you see it approach you. It's a shark, a really ugly one with a protruding mouth, jagged teeth and the face of a hobgoblin looking creature like the pictures in the books you read as a youngling. You dodge out of the way punching the hideous creature in the eye as you do. You are still bleeding profusely but the bleeding and the punch you gave the creature only seems to send it into a deeper frenzy. The Goblin shark lunges at you from beneath you biting your flipper and almost ripping it off. You are going at full speed towards the surface praying that the thing doesn't reach you. The shark is hot on your tail and you can't outswim it. There's no way you can possibly make it. You pray to the Gods and the shark makes it's killing move heading straight for you. It bites your leg. You let a scream of agony but no one can hear you. This is it... You knew Death's embrace would be a cold one but you didn't realise this would be how your life would end. You prepare yourself to be torn to pieces and plunged into a watery grave... Then without warning, the water vibrated a deafening sound and seemingly out of nowhere - the Sperm Whale comes in revealing it's place in the order of the food chain and snatches the Goblin Shark from off of you. You can't believe your luck. You race to the surface before any other hidden dangers lurking about can make their move. You swim as fast as you can in spite of the pain due to the adrenaline. You're not waiting for anyone or anything... You're close to the surface and freedom from this awful place. Surely, Random Pirate will understand that it was just too dangerous a mission. You finally break the surface of the water, and not soon enough, you don't want to spend a second more in that nightmare. You climb the side of your boat and make it onto deck. Safe at last. You make a start over to your medical supplies, but then your ears explode... You collapse onto the starboard. The ringing in your ears is more painful than anything you have ever experienced in your life. "Did I surface too fast?" The icy winter winds blows past the wetness of your swimsuit making you colder. The pink derpy cat sails were flapping. A heaviness starts to take over and you feel yourself drifting into an oddly warm but still icy comatosing state of paralysis. You thought you had cheated Death, but he was one step ahead of you on a game you had never heard of and weren't paying attention to.

Chapter Two - Treasure Island After a couple seasons, you finally manage to gather all the materials you need. You get to work, and within one week, you've managed to build yourself your very own sailboat! Dying the sail your favourite colour was definitely the right choice... The cat sigil you adorned it with looks a bit derpy, but you painted that - you pulled the sail apart so as to lay it flat on the ground and painted it painstakingly bit by bit with colours that took you aaaggges to make. It's yours, and you like it, and that's what counts. You pack a shovel, a fishing rod, a compass you crafted yourself, a sleeping bag, a decent sized net, the navigational equipment you bought of Random Pirate, some cookies, and a bottle of red for when you find the treasure. You wolf down the last of your honey-glazed ham sandwich (made with mayonnaise and last harvest's lettuce and tomato), and set out on your big adventure! You almost head out the door when you realise you forgot your amateur snorkeling kit - you pack that too and check your pockets to make sure sure you hadn't left that note with the coordinates on it. You step onto the boat and pray to the Seraph and Human Gods that you have a safe journey. You look at the coordinates on the note and realise: "I have no idea how to navigate." You check your handbook and learn that you use the sextant to determine your latitude, and you use the pocket watch as a chronometre to determine your longitudinal position. "Oof" you think. "This is confusing" "So... because we can't tell where we are east and west from fixed points like you can north and south from the North and South stars, we can only tell how far east or west we are relative to some point on the World itself? What does that even mean?" You realise that your latitude can be determined easily, but determining your east and west needs to be referenced against something. "So what did Random Pirate mean with this east/westerly coordinate?" Then it hits you. "They must have meant so many degrees east/west of their hut!". You sail back to Random Pirate's cabin. You think about saying hi, but then you think better of it. You calibrate the pocket watch to the huts position using a sundial in Random Pirate's garden allotment. Now... whenever you look at the pocket watch it will tell you the time at Random Pirate's hut (and anywhere directly north or south of that location). In so doing, the pocket watch can now be used to tell you how far east or west you are from Random Pirate. Combined with the sextant and it's ability to tell you how far north or south you are with incredible accuracy, you now have no trouble at all finding out where you are or how to make your way back from your adventure. With your pocket watch in hand and pointing your sextant at the stars, Sun, or Moon, and the Horizon, you can now determine where you are with