Voting is open for the next 12 hours, 34 minutes
Bumping this. We are about a week out from severes healing and I think the first thing we should do is investigate the discipline of 3D Sealing. I'm not entirely sure the Sand portion is a priority right now. It might help uncover crucial information and lore (we need to tap all the leads we can for that), but considering the current emergency and war status we may want to hold back on our week-long trip for a few months.

Aside from that, what does everyone think?

[ ] Future Plan: Investigating the Great Seal
  • Request permission from Asuma to look for DRAGONWAR-related information in Sand
    • Having him pressure the Kazekage into assisting would be enormously helpful.
      • Lore/Sealmasters definitely won't help unless Kazekage briefs them on DRAGONWAR
    • Probe Sand Sealmasters for information on 3D Sealing and other esoteric sealing disiplines
    • Probe loremasters (including at least one from the Yodomi) for information on:
      • The Sage and his companions
      • The Dragons and other powerful entities sealed by the Sage
  • Research 3D Sealing
  • Have Noburi ask the Toads about Dragons and the Sage's companions
  • Have Kagome and Kei investigate how Isan developed an entire sealing tradition from studying a single seal.
    • Do you have any insights how we should reverse-engineer 3D sealing from just the Great Seal?
    • Are there any major weaknesses in Isanese sealing that come from this? How might we avoid similar problems with our 3D sealing?
  • Ask Isolde how he originally defeated the Dragons
  • Probe Mist Sealmasters and loremasters (including Tama)
  • With Asuma's permission, talk to Aunt Ren and a Kurosawa Sealmaster about the Great Seal and the Dragons.
    • Explain how the Iron Nerve recorded details about the z-dimension.
    • Ask about Iron Nerve (worth a shot)
      • Is everything that gets recorded important?
      • How does it know what to record?
      • How can it record aspects about the Great Seal that I never saw?
      • Is there anything else I should know that would help me prevent the imminent destruction of Seventh and then Human Path?
We should get started on the Biju seals asap before we do any traveling.

They are the closest thing we have to 2D versions of the GS as a containment seal.
 
I think the Heartbreaker could shut down Ami.
I think Ami knows this.
I think Ami is trying to turn Mari into the Heartbreaker.

It would permanently keep Kei away from Mari (while fashioning Mari into a truly vicious protector of Kei).
It would drive a wedge between Mari and us.
It wouldn't make Asuma want to kill her.
And most importantly of all, it would hurt Mari more than anything else possibly could.

I think I found Ami's endgame.
 
[X] Training Hazō: Chakra Scarcity

This is an obvious choice. Unless we expect something as low as ES50 to be enough to solve the GS problem, it's optimal to push for higher Resolve first.
 
"A contract," Hazō affirmed. "We can promise that if Mari tries to sacrifice Kei again, the consequences will be so terrible that it'll be worse than whatever Mari stands to get out of it. More terrible than letting me die, for example. Since I don't think Mari intends to ever sacrifice Kei, even without a contract, I'm comfortable giving terms you'd feel confident with in return for you not hurting Mari now."

"And what can you offer me?" Ami asked. "What's so awful that it is 100% guaranteed to override Mari's instincts to protect her family at the cost of mine?"
"Hazō," Ami said with icy patience, "the only guarantee for Mari not to sacrifice Kei to save you is if the consequences for everyone would be far worse than your death. Now, it's a good suggestion, and I'm open to negotiation, but bear in mind that this time, you're responsible, not just Mari. If she or anyone else sacrifices Kei because you didn't do enough to stop them, I will take everything I have, without exception, and use it to utterly annihilate you, them, and the Gōketsu. It is in your interest to give the clan compelling motivation never to think of doing it, and based on Mari's actions, fear of me isn't good enough for that.
[χ] Action Plan: Turnabout is Fair Play

