sgarv wrote:IN THE DISTANT FUTURE, BAROTRAUMA IS STILL VERSION 0.2.5

REGALIS IS NO WHERE TO BE FOUND

NEARLY ALL HOPE LOST, HUMANITY TAKES TO THE STARS IN ORDER TO FIND THE FABLED VERSION 0.2.6 IN AN ULTIMATE LAST DITCH EFFORT

AFTER THE GREAT STRUGGLE

HUMANITY DISCOVERED THE FABLED VERSION 0.2.6

AND VERY SOON 0.2.6.2 APPEARED

HOWEVER

THEY WERE OF NO USE

*drops shovel and wipes dirt off hands*

Okay, so:


"BY THE YEAR 2249 Mankind had left its cradle behind. This was not without some reluctance; centuries of industrialized exploitation and a nuclear war will ruin anybody’s backyard. Though space colonies had already been established throughout the solar system by the world’s most powerful nations, it was the near extinction of those nations which finally broke the shackles keeping far flung colonies in line. No more would mass-driver warheads be a threat from the Third Planet.

So humanity looked for another threat to worry about.

The colonies of Jupter II, Europa, had been among the most successful in recent memory. Scientists were baffled when they discovered life. Not only life, but complex life. Who can forget the Broadsword Mission to Pwyll, or the Masterson Expedition of 2131? An entire ecosystem existed beneath the icy crypt, just waiting to be tapped for its scientific, cultural and culinary potential. Besides, a little radiation never hurt anybody important.

The surface radiation became rather inconvenient, however, so the colonists looked for a solution. In an age of interplanetary travel, a submarine might seem like a quaint and antiquated thing. But the Europans did what humans do best: Give it a new coat of paint and call it a breakthrough. It wasn’t long before underwater highways crisscrossed the moon, following the neatly laid patterns that nature had left behind.

Or was it nature? Every so often a prospector would comment on the ease with which new settlements were located and new routes plotted. It was as if everything had been carved out for them already, eons before humanity learned to walk upright. But with the ancestral home turned to radioactive glass and the Martians impatient for their gourmet filets, there was neither the time nor the reason to look any closer.

Then one day a scouting vessel came back to port. More precisely, it came back in pieces. What was left of the crew regaled the authorities with tales of sea monsters, gaping maws with razor fangs, pointed beaks and beady eyes. Before this could be dismissed as the drunken ravings of old salts, the story was repeated elsewhere. And it was repeated again, and again, and again. Scientists scrambled to catalog these ever-growing monstrosities and explain away their sudden appearance, but that didn’t stop the submariners from arming themselves.

Then the quakes came, and the moon began shaking in ways that it had not experienced for millennia. By the time sonar operators were reporting “ghost sounds” warbling in the distance, it was enough for the local military forces to take that closer look into the abyss.

And the abyss stared back. It also ate them.

It seemed that the seas of Europa would never be the same. Even routine sorties risked death in the briny deep. Many felt that it was only a matter of time before the creatures ventured up into the colonies themselves. Something had to be done, by somebody. Anybody.

The beckon call for soldiers, adventurers, scientists and the criminally insane was hard to ignore. If the people of Europa were to preserve their life, liberty and the pursuit of delicious alien crustaceans, it would take all kinds to get to the bottom of it.

Wherever the bottom was…"





... Long story short: Submarines are common because the colonies have been around awhile, the moon was previously inhabited in the same way, the sea monsters are a recent phenomenon and are directly linked to the reawakening of an alien... something. Since this poses a major threat to all Europans, there's a rush to learn more about it, either for science, defense or glory. People being people, some try to sabotage their rivals so that they can grab all the headlines, or even intentionally expose rival factions/colonies to more danger.

Net result: Massive underwater infrastructure, wide variety of possible submarines/crews/reasons for going out there, rationale for big sea monsters existing tied into an over-arching plot about a big "something" that is no longer dormant in the deep, and is thus the "final boss" for a campaign. The monsters could be an automated defense mechanism, bioweapons of a sort, or they could be spewing from some trans-dimensional hell hole deep down ("Journey to the Center of Europa"). But no matter what it is, the rest of the game as it exists is now thoroughly explained.