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@Noumero, thoughts?

I'd tag voters but when I did that last time apparently someone reported it to SV mods so I'm not doing that again until such time as I've sent everyone a message getting their permission to do stuff like that in advance. (I think this is deeply stupid.)
[X] Action Plan: Exam Day (with some more details)
  • Take the sealing exam.
    • Prepare with Kagome beforehand. (Acquire tags.)
    • Ask a friendly Leaf sealmaster (Aburame? Sarutobi?) if there are any Leaf sealing exam traditions we should observe.
      • Formal dress? Arriving particularly early? Drinking the examiner under the table afterwards?
      • Tone: making sure we don't accidentally offend or overlook something we wouldn't know about.
      • Ask a specjonin if we can't find a suitable sealmaster. Not fishing for exam tips.
    • Crush the exam, but avoid appearing arrogant.
      • Be polite and respectful of the examiner.
      • Once there's no chance it'd be perceived as a bribe or otherwise inappropriate, offer a small (Mari-approved) token of appreciation for their time.
    • If possible, network a bit after the exam is done.
      • Again, stay polite and respectful. Don't pursue this if they don't appear interested, and avoid coming off like you're trying to sway their opinion/report.
      • Was an open problem discussed? Get their thoughts.
      • Were any questions particularly interesting? Go over those. If they came up with the questions, even better.
      • Ask about their research/specialties.
      • Get their one-on-one perspective on the Great Seal.
A significant change is that I've gone from 'aim to impress' to 'crush the exam'. While also avoiding appearing arrogant.
 
@Paperclipped
In the rules doc, Hazō cannot move up the time ladder on calligraphy checks. Is this a hard restriction or a Kagome rule that arrogant Sealmasters like Jiraiya sometimes disregard?

Could we draw a basic seal in four minutes instead of five for some amount of increase in the TN? Even if it would literally double the Calligraphy TN, it'd be worth in a few particular circumstances.
 
I get that the thread has moved on, but it was recommended I repost them from the Discord to here.
tl;dr
Red dot is TA's campsite.
Blue blob is the infil/exfil location.
Blue circle is how far a potential Leaf spy could possibly travel if they found about Team Akane's mission the instant it was issued.
Red circle is how far 8 hours (1 day of travel) of full speed ninja running can go from TA's campsite.

Longer version.
The attackers did not stop to rest inside of Fire's borders. This means that they ran, fought, and ran some more.
Team Akane had made camp and eaten dinner, but not breakfast. This means that they died sometime in between dusk and dawn.
As the attackers did not make camp before or after killing TA, this means they traveled at least 35 miles in the dark. This is usually at half speed, which would mean they traveled upwards of 12 hours in that day.
Furthermore, if they traveled for 12 hours on that day, it means that they most likely did not travel before setting off into Fire. This means they were camped on the border of Iron/Waterfall/Rice the night of the fifth, before they could have received word and traveled there. Either a premeditated assassination/capture targeting Akane specifically, or opportunistic and Akane was unlucky. As Kei said, it's a mighty high risk to just be out there attacking AMITY members, though. Opportunistic murder seems very unlikely.
"I smell woodsmoke along with more of that slightly spoiled fish," Canvass said. "I think the team had made camp." She snuffled around the eastern side of the clearing, moving deeper into the woods for a minute as the humans trailed along. "Yep. Two of the outlanders waited here, the third one went forward and spied on the clearing, then he came back and joined up with the other two and all three of them went forward again, this time into the clearing."
The attackers didn't assault TA with skywalkers, Canvass could smell the path they took on the ground into the clearing. Goes back to the question of "how did they get around the defense?". Answer is probably "Jonin".

Asuma sighed and rubbed his forehead.

"Foreign agents in Fire, perhaps at random but probably informed, found Akane's trail, followed her, engaged her, probably killed her, and fled Fire. They tried to cover up and make sure no one could track them, but they couldn't account for your summons' capabilities. Now we know where they went."
Asuma also suspects that there was a Tower leak. We're not reaching unreasonable conclusions, no matter what others might say. We could be wrong, but it's not unrealistic either way.

