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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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I might as well declare now that I'm already a member of oneiros' scroll-hunting conspiracy, and that I intend to vote for spending 30hrs on this project provided that
  1. We have actually useful things to do in those 30hrs.
  2. We don't have Very Good Reasons to stop (eg. Jiraiya says "this is dumb, knock it off and go back to training").
 
Proud member of Summoning Scroll Conspiracy


I will be advancing this plot as far as possible while minimizing time expenditure in the break month.

I think actually tracking down and acquiring two summoning scrolls in a month is wishful thinking even if we had the whole month.

BUT i think we can get the ball seriously rolling as long as we think things out and spend a few hours IC spreading feelers out and contacting the right people.
 
faflec said:
Having read over the proposal I am tentatively in agreement. I do think that some changes can be made regarding how we investigate, and I feel that the Sannin legend would best we started after the tournament once we give a good showing… But it seems good.
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I feel like we want the rumors to already be in place by the time the tournament comes. That way once we trounce every one convincingly we already have an established reputation to launch whatever initiative we decide to. If we wait there won't be a good opportunity to cement our legend publicly
 
Oneiros said:
I feel like we want the rumors to already be in place by the time the tournament comes. That way once we trounce every one convincingly we already have an established reputation to launch whatever initiative we decide to. If we wait there won't be a good opportunity to cement our legend publicly
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One thing I wanna do with the Yaks is suggest (pretty please) they try to spread the story of Event 5 to every run down dive bar and tavern in Water country

Edit:

WE CAN OF COURSE pay them for their services with a portion of the very significant quantity of explosives we never ended up using in Round 2

:D

Edit edit: Also they may wanna know about the Yakuza that Kato turned(just let them know a Sky ninja compromised one of their assetts.) This info can be freely given I think?
 
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MMKII said:
1) Do it in front of STL
- Balances the awkwardness of her speech at Event 4 's end
- Write "We DO like you guys, you know. Friends?" on the back of their personal word halves.

2) DO NOT, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT: give them a majority of the word halves. If we give them 2/3 they could split it to try to fuck us over (these are of unknown points value, no chances!)

Give them 1/4- 1/3? The lower bound ensures there is no possible way they could possibly do something to outmaneuver us regardless of each ones value. (heaping it all onto one person or something).

Perhaps this is pessimistic. Whatdya think?
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Sure, let's do it in front of STL. And yes, only with Jiraiya's approval.

But: I'm confident that there's mathematically no possible way of distributing the word-halves such that it pushes us out of the tournament. We've won too hard.

We have... How many word-halves do we have?

Let's assume that word-halves count if they were stolen from ninja who were in the running at the moment of theft. (E. g., if we stole someone's word-half in the Swamp, and this person later was disqualified, we get the points, but if we got a word-half of a disqualified ninja after the disqualification, it doesn't count.) We have personal word-halves of everyone in the running except ISC's Blue Team and our R1 teammates, i. e. 57. Let's further assume that half of everyone who was disqualified lost their word-halves. That means we have (57 + (~300-72)/2) = ~171 word-halves (upper estimate).

We currently occupy fourth/fifth/sixth places in overall rankings. That means Team Kurenai will have to propel thirteen people to above us.

Let's assume there was a non-Kurenai team with 600 points. They clearly weren't one of our or ISC's teammates, which means they just lost 500+ points. Our score: 141+445 = 586. Their score: 600-500 = 100. We still have ~500 points of advantage.

Let's further assume that there were thirteen people with 600 scores prior to the Fifth Event. Team Kurenai evenly distributes the word-halves between them, giving them 13 word-halves each. For them all to overtake us, each word-half must cost ~40 points, assuming that we gave Team Kurenai all our word-halves aside from our own and assuming that there's no penalty for losing your own word-half.

Note that there's no less than three impossibilities assumed, and we're still fine if we don't give up all our word-halves.


Further, I don't think Team Kurenai will do that.
  • They want to get into the tournament too.
  • Distributing word-halves makes it unlikely that they'll help anyone, as per calculations above.
  • Political implications are horrible. We tried to help them, and they betrayed us to other villages? It'll be a political suicide for the Hyuuga.
As such, I think we should give them as many word-halves as possible, to ensure that they have good chances of making it even if the rewards for having them are low. Not all, but two-thirds seems sensible.

