Dimensional Research List
| Dimensional Research List | |
|---|---|
| Cascade Archipelago | |
 | |
| Type | Tour Guide Tip |
| Place | Cascade Archipelago |
| Available to | Heroes, Vigilantes, and Rogues |
| Level range | 1–50 |
Overview
Introduction
Cascade Cleansing
Exploration Mission
Firebase Zulu has equipped you with a list of outstanding topics they are looking for data on within the Cascade Archipelago. Being far better equipped and combat-ready than most scientists or military officers; these jobs require a super-powered hand to have any hope of success this far from the normal operational limitations and without support.
You review the material in the document. While not an official assignment, helping the effort to understand and confront Rularuu will pay dividends for all, so it's worth lending a hand if you have the time.
- Gather data within the Cascade Archipelago.
- Science will have to wait.
Too Busy
Your hands are pretty full right now with the tasks you have taken on. Gathering data in the Cascade Archipleago will have to wait.
No More Missions
You run through the numbered list. It looks like you have cleaned up everything Firebase Zulu was looking for concerning the Cascade Archipelago. This should make some scientists quite happy.
Accolade
You've obtained this Accolade by earning every Exploration badge within Cascade Archipelago.
Missions
Castaway
Briefing
The scientists at Firebase Zulu are constantly searching for new methods to provide soldiers with more resistance to what they have dubbed "Shadow Shard Sickness". This is a phenomenon where the loss of reality-grounding elements leads to various psychological issues.
They have prepared a list of things to try whilst staring into the abyssal void below. Losing yourself in this dimensional infinite is documented to cause the most severe symptoms, so any means to combat it would be invaluable to the expedition's progress. <scale 1.1><color BurlyWood>You were brave and volunteered. Now it is time to put your doubts aside.</color></scale>
- Become a psychological Castaway.
As you spend more time in this upside-down dimension and come to terms with its influence on your mind, you begin to question if it is really just the loss of things that grounded you to reality.
What if this feeling of anxiety is a subtle psionic attack? Maybe this paranoia is also Rularuu whispering in your ear.
You are stronger than some strange dimension and its master. Time to prove it!
Mission Objective
- Test Marooned Shore's impact on psyche
You stand on the brink, a psychological one, overwhelmed by a sense of dislocation and loss that is nearly impossible to shake. The scientists manning Firebase Zulu have codenamed this region "The Marooned Shores," and you can see why this name is appropriate. You feel as though you have washed ashore in a hostile land, cast off from everything you know. You fear, for an instant, that you will never again find the way home. You fight down this irrational fear and move on, lest it consume you.
Peace Walker
Briefing
Various surveillance logs have been submitted regarding a hollow located within the Marooned Shore that reported to be completely safe from Rularuu's armies. This claim seems like an impossibility, but if true could be game changing for the expedition into the Shadow Shard.
Unfortunately things too good to be true often are. You will verify the location for Portal Corp, to give Firebase Zulu a reprieve from Rularuu's onslaught is too lucrative a lead to pass by. <scale 1.1><color BurlyWood>You start heading towards the coordinates in the reports.</color></scale>
- Validate being a Peace Walker.
Could this hollow truly be a safe haven? If so, how does it stay the hand of Rularuu's ire? Such power would need to be scrutinized just as closely as the Shadow Shard's master himself.
There is impressively little in this dimension that is truly understood and reliance on the unknown would be inviting disaster.
Mission Objective
- Confirm Marooned Shore's tranquil hollow
You have found a place of peace and calm in a land of madness and danger. High stone walls hem you in on all sides, but they grant a feeling of security and solitude and not one of confinement. You wonder idly why none of the horrors that prowl the landscape around you ever find their way into this place of calm, and you are grateful. Even the unearthly chattering and howls of the Shadow Shard's denizens fail to penetrate here, you almost feel as though you could stay here forever, just lay down and rest, safe from all concern... but you cannot. This sense of ease is an illusion, the safety is a lie. Nowhere is safe here, and you'd best move on before this land robs you of all desire to.