Ami, I've thought about what you said regarding the contract and I've come to the conclusion that you're right. The only way to guarantee a loved one's safety is to make the consequences of their death for everyone far worse than the consequences of their continued life. To that effect, I've placed a few contingencies into place.
If Mari dies before the age of fifty, everything I currently know about the Five will diseminated as far as possible. The connection between each village's thinker clans. The importance of the survival of at least one member of each bloodline. The connection to the Sage's companions. The fact that there are monsters out there so powerful that not even the Sage could kill them. That he had to seal them away and admit humanity's defeat. Everything I know, plus a few falsehoods that will encourage people to dig further.
This information will be diseminated whether or not I am incapacitated. In fact, I can not stop this process even I want to. I literally don't know everything that's going to happen. Some I made sure to never know. Some I made sure to be beyond my reach. And, from the note I left to myself, some I had Ino literally delete from my mind. I don't know what exactly is going to happen if Mari dies, but I do know that I left lots of redundancy that will result in this information being made public in every city and village in the Elemental Nations, as well as some key individuals that can't be surpressed.
You know I'm not bluffing. I'd never be able to fool you like that. I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to prevent by surpressing this knowledge, but I know that it's bad enough that you'll never let it happen. I'm not risking anything or endangering anyone because you're never going to challenge this. You wouldn't dare.
You were absolutely right. This is the only way to truly gaurentee a loved one's life. Thank you for the idea, Ami. I never would have thought of this without you.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have everything about this wiped from my mind.
Remember, Ami. Fifty years and not a day sooner.
 
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This should probably include something about patrolling the border with the Hyena tribe. Get a briefing from Cannai on their relationship & discuss trying to trade with them. On patrol: Ask after their summoner (unless we've done that already) and see if we can get a Hyena to pass a message to initiate trade relations. Or get info about their scroll and see if they want a summoner?


Added something in the off-screen section. Unless you think it should be on screen? Just not sure if the Mari/Ami/Kei thing will be all 3 scenes or not.

  • Patrolling Hyena territory (sanity check with Mari and Noburi)
    • Briefing from Cannai on relationship of Dogs and Hyenas on 7th Path
    • Is trade possible or permitted?
    • Can we exchange information?
      • Information on their summoner?
  • On Patrol:
    • If Cannai allows trade, initiate trade talks
      • Ask about Hyena's scroll and summoner
 
  1. Does the list of 21 jōnin include S-Rankers and the Hokage?
  2. Does it include special jōnin?
  3. If Hazō asked Noburi for the names of the jōnin he refilled, what would he say?
  4. If Hazō asked Kei if the Nara have a jōnin, what would she say?
  5. If Hazō asked Ino if the Yamanaka have a jōnin, what would she say?
  6. If Hazō asked Mari who the jōnin in the village were, would she know anyone not on this list?
They would say "What is this, a Raymond Smullyan puzzle?"

And then they would go sit in QM QUINOA until @Velorien and I can discuss it.


Trying my hand at a plan.

Feel free to let me know where I failed.
Nice! Go you and your badass plan-writing self.

In case it hasn't come up, note that we chose the Google Docs to be the standard word counter. (I'm not confident in the SV one since it counts tags.)


Note that you are not going to have time for seal research until you have done some time management. Check the freshly-rewritten chapter 483 for details.

Briefing from Cannai on relationship of Dogs and Hyenas on 7th Path
The sergeant-equivalent that you'll be running with tells you the important parts: They are enemies of the Dogs but they have pulled back lately so there haven't been many encounters. This punishment patrol isn't so unnecessary that it can be ignored, but it's more intended to be boring and unpleasant than anything else.

Asuma has confirmation from Enma that the Great Seal is real and can verify our story.
He does? If you're referencing the passage I'm thinking of, Enma said that weird things had been happening and that it was plausible for there to be a Great Seal. The Condors then sent a scout out to Arachnid territory and saw it.

May I ask if there's a concrete reason that you decided to go for a compromise solution? At first glance it feels like a middle ground fallacy/bias, but I assume that there's more to it.
We didn't do a compromise. This is what we felt was the most realistic timeline based on all the previous events that were brought to our attention and the plan that the players voted in.



Hazo pulling a "better ask for forgiveness than permission" is even more OOC for him than being a ditz and forgetting that asking permission is a thing IMHO.
As @Velorien said, we are definitely not reading the same quest. "Better forgiveness than permission" is essentially Hazō's family motto...at every opportunity he has bulled ahead with what he wanted to do and not given a damn about any tradition, cultural norm, or authority figure that didn't have a big enough stick to be unignorable. Cannai might be an exception but it's still early days there.

@eaglejarl @Velorien I have been assuming the answer is YES, but I want to be sure: Have we told Leaf's other sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal?
Dunno. Let's vote:

[] (GS) Yes, tell the Leaf sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal
[] (GS) No, do NOT tell the Leaf sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal
[] (GS) Tell Asuma, then tell the Leaf sealmasters\
[] (GS) Write-in, but please use the (GS) topic.

