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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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RandomOTP said:
I'm not very comfortable with asking Mari to return to that lifestyle.
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Mari never left the lifestyle. She's currently banging the head of the merchant council and blackmailing him.

Edit: besides it's a mutually beneficial arrangement in which everyone wins. Yasuji and Mari get great sex plus a potentially huge political marriage down the line. We get influence in Mist and Wakisha get a trading partner in Leaf.Throw in some toad jutsu and have kagome teach some kids sealing and we got ourselves a baseline in getting the hat when Ren retires
 
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I don't want to ask Mari to seduce Yasuji. I also don't think she needs to, to give us the advantage in these negotiations. I also think that she might choose to of her own volition, which I would be okay with.

So I'd like to ask Mari to turn the situation more in our favour, and leave it to her how she accomplishes this.
 
Noumero said:
I think the optimal sequence is:
  • Mine Yasuji for information. Act concerned about what he's revealed, and interested in his offer. Don't commit to anything, citing the need to seek the Hokage's approval, but have him walk away thinking he's won.
  • Discuss the information we've gathered, what we're willing to offer him, etc. Put together a plan and get Asuma's approval on it.
  • Have the second meeting, and do a one-eighty: immediately reject the seals-related part of his offer, act only marginally interested in the other parts.
    • Seals: In reality, we don't care about it because 1) the problem is years away, and by the time it's a problem we'll have become a jounin-level biosealmaster capable of fixing it on our own, 2) depending on how the seals' expiration function is made, we could likely steal a refreshed design from another Wakahisa, even from Yasuji here right now. (Not that we can say any of that, since the first is effectively bloodline theft and the second is an explicit threat of hostile action.) I'm confident we don't need external assistance there.
    • Ami: Just claim we're confident she can save herself, or that Aunt Ren owes us a favour. Get Keiko in on it if possible, for maximum impact.
    • Koi: Claim that we could just breed our own specialized chakra beasts, or something.
Ideally, we'd handle him like we've handled Kabuto, switch to dismissing his offers and pressuring him right now. But it's a significantly more complicated situation that we also know less about, we need to take a break do discuss it, so trying to put him off-balance by a mood whiplash is probably our best bet. (If we want to maximize what we get out of this deal, that is. If we want to establish a long-term trading relationship with the Wakahisa, it might make sense to make them happy about the deal and happy about the easily-manipulated Yasuji, so that he stays the ambassador whom we can pressure into accepting an even more lopsided deal at some future point. I'm inclined towards not doing that.)

Edit: Ohh, we can also question his ability to deliver on his promises by pointing out that we'd be trading bloodline secrets and he's nowhere near a Clan Head. Seems like it'd work better for fishing for information, though, so we should probably do it during Phase 1 and subtly.
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What I had in mind was actually continuing with Hazou as bad cop and Mari as good cop, which is a dynamic they've sort of fallen into naturally in the conversation thus far. I wouldn't necessarily say act disinterested, but intentionally put him on the defensive.
  • Be formal, serious and focused on business. Use IN to maintain a neutral expression and body language.
  • Point out that he'd moved really quickly following Ami's departure. Can be formulated as praise, to stop it from sounding too much like an accusation.
  • Ask what changed in the Wakahisa elders' opinion that they'd consider selling more clan secrets to the traitors.
  • Question how much he's able to influence his father's actions as pertaining to Ami, and whether this kind of trade is something his father agreed to explicitly.
  • Imply that we can reverse-engineer the barrel seals, especially since Kagome seems to know how the Wakahisa invalidate the pattern.
  • Etc.
Take him out of his comfort zone by changing the tone of the conversation and put him in a situation where he needs to prove his value to us, by questioning said value. Meanwhile, Mari will likely pick up the good cop role and steer Yasuji in the right direction. He'll let something useful slip.
 
Roomba said:
What I had in mind was actually continuing with Hazou as bad cop and Mari as good cop, which is a dynamic they've sort of fallen into naturally in the conversation thus far. I wouldn't necessarily say act disinterested, but intentionally put him on the defensive.
  • Be formal, serious and focused on business. Use IN to maintain a neutral expression and body language.
  • Point out that he'd moved really quickly following Ami's departure. Can be formulated as praise, to stop it from sounding too much like an accusation.
  • Ask what changed in the Wakahisa elders' opinion that they'd consider selling more clan secrets to the traitors.
  • Question how much he's able to influence his father's actions as pertaining to Ami, and whether this kind of trade is something his father agreed to explicitly.
  • Imply that we can reverse-engineer the barrel seals, especially since Kagome seems to know how the Wakahisa invalidate the pattern.
  • Etc.
Take him out of his comfort zone by changing the tone of the conversation and put him in a situation where he needs to prove his value to us, by questioning said value. Meanwhile, Mari will likely pick up the good cop role and steer Yasuji in the right direction. He'll let something useful slip.
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I'm concerned that if we put pressure on him right now and then let him go without committing to anything, he's going to run to the senior ambassador and get quality advice and turn the tables on us during the second meeting. At the very least, we'll lose the advantage of having put him off-balance. If we think he was actually given leeway to make deals on behalf of the Wakahisa, it only makes sense to seal the deal in the same meeting when we crush him.