Not unless you want to run the risk of running into a chakra beast or border patrol while chakra exhausted and unable to fight. Still, ninja have been known to make longer, harder runs in times of great need.
Running for 12 hours after having fought Akane's team, in the middle of the night in unfamiliar territory is bizarre. The risk is high.
 
A week is barely a timeskip. It is one research cycle with prep. Want to do longer timeskips but feels uncomfortable when writing nonlinear time. Hard enough writing meaningful results from nonlinear plans without threading needle to stay meaningful when ignored for 50 days. Behhhh, words not coming out.
Keep in mind, our current seal project (the Minato chain) is optimally done with SSA but without prep right now. So a week-long plan could fit three research rolls and leave us at the start of our two-day cooldown before the next roll. At the rate I understand we're going at, three research rolls finishes up approximately one Minato seal.
 
Asuma also suspects that there was a Tower leak. We're not reaching unreasonable conclusions, no matter what others might say. We could be wrong, but it's not unrealistic either way.
I haven't necessarily moved on - I don't think a lot of others have, either.

The attackers had foreknowledge but that doesn't mean a Tower leak.

What are the various factors that would need to have been in place for the information to have gone from Leaf post-assignment (e.g., no leak, just normal spying) to the attackers in time for them to have attacked Akane and then fled?
 
We should just go and kick the shit out of every ninja organization that might have killed Akane till we find out who did it. Then we can use some lead pipe legilimency to find out what the leak was!
 
What are the various factors that would need to have been in place for the information to have gone from Leaf post-assignment (e.g., no leak, just normal spying) to the attackers in time for them to have attacked Akane and then fled?
The jonin+chunin hunter/tracker team was already moving to or already at the Rice/Waterfall/Iron border before news of Akane's mission could get to them.

I see a few possibilities, but I could be missing something.
1. The attackers knew that Akane would be assigned that mission ahead of time and moved accordingly (Tower leak).
2. There was a long term mission intended to capture Akane/a SC user/a Goketsu (Tower leak or ninja spy. Unlikely as jonin are at a premium in the world these days and barring Hag interference, Akane wouldn't have gone on a mission for another month. Huge waste of jonin manhours).
3. The stars aligned for the attackers, and they happened to have a spy that saw Akane, and they just so happened to be camped in the perfect area to reach TA and escape.

I don't think 2 would be a smart decision without outside knowledge of Akane leaving. 3 is just... incredibly unlikely, though not impossible.
 
Rats:
  • Approach most influential Rat trade reps with advisor-suggested tributes.

this is from the Conclave Crimson Sunrise Plan.

My question is, are we sure this wouldn't be a faux pas because of Summon Path/Rat peculiarities? I think our best bet would be to talk to the rat we locked eyes with if they are of middling importance, let them sanity check/vet us, and then ask them for an intro with their boss.
 
1. The attackers knew that Akane would be assigned that mission ahead of time and moved accordingly (Tower leak).
I'm quoting this so I can refer to scenario 1.
2. There was a long term mission intended to capture Akane/a SC user/a Goketsu (Tower leak or ninja spy. Unlikely as jonin are at a premium in the world these days and barring Hag interference, Akane wouldn't have gone on a mission for another month. Huge waste of jonin manhours).
Let's say you're Rock. You didn't get Collapsed and while you suffered losses in the most recent war, your intelligence apparatus wasn't gutted by a disaster so you didn't over-extend yourself and take worse-than-expected losses.

You have intelligence assets in the village of your worst enemy: your spymaster didn't suddenly die so your intelligence network is pretty intact and you haven't gone through three Kage in as many years so you have most of your institutional knowledge.