(EDIT: Yeah, there's a \ typo on the third option. I'm leaving it rather than asking people to revote.)
 
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[X] (GS) Yes, tell the Leaf sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal
[X] (GS) Tell Asuma, then tell the Leaf sealmasters\

By the by, did we ever formally distinguish the terms sealsmith and sealmaster? My original assumption was that a sealsmith is someone who can make (a) seal(s), while a sealmaster has created one or more seals, or their expertise is widely acknowledged. However when re-reading, it did seem not to follow that rule I made up in my head. Are those fully interchangeable?
 
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Hey, new reader here (so please be mindful of spoilers, it'll be a while before I'm caught up). First comment is gonna be an essay. You can thank @_The_Bomb for this.
Then there's the dire rabbits—careful with those ones, they've got a mean streak a mile wild
Monty Python reference?
She had not gone this deep in a while, not since before Shikigami-sensei killed Sumie-sensei and ended the future she had expected for so long. In the future-as-planned, she would not have been drawing on her Bloodline Limit like this until she was much stronger, both as a ninja and as a Mori.
This seems to me like not true future sight, but an ability to draw upon the collective experience of her ancestors to predict the future using thousands of years of historical context. (although I don't know the scale of this world, so I don't really know if it's thousands of years)
So she reached down, past the shadows that were the legacy of the Mori Clan's distant progenitors, into the depths of the Frozen Skein. She touched the focus point.
There is something further past the collective consciousness of the Mori Clan, something that allows them to look into the past to predict the future. The further down you reach, the stronger your connection, and the clearer the vision.
Thoughts, feelings, even the outside world—all was instantly washed away by a pale wave of apathy, its waters freezing into unbreakable ice that numbed all sensation. All that was left was the Mori Voice, the incurable poison in her bloodline's chalice.
This is the downside to the Mori Clan's bloodline. Reaching into the minds of others separates one from their own time and drives a wedge between the consciousness and humanity. Either that, or whatever lies in the "depths of the Frozen Skein" is trying to remove emotion and empathy from those with the Mori bloodline.
Rest. Sleep. Embrace the nothingness within you. Will is struggle. Will is suffering. Step aside from the world, and know peace. Let the gears of fate grind without you. Forsake the agony of choice, the crushing responsibility of action, and find the happiness of pure oblivion.
This is either the result of human experience being compiled and added together over time, or it is whatever "force" is granting the Mori Clan's abilities. We are directly seeing an influencing voice attempting to change the bearer of the Mori bloodline.
The litany continued, endless variations on a theme, the force of sheer repetition increasingly hypnotic, compelling. The Mori Voice was why you never, ever, dove this deep without your defences in place.
It seems that a protection from losing yourself in the depths of centuries of memories (or some eldritch horror trying to body-snatch you) is to ground yourself (because rocks, get it?) to the time period you exist in.
She drew the ice of apathy further up her body, past the frozen heart and into the structure of her mind. Final safety check. The words were a mould, reshaping the ice as it passed through them. Finally, the ice arrived inside her eyes, twin razor-sharp shards serving as lenses of dispassionate, merciless clarity.

Once those three seconds were over, Kei opened her eyes. She slowly scanned the clearing, from right to left.

Safety Rock A, out at the very edge.

The boar bristles in the centre, placed in a small pool of water. Wakahisa next to them. Safety Rock D next to both.

Kurosawa, on a treetop mirroring her own position on the far side of the clearing. Safety Rock B on the ground, some way past Kurosawa.
This is the method by which the Mori Clan can defend themselves. Despite being removed and apathetic from the time you inhabit, by remaining anchored to objects in the real world you can protect yourself from the influence of the Mori Voice.
All relevant objects were in position, including Kurosawa, Wakahisa and Inoue-sensei. The next step was to draw the overlay of causal webs between them, and simulate their interactions given the various possible failure modes of the experiment. Were there any variables she had not yet taken into account?

