Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

faflec said:

*snips*

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My gut-feeling on this is that it'll be more than a month's worth of work tier difficult, maybe.

My thoughts were roughly along the lines of "Things that aren't that difficult to do because they're specific (yet esoteric) modifications of an easy thing, that we can either apply en masse to buff an army (Our RW specs have Weapon: 6 explosives, compared to the other folks' Weapon: 4 ones, etc.) or stuff that we can Do A Radvic or Do a Lailoken on with some preptime to convert it into (what amounts to) a strategic scale weapon."

So stuff like @Noumero 's "Can we do Implosion Seals but with meat." idea falls in that category.

Can people start voting, please? Unless I'm mistaken, it's three hours before the deadline, and the leading plan has four five votes.

[x] Research Plan: People-Eating Explosives

Assess difficulty & usefulness of the following seal proposals.

• Modifying Implosion Seals to not store air within a 2-meters radius.
  • In combat, a team erects a 1.9-meters Air Dome around itself, then activates the MIS. They're unhurt; everyone else within 20 meters dies instantly, with little warning or ability to escape.
  • Could it be developed in a month?
  • Improved version: Modify it to store calcium/meat instead of air, then erecting an Air Dome won't be necessary.
• Modifying explosives to detonate upon partial/full destruction.
• Storage seals that are more failure-safe if they lack sufficient space to unseal. Ino had those on clothing.
• Load a macerator with a mix of molten iron and ice/cold water. Should explode well.

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@MMKII, @faflec, @Oneiros, @Inferno Vulpix, consider voting for the above.

Noumero said:

[x] Action Plan: Stick Your Appendages Everywhere
Wordcount: 298
Intended duration: 1 day.

• Message Keiko to arrive as soon as convenient, to discuss "a Pangolins-related matter".
• Continue dinner while waiting:
  • Ask Mari to summarize global and local politics to Yuno. "Especially the Hokage's external-politics views."
  • Offer Yuno a guest room.
  • Incidentally, did she speak to Mori Ami?
  • Covertly offer Noburi and Yuno an opportunity to speak privately.
• Once Keiko arrives, discuss privately (Team Uplift only):
  • What's Mari's take on Isan? Does Keiko want to involve herself? Is Noburi interested in the marriage?
    • Ethically, Isan is heading in a bad direction, and we could help. Pragmatically, it's a good power-grabbing opportunity. You're inclined to go along.
    • Takahashi mentioned "concessions" from Azai — could they be working together?
    • Possible attack vectors:
      • Challenge Sousuke's religious significance. Summon Pangolins, have them publicly condemn Azai's sacred tapirs as enemies, reveal Sousuke's "visions" as lies.
      • Challenge Sousuke's competence. The SSSSS seems Orochimaru's. Tell Isan's public about who he was; bring some body-horror examples.
      • Contact the SSSSS and turn them against Sousuke by promising funding or Basement samples.
  • Ask Kagome about Cloud's religion.
  • Ask Keiko to send messages via Pangolins:
    • To Crows and Sharks: Invitation for Akatsuki to open dialogue.
      • Or should we instead post a request through an intermediary for a strategic-scale beast-clearing operation and wait?
    • To the Mara Summoner: Invitation to discuss philosophy.
    • Might require political capital with Pangolins. Would she be willing to sell non-combat seals, or wood/food?
• Update Yuno.
• Background:
  • Ask Mari to forcefully remind you to discuss outside-context problems with Team Uplift within two days; you might forget.
  • Ask Tsunade to check Noburi's suitability for Summoning and SC; no time to deal with Kabuto.
  • Buy a tavern/inn damaged by the failure.
  • Schedule a Games Night on February 15/16. Invite Team Gai + Keiko (both important), KEI ninja, other peers.

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MMKII said:

My gut-feeling on this is that it'll be more than a month's worth of work tier difficult, maybe.

My thoughts were roughly along the lines of "Things that aren't that difficult to do because they're specific (yet esoteric) modifications of an easy thing, that we can either apply en masse to buff an army (Our RW specs have Weapon: 6 explosives, compared to the other folks' Weapon: 4 ones, etc.) or stuff that we can Do A Radvic or Do a Lailoken on with some preptime to convert it into (what amounts to) a strategic scale weapon."

So stuff like @Noumero 's "Can we do Implosion Seals but with meat." idea falls in that category.

