The Lament of Lonesome David
cloudsoda
Los Angeles Join Date: 2016-12-10 Member: 224769Members
Los Angeles Join Date: 2016-12-10 Member: 224769Members
Hello everyone. I'd like to share a story about an incident that occurred half an hour ago. I've included screenshots to help illustrate what happened.
So I was in the Underwater Islands, checking out the wreck there. I had gone back up to my Cyclops, but as I was swimming down I spotted this:
Normally I wouldn't care because hey, it's just a game. But reefbacks have a special place in my heart; they've sheltered my big babby self during night time, let me take plants off their backs, and didn't mind that one time I accidentally drove into 'em with my submarine. Plus, it was a baby! So I quickly grabbed my Seamoth and headed back down.
To the rescue!
Shit. He was stuck in there real good. I figured the best way to help him was to nudge him out. This didn't seem to work too well so I ended up having to use more force. And it was taking a toll on my poor Seamoth. What's worse was night was falling and I still hadn't managed to get him out!
Gaaaah sorry Seamoth, sorry baby reefback!
As morning came, I had the great idea of using the Seamoth as a sort of leverage to help force the reefback to start wiggling off the geometry of the ship. By the way, that wasn't the first creature I'd seen caught on the wreck's geometry; a few hours before I'd seen a boneshark go berserk all over the exposed metal girders before wiggling himself free. But reefbacks are virtually helpless. ;_;
My Half-Life senses kicked in and I realized I could use the Propulsion Cannon to force the reefback out! What's better, it wouldn't hurt him or my Seamoth! Woohoo!
Propulsion cannon wasn't doing shit! The other reefbacks were constantly swimming by, silent but foreboding. At this point, I'd taken to calling the baby reefback "David", like David and Goliath. See, 'cause even though he's just a babby, he's still 5 times the size of my Seamoth!
I had to drop a flare in the end because:
A. I was pissed off that I couldn't see ANYTHING clearly, even with the Seamoth's headlights, and
B. the red is a good complementary color, so it would help me see the geometry more easily.
Eventually I had to start make David start wiggling, too. I couldn't be doing all the work myself! The Seamoth's self-defense system had done a good job of that. If I could keep him wiggling every once in a while as I was more or less flailing around in my little machine, I'd loosen him free.
The flare died after an ENTIRE DAY of me flailing, David wiggling as best as a baby reefback could, and this is how he ended up. YOU'LL BE FREE IN NO TIME, LITTLE GUY!
Night fell. I was flailing around like an angry bee and zapping like an angry... eel, crashing and nearly destroying my Seamoth countless times in a desperate attempt to free poor David. This had gone on for 3 in-game days and nights. At one point, I'd be straining with the propulsion cannon and I almost felt like he was straining to just be free. He kept trying to swim downwards, so we were butting heads. And even though he'd been a complete pain in the ass, I felt like li'l David was worth it. We'd sort of grown to become friendly with one another. Later, when David had flipped over, I couldn't help but laugh, like he'd just decided to go to sleep and let me do all the work.
So when this happened, I couldn't believe it:
In the end, I had killed him. I just sat there, dumbfounded. I realized way too late that all the Seamoth's self-defense shocks had been slowly killing him (and probably the crashes, too). I stared at the piles of flesh and chunks of reefback, before my attention turned to this interesting object:
What the--
What is this?? Whatever it is, it's beautiful. Call me optimistic, but I like to think maybe it was his little (er, big) soul. Or maybe it was how he viewed the world with his weird eyeblobs. What's even more amazing than the simple, polygonal filter it cast on everything was that it traveled!
It actually floated backwards of the path that David had traveled to get caught in the first place, so I followed it. It headed towards the giant floaters attached to the islands, almost like it just wanted to be with something familiar to its big, blobby self. The guilt sank in more and more as I finally realized what I had done: I'd killed the thing I had so desperately wanted to help. ;_;
Oh David. I wish I had realized sooner. Now I'm David, having slew Goliath. We could have gone our separate ways after this, but now every time I see that wreck I'll think of you. You and that purple-pink sphere of... whatever lovely thing it was. Even in death, reefbacks keep giving. I hope you saw me as a little pink speck that just wanted to help you.
I promise I'll erect a memorial for David next time I log in. ;__; Thanks for reading this sad tale.