Oneiros said:
Friends I come before you with a simple proposal. As you know I am a proponent of trying to obtain Summon Scrolls for every member of Clan Goketsu. My original idea of trying to find them during the break was met with very vocal criticism. Instead of trying to ram through my ambition I have narrowed my scope. I propose that during the month long break we begin laying the ground work to asses the viability of obtaining 2 or more scrolls. I am not asking that this be the primary focus of the upcoming month. Simply hoping to get us to invest a mere 30 hours of Hazō, Noburi and Kei's time in the coming month. A mere hour a day on average from each of them.

I see several potential avenues that we could explore that would help further this goal. Having Kei investigate potential scrolls that the pangolins know about. Seeing if she can convince the pangolins to throwing there support into having a friendly Condor Summoner. Having Noburi investigate the Hydra Medical Facility. Which is the last known location of the Capybara scroll. Perhaps he could ask our dear friend Kabuto if he knows anything about the group. Have Hazō attempt to deepen the bond we share with the Yakuza. Try to find any information they might have about errant scrolls or assets they might have that we could acquire.

While this limited information gathering is going on I would like to help assure that the quest gets approved if we find out it is a viable option. To help achieve that first I would like to make sure to train with both Kakashi and Gai. As S-rank senior Jounin in Leaf they would be ideal to lead the mission. So doing our best to impress them would pay huge benefits to this quest and our goals at large.
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I fully support this conditional on also asking the Pangolins and the Toads about their ancient history. It's one of the obvious ways to confirm Kagome's conspiracy theories, and I've been pushing for it for so long.

And information-gathering is fun in itself.
 
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Noumero said:
Sure, let's do it in front of STL. And yes, only with Jiraiya's approval.

But: I'm confident that there's mathematically no possible way of distributing the word-halves such that it pushes us out of the tournament. We've won too hard.

We have... How many word-halves do we have?

Let's assume that word-halves count if they were stolen from ninja who were in the running at the moment of theft. (E. g., if we stole someone's word-half in the Swamp, and this person later was disqualified, we get the points, but if we got a word-half of a disqualified ninja after the disqualification, it doesn't count.) We have personal word-halves of everyone in the running except ISC's Blue Team and our R1 teammates, i. e. 57. Let's further assume that half of everyone who was disqualified lost their word-halves. That means we have (57 + (~300-72)/2) = ~171 word-halves (upper estimate).

We currently occupy fourth/fifth/sixth places in overall rankings. That means Team Kurenai will have to propel thirteen people to above us.

Let's assume there was a non-Kurenai team with 600 points. They clearly weren't one of our or ISC's teammates, which means they just lost 500+ points. Our score: 141+445 = 586. Their score: 600-500 = 100. We still have ~500 points of advantage.

Let's further assume that there were thirteen people with 600 scores prior to the Fifth Event. Team Kurenai evenly distributes the word-halves between them, giving them 13 word-halves each. For them all to overtake us, each word-half must cost ~40 points, assuming that we gave Team Kurenai all our word-halves aside from our own and assuming that there's no penalty for losing your own word-half.

Note that there's no less than three impossibilities assumed, and we're still fine if we don't give up all our word-halves.


Further, I don't think Team Kurenai will do that.
  • They want to get into the tournament too.
  • Distributing word-halves makes it less likely that they'll help anyone, as per calculations above.
  • Political implications are horrible. We tried to help them, and they betrayed us to other villages?
As such, I think we should give them as many word-halves as possible, to ensure that they have good chances of making it even if the rewards for having them are low. Not all, but two-thirds seems sensible.


I fully support this conditional on also asking the Pangolins and the Toads about their ancient history. It's one of the obvious ways to confirm Kagome's conspiracy theories, and I've been pushing for it for so long.


And information-gathering is fun in itself.
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This is a fair assessment. I am wary of giving them a majority still. I would go as high as 1/2, to make a statement of charitability.


Consider: There is a possibility that our relative standings with respect to each other will be used to determine the tournament brackets. I dont know what it would look like now (not enough info) but we should be mindful relative point distribution may have an effect here. Perhaps ISC will be seeded against the rank 14,15,16 contestants. We will get the next lowest, etc.