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Modified FW seals to be smaller, and create weird lightsaber-analogues? I mean, beyond that, all I can think of is weaponizing Macerators with different payloads, but that isn't seal research so much as experimenting with the functionality of existing seals.

Speaking of Macerators, though, I wonder what would happen if we introduced temperature changes to our payloads? Maybe chemical reactions, by forcing otherwise inert materials into combining into something appropriately horrifying by adding extremely hot materials, that wouldn't be possible the normal way due to byproducts or something? Or maybe just add molten iron with cold water or ice and make another massive bomb.

[x] Research Plan: People-Eating Explosives

@Noumero

If you could include "Storage seals that are more failure-safe if they lack sufficient space to unseal."

We know something like this exists, Tenten has storage seals in her sleeves!

[x] Research Plan: People-Eating Explosives

@Noumero Mind adding some of my ideas regarding Macerator payloads above to the research plan? I haven't thought of useful chemical reactions we could use, but combining molten iron with cold water would probably be...really fucky. Like, advanced stupid box levels of fucky.

faflec said:

@Noumero Mind adding some of my ideas regarding Macerator payloads above to the research plan? I haven't thought of useful chemical reactions we could use, but combining molten iron with cold water would probably be...really fucky. Like, advanced stupid box levels of fucky.

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Done.

MMKII said:

If you could include "Storage seals that are more failure-safe if they lack sufficient space to unseal."

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Done.

We know something like this exists, Tenten has storage seals in her sleeves!

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Ino, not Tenten.

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Noumero said:

[x] Research Plan: People-Eating Explosives

Assess difficulty & usefulness of the following seal proposals.

• Modifying Implosion Seals to not store air within a 2-meters radius.
  • In combat, a team erects a 1.9-meters Air Dome around itself, then activates the MIS. They're unhurt; everyone else within 20 meters dies instantly, with little warning or ability to escape.
  • Could it be developed in a month?
  • Improved version: Modify it to store calcium/meat instead of air, then erecting an Air Dome won't be necessary.
• Modifying explosives to detonate upon partial/full destruction.
• Storage seals that are more failure-safe if they lack sufficient space to unseal. Ino had those on clothing.
• Load a macerator with a mix of molten iron and ice/cold water. Should explode well.

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I keep missing your spoilers

Noumero said:

• I'm not sure I'm reading that correctly. By "meetings", do you mean games nights?
• Are they going to be steamrolled? I'm not sure, but I thought the alliance against them didn't form yet?

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• Yes and no. For Hazou, he can spend his time with Neji promoting YOUTH and saving him while they're doing those get-togethers.
• It probably will, I think that was predicted a while ago? IDK.

Orisha91 said:

WATER RESISTANCE TRAINING​

So I've been thinking about an interesting training method that's been kicking in the back of my noggin for a bit. I was inspired by a comment about sparring with Rock Lee in water and modern exercise methods.

Kept googling until I found something on ancient Japanese swimming. The search brought up something called Suijutsu; an area involving balancing, swimming, fighting, and escape techniques in water while wearing armor.

Suijutsu

I assumed that Mist would be the one to most develop Suijutsu since water, swimming, and 7 swordsmen are their thing. I do see some limitations with this for Hazo though(I'm no fitness expert):

1. Need a body of water or pool.
2. The expense of pool maintenance
3. Hazo wouldn't know any of the skills involved that would be useful efficient moves, exercises, techniques, etc.
4. Need to rework your balance and moves you do have for the pool. (Not sure if IN can be used)
5. Water resistance is useful up to a point (Non-athletes or civies would burn fat, gain speed, endurance, flexibility, and strength. Real-world athletes and ninja can already achieve their max work-out intensity and weight resistance on land, so little to no gains. Their joints are spared though. Also more wholistic workouts)

Besides the limits, it's useful that water is acknowledged as a training tool in Mist and there was a real-world equivalent; The underlying stuff is what I want to work on. I'm counting on Hazo having a general idea about how water can provide training benefits through water resistance. The only problem is that regular water might not be enough to really push him the way it would a regular genin or what's needed for WW4; He needs something to provide more resistance than what he can get from regular weights on land. He needs extra weights or he has to increase the viscosity of a pool he's in?

As for the benefits I see this could be good for taijutsu, athletics, physique, and maybe melee weapons.

Water properties and application for Training
Aquatic Cross Training for Athletes

Thoughts?

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Maybe use Noburi's syrup trap jutsu? That's probably a lot more viscous than normal water.