Keeping a rotating squad of 3-4 chuunin stationed on the border of your worst enemy so you can take advantage of sudden opportunities doesn't seem too dumb to me.
3. The stars aligned for the attackers, and they happened to have a spy that saw Akane, and they just so happened to be camped in the perfect area to reach TA and escape.
I agree this is improbable.

The question here is - do we have any rebuttal to Kei/Mari which pushes us towards scenario 1 over scenario 2?

If we do, then I'd like to make it. I think that the travelling at night end of things might change the equations, and the bit about how they must have run, fought, and run back is definitely weird, but I don't know how to package that up nicely in a compelling way that lets us suggest it as a serious possibility.

I write successful plans on a not-irregular basis: if you can sketch something out I can fill it in and try to get it done, but right now, I'm not seeing it. I'd eagerly waiting hearing back from Hidan, if we hear back from him.
 
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Keeping a rotating squad of 3-4 chuunin stationed on the border of your worst enemy so you can take advantage of sudden opportunities doesn't seem too dumb to me.
I don't think it was chunin. Or rather, just chunin. The attackers killed TA without seemingly taking any wounds. I suppose it's possible that some of the scorched flesh that Canvass smelled was one of the attackers, but Canvass didn't mention that the scent was present when tracking the attacker's exfil.

The attackers came upon the camp at night. One of them, likely the jonin, snuck forward, scouted, and likely deactivated the perimeter seals so that the chunin backup could make it into the clearing safely. They attacked. Perhaps one of their fire jutsu killed Akane, or perhaps Akane's recently improved Alertness let her go early and activate Flame Aura. The backlash of that plus what was likely the jonin's attack killed her. The chunin cleaned up the genin with little difficulty.

It could have lasted longer than that. Perhaps Akane got some attacks off but wasn't successful. The results are the same. Attackers uninjured, TA deceased.

The question here is - do we have any rebuttal to Kei/Mari which pushes us towards scenario 1 over scenario 2?
If it is scenario 2, then the timeline gets even tighter. The travel distances are drawn with the assumption that the spy finds out about the mission immediately. It's still possible, sure, but odds are it takes longer for the spy to find out about the mission.

Either way, scenario 1 or 2, Leaf is infiltrated by enemy ninja or is housing traitors (the non-dragon kind).
 
[X] Action Plan: Let's Run Those Numbers Again

Word Count: 398 words
  • Continue conversation
    • Mindset: Examine the evidence soberly. Avoid furiously rationalizing why there must be a conspiracy; but don't dismiss the idea at the slightest pushback if there are still inconsistencies you don't understand.
      • If there is a conspiracy, Mari/Kei/Snowflake may be trying to get you off the track, because they expect you to react badly to the truth.
      • Don't live down to these expectations. Remain collected.
    • So the enemy had up to 37.5 hours to get a team ready at Fire's northern border, but who could have pulled this off?
    • What about Waterfall, or one of the clans in Iron or Rice? Would they have the spy network, motivation to capture/kill Akane, willingness to risk war?
    • What are plausible motivations for this attack? Akane had Gōketsu seals and Shadow Clone. Rock wants revenge. What else?
    • Would Rock, or another major village, have a team of this caliber loitering in Waterfall/Iron/Rice, to strike targets of opportunity?
      • They were most likely judged capable enough to capture/kill Akane with low risk of getting caught. A couple of chūnin could kill her, but how certain is that if you're assigning the mission?
      • Someone with the rank to authorize this mission on short notice must be on the team or near enough to them to send them orders after the message is received.
    • What if Rock had a team stationed on Earth's eastern border? How long would it take a messenger to reach them from Leaf, then for them to travel to Fire's northern border with Waterfall/Iron/Rice, then to rest long enough to be ready for the mission?
      • As far as Canvass could tell, they didn't make camp within Fire, and if they weren't insane they wouldn't plan on covering that much distance and getting in a fight without being sufficiently rested beforehand. Their journey to Fire's border would also be tiring.
    • Based on what we know about the attack, and what plausible scenarios could explain that evidence, are our enemies more capable than we expected, before the attack? More capable than you think Asuma/Shikamaru/Tower expected?
      • Tone: Not making accusations, trying to figure out if we were mistaken.
  • Take the sealing exam
    • Prepare with Kagome (acquire tags)
    • Crush the exam, but be polite and respectful.
    • Offer a small (Mari-approved) token of appreciation for the examiner's time once they've submitted their observations.
 
