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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Rafin said:
Yep. Definitely weird. :p

Joking aside, I currently know only who three elected or appointed officials relevant to me are with actual certainty. The head of government in the country I live, the head of government in my country of birth and the mayor of my village, who I know personally. Beyond that I know a sliver about American politics due to certain humorous talkshows. Everyone else I'm not sure if they still hold the same positions they did when I last heard of them.
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I don't even know that much! :p
 
We should definitely try to adopt every clanless jounin like yesterday. If we could grab even the five confirmed ones that would be huge. We'd gave a quarter of all of them
 
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@Velorien
I liked the chapter very much.
On an emotional level it felt bad (Hazou 'losing points' for proposing ideas perceived as unacceptable in Keiko's case and suicidal in Shika's case; being reminded of Keiko's continual suffering).
I liked how we are presented with the results of other people having their own thoughts and making their own decisions (Keiko wanting no more part in the pangolin expansion, Ami and Shika having arranged for Ami to be in Leaf).
I liked how we got hints of the potentially bad consequences our arrangement with Mari may have.
The chapter deepened my immersion.



[X] Action Plan: Ino, You Know

@huhYeahGoodPoint

On the topic of offering condolences to Ino:
I would like it if we at least sent letters of condolence to other friends and acquaintances impacted by the BotG (Not as Goketsu clan head but as friend/acquaintance). We can coordinate who qualifies with Mari, since she seems to have gone through the who-died?-lists. Maybe also talk to the rest of the clan, so they can send their own letters/coordinate with ours if they haven't taken similar steps yet.
E.g. some Hyuuga or Aburame may have died in the battle, and this might have impacted Hinata or Shino.

I would still like to know how people not diametrically opposed to Hiashi think about him, but feel this might exceed scene count.
It feels like a lot of people think Hiashi is forevermore enemy of the Goketsu. I recall Jiraiya saying something like this once but was not convinced by that conversation.
Is there any additional evidence pointing to Hiashi eradicating us upon obtaining the hat?
 
eaglejarl said:
Sadly, there aren't any. Yes, I know, @faflec helpfully linked yet another case where I fucked up and contradicted the worldbuilding. Whatever. There aren't any trained psychiatrists in 12th-century military dictator-land.
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Hopefully this is helpful:

Historically, people tended to talk to religious figures about that sort of thing at the time. They were pretty much the closest things to therapists in many although not all traditions. (I'm afraid I don't know enough about Shinto to speak for medieval Japanese society on that count, I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows.) If you'd like some sort of in character option for what people think you're supposed to do when you 'need guidance', that seems like a natural choice.

Alternatively, in military settings people tend to build very strong bonds with the people they serve with. It might be an unspoken role of people on your team and in your clan to support you when you need someone to talk to because you've seen and done awful things. Goodness knows ninja would virtually all need it eventually considering what they do, and the ones that don't need it would be the absolute monsters who feel no sense of empathy or remorse over anything.

Now that I think about it, a clan or hidden village that did figure out a method of mental health treatment that wasn't ad hoc would probably have a real advantage over time in better performance and lower attrition. That'd be an interesting secret for the Yamanaka to have. If the need occurred to anyone it would probably be them.
 
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[X] Action Plan: Give Anko the Goketsu Dango

Scene 1: Hazou and Mari
  • Ask about bringing Jonin into the Clan
  • Mention how IN could work with Seduction
  • Get a list of Female Jonin
  • Profit

I think this thread needs some levity.
 
Asquil said:
@Velorien said that he wanted Ami to attend the wedding, but couldn't figure out how, and that he was willing to give a large number of XP if we found a way.

Now that I think about it, after reading this update, he might have been lying the whole time. The whole wedding happening so soon was apparently Ami's plan all along.

Did we seriously just spent a lot of our collective brainpower - and a good chunk of Hazou's reputation in the eyes of Shikamaru - on a wild goose chase? @Velorien, what the hell?

[X] Action Plan: Ino, You Know
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-or, that was his first take on the matter before really thinking about it and my spelling out all the reasons why Ami would be expected to have already handled it. It wouldn't be the first, or even second time something I said ended up in the story. Sometimes I wonder if the GMs are the only people who can hear me. Please stop pissing them off.



MMKII said:
I don't get this.

Shikamaru's an asshole and he pretty much just sprinkled salt and broken glass in the half-healed wounds inflicted upon us from when Jiraiya hit our agency with Samehada.

In summary, his CCnJ talk was:

SHIKAMARU: You stupid man. I like you, but you're worthless

Just like pretty much every interaction with him that isn't just chilling out.