Sentient Tree said:

Maybe use Noburi's syrup trap jutsu? That's probably a lot more viscous than normal water.

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Sadly, the technique lasts 30s for 22+ chakra, I'm not sure it's a viable technique without significant investments in chakra capacity.

Which Noburi has, mind you, but we'd still need a lot of people/chakra monsters readily available to use as batteries.

faflec said:

Damn.

Anyway, I'm thinking more and more about radar seals, which are the ultimate manifestation of chakra detection seals and can, if used properly, detect a Skywalker attack miles in advance. My current thoughts, if we can't get variable-intensity vibrator seals, is that we could try working on other aspects of radar seals that we'd have to do anyway, but which have beneficial aspects in the interim. These would include:

• Changing the detection method from spherical into conical, or at least to some non-omnidirectional method. This would partially shave off the issue with ESP seals, as I would imagine them to be easier to make. Hazou's got storage seals and explosion seals down, and if he needs a way to bump up his TN he could research directional explosives, which are kinda important anyway.
• Adjusting them so that they can detect more diffuse uses of chakra. The chakra diffusion problem might be solvable if, as I suspect, chakra disperses into the environment in a manner similar to light scattering, as it would imply that we could detect chakra emission from a distance.
• Setting a maximum quantity at which it will respond. This would, in conjunction to the above method, filter out more nearby sources of chakra and allow us to focus on distant chakra usage.

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Why would changing it from a sphere to a conical would be easier to make? If anything, the simpler the shape, the easier it would be to make it work?

Adjusting detection to sense diffuse chakra will benoisier. Additionally, you have the background radiation of chakra to deal with. So you would be dealing with emission of chakra from every charka worm, bugs, spiders, etc.

You don't want to set a maximum quantity. If anything, the better something stand out, the easier it is to detect.

eaglejarl said:

What sort of mechanics are you looking for here? Ninja don't wear armor and can walk on water, so the drivers for its creation are missing. Are you thinking of this as an extra-XP training method, a "Hazō can still fight in conditions where others can't", or what?

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It's more of an XP training method than actually being able to fight underwater. I'm thinking more about Ebisu stretches, a few kata, swimming, simple punches and kicks, maybe weights as well.

I'd love to see if Hazo could actually fight underwater, but then IN would have to compensate for the new environment and new micro movements, risking a seizure. I'd rather avoid that with the current mental consequence unless WoG deems it safe.

I can propose an appropriate stunt later. If it were a combat ready stunt, I'd use the training as a prerequisite.

I would agree that although modern mfd ninja don't use armor and can simply walk on water, there would be cases where underwater movement would be valuable like HLaM is. I figured Mist of all places would have the cultural motivation to think this up the way hidden mist jutsu would occur to them, or a leaf ninja would use trees.

Hold up.

Locking seals.

There was a locking seal on a ribbon over the Pangolin Summoning Scroll, which prevented Isan from ever reading the words of their holy saviour blah blah blah. But normally seals aren't meant to last that long, nor the materials.

If locking seals actually keep the material from being destroyed, and you can add other seals to the material, it might be possible to make perma-seals.

It's difficult to get in contact with them for various reasons, but we do have alternatives for figuring out if Wakahisa are capable of summoning:

• Tsunade
• Ami/Hazou's mom: we would have to give something up to get this from Ami, but she can almost certainly figure it out
• Mari's deep network in mist: as a jounin seduction specialist Mari should be able to easily get this info from people she knows unless it's a deep clan secret (which doesn't make sense: if the Wakahisa have ever gotten hold of a summoning scroll in their history it becomes immediately obvious whether they used it or not).

The problem with all of them is that we don't have an easy way of contacting any of them, but it's definitely feasible on all counts: mist and leaf are allies so Hazou talking to his mom is plausible. We have the KEI in leaf which opens a line of communication to Ami, though it could be slow. There's also the whole Nara/Mori communication route, but since Shikamaru's being a bit of a twat that might not be available.

@faflec where is tsunade right now?

ting said:

It's difficult to get in contact with them for various reasons, but we do have alternatives for figuring out if Wakahisa are capable of summoning:

• Tsunade
• Ami/Hazou's mom: we would have to give something up to get this from Ami, but she can almost certainly figure it out)
• Mari's deep network in mist: as a jounin seduction specialist Mari should be able to easily get this info from people she knows unless it's a deep clan secret (which doesn't make sense: if the Wakahisa have ever gotten hold of a summoning scroll in their history it becomes immediately obvious whether they used it or not).