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I get that the thread has moved on, but it was recommended I repost them from the Discord to here.
tl;dr
Red dot is TA's campsite.
Blue blob is the infil/exfil location.
Blue circle is how far a potential Leaf spy could possibly travel if they found about Team Akane's mission the instant it was issued.
Red circle is how far 8 hours (1 day of travel) of full speed ninja running can go from TA's campsite.

Longer version.
The attackers did not stop to rest inside of Fire's borders. This means that they ran, fought, and ran some more.
Team Akane had made camp and eaten dinner, but not breakfast. This means that they died sometime in between dusk and dawn.
As the attackers did not make camp before or after killing TA, this means they traveled at least 35 miles in the dark. This is usually at half speed, which would mean they traveled upwards of 12 hours in that day.
Furthermore, if they traveled for 12 hours on that day, it means that they most likely did not travel before setting off into Fire. This means they were camped on the border of Iron/Waterfall/Rice the night of the fifth, before they could have received word and traveled there. Either a premeditated assassination/capture targeting Akane specifically, or opportunistic and Akane was unlucky. As Kei said, it's a mighty high risk to just be out there attacking AMITY members, though. Opportunistic murder seems very unlikely.

The attackers didn't assault TA with skywalkers, Canvass could smell the path they took on the ground into the clearing. Goes back to the question of "how did they get around the defense?". Answer is probably "Jonin".


Asuma also suspects that there was a Tower leak. We're not reaching unreasonable conclusions, no matter what others might say. We could be wrong, but it's not unrealistic either way.


Running for 12 hours after having fought Akane's team, in the middle of the night in unfamiliar territory is bizarre. The risk is high.

QMs: Who killed Akane? I guess we'll never know...
VIHH: Um, excuse me, but math.
QM: I guess we'll never kn--
VIHH: Math and Spreadsheets.
 
Guys, our sanity checkers are trying to convince us nothing is going on because we're Kagome tier at secrets rn. The most likely person for us to accuse here is Shikamaru, or any of the Five allies that Shikamaru may have told, if we want to accuse him of that treason instead, and we just tried to reveal clan secrets to him.
 
I continue to think Asuma or Shikamaru having Akane killed is pretty unlikely, and mostly want Kei to explain to us what could or could not have happened so I'm less confused about it.
 
Why use your skills for evil?
Why have skills if not for evil?
Fun thing: prior to Mari, the Ministry of Doctrine was mentioned on the Seventh Path. Unclear if Hazou or Mari ever heard the term before.
This must be time travel!
Thank you as always for the reaction post, +1 XP to a PC of your choice.
Oh, thank you! Hazō deserved it I think
 
Guys, our sanity checkers are trying to convince us nothing is going on because we're Kagome tier at secrets rn. The most likely person for us to accuse here is Shikamaru, or any of the Five allies that Shikamaru may have told, if we want to accuse him of that treason instead, and we just tried to reveal clan secrets to him.
I mean yes. Doesn't mean we should act like Hazou is completely oblivious to it potentially happening around him, that just reinforces that as an acceptable behavior, has us look naive and makes sure that if our entire advice council is gaslighting us, it will continue to do so in the future.

Ideally, I think we just tell them we're not in the sanest of minds lately, point to the Shikamaru opsec incident specifically to make sure people understand we understand, and then continue on to say that in our present state of mind we would rather not focus on this, especially with all the world-ending problems afoot, and that we trust them to act in our best interests even if it potentially meant them keeping us in the dark, but want to make sure that someone is on the task of investigating the situation and trying to work out what happened and if it is actionable to do anything about it, such as Kei or Mari.
 