CONSPIRACY:
My main idea/avenue of research at the moment is basically "Ask the Toads/Pangolins some stuff. Prep a research expedition to the Great Library. Have Pandaa track info down in the meantime."
 
PSA:

After discussion with The Evil One other QMs, it has been determined that there will be no timeskip.

In part this is because of how we model Jiraiya and in part it is how we model certain background/political events. A timeskip would be heavily to your detriment and something that likely would not fit well with Jiraiya's needs over the next month.

Radvic, thank you for the suggestion on major/minor actions. We're going to keep it in our back pocket for something we might do in the future when things are a bit calmer, but the end of Jiraiya's tenure is probably not a good time. We appreciate the suggestion though.
 
eaglejarl said:
PSA:

After discussion with The Evil One other QMs, it has been determined that there will be no timeskip.

In part this is because of how we model Jiraiya and in part it is how we model certain background/political events. A timeskip would be heavily to your detriment and something that likely would not fit well with Jiraiya's needs over the next month.

Radvic, thank you for the suggestion on major/minor actions. We're going to keep it in our back pocket for something we might do in the future when things are a bit calmer, but the end of Jiraiya's tenure is probably not a good time. We appreciate the suggestion though.
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I knew it! @Velorien and @OliWhail were the same person all along!
 
...Question.

Could we give all of our word halves to the leaf nin who we screwed over to try to get him in the finals?
 
MMKII said:
Consider: There is a possibility that our relative standings with respect to each other will be used to determine the tournament brackets. I dont know what it would look like now (not enough info) but we should be mindful relative point distribution may have an effect here. Perhaps ISC will be seeded against the rank 14,15,16 contestants. We will get the next lowest, etc.
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I have a feeling that the brackets will be decided the same way the fifth event ones were decided, with Ren having to balance between giving us a hard time while also supporting us. Our team's brackets aside, I also imagine that they will have people from the same clan face off against each other first so there isn't as much of an overlap in the later bounds with similar abilities - with the exception of spreading out remaining Mist nins so they are represented in more fights.

But either way, I doubt Ren won't tamper with the brackets for as much as she can get away without it being too obvious.
 
Noumero said:
Sure, let's do it in front of STL. And yes, only with Jiraiya's approval.
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I'm conflicted about doing it in front of anyone. 100% give them back their personal word halves. But we want to embarrass Hiashi, not Hinata. We are going to have to share Leaf with her for a long time, and her hating us for humiliating her by offering charity in front of others is bad.

She's been good to us this whole exam. Not saintly, but she has honored all deals, and offered help to STL even when refusing would have gotten us out. There is no way Neji and Hinata were not given orders to stomp on us. Their honorable play even in the face of those orders demands honorable treatment in return.
 
Velorien said:
"Only ever since they made their contract with the Uchiha—and only the Uchiha, by the way, which is weird too—their military started expanding, and now there's loads of tension between the sages who are in charge and the military faction that thinks it ought to take over. Then there was this big kerfuffle a few years back when something big happened on the Human Path, and they had a completely different split over whether to keep supporting the Crow Summoner or not. That lasted until the Crow Summoner himself came to the Seventh Path and flattened everyone who didn't like him. Right now he's probably the second most important person in the clan after Karanium himself.

"That's everything I have clearance for. There's some other stuff marked Top Secret, but the overall gist of it is that the crows aren't going to mess with us, and we have to make absolutely certain we don't give them a reason to. It's actually a little weird how emphatic the tablets are about that part."
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I want to ask the Pangolin about the Top secret stuff they have on the Crow clan and give it to Jiraiya, of course we can do that after we got back to Leaf, but I wanted to throw it out before I forgot again. Let's kill our cousin!
 
eaglejarl said:
PSA:

After discussion with The Evil One other QMs, it has been determined that there will be no timeskip.

In part this is because of how we model Jiraiya and in part it is how we model certain background/political events. A timeskip would be heavily to your detriment and something that likely would not fit well with Jiraiya's needs over the next month.

Radvic, thank you for the suggestion on major/minor actions. We're going to keep it in our back pocket for something we might do in the future when things are a bit calmer, but the end of Jiraiya's tenure is probably not a good time. We appreciate the suggestion though.
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Question:

What are we voting in for Thursday then?
 