The problem with all of them is that we don't have an easy way of contacting any of them, but it's definitely feasible on all counts: mist and leaf are allies so Hazou talking to his mom is plausible. We have the KEI in leaf which opens a line of communication to Ami, though it could be slow. There's also the whole Nara/Mori communication route, but since Shikamaru's being a bit of a twat that might not be available.

@faflec where is tsunade right now?

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HDK.

Serious: It's been 3 weeks and we haven't heard about her whereabouts since then. It's possible she fucked back off to Tanzaku Gai after the election, but given the amount of funding Hiashi's giving to the medical field she's possibly in Leaf managing it all.

faflec said:

Speaking of Macerators, though, I wonder what would happen if we introduced temperature changes to our payloads? Maybe chemical reactions, by forcing otherwise inert materials into combining into something appropriately horrifying by adding extremely hot materials, that wouldn't be possible the normal way due to byproducts or something? Or maybe just add molten iron with cold water or ice and make another massive bomb.

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MMKII Weapon Schematic 75 has us using red-hot metal scraps as projectiles.

(Dunno if that would cut it. Structural integrity of metal vs temperature ain't my bailiwick).

A) Mostly my point is that theres a couple dozen minor variations we can make on things as simple as storage seals or explosives that go like:

1) What if (Modification)?
2) *Do (Modification)*
3) Plug (Modified Seal) into Munchkin.exe
4) waiting waiting waiting
5) Congratulations! You have created a blueprint for a horrifyingly deadly weapon of decently-large-scale destruction and desolation!
6) Do minor tests on a toy version
7) (In case of war) Drop on Rock from a few miles overhead.

B) But theres also things to be considered along the lines of

1) What if (Modification)?
2) *Do (Modification)*
3) Plug (Modified Seal) into 21stCenturySocialNorms.exe
4) waiting waiting waiting
5) " Why the fuck wouldn't we hand one of these to literally everyone capable of getting a +5 to it if it isn't our best stuff and also helps us layeth the military smackdown?"
6) Do small scale efficacy tests with a small group of clanless folks. Add said seal to the "Stockpile this" list.
7) (In case of war) Give everyone + 5 seals.


C) And then theres always:

HAZOU: So theres these jutsu called "Ghost Scales" and "Pangolin Training Jutsu" and "Pantokrators Hammer" that I'd like you guys to learn.

LEE: Sounds youthful! Is this why I was just adopted?

AKANE: Youthful as fuck. Lee and I will be so strong after learning these.

NARUTO: Why are you giving me this? I'm not in your clan! Clan secrets! Pangolin will be mad!

HAZOU:
HAZOU: Listen here son:

One: Fuck the clan stuff, fuck the votes. You are now unofficially adopted, I'll fill out the paperwork later.

NARUTO: I don't know if I want--

HAZOU: Two! Listen to number two!!! You can make dozens of yourself that all have bullshit chakra. I saw those Substitutions you absolutely spammed a few weeks ago just to play a cute little shell game! You can also train with these clones to master said techniques super fast! Why would I *not* give these to you???? Why would I not want dozens of Naruto clones with at least 4 armor running around, that can also boost ridiculously before running people through with that bullshit hax Rasengan sphere nonsense!? What kind of madmen --madman do you take me for???

NARUTO: But the Pangolin--

HAZOU: Three: Who fucking cares about the Pangolin's opinions of us at this point? Do you have any idea how many different ways I can reframe any objections they might have to this in a way that makes them come off as the bad guys!? Do you think the other summon clans wouldn't go along with that, given that it matches the general preconceived notions of "Pangolins are xenophobic dicks." with a bit of a twist? Not to mention what Mari could do!

NARUTO: That's not even a good argument though because you have no guarantee that--

HAZOU: No! No, listen to me for a second here. Just one second. This entire "Pangolins will badmouth us and ruin our chances of doing politics on their plane" thing, is reliant on so many social dynamics being abstracted away to such a degree that its just completely inaccurate to proceed as if this is a given! First and foremost, this is super dependent on them talking to other summoning clans! They're the isolationist and xenophobic clan! Maybe, just maybe they'll convince some other pile of jerks on the 7th Path to have their summoner form a gang here and execute us in retaliation. but does it really matter given the circumstances? We're already public enemy number one to half of the villages in this scenario. Second, when in the history of forever was the overriding opinion of a group based on hearsay from another rival group? At worst it might come back to bite us with the Toads, but I think we can mitigate this decently given their history with Jiraiya so long as we get Noburi training on this summoning stuff like, immediately.