ease. You set sail once more for Temporal Island. On days when the winds are calm, you find yourself casting your nets and fishing out on the open sea. The fish are plentiful, there are mackerel, sardines, cod, haddock... On some days you decide to go for a swim and see the bounties of the ocean yourself with your snorkeling gear - on other days when great white and reef sharks were about, you decide not to. Bringing the snorkeling gear was a great idea. As you swim past corals you see a whole assortment of colour and life, fish and flora, sponges and anemones. The flippers let you swim that little bit faster, the swimsuit reduces the drag of the ocean and keeps you warmer as you swim, the snorkel mask increases your visibility, and the snorkel lets dive an extra couple metres without having to come up for a breath. On days when the winds pick up, you use the boats windsock and your compass to tell you if the wind blew in a direction you can use. On those days, you unfurl your sails and point them toward your destination. On day 6 you were greeted by a pod of dolphins. On day 7, you caught a glimpse of a humongous mastodon looking creature off in the distance. You heard of whales before but you didn't think they'd be so big! On one of the journey's days you see a cloud of cherry shrimp near the coast of some island. You feel silly for only packing medium and large casting nets otherwise you might have been able to have yourself something nice to whack on the grill! It wouldn't have been all that hard either to make a fine net... After almost two weeks, you see some birds flying in the distance. Realising you've travelled the brunt of your journey due to your amazing Celestial Navigation skills, you quickly realise you are close to the island. You sail quite easily despite the small regions of ice in the water. You heard at really cold temperatures the ice sheets can form these strange things called brinicles that can freeze the sea stars and sponges underneath. You see a pod of orcas surrounding a seal that has taken refuge on a floating piece of ice. You feel sorry for them, but it appears from where you are there is little you can do to help the poor thing. Making land on the island, you set anchorand are greeted by some small crustaceans. The island was mostly low in vegetation, but there were a few patches of trees dotted about - even though they looked out of place as you imagined the island would have been a bit more craggy and tree-desolate. The island wasn't totally frozen over - even though it was winter and there were icebergs about, the flora of the place seemed to hold up its own. You see some birds (albatrosses perhaps?) flying around and nesting about the obvious high point of the island and decide you'll ascend the peak in the morning. You make a campfire, realised a tent would have been a good idea to stave off the cold, but settle down and enjoy a glass of red to compensate. You made it. The Sun rose way later than you were hoping due to the season, but you had a decent sleep all the same. With your gear all packed and your boat well moored, you begin to make the ascent to the top of the island. It was a pleasant walk for the most part. Turns out those birds were even more spectacular than you thought. "Boobies!" The sight of pair of blue-footed boobies nesting on the rocks with a chick underfoot fills you with joy as one of them comes up to you - more curious than fearful. You give them a cookie and they quickly snatch it off you and bring it back to their nest to feed their chick. You wish you could afford one of those fancy pants image capturing thingy's. Even if the blue wouldn't come out on the film, you just know the sight of this bird family would look wonderful back home on your mantelpiece. The last stretch to the summit was the hardest. There was no gradual incline here, and instead you realised you have to scale a vertical face. "If only I brought my grappling hook and climbing gear" you think to yourself. "It took me ages to craft and I never even use it!" You begin to wonder how you might reach the top. Several ideas come to mind... "What if I got some dirt or sand blocks and jumped whilst placing those blocks underneath me to get height?" you thought... "Oh but that wouldn't work because I live in the real world - duh!" You remember some block game you use to play as a young seraph and remembered that it's not the same because this is real life. "What if I built a stair case out of dirt?" you wonder. Then you remember that you live in a world where soil obeys the laws of physics... something which is a default physical property of all the worlds of the Universe, and that soil behaving without gravity would purely be an imaginative fantasy... "Looks like the only option left is to collect some sticks, make some rope - and fashion them together to make a crude ladder." You set back down to your camp spot and decide to get something to eat. You're down to your last cookie. Rather than eating it you decide to cast out your fishing line, but you've run out of bait and can't use previous fish you caught to bait the rod because you've eaten it all. Seeing a small crustacean, you smack it with a rock and get some gooey crab meat. It's not enough to feed your stomach so you instead attach the crab