So I was in the Underwater Islands, checking out the wreck there. I had gone back up to my Cyclops, but as I was swimming down I spotted this:
Normally I wouldn't care because hey, it's just a game. But reefbacks have a special place in my heart; they've sheltered my big babby self during night time, let me take plants off their backs, and didn't mind that one time I accidentally drove into 'em with my submarine. Plus, it was a baby! So I quickly grabbed my Seamoth and headed back down.
To the rescue!
Shit. He was stuck in there real good. I figured the best way to help him was to nudge him out. This didn't seem to work too well so I ended up having to use more force. And it was taking a toll on my poor Seamoth. What's worse was night was falling and I still hadn't managed to get him out!
Gaaaah sorry Seamoth, sorry baby reefback!
As morning came, I had the great idea of using the Seamoth as a sort of leverage to help force the reefback to start wiggling off the geometry of the ship. By the way, that wasn't the first creature I'd seen caught on the wreck's geometry; a few hours before I'd seen a boneshark go berserk all over the exposed metal girders before wiggling himself free. But reefbacks are virtually helpless. ;_;
My Half-Life senses kicked in and I realized I could use the Propulsion Cannon to force the reefback out! What's better, it wouldn't hurt him or my Seamoth! Woohoo!
Propulsion cannon wasn't doing shit! The other reefbacks were constantly swimming by, silent but foreboding. At this point, I'd taken to calling the baby reefback "David", like David and Goliath. See, 'cause even though he's just a babby, he's still 5 times the size of my Seamoth!
I had to drop a flare in the end because:
A. I was pissed off that I couldn't see ANYTHING clearly, even with the Seamoth's headlights, and
B. the red is a good complementary color, so it would help me see the geometry more easily.
Eventually I had to start make David start wiggling, too. I couldn't be doing all the work myself! The Seamoth's self-defense system had done a good job of that. If I could keep him wiggling every once in a while as I was more or less flailing around in my little machine, I'd loosen him free.
The flare died after an ENTIRE DAY of me flailing, David wiggling as best as a baby reefback could, and this is how he ended up. YOU'LL BE FREE IN NO TIME, LITTLE GUY!
Night fell. I was flailing around like an angry bee and zapping like an angry... eel, crashing and nearly destroying my Seamoth countless times in a desperate attempt to free poor David. This had gone on for 3 in-game days and nights. At one point, I'd be straining with the propulsion cannon and I almost felt like he was straining to just be free. He kept trying to swim downwards, so we were butting heads. And even though he'd been a complete pain in the ass, I felt like li'l David was worth it. We'd sort of grown to become friendly with one another. Later, when David had flipped over, I couldn't help but laugh, like he'd just decided to go to sleep and let me do all the work.
So when this happened, I couldn't believe it:
In the end, I had killed him. I just sat there, dumbfounded. I realized way too late that all the Seamoth's self-defense shocks had been slowly killing him (and probably the crashes, too). I stared at the piles of flesh and chunks of reefback, before my attention turned to this interesting object:
What the--
What is this?? Whatever it is, it's beautiful. Call me optimistic, but I like to think maybe it was his little (er, big) soul. Or maybe it was how he viewed the world with his weird eyeblobs. What's even more amazing than the simple, polygonal filter it cast on everything was that it traveled!
It actually floated backwards of the path that David had traveled to get caught in the first place, so I followed it. It headed towards the giant floaters attached to the islands, almost like it just wanted to be with something familiar to its big, blobby self. The guilt sank in more and more as I finally realized what I had done: I'd killed the thing I had so desperately wanted to help. ;_;
Oh David. I wish I had realized sooner. Now I'm David, having slew Goliath. We could have gone our separate ways after this, but now every time I see that wreck I'll think of you. You and that purple-pink sphere of... whatever lovely thing it was. Even in death, reefbacks keep giving. I hope you saw me as a little pink speck that just wanted to help you.
I promise I'll erect a memorial for David next time I log in. ;__; Thanks for reading this sad tale.
Comments
I was sure i was eventually going to find out that you successfully free'd it but it saddened me to read that in fact all your attempts to free it actually damaged it to death!
@subnauticambrian Yes, they do. XD; It's kind of weird because they do that thing that the mushrooms in the Mushroom Forest do if they get hit- break up into multiple chunks but they're like, multiplied. XD
That seems odd, given the fact that UWE changed the blood color from red to yellow to comply to "violence" ratings. I hope they keep the reefback thing though, because it is much more immersive.
LOL. That movie, man...
It's true, I'm actually housing David's mind soul in my body.