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[X] Action Plan: Moving On But Not Really
Word Count : <200
  • Briefly continue conversation
    • Take a deep breath.
    • We trust everyone here to act in our best interests even if that potentially means keeping us in the dark.
      • We know our sanity and emotional stability remain compromised, as seen with our blatant OPSEC leak with Shikamaru.
      • Given our state of mind, this analysis won't help and we will try and focus our time and energy on practical efforts. If Akane is dead, Project Necromancy could bring her back, where even the most meticulous analysis would not.
      • We still need to make sure that what happened is investigated in extreme detail and know if its actionable for all of us to do anything about it. Kei? Mari? Could you please continue to look into it, even if you end up feeling like you hit a dead end?
    • Thank everyone for their time and being there for us, it has been a rough couple of... years, really.

  • Take the Sealing Exam
    • Prepare with Kagome (acquire Tags)
    • Aim to impress
    • Be kind to our examiner whoever they might be and make sure we know we appreciate them giving us their time of day.
 
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I would like to note that there is someone with particular capacity to track Akane (and therefore capacity to catch her, specifically, out), with reason to kill her, that is not a member of the Big 5 and therefore not bound by AMITY, and who Hazou in particular would be aware of the existence of.

I forget their name, but the member of the Kotsuzui clan that was chasing us post-Hot Springs got some of Akane's blood.
 
[X] Action Plan: Moving On But Not Really

Ive been struggling to figure out how to even deal with this if it is gaslighting, but done from a place of kindness, which I think is our most likely scenario. This seems like a good way to do so.
 
@Paperclipped, did Kagome give up researching this seal from Jiraiya's notes?
Kagome finished the Tower-standard anti-Byakugan seal around the end of quest year 1069, and has been producing a small tithe of them accordingly. Sadly, Kagome cannot produce enough to keep the entire compound covered 24/7, but his bedroom, as always, is impeccably secure.

Also, do we have a list of what the currently unstudied Jiraiya seals (let's say at jōnin-level and up) are, or are we completely unable to tell what a seal does until we finish researching it?
Jiraiya's notes generally include information about what the seal does. Details TBD.

Just had a thought @eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped we can do a single day of prep to get the difficulty of a seal, genin/chunin/jounin/Jiraiya. But if another sealmaster has already researched the seal, can we just ask them what the difficulty is? I'm thinking Kagome is a couple seals ahead on the Minoto chain and he could tell us how hard the ones he's done already were.
Kagome tells you that the Fourth's seals so far are all tough but managable. He recommends that you use full prep days.

[regarding reading XP-lootboxes] I hope so... @eaglejarl , @Velorien , @Paperclipped ?
If you put Noburi on it full-time (i.e. told him to stop working at the hospital), he could read two sets of notes and also benefit from his ACE training.

In the rules doc, Hazō cannot move up the time ladder on calligraphy checks. Is this a hard restriction or a Kagome rule that arrogant Sealmasters like Jiraiya sometimes disregard?

Could we draw a basic seal in four minutes instead of five for some amount of increase in the TN? Even if it would literally double the Calligraphy TN, it'd be worth in a few particular circumstances.
5 minutes on the time ladder is a broad bin, rather than a hard and fast stopwatch time. It has never once been relevant in the span of the quest whether Hazou's seal scribing took 4 minutes or 7.

As the complexity of sealing elements makes it functionally impossible to draw a seal in 1 minute, the answer is that this is a hard restriction at the levels that we care about. IN optimization and TN changes will not get Hazou to a qualitatively faster level of seal-scribing.