meat to your fishing hook, cast your line, and position your rod over a log in the hopes of finding a little something something when you return. Swimming into the ocean with your snorkel gear, you cut some kelp and bring it to shore. You pick up some sticks and craft yourself a crude drying rack. You place the kelp onto the drying rack and build a fire nearby in the hopes it will dry the kelp sooner. You pray it doesn't rain. You go into a patch trees to find some more sticks and notice some weird pillar things as you do so, but you can't quite see the tops because of the tree leaves and branches above. When you get back to camp, you let out a sigh of relief that the kelp has dried. You head over to your fishing rod, and hope you've caught something... It's a Capelin - barely much better than the tiny crab you crushed earlier. You make an executive decision and decide to cast the rod out again using the capelin as bait in the hopes of catching something much more nourishing. Looks like you'll be eating dried kelp it seems. You decide to spend your time making a temporary shelter by making a tent frame using the sticks and some moss to cover the structure. You spend the rest of the evening splitting the dried kelp and twisting the kelp fibres into rope. You then use the kelp rope with the sticks to craft yourself some crude ladders. As it gets late you head over to your fishing rod to see if you caught anything with the capelin... You caught a halibut! You leave the halibut bones on the shore in case you need to use it's bones for more fishing hooks. The next morning you make your way back to the top of the island. Since they are only crude ladders, you can't just stick them onto the rocks like they have glue on them like you can with regular ladders made from planks and nails... you have to place each ladder, one on top of the other and against a surface with the bottom ladder piece on the ground... but you already knew this. You climb the crude ladder and finally make it to the top of the island. At the summit, you have a moment to take in the spectacular views of the island. The ocean, the island, the scenery - it was breathtaking. You notice amongst the trees of the island are these odd pillars scattered about almost randomly, but they seemed to be oriented into some kind of line. You are pretty sure they were the weird pillar things you saw before. Each pillar looked a little different from the other, they were different sizes, and each of them came up to a point and was topped with a different "symbol". You wonder what it could be when you notice some writing etched into the rock on the ground where you stood... "Spring Equinox - Noon" "Oh come on!" you think to yourself. You travelled all this way just for some rock to tell you to meet up in 4-5 months? You decide you're not going to wait that long. You get up to start heading back to camp (and boat and beyond), when suddenly... It was noon. Local noon - you're pocket watch didn't say noon because it wasn't noon at Random Pirate's noon, but it was noon here. The shadows of the pillars were all lined up and pointing southward, but the shadows seemed a little long - perhaps because it was winter and the Sun was lower on the horizon. You look at the pillars some more and you start to think about it because you're smart. If you're 60° north from the equator, and it's winter right now but the rock is telling you to meet up at the spring equinox... then that means, the shadows would be such and such smaller... And then you see it. By imagining the shapes made by the tips of each pillar's shadow, you realise that if the Sun was at it's peak on the Spring equinox, then the shadows would come together to make a giant... "X" You do some quick mental calculations and make a pretty educated estimate as to where this 'X' would fall assuming noon on the spring equinox - all without having to wait 4-5 months. It's not too far from where you set up camp. You race down the summit, grab your shovel, and start digging at where you calculated the Shadow-X would fall. You keep digging until eventually you hit something hard. It's sandstone. You excavate a little more and eventually you find some stairs. You dig out the sand from the stairs to reveal a tightly enclosed cavern space - and there's a door. You open the door to reveal more stairs, and a tunnel. You head back to camp and collect some materials from which to make some torches with. Coming back with some lit torches, you go down the tunnel, placing torches into the torch holders conveniently placed along the way. At the end of the tunnel, there is a rusty iron barred door. You push it open to reveal a large cavernous hall like cave somewhere under and within the mountainy summit point of the island. There were pillars in the cavern and navy blue banners everywhere. There are several treasure chests about the room and small piles of gold coins all over the floor. There were paintings, chests of fine linens, and even a few furnishings including a fancy grand table and chairs, and an intricately designed rug. At the top of the table was the most intricately designed chair of them all with padded cushion fashioned onto the seat itself. There was a door to the right, but going a little further in this room you saw an area of straw