On giving away word halves - I say nay to giving away any of them. We already know us getting into the tournament was going to be close point wise, so no need to risk it. If team Kurenai don't make it, that's perfectly fine, as six out of sixteen participants being Leaf is good enough, especially given our performance.
 
MMKII said:
This is a fair assessment. I am wary of giving them a majority still. I would go as high as 1/2, to make a statement of charitability.
Consider: There is a possibility that our relative standings with respect to each other will be used to determine the tournament brackets. I dont know what it would look like now (not enough info) but we should be mindful relative point distribution may have an effect here. Perhaps ISC will be seeded against the rank 14,15,16 contestants. We will get the next lowest, etc.
CONSPIRACY:
My main idea/avenue of research at the moment is basically "Ask the Toads/Pangolins some stuff. Prep a research expedition to the Great Library. Have Pandaa track info down in the meantime."
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Hmm. Assuming that word-halves cost 10 points (reasonable given everything that happened, in my opinion), we'll need to give Team Kurenai... 87 word-halves1​, assuming we want to ensure that all of them get into the tournament. This is about half of my upper estimate... okay, I agree. Also, I'd like to join your conspiracy. (Getting access to an alien library? I'm sure Keiko wouldn't be opposed to the idea either.)

I'm not sure why we need to care about tournament brackets? There's a nasty thing that Mist could do: pit the three of us against each other during first two rounds. It probably won't happen though: too overt. But aside from that, why do we care?
Unless someone who did the math wants to interject (@Adept_Woodwright , @Noumero what doth thou think?)
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Umm... in a moment.

Wait, did ISC not spare him during R2? Poor sod.

1. Pessimistic math: They lost 630 points, had 600 points, there's thirteen people among the eighteen of our teammates who had ~300 points going into the Fifth Event. (300-40) - (600-630) = ~ 290 score difference; 290 points x 3 people / 10 cost = 87 word-halves.
 
Noumero said:
I'm not sure why we need to care about tournament brackets? There's a nasty thing that Mist could do: pit the three of us against each other during first two rounds. It probably won't happen though: too overt. But aside from that, why do we care?
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It's not at all nasty; on the contrary, making us face each other ASAP lets us conserve energy and saves our tricks for later rounds.
 
Enjou said:
On giving away word halves - I say nay to giving away any of them. We already know us getting into the tournament was going to be close point wise, so no need to risk it. If team Kurenai don't make it, that's perfectly fine, as six out of sixteen participants being Leaf is good enough, especially given our performance.
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Point estimates suggest that (not taking Word Halves into account and even with some generous margins of error) we are the second highest ranked team now in the exams overall, right under ISC. The next highest is Red Team One, ISC's Round One Team and then possibly our Round 2 Teammates.

Logically speaking this makes sense. We were pretty much the lead scoring team after the merchant event. Round 1 undid our failure in Event 4. In Round 2, we gained an additional ~200 points or so on top of that and most teams lost a few hundred, with the exemptions of Team K and those teams mentioned above.

Put simply, if the word halves are worth any reasonable amount of points, and we only give 1/2 to Team Kurenai, there is no possible redistribution they can do that will kick us out of the finals. At worst, they reshuffle the rankings a bit and cause some of the lower ranked finalists to get the boot. Us and ISC are completely safe from this, its only the people at the border that would need to worry. That would likely be our Round 2 Teammates. Quite frankly, I don't care about them, so thats fine with me.

This also makes a bunch of political statements and such that would further Jiraiya's goals (let everyone in Leaf know we gave the Hyuga a boost to get into the finals (regardless of whether they needed it or not, he can still spin it as charity if he needs to)) and serves as a gesture of good faith on our part.



faflec said:
It's not at all nasty; on the contrary, making us face each other ASAP lets us conserve energy and saves our tricks for later rounds.
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No that would be terrible! The best outcome would be if we were all in separate branches so that we could get Team Uplift + Rando into the semifinals. Then we can basically breathe a sigh of relief because we are all but assured a sweep.

At that point, we can just coin flip which of us goes to the finals, and hope the member of our team fighting the stranger beats them. We would look literally unstoppable. This would be amazing for our fame and public image, everyone would hear of it!

People would start to take us seriously, and all the folks who want to play politics will be able to do something real (as opposed to all this dealing with people our age stuff)with that amount of tangible international street cred. Its a win for everyone!
 
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