Finally, Kei concluded that the precautions taken were an acceptable balance of probability of injury or death versus available time and material resources, and that further optimisation would be impractical.
This kind of throws a wrench into my working theory of a disembodied collective consciousness made of an amalgam of previously human psyches or a eldritch abomination because the language gets very mechanical and generally computer-y. Perhaps the "simulationist" aspect of this story is more literal than metaphorical and this bloodline is a look into the simulation; A means of interfacing directly. Or my next best theory, Mecha-Lovecraft.
Overall, I'm leaning towards a mix of the memory amalgam and the Lovecraftian horror angle, because in my opinion, the two sentences of more mechanical language might just be the human mind's inability to fully contextualize the information they are handling through the bloodline ability. It seems to me that the Mori Clan has a massive data bank of memories that when accessed, can be used as a predictive algorithm. The downside, however, is that either the strain of all these human psyches and experiences coexisting caused them to disassociate as a whole, leading to the lack of humanity and the all encompassing apathy that the bloodline bearer feels, or there is a more malevolent entity lurking "deeper" in the Mori Clan's bloodline in this "Frozen Skein." Also, the term Frozen Skein gives me major R'Lyeh vibes. In case you couldn't tell, I'm a bit of a Lovecraft fan (his writing, not his personal beliefs lol)
Hazō did his best to stand like someone who could handle himself in a fight, while not being a member of an elite warrior caste individually capable of wiping entire armies off the face of the earth (eventually, anyway).
Time to take a rapid shift away from contemplating what horrors lurk in the depths of our subconsciousness, because what Hazo just said is super relatable. Yup. I too, aspire to one day wipe entire armies off the face of the earth, but not look like I'm trying *too* hard, you know?
Ninja can't really breathe fire. That's just stories.
Do the Uchihas exist in this world?
Inoue-sensei nodded, understanding the implication.
I didn't think of the implications!
 
[X] (GS: Yes) Tell the Leaf sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal

By the by, did we ever formally distinguish the terms sealsmith and sealmaster? My original assumption was that a sealsmith is someone who can make (a) seal(s), while a sealmaster has created one or more seals, or their expertise is widely acknowledged. However when re-reading, it did seem not to follow that rule I made up in my head. Are those fully interchangeable?
The options got edited, so would you mind changing that vote to:
[] (GS) Yes, tell the Leaf sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal


Yeah, the words have been used interchangeably, which is a pity. We could have had sealsmith be the term for anyone who does sealing and sealmaster be for accomplished experts, or people who have created seals, or have been teachers...lots of potential, but didn't think of it.
 
Hey, new reader here (so please be mindful of spoilers, it'll be a while before I'm caught up). First comment is gonna be an essay. You can thank @_The_Bomb for this.
Then there's the dire rabbits—careful with those ones, they've got a mean streak a mile wild
Monty Python reference?
She had not gone this deep in a while, not since before Shikigami-sensei killed Sumie-sensei and ended the future she had expected for so long. In the future-as-planned, she would not have been drawing on her Bloodline Limit like this until she was much stronger, both as a ninja and as a Mori.
This seems to me like not true future sight, but an ability to draw upon the collective experience of her ancestors to predict the future using thousands of years of historical context. (although I don't know the scale of this world, so I don't really know if it's thousands of years)
So she reached down, past the shadows that were the legacy of the Mori Clan's distant progenitors, into the depths of the Frozen Skein. She touched the focus point.
There is something further past the collective consciousness of the Mori Clan, something that allows them to look into the past to predict the future. The further down you reach, the stronger your connection, and the clearer the vision.
Thoughts, feelings, even the outside world—all was instantly washed away by a pale wave of apathy, its waters freezing into unbreakable ice that numbed all sensation. All that was left was the Mori Voice, the incurable poison in her bloodline's chalice.
This is the downside to the Mori Clan's bloodline. Reaching into the minds of others separates one from their own time and drives a wedge between the consciousness and humanity. Either that, or whatever lies in the "depths of the Frozen Skein" is trying to remove emotion and empathy from those with the Mori bloodline.
Rest. Sleep. Embrace the nothingness within you. Will is struggle. Will is suffering. Step aside from the world, and know peace. Let the gears of fate grind without you. Forsake the agony of choice, the crushing responsibility of action, and find the happiness of pure oblivion.
This is either the result of human experience being compiled and added together over time, or it is whatever "force" is granting the Mori Clan's abilities. We are directly seeing an influencing voice attempting to change the bearer of the Mori bloodline.
The litany continued, endless variations on a theme, the force of sheer repetition increasingly hypnotic, compelling. The Mori Voice was why you never, ever, dove this deep without your defences in place.
It seems that a protection from losing yourself in the depths of centuries of memories (or some eldritch horror trying to body-snatch you) is to ground yourself (because rocks, get it?) to the time period you exist in.
She drew the ice of apathy further up her body, past the frozen heart and into the structure of her mind. Final safety check. The words were a mould, reshaping the ice as it passed through them. Finally, the ice arrived inside her eyes, twin razor-sharp shards serving as lenses of dispassionate, merciless clarity.