beds with neatly folded clothes, blankets, and sometimes boots besides them. At the far end of the sleeping area was a partition screening a small enclosure from the other sleeping stations. It had double spread hay mattress with a double sized blanket. It was laced with navy blue ribbons and long since wilted flowers that would surely crumble if you tried to pick them up. There was a wardrobe filled with dresses, stockings and a captains regalia. On the bedside table was a photograph. A young couple getting married. You can't quite make out their faces as they were kissing, but they were clearly happy and very much in love with each other. The groom appeared to have long hair and was dressed rather androgynously. The bride was beautiful and had a maddening love in her eyes. Her dress flowed like water round the curve of her belly, and in the foreground you could see pirates cheering and applauding for the newlyweds. You turn the photo over and see something written: "To my first and only mate, I am yours forever always. The ends of the world cannot seperate us. Time will never keep us apart. - Scruffy Wuffy". You stick the photo into your waistcoat pocket and search around for more treasure. Amongst the booty you find jewellery, pearls, maps, fine linens, precious stones, an embroidered tapestry, artworks, a couple of decorative small statues, an entire bottle rack of aged mead (jackpot), 1 really big statue, a book on advanced seafaring vehicles, and a pretty decent amount of gold. You ferry the haul back to your sailboat and check the last door in the room, but it's locked. You think about how you can get in so you try picking the lock with a lockpick set you found amongst the booty. You try several times, but then the lockpick snaps. So you have another idea... You head back to your sailboat and find a pickaxe you brought with you just in case you might need it. You swing your pickaxe at the stone rocks to the side of the door - but nothing happens... well nothing except a small flash of light coming from the tip of the pickaxe. You swing again and sparks fly again from the end of your pickaxe but the rock walls don't budge - they're not even scratched. You go and fetch your hatchet to try and smash the door in... and nothing... nothing but sparks and you suspect if you continued in this way all that would be served would be the bluntening of your tools. "How can wood beat steel?" You search the hall and find a big ol' rusty key in a draw full of the captain's undergarments. "Sorry Scruffy..." You head back to the door and it works. Past the door you find another room - not as big as the first but still a decent size. As you enter you begin to realise that you're not quite sure exactly what you are looking at... In a nook to one side was a humming contraption connected to some copper wires that led to a wall. On the contraption was a lever, and towards the top of it, it appeared to be emitting some kind of signal through the air. The air around it's top appeared to wobble as if in waves... "It couldn't possibly be producing some kind of 'protective shield' around itself making it impossible to break ordinary building materials within some kind of force field could it?" you wonder... In the middle of the room was another contraption you'd never seen before. There are wires wrapped around it, and on it's corners there were these tall metal things capped with something that looked almost like a donut. There are machine parts and funny looking components all about the thing. In the middle to one side of it was some sort of control panel or control switch. The whole set up was also connected to some copper wires that led into the wall. You weren't sure at all what it was. If only you had studied to become a scientist in the class of Seraph U, you might be able to understand what this thing is (or maybe even build one?). In the middle of the device (which spanned an area of several square metres), something shiny caught your attention. You crouch under the wires and reach out to it. It's a gear! It was kind of like the rusty gears you used to trade with... but this one looked funny. It had an ethereal quality about it, and it glowed a greenish hue of blue. You come out from under the wires and just stare at it a bit longer. It feels hard. You tap it against the wall and nothing happens. You squeeze it to feel how hard it is, but then it disappears! You are left confused by the weird blue thing, so you decide to leave and not think about it.