I agree about the good/bad cop, though, as long as we're still keeping up the pretense that we're buying what he's selling.
 
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Noumero said:
I'm concerned that if we put pressure on him right now and then let him go without committing to anything, he's going to run to the senior ambassador and get quality advice and turn the tables on us during the second meeting. At the very least, we'll lose the advantage of having put him off-balance. If we think he was actually given leeway to make deals on behalf of the Wakahisa, it only makes sense to seal the deal in the same meeting when we crush him.

I agree about the good/bad cop, though, as long as we're still keeping up the pretense that we're buying what he's selling.
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Isn't Ami the senior ambassador, though? I somewhat remember Ami saying she was an ambassador when she started staying here, and Wakahisa came to us very shortly after Ami left for Mist so unless Mist came with a replacement senior ambassador and the move against Ami involved revoking her position as ambassador, I feel like Ami would still be in that position.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Isn't Ami the senior ambassador, though? I somewhat remember Ami saying she was an ambassador when she started staying here, and Wakahisa came to us very shortly after Ami left for Mist so unless Mist came with a replacement senior ambassador and the move against Ami involved revoking her position as ambassador, I feel like Ami would still be in that position.
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eaglejarl said:
"Now c'mon...is that any way to talk to the new Ambassador from Mist?" He really leaned into the audibly-capital letter on his job title. "I'm here to talk with your Clan Head, of course. All in the interest of trade and good relations."

"You're the ambassador from Mist? Did I fall through one of those rifts that Hazō keeps tearing open? Is this some weird backwards universe?"

Wakahisa shrugged. "Okay, junior member of a two-man team. Still, official Ambassador with authority to negotiate."
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Seems Ami was the senior ambassador, and this guy is part of the replacement.
 
faflec said:
Seems Ami was the senior ambassador, and this guy is part of the replacement.
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We should definitely grill him on who the senior ambassador is now. If it's actually Ami then he may know that she's not actually in trouble and is just lying to us in order to make it seem like he has more to offer than he actually does.
 
eaglejarl said:
"Now c'mon...is that any way to talk to the new Ambassador from Mist?" He really leaned into the audibly-capital letter on his job title. "I'm here to talk with your Clan Head, of course. All in the interest of trade and good relations."
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@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail Does Yasuji actually have the authority to make trades with important Leaf figures without explicit Hokage approval like this? Are we permitted to be having these discussions without notifying the Hokage in advance/immediately after?
 
faflec said:
Are we permitted to be having these discussions without notifying the Hokage in advance/immediately after?
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Well we never had to inform Asuma about our meetings with Ami (and she was undermining his regime, not just being some guy). If meeting an ambassador like this is illegal...well it's just more accidental treason. Besides, pretty sure we all want to go to Asuma afterwards anyway.

edit: Also he came to us, so not really our fault as long as we don't agree to anything.
 
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ContextBot said:
Well we never had to inform Asuma about our meetings with Ami (and she was undermining his regime, not just being some guy). If meeting an ambassador like this is illegal...well it's just more accidental treason. Besides, pretty sure we all want to go to Asuma afterwards anyway.
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Discussions of trade between Mist and Leaf, or between two clans from said countries, I mean. I don't recall Ami having done this at any point.

Also, we're not exactly on good relations with Asuma RN.
 
faflec said:
Discussions of trade between Mist and Leaf, or between two clans from said countries, I mean. I don't recall Ami having done this at any point.

Also, we're not exactly on good relations with Asuma RN.
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No we just kind of helped her found the KEI.

We can just abort the whole talk and go straight to him, but getting some more info sounds just reasonable to me.
 
faflec said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail Does Yasuji actually have the authority to make trades with important Leaf figures without explicit Hokage approval like this? Are we permitted to be having these discussions without notifying the Hokage in advance/immediately after?
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Treason is ultimately whatever the Hokage defines it as. However Asuma doesn't have very much room to throw around his weight. He's only the second Hokage that doesn't have the personal power to enforce his whims. Also he wasn't a winning candidate against Hiashi. So the Hyūga block still has considerable influence. Any elite jounin in that faction could easily make a play for the hat if Asuma over extended himself. Which accusing anyone from his faction of treason would almost certainly do. Since the only clan outside of the Sarutobi that completely supports Asuma was the Minami and Uzumaki Asuma is in a very delicate position. Since moving against the Gōketsu, ISC or KEI sits all of them against him.

Ultimately everyone in Leaf is in a position to slowly erode the powers of the office of Hokage down and bring in more power to the clans.

TLDR: we are probably safe unless Asuma wants to risk civil war
 
faflec said:
Also, we're not exactly on good relations with Asuma RN.
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ContextBot said:
No we just kind of helped her found the KEI.
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We weren't really popular with Hiashi either and Ami used our favor to found the KEI and more or less admited that she used our failed clan council vote for that. Hiashi didn't even question us.