Being and Nothingness
Briefing
Here is an odd task: the scientists are trying to confirm if objects of relative mass in the Shadow Shard could repel each other out of their positions within incongruous gravitational space. In other words, they want you to try jumping on small floating rocks to see if you can move them.
They have marked the coordinates of rocks that would be ideal given your own size and weight. Something about the way these chunks of stone are suspended in nothingness makes you feel uneasy but are unable to say why.<scale 1.1><color BurlyWood>This one won't be a problem, you head towards the assigned location.</color></scale>
- Challenge Being and Nothingness.
This task should be easy, but the closer you get, the more concentrated an intrusive feeling of unease becomes. As you move through the Shadow Shard, it feels like a magnifying glass is focusing all the anxiety in your mind into a single piercing beam.
It is not a sensation you would like to endure any longer than necessary.
Mission Objective
- Confirm mass effects atop Air Shoals
A sense of floating encapsulates you, a lightness of being that does not bring with it feelings of ease or contentment, but of nothingness and insignificance. Vertigo sends your senses reeling and the urge to leave this place is undeniable. You do not belong here, you are the alien here, and nowhere else is this feeling more acute.
Hearing Voices
Briefing
Numerous claims have been put forth that maddening chanting is heard near the aptly named Chanting Islands. This strange occurrence has impacted many operations within the area, causing soldiers to become gibbering and senseless, often requiring their comrades to restrain and extract them. Scientists believe this is something different from the normal symptoms of "Shadow Shard Sickness" and are asking for more data.
<scale 1.1><color BurlyWood>You put your name forth as a candidate to venture into these islands;</color></scale> your mental fortitude should permit you to confirm the phenomenon and perhaps uncover more about it.
- Look into Hearing Voices.
The scientists had you listen to recordings of the strange chanting before you left Firebase Zulu. It was bizarre and senseless, with nothing coherent to be heard. Yet as you near the Chanting Islands, your recollections of the chants are somehow becoming more lucid.
One word begins resonating strongly in your mind, over and over: <color #ff0000>Rularuu. Rularuu. Rularuu.</color>
Mission Objective
- Test influence of Chanting Islands
Low voices vibrate the very air around you, issuing from no mouths that you can see. No matter where you go, you cannot escape the constant chanting of the nonsense phrase "...uuLArUUruUlaARUuaALuU..." You cover your ears but it cannot deaden the sound. You dream of earplugs, you fantasize about cotton swabs suffused with wax, you wish for an ice-pick to puncture your eardrums, anything to make the chanting stop. It is not long before you realize that the chanting is not coming from without, but from within, from you. It is your own mouth that chants this dark refrain, something commands you to speak and unless you leave now you wonder if you will ever stop.
Liquid Memory
Briefing
The Cascade Archipelago is host to a strange phenomenon located in the largest cluster of islands: bizarre blood-red fluid flows from above, creating great waterfalls that have come to be known was the Crimson Falls.
The exact nature of this substance has been the topic of much speculation, and so <scale 1.1><color BurlyWood>you have been tasked with the collection of some samples for study.</color></scale> You were cautioned that exposure to the liquid has caused "memory recollection surges". You are not sure what that means, but now curiosity is getting the better of you.
- See what is meant by Liquid Memory.
There were a handful of reports regarding soldiers who were briefly exposed to the blood-red liquid. While they were visibly shaken, each was later examined and found to be entirely unharmed.
With no permanent damage on-record it would probably be okay to sample a very small taste, right?
Mission Objective
- Sample Crimson Falls river
You look upon this pool of red fluid and your mind says "blood." But despite this another part of your mind says "drink." And you do. It tastes like the scent of green grass, of the metallic tang of an adrenaline rush, burnt rubber, your mother's blueberry pie, and on and on. You realize that it is not flavors the liquid is eliciting, but memories, and with each passing second they come on one after another until you become nauseous with the sensation overload. You spit the liquid from your mouth and vow never to taste it again. But...
Usurper of Worlds
Briefing
A strange phenomenon has been reported from a location dubbed Tyrant's Rock. There have been strange behavioral anomalies witnessed in personnel within this relatively high-elevation area. Their hypothesis is that the individual's own cognition sees themselves as closer to the Shadow Shard's "higher being", Rularuu, and by association triggers psychological degradations.