So I've been letting my brain go off imagining what the VS oceans could look like if we ran wild and put in a whole load of oceanic critters into the game. Whilst doing so, I tried to imagine what a lore based Ocean would look like. This wasn't meant to be a story in a classical sense, but rather something akin to a suggestion wrapped up in a side quest, with a bunch of other suggestions that float around my head that I decided to write as a short story - kind of like my vision of Vintage Story could be. I ended up getting a bit carried away but I still had fun writing it all the same. I hope you like it. Let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! - Pingu Thalassophobia Chapter One - Concerning Pirates Whilst wondering along the coastline of the continent you find yourself in, you see a strange looking person living alone by the shoreline. They had a hut, a dinghy next to a small wooden dock in the water (presumably theirs), some crab pots, and some fishing rods cast out into the water leaning up against a log to stay upright. The stranger looks like they've seen better days - they were sporting an eye patch, wearing a navy blue bandana, looked old, weathered, and had missing teeth. Finding them inside their hut, the stranger asks: "Didn't yer mother ever teach 'ee to knock?" Looking around you can see an assortment of peculiar objects, shiny trinkets and things that would look better placed on an old sea captains vessel. "Do you have anything to trade?" you ask. Perusing through their wares you see an array of items including a compass, a mariner's quadrant, a sextant, a pocket watch and some empty maps. "What do I want some rusty ol' gears for? Be gone wid ya!" The strange sea-person doesn't accept rusty gears as legal tender apparently. You have an idea, and looking around you think you know what the naval mystery would prefer. Surely... it can only be one thing... You set back to the stranger after acquiring some fine gold bullion. "Ye mean business now do 'ee?" After buying something from them using the gold ingots, the stranger turns to you and says: "Arrr, I might 'ave been a bit hard on 'ee me thinks." "That's alright, we all have good days and bad days." "Yargh, but that be no reason to be treating 'ee ill. I apologise. See, it all goes back to me father... ... and then after the economy tanked, the factory closed... ... so I whacked 'ee on the 'ead with a trumpet! You shoulda seen 'ee!... ... and so what I'm tryna' say is we're all the products of our genetics and environmental conditioning, and after years repressing the burdens of my youth, I sometimes lash out when I don't mean ta'." "That's alright" you tell them. "If only the fiscal mismanagement of our forebears didn't create the fertile soil for the systemic failings seen in our current crisis, then perhaps we'd all be living free from the oppressive policies of the plutocratic class. Yarrr." As you start to leave, you can't help but notice the stranger begin to cry. You ask them: "Hey! Are you okay?" "Sorry, is just so long since I could talk to somone. Yer a good friend 'ee are. Whats 'ee name again?" "[PLAYER]" "Hi [PLAYER], I'm [Random Pirate Name]. It just gets so lonely in this hut living on me own." You have an idea. Going out into the world you keep on the look out for bird nests. You find the unhatched egg of either a Parrot, a Raven, or a Snowy Owl. You need to get this egg back to [Random Pirate Name] before it hatches. You hand the egg over to Random Pirate... "What's this?" "It's a [bird] egg. Thought you could do with a..." "Breakfast!" Random Pirate exclaims. "Ha-harr! This'll warm me up just nicely and thaw out the chills of my isolated internal prison! Yargh!" As you get up to leave (speechless). Random Pirate grabs you by the hand and says: "Wait! I have something for 'ee..." They lift up their eye patch revealing a hollow where an eye presumably once was. From the hollow they reach in and extract a small paper note, then cover their lack of eye back up again. You start to hear the faint patter of rain falling to the ground outside. "Have 'ee ever heard of... ... The Shrekening?" You hear a loud crash of thunder as the room shakes, and lights inside the cabin flicker - despite there being no discernible light source within the hut at all. "The what?" you ask. "The Shrekening!" The room shakes, lights flicker, and the roar of thunder can be heard once more. Voice shaking you say "No. I've never heard of... a uh... Shrekening." Suddenly there is a loud knock at the door and the rain hammers harder. "Hello! Random Pirate?" a voice calls out. "Can you come out please - there's been an accident!" "Hold on just one moment please" Random pirate says to you. They open the door. "What 'ee want?" "There's been an accident. We were navigating along the coast and our ship crashed into your dock I'm afraid..." "Twice?" "Yeah." "Seems like a convenient excuse to explain a previously established plot device." "Don't you mean a red herring implying a supernatural occurrence?" The old sailor slams the door and gets back to their story. "Now, where was I? "The uh..." "Ah yes! The Shrekening" - a dark now enveloping and a light shining beneath the old mariners face (still no idea where the light is coming from). As Random Pirate tells you their tale, your eyes avert and begin to focus on a drawing on the wall that seems as if to animate itself as like some kind of daydream flashback or cutaway... "Long ago there were a crew of the most bastardly, daring, and devious pirates to sail the 'igh seas. 