(Though, its true that Keiko then wrapped our wounds shut (unpleasant particulate matter and all) with the Pangolin Scroll and is currently in the process of tossing us into a volcano because she is categorically incapable of clearly communicating [KEIKO WE HAVE A FUCKING TECHNIQUE FOR THIS YOU MORON] even the most basic of preferences to the rest of the siblings Gouketsu without a childish outburst and taking drastic action that could backfire on a scale of such great magnitude that even Kagome would recognize the danger.)
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Lailoken said:
My major concern is that the current plan comes across as:

"Hey, Shikamaru! You need to tell Ami about the wedding for your own safety, so we'll do that for you and even get her into the city in exchange for twelve days worth of effort from you. By the way, you're going to need to figure all that out because we've got nothing beyond 'write a letter and hope for the best'".

"Hey, Hazou, Ami has known that the wedding was going to be immediately after the exams since we had our... discussion, the Nara have channels of communication with the Mori you cannot imagine, and I am perfectly capable of writing my own damned letters thankyouverymuch."​

Followed by:
​
Dearest Ami,

I write to inform you of your sister's imminent wedding. I offer to help you attend as long as you do all the hard work of figuring out how to smuggle a foreign jounin into a crowded clan event inside a fortress city without endangering my goals because my ideas have petered out at 'write you a letter'.

By the way, you hella owe me another favo-
​
"I've literally been standing right behind you for 36 hours."​
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Oneiros said:
Question how the fuck did Ami get in leaf at a time of maximum political chaos? Who approved this and gave her an escort? What shadow council is running leaf now? How did she get permission to leave mist so fast to be in leaf within a day? This makes no sense
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As I repeatedly stated before the update, she has known about the wedding since before it was even planned. All of the factors driving it are known to her and therefore she could easily derive the reactions of the people involved. She found them out before even Leaf did due to Mist being closer to Nagi island.

She got permission by being a pain in the ass which Ren wanted gone for a while, then giving Ren the perfect excuse to exile her. Ren in her capacity as Mizukage sent a formal request to Leaf's diplomatic corp that Ami be permitted to serve in her stead as respectful witness at the Hokage's funeral and the diplomatic corp decided that they shouldn't dismiss such a charged and respectful request regarding a major international event at such a sensitive time, but did decide to guard the hell out of her.



Oneiros said:
But the back up plan was to just have a civilian walk it in the gates. This world makes no sense
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Getting the message to her was never the problem. The problem was Hazou sending messages between villages was always suicidal even just on the Leaf end. I've repeatedly pointed out that the major concern with the entire enterprise was the T&I departments on both sides deciding to remove the fingers of everybody involved on both sides knuckle by knuckle. It's akin to getting caught tossing a letter to the opposing trench asking if Corporal Albrecht can come over to play after the shelling tomorrow. If the opposing general wants to request that your side hosts a diplomatic negotiator or humanitarian inspector that's one thing, but if Private Simpson takes it upon himself to invite one over he's going to get summarily executed as a traitor.



Rafin said:
On a related note, Shikamaru has proven that his CCnJ isn't worth much. CCnJ works only due to honesty and he was claiming to use it while also claiming it impossible for Ami to attend.
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He never claimed that it was impossible for her to attend. He claimed that it was impossible for Hazou to send a message inviting her to attend without massive consequences.



Oneiros said:
Why did no one tell us a clan head that an jounin from another village who is directly related to your clan is at the gates
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Who's job would that be? Why would there be an existing protocol in place for dealing with visiting family from another village? Would either of them be expected to stand up to Ami deciding that she wanted her presence to be a surprise? Bear in mind that her official reason for being there doesn't even have anything to do with the Gouketsu.



Oneiros said:
Negging - Wikipedia
From my point of view Shikamaru is deliberately trying to convince us that we have less value. He also gaslighted us by concealing that Ami was already in leaf at the time we talked to him. Plus used CCnj to further downplay our capabilities. Generally he's acting super manipulative from my point of view
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Alternatively: he knew that Ami wanted her presence to be a surprise, is in mortal terror for his very sanity of her, and still went out of his way to talk Hazou out of doing something catastrophically ill-advised and totally, obviously unnecessary while instructively educating him about where he made his mistakes as best he could without bringing down Ami's wrath upon himself.



Oneiros said:
The plan was to get Ami in and she would owe us another favor that we could use to help secure the hat by coordinating with her. Now she is very much a a grenade
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There was exactly one credible idea for actually getting Ami into Leaf. It came from me, and was vetoed by the GMs on worldbuilding grounds. Everything else was empty promises we wouldn't be able to begin to keep.​
 
faflec said:
So did Hazou not process that Keiko accounted for this and was willing to accept the loss in personal power while also pointing out that the clan's power wouldn't be diminished since we'd still get the gold through the Toads?

Am I missing something?
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Considering she just sprung it on him mid family dinner, probably not.
 