Once those three seconds were over, Kei opened her eyes. She slowly scanned the clearing, from right to left.

Safety Rock A, out at the very edge.

The boar bristles in the centre, placed in a small pool of water. Wakahisa next to them. Safety Rock D next to both.

Kurosawa, on a treetop mirroring her own position on the far side of the clearing. Safety Rock B on the ground, some way past Kurosawa.
This is the method by which the Mori Clan can defend themselves. Despite being removed and apathetic from the time you inhabit, by remaining anchored to objects in the real world you can protect yourself from the influence of the Mori Voice.
All relevant objects were in position, including Kurosawa, Wakahisa and Inoue-sensei. The next step was to draw the overlay of causal webs between them, and simulate their interactions given the various possible failure modes of the experiment. Were there any variables she had not yet taken into account?

Finally, Kei concluded that the precautions taken were an acceptable balance of probability of injury or death versus available time and material resources, and that further optimisation would be impractical.
This kind of throws a wrench into my working theory of a disembodied collective consciousness made of an amalgam of previously human psyches or a eldritch abomination because the language gets very mechanical and generally computer-y. Perhaps the "simulationist" aspect of this story is more literal than metaphorical and this bloodline is a look into the simulation; A means of interfacing directly. Or my next best theory, Mecha-Lovecraft.
Overall, I'm leaning towards a mix of the memory amalgam and the Lovecraftian horror angle, because in my opinion, the two sentences of more mechanical language might just be the human mind's inability to fully contextualize the information they are handling through the bloodline ability. It seems to me that the Mori Clan has a massive data bank of memories that when accessed, can be used as a predictive algorithm. The downside, however, is that either the strain of all these human psyches and experiences coexisting caused them to disassociate as a whole, leading to the lack of humanity and the all encompassing apathy that the bloodline bearer feels, or there is a more malevolent entity lurking "deeper" in the Mori Clan's bloodline in this "Frozen Skein." Also, the term Frozen Skein gives me major R'Lyeh vibes. In case you couldn't tell, I'm a bit of a Lovecraft fan (his writing, not his personal beliefs lol)
Hazō did his best to stand like someone who could handle himself in a fight, while not being a member of an elite warrior caste individually capable of wiping entire armies off the face of the earth (eventually, anyway).
Time to take a rapid shift away from contemplating what horrors lurk in the depths of our subconsciousness, because what Hazo just said is super relatable. Yup. I too, aspire to one day wipe entire armies off the face of the earth, but not look like I'm trying *too* hard, you know?
Inoue-sensei nodded, understanding the implication.
I didn't think about the implications!
 
[X] (GS) Yes, tell the Leaf sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal
[X] (GS) Tell Asuma, then tell the Leaf sealmasters

I don't really know if there's any meaningful distinction between the two? I'm 100% full-disclosure policy on the Dragonwar because even if we're its focal point in Leaf everyone is equally invested in the outcome whether they like it or not. I am supporting both of the above options under the expectation that neither of them deviate from this policy - that is, I believe that 'Yes, tell the Leaf sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal' also involves us telling Asuma, just not explicitly before telling the sealmasters.

If I am wrong and either of these options will attempt to conceal relevant Dragonwar information from anyone, let me know so I can change my vote.
 
Yeah, the words have been used interchangeably, which is a pity. We could have had sealsmith be the term for anyone who does sealing and sealmaster be for accomplished experts, or people who have created seals, or have been teachers...lots of potential, but didn't think of it.
That does play well in the "sealing is dangerous and if you're alive after trying something it's very very good" theme, though. Silver linings :)
 
Chapter 483: Wisdom is Knowledge Gained Too Late
Time to see what's going on!
His easygoing mien vanished the moment Hazō appeared alongside Canzone, the six-month-old mastiff who had boosted Hazō up to the Seventh Path.
Is Cannai not happy to see us? Odd. We haven't said anything yet?