'Blue Wave' they called 'em - owin' to their deep blue Jolly Roger and garb, and the way they brought the sea with them wherever they anchored. Men would lock up their wives, sons, pets, and daughters, if so much as a whisper of their arrival reached their ears... Even the landlords would let the roofless gutter-borns into their homes out of compassion and pity for the lower classes!" "Now I know your lying" you interject. The animation stops and Random Pirate puts away the pictures they were using to illustrate their tale. "It's true!" says Random Pirate. "Not a poor person to be found whenever those sea-devils were around! Some say, their captain had a certain 'predilection' for the poorer classes... If ever a low born found themselves in the captains clutches during one of their raids, they would be dragged into the very sea itself never to be seen again!" "And who was this captain?" you ask. "To think her name is to invite the black spot itself! To speak it is bring about a curse on your family for a thousand generations!" Random Pirate was serious. Your eyes lock. They squint their eye. You squint yours. They stare at you. You stare at them. Locked in an eternal oculus embrace with neither of you willing to break. They an Immovable Object, and you the Unstoppable Force. You begin to wonder if now was the right time to ask their pronouns... Sensing weakness, Random Pirate stares at you more intently raising their cheeks menacingly as they do so. You draw back from the assault turning your head and closing your eyes. A pursed grin begins to curl on the old crows face... Suddenly, you pull back into the fray, eyes wide open, brows as high as the stakes. Random Pirate was taken off-guard. They hit you with a one-two brow shift but it fails to land. Panic sets in as you stare into their soul. You see Random Pirate on their Wedding Day. You see Random Pirate watching their beloved fall into an icy abyss with a thousand ships around them ablaze in greek fire. You can hear Random Pirate's mother in the throws of birthing agony, a baby with an eyepatch cries, the voice of the midwife "Congratulations! It's a child!". Random Pirate recoils, then comes back to give one final push, but it's no use. With the look of disgust and loathing aimed right at you, Random Pirate through clenched teeth whispers one word: "Scruffins McGee". "Scruffins McGee‽" "SHHH!!! Tha's wot I said". Random Pirate appeared to find more drawings they made as if they were going to set up another animated cutaway. They lean in and commit to the bit... "Scruffins McGee. The meanest, scruffiest, shaggiest ol' sea bitch this world has ever known. 8 Foot tall. Folks say her father was a squid, and her mother was a hippo. Nothin' could stop ol' Scruffin. Fear drove the people mad. In a last ditch effort to quell the unrest, the kings of rival nations joined their naval forces together in order to rid themselves of the Blue Wave once and for all! They drove Scruffins and her fleet just off the icy coast of Temporal Island. Their coalition's armada outnumbered the Blue Wave 100-1. There was nowhere for Scruffin to escape! She and the Blue Wave were surrounded. As I recall, it was the Phyre nation that shot the first cannons. Before long, splintered wood was flying everywhere. The noise was deafenin'! The smoke from the gunpowder blotted out the Sun as blood flowed into the ocean turnin' it a deep purple. Captain McGee's Lookout Wilmer was climbing down the mast rigging when he got shot by a stray musket round, and falls straight overboard! I can still hear 'im screamin'..." "You were there??" "'Eye..." Random Pirate stood up and walks over to a cast iron stove. They light a fire in the stoves firebox, crack the bird egg you gave them earlier into a frying pan and starts cooking. "'ow long have you known I [PLAYER] and yer still doubt I after all this time? I was there [PLAYER]... It was just then.. when all hope looked lost for Scruffin, and she were down to her last ship that she wrought her most insidious curse. She screamed at the Armada with bloody murder in her eyes! Then, without warnin', the world started to change... the ocean started to twist and contort, the line of the horizon began to wobble, the waves were 100 feet tall, and the sky turned velvet. The water, the splashes, the wood that had been blown off of ships started to go back to whence they came. Blood poured back into the bodies of fallen men. Bullets flew out of mariner's chests and back into the barrels of the muskets that shot 'em! I was blinkin' in and out from where I was to a moment I didn't recognise, and it got faster the closer that moment came... Lights were shinin' from under the water growing and getting brighter as they drew near. The very chains holding up our world were being pulled in the distance by a Tempest Titan with a face that brought insanity to gaze upon. Tridents the size of masts started to rain down on all ships without prejudice setting them to a fire that all the lakes of the world could not be put out... even ships from Scruffin's own fleet that had been newly repaired by the reversal of time were not spared. As if all that wasn't enough, rusty tentacles came up from the deep dragging any ship and sea person left remaining down to their watery grave - such was her wrath." You stare at Random Pirate unable to believe what you just heard. They were staring off into some memory, vacant and haunted - you were unsure whether or not to call them out on their tall tale... even if it wasn't true, they certainly seemed to believe it so. "And then I saw it." "Saw what?" "The moment I were blinkin' to." "What happened?" "She fell." "Who? Scruffins?" "'Eye." "How?" "I can't quite remember 'ow it happened... Either it was an accident or she jumped in with intent..." ... ... "... or I pushed her." "You