Torpling said:
It feels like a lot of people think Hiashi is forevermore enemy of the Goketsu. I recall Jiraiya saying something like this once but was not convinced by that conversation.
Is there any additional evidence pointing to Hiashi eradicating us upon obtaining the hat?
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I doubt any of us think Hiashi is our destined enemy or anything. I'm sure that, given time, we can make him a friend.

Problem is that right now he hates us and also has disproportionate power.
 
Oneiros said:
The plan was to get Ami in and she would owe us another favor that we could use to help secure the hat by coordinating with her. Now she is very much a a grenade
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I don't want to put too much credence on the 'favor' thing, those are just words she says. It isn't like she loses anything if she decides to say 'no' when we try to cash one in. Like, she is paying us in coin she mints. If we make any deals with her they shouldn't be measured in future favors ("but you promised", "Ninja!"), but in stuff we hand each other at the same time, carefully verifying.
 
I for one am very upset that the genocides might end soon, that we have possible in-roads to getting Mari elected Hokage, that Keiko is taking baby steps towards asserting herself and being a happier and mentally healthier person, that AMI speaks to a hopeful future not ruled by paranoid bloodlust, entrenched clan politics and perpetual vendettas, and a dozen other good things I can't be bothered to name.

I mean, are we even trying for the bad ending anymore? Do we even care anymore about royally screwing up everything we touch? Can we get back to unintentionally sabotaging ourselves and rushing to lose first so we don't upset anyone?

I mean, we were on the right track after being the ultimate cause behind foiling the actual good guys with a plan to fix everything (while all the amoral psychopaths got rezzed and the stupid powerful visionary leader holding them together and diverting their destructive aims towards good died), getting all but one of the Kages killed along with almost all of the world's S-rankers and elite Jounin (of course that was after causing our home village and new village to both lose Kages, Jinchurriki, and double-digit percentages of their fighting forces in a single skirmish), and upending the balance of power in the world now multiple times with our dealing of superweapons (which are now public knowledge) thus increasing tensions and making a world war more likely at every turn (not to mention of course all the other genocide and death and chaos we're directly responsible for).

Come on, people. We had so many horrible atrocities going against us. Don't fix that now!

[X] Try Even Harder to Doom Ourselves and Everything We Touch
  • Immediately seek out Hiashi and pledge him our support
    • Ask Mari for lessons on how best to grovel so he doesn't kill us when he's Hokage
    • Offer to immediately cancel all our outstanding bounties on Till'N'Fills to donate to his campaign fund; they're a waste of village resources anyway
    • Ask him what he thinks about an alpha strike against Rock and Cloud while they're still recovering
  • Regardless of Mari's intentions, reprimand her in front of the clan for failing to manipulate Keiko into not cancelling our weapon deaIs with the Pangolins
    • While we're at it, maybe threaten to marry her out of the clan unless she gets the Pangolin scroll officially recognized as clan property. Don't actually do that though, just hold it in our back pocket in case she doesn't do it of her own volition after we ask kindly.
  • Definitely go through with the plan to give superweapons to everyone on the 7th path, starting with Pangolins and Toads and Snakes
  • Ask Ami to cash in our favor to work with us to get as many Nara hours from Shikamaru as the favor is worth
    • Use the Nara hours to get Shikamaru to help us get as many favors from Ami as we can
      • Repeat
        • Use our accrued capital to
    • NVM this might cause good things to happen
  • fuck this bullet point
  • Read all of Jiraiya'a notes and work with Kagome to develop more superweapons
    • To sell to the highest bidder of course
      • Or maybe give them to Hiashi for use in the alpha strike as a token of goodwill
  • Any other ideas?
 
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Walter said:
I don't want to put too much credence on the 'favor' thing, those are just words she says. It isn't like she loses anything if she decides to say 'no' when we try to cash one in. Like, she is paying us in coin she mints. If we make any deals with her they shouldn't be measured in future favors ("but you promised", "Ninja!"), but in stuff we hand each other at the same time, carefully verifying.
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Much of Ami's power and influence is built on that same favour system. She may mint the coin, but we're not the only one believing the currency has value.

Now granted, it's possible that Ami could short-change us without the people back in Mist finding out and calling into question the value of the currency, but it's a risk that's arguably greater than simply abiding by the rules of her system (rejecting absurd favours is still valid, of course).

Moreover, the strongest systems like this are forged by the creator honestly holding to their principles, so it's likely that Ami believes in full sincerity that favours are things to be respected, and for her to short-change us that would mean a betrayal of an important principle of hers.

My personal opinion of the Ami favour is that she's already inclined to help the Goketsu (or rather, Keiko) against the Hyuuga so the best use of our favour is for her to wrangle permission for Hazou to learn Iron Nerve Socials from Ren. It's something Ami's in a unique position to arrange for us, probably roughly matches the magnitude of the favour she feels like she owes us, and brings us a seriously useful benefit in the long-run.