Maybe this is supposed to imply that Cannai knew what was going on (he has senses sharp enough to see lightning travel through the sky at 750,000 mph) and was waiting for us to talk to him?
Cannai nodded expectantly but said nothing, which made Hazō suddenly nervous. Cannai was usually much more engaging.
Ah, yeah. That's exactly what it is implying.
It seems to me that Dog having a presence at the Conclave is useful to you since it would allow you to meet other Leaf summoners on the Seventh Path
If you want to emphasize a word that is already italicized, bold it instead of unitalisizing.
"...It seems to me that Dog having a presence at the Conclave is useful to you since it would allow you to meet other Leaf summoners on the Seventh Path...
versus
"...It seems to me that Dog having a presence at the Conclave is useful to you since it would allow you to meet other Leaf summoners on the Seventh Path..."
I'm unclear what advantage Dog would get out of it." He paused, then hastened to add. "Not that this is inherently a bad thing. Partnerships must be valuable to all parties, but that does not mean that every specific aspect must be useful to both sides. I am not entirely adverse to doing things that are of benefit to you and not us, provided that we gain enough value elsewhere. Still—"
Ok, I love Cannai.
"So you're in?" Hazō asked, excited.
Hazō is literally acting like a puppy. Cannai must know this.
(Also, why is Hazō so excited? Zoo Rush hasn't happened yet.)
Cannai cleared his throat meaningfully. "As I was about to say: Dogs are a social clan who live close to the land. You are asking that one or perhaps a pawful should travel hundred or thousands of miles through enemy territories, across a mountain range, to live amidst a warlike and xenophobic species who have recently been on a conquest spree. Those dogs would be away from our lands, eating unfamiliar foods, and away from their packmates for months or even years. I would never order something so cruel." He cocked his head as a thought struck. "Speaking of the pangolins, that group on our eastern border reached out yesterday. Pandā, your sister's summon? He said to remind you that, quote, Kei's commitment ceremony is coming up soon and Hazō better not forget or I'll thwap him, oh, but he shouldn't tell her that I told him because otherwise he won't get the credit for remembering and I've got his back. Unquote." He snorted. "He sounded like a charming young man."

Hazō laughed. "He really is. The first time we met him was hilarious. See, he fancied that he understood something about human sexual mores and familial bonding, so he said..."
This is a really good line, BirdLord. It's quite clear how Hazō could misunderstand it. I would misunderstand it if I heard it. It's perfectly reasonable to asume tha----

Hey wait a minute.

You're giving Hazō too much justification here. It's entirely reasonable (for a human) to assume that Cannai would be fine sending someone who was willing to go. Thus, Cannai is going to make a really big deal out of a cultural misunderstanding.
Hazō laughed. "He really is. The first time we met him was hilarious. See, he fancied that he understood something about human sexual mores and familial bonding, so he said..."
That was an absolutely hilarious scene. I really emphasized with Akane, finding it funny and watching everyone else get offended.
"Hang on," Mari said, a note of insufficiently-hidden alarm in her voice. "It sounds like you're saying that Cannai didn't want to send anyone to Pangolin but you're trying to send someone to Pangolin. Are you?"

Hazō shook his head. "Not without his permission, no. He said that he wouldn't order anyone to go but he didn't say that he would stop someone from going if they wanted to. I figured I'd ask around, see if anyone was interested. If not, no harm done. If so then everyone wins—the dog or dogs in question get an exciting adventure and Dog gets a representative at the Conclave."

The noise level in the room plummeted as Mari, Akane, and Noburi all stopped eating to stare at Hazō. Kagome-sensei stopped eating so that he could grab an explosive and look around wide-eyed to figure out what had everyone else so alarmed. Yuno simply looked confused.
CANNAI: "Why exactly did your family have such an extreme reaction to your comment?"
HAZŌ: "Oh, right! That's because I was once almost executed for conducting international diplomacy with terrorists behind my Alpha's back."
CANNAI: "wat"
"Your relatives sound quite perceptive," Cannai said calmly, once Hazō had finished retelling the key points of the conversation. "I am surprised that you waited so long to talk to them."

"What?"

"You have been 'asking around', as you put it, for several weeks now. Yes?"
Wow did Hazō really say this whole thing line-by-line? Damn. That would be hilarious.