pushed her‽" "I DON'T REMEMBER" they shouted. Remorse, regret, and tears filled their eyes as Random Pirate relived the moment their heart withered away. Sniffling, they put the now fried egg onto a slice of unbuttered bread. "Alls I knows is..." Chomp. "I mih... uh... oh... mush." "Sorry. What was that?" Chew chew chew. Swallow. "I miss her so much" they cried. There was a pause. Random Pirate sniffled some more, followed by another bite of they sandwich. "I'm so sorry Random Pirate. That must have been really hard for you..." "Toby." "?" Chew chew chew. Swallow. "Don't be." You both knew it was the time to let the moment settle. After a few moments to calm down. Random Pirate brings themselves to composure. "That note I gave yer... It's coordinates. It'll take 'ee dreckly to Temporal Island." "Why would I want to go there?" you ask. "It sounds terrifying!" "Treasure." "Well why would tell me about it? Why wouldn't you keep the treasure for yourself?" "Arrr... 'ee may has a point. But 'ee be my oldest friend, and what kind of non-binary pirate friend would I be if I didn't share me treasure with yer? Besides... the only booty I ever wanted to plunder went down into the depths the day I lost her." Random Pirate offers up the rest of their sandwich with a gesture. "I'm good thanks." Something's bothering you. With all that commotion and the literal world collapsing around them... "How did you even survive?" "Swam." "Ah." "To find those coordinates, yer'll need a sextant and a chronometre or pocket watch. Ya know how to use 'em do 'ee?" "How?" "Press H on your keyboard to open the handbook." ... "Go up to the tallest point on the island. Yer'll see it when ya see it." As you get up, you start to contemplate everything you just witnessed, but there's one thing that's still bugging you. "There's something I still don't get..." you start... "You said this whole event was called... 'The Shrekening'?" "Well yarr, what of it?" "Well why would you call it 'The Shrekening'? Why wouldn't you call it something like a 'Temporal Collapse' or something?" "Because it was a shipwreck-ening - a shi-reckening - a shrekening." ... "That's stupid." "We pirates ain't one for words with too many syllables ya see." "I bet." "Does yer know what a pirates favourite letter of the alphabet be?" "Lemme guess... R???" "No... it be the C 'ee truly loves!" After getting the heck out of there, you see the dock that belonged to Random Pirate thoroughly smashed to pieces. You decide you will go to Temporal Island, if not for the treasure, then at least for your insatiable curiosity, and to see if there was any truth to the old fools tale.

The root problem? Yes, the root problem is the soil lol. Probably a good place to start. Have some sandy soils of varying degrees. Actually that sounds fun. Just stright up more soil types.

Yes. Really good stuff. I was literally just thinking about moss the other day. Tldr: I was trying to imagine how to make a shelter in a cold craggy biome - perhaps on sub-arctic island or something, and in the absence of banana leaves or something, you'd probably have to use moss. Yeah I want biodiversity and everything. Like there's a lot of little things I'd have changed about the game - some generation issues, realistic navigation, some lore related stuff... but on the whole I think one of the bigger components to it is being able to jump into a world and feel like it is alive. No better could something like this be achieved that by filling the world with an approriate richness of vegetation and wildlife. You mentioned lichens - good stuff. Can I interest ye in some slime molds? They're like sentient mushrooms.

I would love me a crock and some sheep dogs maybe. Add in a whistle and some mechanism and you could probably bring about a realistic sheparding.

@marmarmar34 Could I tempt you with a Sarcastic Fringehead? (yes this is real)

Telescope fish looks perfect. Lives at about 2000m below sea level but can be found between 500-3000m. About 20cm in length but they look amazing.

There was something in rlcraft if I recall correctly - it had something like what you describe and if you got hurt on your leg, then you'd walk slow or limp, if hurt on your arm you'd be weaker there etc. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I do believe it would be hard to get it done and do it right. I'm all for it otherwise, but I suspect we'd still be in a minority on that one, so yeh, make it a world setting or something lol. Personally I think it'd be hilarious to have the seraphs walking around in casts and crutches and wheelchairs lol.

That is something I like about project zomboid, also the nutrient management system pretty dope. That said, it works for that style of game - would it necessarily work for ours in VS? Couldn't say - more research needed. Same with the healing local limbs I reckon - I like the idea, but it could be one of those things that totally reworks feel and mechanic of the game to the point that it plays too differently to how some otherwise expect. For example, I tried a stamina mod fairly recently thinking it would be lit and immersive, truth be told I hated trying to do anything with it. Perhaps it just needed reworking. I'd want to see it as a mod to try it first than strasight in the game I reckon.