And now's the best time to ask. Not only is Ami right here, in Leaf where we can ask her directly, but Ami leads the AMI as it rises into prominence and Ren might not yet have Utakata as S-rank Mizukage support. Ami's at the height of her power and Ren's at a nadir, so there is no better time for Ami to orchestrate this.
 
Alright, you know what.

Having thought about it, it's pretty clear to me that there was a breakdown in communication with Keiko as to the purpose of the United Summon Nations plan. It was very explicitly not intended to demilitarize them, nor especially to reduce our dependence on selling them arms.

Had Keiko expressed that the lattermost was what she was concerned about prior to storming off, Hazou could have put forth a number of ideas (Salt empire, ice with Akane, serving as the go-between for low-logistics trade) to reduce our dependence on foreign oil gold. We didn't realize that that, specifically, was her problem, any more than Hazou did.
 
Cariyaga said:
Alright, you know what.

Having thought about it, it's pretty clear to me that there was a breakdown in communication with Keiko as to the purpose of the United Summon Nations plan. It was very explicitly not intended to demilitarize them, nor especially to reduce our dependence on selling them arms.

Had Keiko expressed that the lattermost was what she was concerned about prior to storming off, Hazou could have put forth a number of ideas (Salt empire, ice with Akane, serving as the go-between for low-logistics trade) to reduce our dependence on foreign oil gold. We didn't realize that that, specifically, was her problem, any more than Hazou did.
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She's being childish. "Make this just not be happening" is pretty much the quintessential whine. Fortunately, she was at least responsible enough to wait until Noburi could take over before collapsing into her nest. She'll either recuperate and get back to being a big girl, or the pangolins will cancel her contract and the Gouketsu can use their copious goodwill and influence from the deals to convince them to demand a summoner more suitable to both.

Alternatively, expend the Ami favor asking her to figure out how to fix the Seventh Path in a way which satisfies both Keiko and the rest of the clan.
 
Velorien said:
Welcome!

I see you are advocating an increase in exploitable chaos. You'll fit right in around here.
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Thanks for having me.

Chaos leads to instability, instability means that a smaller force (influence/group of people) can have a bigger effect and might change the outcome more easily. With the stable solution being Hiashi elected Hokage, chaos is a good thing. Something like a really nice political scandal would be godsend, like Ami posting his blackmail material in the newspaper or something.
 
Lailoken said:
She's being childish. "Make this just not be happening" is pretty much the quintessential whine.
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Okay, can we acknowledge thatnot wanting to participate in nigh-genocidal acts of colonial violence and oppression is an acceptable position to take? As is not wanting to sell weaponry that has only historically been used for that violence? Keiko should have explained herself better, yes. No arguments there. But calling her position childish is flagrantly unfair.
 
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djehuty3 said:
Okay, can we acknowledge thatnot wanting to participate in nigh-genocidal acts of colonial violence and oppression is an acceptable position to take? As is not wanting to sell weaponry that has only historically been used for that violence? Keiko should have explained herself better, yes. No arguments there. But calling her position childish is flagrantly unfair.
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"I don't like the way things are."

"Here's a solution."

"That's an effective solution, but it requires me to continue to do arbitrarily declared icky, so no and I'm done talking about alternatives to my unilateral refusal of icky."
 
Lailoken said:
"I don't like the way things are."

"Here's a solution."

"That's an effective solution, but it requires me to continue to do arbitrarily declared icky, so no and I'm done talking about alternatives to my unilateral refusal of icky."
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Where icky is continue selling weapons to a genocidal dictatorship, yeah.
 
MMKII said:
SHIKAMARU: You stupid man. I like you, but you're worthless
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Well shika is not wrong here, the idea was objectively bad and unworkable, and he even explained it to us without setting our hair on fire or threatening to stab us, he's already a better Keiko than the original.

Velorien said:
With that in mind, being accused of writing the 20,000 words I've written so far this month in the spirit of malevolence
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I thought the joke was that the whole quest is written in the spirit of malevolence. :p
BG-Scout said:
Keiko may simply require some manipulating at this point to achieve our goals
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This is the preferable plan b to ignoring her problems. Social the hell outta her to the point of brainwashing. But that sounds morally bad and I'd rather just leave her alone with her issues.
Raichu1972 said:
This is not a "puzzle" that we as players can resolve I feel.
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See? This is my problem, since this is a quest, everyone and their mother assumed this whole Keiko thing was a sidequest, it looked like one, now that It stopped looking like its completable, I wanna cut our losses and forget about it.
eaglejarl said:
Yes, because your actions absolutely are the only thing that define the personality of the characters in the story who are not you
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Sorry. I didn't mean to say "she has no reason to have issues" I meant to say that we shouldn't feel the responsibility to fix this.
 
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