Also, yeah, Cannai knew.
"I told you no, Hazō. I was very clear about not sending a dog to Pangolin territory. Why you would hear those words, obviously understand them, and then sneak around behind my back to defy me on something that so clearly had not a hope...I couldn't understand what you thought to gain.

"Now I see that it was stupidity, not malice." He paused, then shook his massive head. "Perhaps 'stupid' is unfair. You are intelligent, so this was not due to stupidity. This was simply you being oblivious, pathologically unaware, and arrogant."
To be fair, you'd have to be stupid to be malicious to Cannai considering the power disparity between them and how good of a relationship they had.
A trace of heat was creeping into the Alpha Dog's words. "I am the Alpha here, Hazō. I am responsible for the safety and well-being of every dog in existence. I decide if and when and where and how we fight, what treaties we make, and how our herds are managed and our lands preserved. You are an outsider with almost no knowledge of our culture, barely more than a child yourself. I rule over a Clan of hundreds of thousands and have done so for centuries. You, according to your own words, are lurching along on the edge of disaster as you learn how to manage a paltry few hundred. The idea that you—"
Uh........
I am responsible for the safety and well-being of every dog in existence.
Every dog? Including those on different Paths? Does he know anything about the origins of the Inuzuka? I want to ask him about this but I also want to never bring this up again.
barely more than a child yourself.
Hey! Our average age is, like, 25!
I rule over a Clan of hundreds of thousands and have done so for centuries.
holy shit
You, according to your own words, are lurching along on the edge of disaster as you learn how to manage a paltry few hundred. The idea that you—"
Ouch. You know that this wasn't intentional. We weren't trying to circumvent your authority and we certainly weren't thinking we knew better than you. No need to bring up our failure into this; we weren't ready to take over after our dad suddenly died.
Cannai's voice had been rising as he spoke, the heat shimmer in the air getting more and more intense. He broke off in midsentence and took a breath; the air went back to normal and the grass stopped rustling. When he resumed, his voice was calm again.
Bosses are scary.
"I am glad to see that this was an issue of misunderstanding on your part, and not an explicit defiance of my authority. Violating pack hierarchy the way you appeared to be doing is not acceptable. I have held my paw this long simply because your actions seemed utterly bizarre and I wanted to find out what you were thinking.
Oh thank god. Plus one for being so stupid that our boss is confused enough by why on earth we would do this that they don't immideately kill us. I wonder if we will eventually get a scene long in the future where we summon Cannai to the Human Path. I can seem Cannai and Asuma chatting about this very thing and how close they were to killing us because we didn't realize that we were commiting treason.

@eaglejarl how much fun would this scene be to write?

You are an outsider with almost no knowledge of our culture,
Can we take lessons from one of the hundreds of thousands of dogs? There's got to be at least one cultural attache or lorekeeper or puppy-wrangler that has experince teaching cultural norms. I'd like it if Hazōpilot, at the very least, knew some of the cultural taboos that might come up. (Though I would also love it if the thread gets to see the full deal, I recognize it's going to be a lot of work to write and come up with all this stuff. If it's a Hazopilot thing, however, you can just get an advanced warning if we're running into something problematic.)
"However," Cannai said, causing Hazō's breath to catch again, "the fact that this happened demonstrates that you have an arrogance and essential disrespect that I am not willing to accept from a Summoner. Perhaps a bit of running through the dusty hills of Hyena will help sand off some of those rough edges. I recognize that you have obligations on the Human Path, so I will not insist that it be continuous...five hours per day should be enough. I will assign you to one of the punishment squads."
It's a real shame we don't get any better at running from IC activites. Cannai was driving us hard even before making this be literal punishment. I was genuinely wondering if there was a way to have this be reflected narratively (or perhaps even mechanically) once Hazō had been doing it for long enough.
At the end of every session Hazō is exhausted, shaking, vaguely nauseous, and so sore he can barely hobble even with his cane.
"Hazō's physical consequences shall now take another week to heal."
You're going to need to do some time management because you don't have time to train Harumitsu, train Kagome-sensei, manage the clan, do 5 hours of exhausting exercise each day, run the clan, take care of normal food/hygiene/biology, and also sleep. Figure out which of those things you want to give up on.
I think we should talk to Asuma about letting Noburi help us with teach Kagome when he isn't on mission. I doubt Asuma will care.
 