NARUTO: Something could still go wrong though, like isn't it entirely possible that--

HAZOU: Oh for fuck's sake! The only universe in which this ever becomes a problem is the one in which you actually have to use these techniques in battle to get an overwhelming advantage! So as applied to this upcoming war, we will probably have been very glad that we made sure that you had them beforehand as opposed to trying it at the last minute and almost certainly not giving you enough time to prevent the tens of thousands of deaths that would result in such a long and drawn out stalemate of a conflict as would require the use of them in the first place! Just treat them as a trump card and don't wave them around like you would any other secret jutsu, and make sure you kill anyone hostile that sees you use them a couple times over. If they're friendlies, then we talk to whoever summoners there are in Leaf after the fact-- like Asuma --and just tell them not to mention it. They'll probably agree because they'll like a) winning this war and b)not being dead in a ditch somewhere!

NARUTO: I still don't like this.

HAZOU: Shut up and take these buffs!!! FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!

@OliWhail, you mentioned on Discord the other day that Hazou's lack of Apprentice Earthshaper was approximate to 'build inconsistency, fix ASAP'. By my count Hazou has enough XP to purchase it (The sheet says 43 XP but doesn't show the 10 XP award from Chapter 290) and while I have a training plan up to bring it to attention I don't think any of us would have cause to object if you simply resolved the inconsistency directly.

Incidentally, there's another question that's been bugging me a little: if we accumulate enough Pangolin XP to have Physique jump tiers (29 -> 30), what happens if doing so would break the pyramid? In my build projections there are multiple cases like that, so it'd help to know what you'd lean towards even if it's not a full wog.

I think the best say to resolve the PCJ problem is by letting it happen when we vote to allow it.

Sentient Tree said:

Maybe use Noburi's syrup trap jutsu? That's probably a lot more viscous than normal water.

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faflec said:

Sadly, the technique lasts 30s for 22+ chakra, I'm not sure it's a viable technique without significant investments in chakra capacity.

Which Noburi has, mind you, but we'd still need a lot of people/chakra monsters readily available to use as batteries.

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I don't know how goo bombs interact with water, but I'm guessing that's probably covered for.

Assuming they need to be modified, maybe that's you thicken a pool.

Inferno Vulpix said:

@OliWhail, you mentioned on Discord the other day that Hazou's lack of Apprentice Earthshaper was approximate to 'build inconsistency, fix ASAP'. By my count Hazou has enough XP to purchase it (The sheet says 43 XP but doesn't show the 10 XP award from Chapter 290) and while I have a training plan up to bring it to attention I don't think any of us would have cause to object if you simply resolved the inconsistency directly.

Incidentally, there's another question that's been bugging me a little: if we accumulate enough Pangolin XP to have Physique jump tiers (29 -> 30), what happens if doing so would break the pyramid? In my build projections there are multiple cases like that, so it'd help to know what you'd lean towards even if it's not a full wog.

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I'd rather just lose the ability to MEW for a while and spend the XP on other more urgent stuff.

MadScientist said:

I'd rather just lose the ability to MEW for a while and spend the XP on other more urgent stuff.

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I don't think we have the choice, IIRC in Discord we were told the QMs were leaning pretty strongly in favor of "correct this problem ASAP".

MadScientist said:

I'd rather just lose the ability to MEW for a while and spend the XP on other more urgent stuff.

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Yeah so would I, but I asked Oli on discord whether it was 'build inconsistency, fix ASAP' vs. 'you can't use MEW again until you have it' vs. 'please fix this sooner or later' and Oli said it was probably the first one, so I take that we literally don't have a choice to not get it immediately.

grumble grumble

This'll probably be a controversial thought, and if it's at all contentious to it I'd rather it not be changed...but @Noumero if we're updating Yuno afterwards what's the point of keeping her out of the conversation? Especially in regards to the Isan situation, which she should certainly be able to give good advice for.

Maybe it'd be preferable to have the Isan situation with Yuno, and leave her out of the Cloud religion/Pangolin messages thing?

It is less than ideal for them to be introducing enforced build changes when so close to a war. Grumble.

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