But some dude shows up and offers us cooperation and we can't even talk with him a bit about a theoretical alliance/trade? While he is an ambassador, basically doing his job?


But apparently HDK so whatever, let's just abort.
 
Velorien said:
I encourage you, in the name of science, to bring this to Asuma's attention.
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Oh right, that was treason too, wasn't it. I think we even knew that at the time? Indeed, I remember that when I was arguing in favour of doing that, I noted that it would make us exactly what Hiashi thought we were: filthy foreigners colluding with another foreigner the first chance they got. I was really gleeful about that! I believe my exact words were "goal of the month: meet and exceed Hiashi's worst expectations". Man, those were the days.

And I totally forgot. We legitimately need to make a list.
 
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Oneiros said:
Treason is ultimately whatever the Hokage defines it as. However Asuma doesn't have very much room to throw around his weight. He's only the second Hokage that doesn't have the personal power to enforce his whims. Also he wasn't a winning candidate against Hiashi. So the Hyūga block still has considerable influence. Any elite jounin in that faction could easily make a play for the hat if Asuma over extended himself. Which accusing anyone from his faction of treason would almost certainly do. Since the only clan outside of the Sarutobi that completely supports Asuma was the Minami and Uzumaki Asuma is in a very delicate position. Since moving against the Gōketsu, ISC or KEI sits all of them against him.

Ultimately everyone in Leaf is in a position to slowly erode the powers of the office of Hokage down and bring in more power to the clans.

TLDR: we are probably safe unless Asuma wants to risk civil war
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I disagree that we are safe in any way. We just had a situation a few updates ago where we almost got executed by Asuma, for something that we didn't even do while he was Hokage. Furthermore, in order to get us out of that situation our allies spent a ton of political capital, and the ones that aren't all the way over in Mist may very well not want to spend even more political power in order to save our sorry butt less than a week after they saved it the first time.

We had our miracle. I don't want to tempt fate by asking for another one so soon. Let alone one that we should be able to avoid needing.


Noumero said:
And I totally forgot. We legitimately need to make a list.
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Let's just use the one in the QM docs titled 'All the times Goketsu Hazō has committed treason, and number of days until it comes back to bite him in the butt.'
 
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@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @OliWhail,
So we were talking on discord about how sealing would go with shadow clones, and we had a discussion on how seal mastery worked in FtD. Per the rules:
quoth the rules said:
Mastering a seal means that you have drawn and infused that particular seal enough times to reduce the TNs of both your Craftsmanship (Calligraphy) and Sealing rolls to 0. Correct drawing and successful infusion each reduce their relevant TN by 1.
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We noticed that this was the same balance as AugJEV, where you rolled Nd100, and so was kind of OP for FtD.

Specifically, a check at level 20 would roll an average of 1000 in AugJEV, and an average of 20 in FtD, a 50x difference.

While there are differences in variance and whatnot, the simplest fix to this is to make it so 'every 50 correct calligraphy/infusion checks reduce their relevant TN by 1'.

Next, we considered how mastery might interact with the Iron Nerve. This is how I would imagine things would go:
  • Hazou's first successful Calligraphy check would count towards mastery, but all subsequent checks using the Iron Nerve would not.
  • A successful Calligraphy check with Iron Nerve off (such as from a Shadow Clone) would contribute to mastery.
  • Mastery gained by Shadow Clones would contribute to Hazou's mastery after merging, and would be passed on to subsequent Shadow Clones.
These are suggestions made in the idea that, should you not have ideas constructed for how to handle these topics in FtD, they may be good advice, at least as a starting ground. If you have already discussed the topic or are already past this point in the discussion, feel free to disregard these suggestions.
 
Sentient Tree said:
I disagree that we are safe in any way.
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Agreed.

Sentient Tree said:
We just had a situation a few updates ago where we almost got executed by Asuma, for something that we didn't even do while he was Hokage. Furthermore, in order to get us out of that situation our allies spent a ton of political capital, and the ones that aren't all the way over in Mist may very well not want to spend even more political power in order to save our sorry butt less than a week after they saved it the first time.
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I would argue our political situation only matters if talking to him is illegal, if it is totally ok it might actually give us points, by starting to get the Wakahisa to be a pro-Leaf clan.

But:

Velorien said:
"You went over my head and engaged in private negotiations with a hostile force that we would declare war on this instant if we dared. Hazō, there is only one word for that." Asuma's voice was even, but his knuckles were white.
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Whats more important, the private negotations (that he initiated) or Mist's status? They aren't an ally (yet), but they are not an enemy. We really don't even know the basic rules of anything.

Byzantine said:
You shouldn't trust that list. I've been sneakily reducing the number of outstanding treason calls and pushing back the discovery date. Shhhhh.
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Have you taken out the time we killed some Leaf border guards? Or that time we set fire to a forest in the land of Fire?
 
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