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I don't want Hazou to blunder away a chance at actually saving Mari.
I would like to reframe much of the discussion around this from 'saving Mari' to 'saving Ami'. If we fail to deescalate this situation, and thus truly believe that Ami will actually try to destroy Mari, I'm voting to save Mari and destroy Ami first. Assuming that Asuma doesn't destroy Ami first.

peace-bringing Path-spanning polycule.
That needs to be the MfD general solution to problems. From interpersonal to geopolitical: make a polycule, call it a day and go home.

While I do acknowledge that this is something we can and should bring up to Mari, I do not agree that it would be a useful topic to bring up to Ami; she's already acknowledged that she spares zero fucks when it comes to Kei's safety, even at the cost of her agency.
I agree that bringing it up to Ami is pointless, but brining it up to Kei might be useful.

Justice: In Ami's world, disproportionate retribution for endangering Kei is just.
  • No way to counter that, there's only convincing Ami to let this "injustice" pass for other reasons.
A possible solution is to note that Ami is being just like all of the other super powered nut jobs that put their egos and personal irrationalities above being reasonable, making everyone else deal with their nonsense or be destroyed. Is that really what Ami wants to be, just another egotistical nut job that hurts people because they can?

Mari faced down an S-Class threat for Kei
  • On the spot, with no time to prepare
  • Has Ami done the same in the time she's been here? He should be the target of her ire.
  • Until she's done this, she can't even be put on Mari's level as far as 'caring about Kei'.
  • She has a lot of words and threats, but not nearly as many actions as Mari
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I think Ami would not accept the argument that she can't be put on Mari's level for caring about Kei. She would likely not-accept-it with grace and understanding, keeping a level head and moving the discourse in a positive direction.

Needs a space, as word count matters.

  • It will split Kei's family up to detrimental levels
  • Doing this on Kei's behalf trivializes her as a person and a ninja, removing her agency and indicating that Ami doesn't value her much
I think Ami finds the first to be entirely acceptable, and Ami has already stated that she doesn't find the second to be true (or she's just telling herself and us that it isn't true).

Hazou is against the contract, and would talking Ami out of 'destroying' Mari.
This sentence is missing a .

Punishing Mari for placing Kei's wellbeing high but not paramount disincentivises others from getting involved with Kei, even if the effect would be net helpful. This is also terrible for Kei's agency.
Possibly add that it incentivises her current allise to abandon her.

[x] (GS) Tell Asuma, then tell the Leaf sealmasters\
 
He does? If you're referencing the passage I'm thinking of, Enma said that weird things had been happening and that it was plausible for there to be a Great Seal. The Condors then sent a scout out to Arachnid territory and saw it.
Yeah that's what I meant, even if he hasn't gone to check it out in person yet like he said he would (C'mon man, it's been months since the condor scout verrified it), he still can confirm that it's been verified by a subordinate of another boss in addition to being verified by the subordinate of his summoner. All in all, it's enough evidence that he's willing to personally go and check it out.
As @Velorien said, we are definitely not reading the same quest. "Better forgiveness than permission" is essentially Hazō's family motto...at every opportunity he has bulled ahead with what he wanted to do and not given a damn about any tradition, cultural norm, or authority figure that didn't have a big enough stick to be unignorable. Cannai might be an exception but it's still early days there.
I strongly disagree
he isn't even thinking about getting forgiveness

[X] (GS) Tell Asuma, then tell the Leaf sealmasters\
I don't really know if there's any meaningful distinction between the two? I'm 100% full-disclosure policy on the Dragonwar because even if we're its focal point in Leaf everyone is equally invested in the outcome whether they like it or not. I am supporting both of the above options under the expectation that neither of them deviate from this policy - that is, I believe that 'Yes, tell the Leaf sealmasters about the cracks in the Great Seal' also involves us telling Asuma, just not explicitly before telling the sealmasters.

If I am wrong and either of these options will attempt to conceal relevant Dragonwar information from anyone, let me know so I can change my vote.
I think it might be smart to tell Asuma first, if for no other reason than so that he doesn't hear about the terrifying development from anyone else. We also want him there when we break it to the Sealmasters, so we should really tell him in advance. (Also this gives him the option of classifying it, which I doubt he'll do but I think he'll appreciate)

They're pretty similar, but I think telling Asuma first is better because it adds more weight to what's going on.
 
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