There is a documented risk involved in this task, but you've tackled worse. <scale 1.1><color BurlyWood>The scientists have provided a list of mental techniques to use in resisting this region's impulses.</color></scale>
- Climb towards the Usurper of Worlds.
You wonder what having a higher vantage point has to do with distorted behavior. Perhaps seeing everything below makes you realize how beneath you it all is; how your power is above such menial trifling and the lowly worms should perish under heel in service to their god... you stop.
It seems that letting your mental guard down for even a moment could prove your undoing.
Mission Objective
- Test influence of Tyrant's Rock
The briefing listed this area as "Tyrant's Rock," though you are not sure why. Perhaps it is the growing sense of duty and entitlement that fills your chest with unbidden pride. You cast your gaze across this shattered landscape and are struck by a sudden feeling that it is yours, by might or by right. Your heart thuds with a martial drumbeat and you nod at the truth of it—yes, it could all be yours. You will find the one who rules this land and take their throne by force. But you shake off this irrational notion and the realization of where you are slaps you in the face. These thoughts are a trap meant to distract you from your real purpose here.
No Turning Back Now
Briefing
Of particular importance to the area are the gravity geysers. Their utilization for fast travel is crucial for keeping operational time minimalized and exposure to danger controlled. Despite this reliance, they are not truly understood, and research is on-going.
On your checklist is a task to collect scanner readings from a lone geyser. Its relative isolation could provide answers as to the nature of the anomalies as well as potential means to harness them. <scale 1.1><color BurlyWood>With minimal local hostiles, this assignment should prove easily within your capacity to fulfill.</color></scale>
- There's No Turning Back Now.
For some reason, thinking about the gravity geysers is causing you to have strange thoughts. Your mind rambles about the pull going beyond just the material. Rularuu has drawn you into this unrelenting void and it is only a matter of time until his influence's pressure crushes you, compacts everything you are until there is nothing that remains...
Taking a moment regain composure, you recall to be wary of letting your mind wander.
Mission Objective
- Scan the isolated gravity well
Gravity operates strangely in the Shadow Shard, but more than just the floating masses of rock, there is a gravity here of a more spiritual kind. You feel it drawing you inexorably forward towards an unknown destiny. All thoughts of retreat are discarded as counterproductive, there is no other course of action but to press on. You've been caught in an unseen orbit, around a power you cannot possibly fathom.
The Heart of Memory
Briefing
The composition and mechanics of the Crimson Falls' bizarre blood-red waterfalls is a highly researched topic amongst Firebase Zulu scientists. Defying all climatology knowledge and with no known precipitation in the Shadow Shard, how the substance arrives at the top to flow downwards is a great mystery.
<scale 1.1><color BurlyWood>A great mystery that you are now assigned to help answer.</color></scale> You imagine you are looking for the highest point in the Crimson Falls cluster, but have no idea of what to expect. Knowing how unpredictable the Shadow Shard can be, you steel yourself.
- Seek The Heart of Memory.
There was caution issued regarding the fluid causing what scientists described as an "undue lapse into the greater unconscious morphogenetic field". Long-term exposure carries the risk of the subject being stripped of all memory and individuality, as their mind becomes an indistinct slurry within the field's confines. That sounds bad.
You like being you, and the world needs your $class skills, so having your memories washed away is something you will try to avoid.
Mission Objective
- Locate source of Crimson Falls
You have found the source of the Crimson Falls. Scientists who have studied it have only theories as to its source and composition, but they are in agreement that it is not entirely of this dimension. Some think that perhaps it is a form of quantum foam; exotic particles and degenerate matter drawn to the Shadow Shard from other dimensions. Swimming through it you find that it offers little resistance, does not make you wet, and while immersed in it you find yourself recalling past events. These recollections become fleeting, as though drawn from you to suffuse the fluid. One memory follows another and as each one does, it becomes increasingly difficult to bring them back. You fear that were you to stay here much longer, the fluid would empty you of all memory.