"It does, doesn't it? Anyway, that was a great lead-in to asking him about this idea I had for research missions, where the Tower pays a sealmaster or jutsu creator to create a specific thing." He grimaced. "Turns out, that's pretty much how it works now. Sure, people can also hire it privately but the Tower does it using the standard mission framework."
@eaglejarl has this policy changed since we asked Jiraiya about this?
"Anyway, that was just my first thought. Other things that might be good would be using MEW to make stone buildings or walls, selling seals—storage scrolls and explosives are useful for lots of things, and I have some ideas about making civilian-usable versions. We could take commissions to research seals that people want, or—"

"Let me stop you right there," Jiraiya said. "Those are all great ideas and would make us a fortune if we could do them. They would also be a lot easier and safer than taking ninja missions. So, ask yourself: Why hasn't some other ninja with the same or equivalent jutsu done those things already? For that matter, why are there ninja and ninja missions at all? Why isn't everyone who knows how to use chakra sitting at home in the lap of luxury?"
Jiraiya's answer was beating back the flood of Hazou-signature ideas, not specifically saying that every single one of them didn't yet exist. Selling explosives and storage seals, for instance, has already been established as a feature of the setting, yet Jiraiya did not explicitly stop and point out that Hazou's idea here had already been done.

@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped, does ARS (and MARS) work on chakra adhesion activated seals?
Yes.

Did Asuma ever get back to us on the topic of recruiting Akatsuki to help with the dragons?
He had his people talk to Kisame about it at the Chuunin Exams. If results came from it, he hasn't told you yet with of the fallout from Team Akane's mission.

Gaku's reaction was explained after the chapter, we were given reason to believe this will not pan out. Essentially, there's apparently not a good way to source the food or something like that.
There's not really anywhere in the setting that's particularly cosmopolitan. Leaf doesn't have Rock-style or Waterfall-style restaurants set up within its borders.
 
They don't seem to have been very surprised by our report (of Canvass' findings), or to have reacted the way one does upon learning your enemies are much more capable than you thought.

I am not sure why you think that, Asuma talked about possible spies inside Leaf and also about being suprised at the audacity of the attack, not their possible capabilities (He probably assumed that other countries could, but wouldn't do it):

"Yes," Asuma said, "and a particularly brazen one. Shikamaru can confirm that enemy nations are still running their most important and lowest risk espionage and scouting operations inside our borders, and that we suspect that sometimes patrols disappear because they run into enemy ninja by accident. AMITY can't convince a spotted infiltrator jōnin to let a genin team leave with their lives. Still, an attack this brazen is as yet unprecedented, I think. If you're going to be searching the area near the fight, I need you to find incontrovertible evidence of who did it. Informally, I strongly suspect Rock. Formally, I can't make an accusation without solid proof."

"What am I looking for, sir?" Hazō asked.

"More signs of ninjutsu use. The more techniques we can identify, the greater the odds of positively tying it to someone specific. Any discarded seals or personal effects, especially ones whose sources we could track. Any more information about their operating procedures. We don't exactly have Rock's field manuals, but enough small pieces of evidence can build up into a convincing case."

Asuma stamped a second scroll, then handed them over to Hazō, one at a time. "Orders for Inuzuka Yamato," he said, "and a retroactive mission approval for Kagome. Ruri said he sprinted right out of Leaf as soon as he heard the news. I'm not going to fault him, given the circumstances, but you need to check in with him in Arachnid and get him under control. Loop him into the search for evidence too. He's sharp enough that he could find something others would miss."

He was actually suprised at Hazou that he didn't try to find a new trail with Canvass:
"You're not going to find where the attacker's trail sets down with your summon, possibly the best tracker in all the Paths?" Asuma asked again.

"No, sir," Hazō said as the despair steadily sank deeper into his gut.

Asuma considered Hazō for several seconds. Eventually, Asuma nodded.


In general for the jonin debate:

Leaf had ~20 jonin+special jonin after the Nagi Battle and the Collapse. Meanwhile Rock and Cloud suffered minor losses, and the smaller Nations even less. It's also a bunch of months (Chapter 501 was March 11 and now it's January 26) since the war "ended", time enough to train up some specialists.

And Leaf has currently 2 S-rank ninja and 1 jonin (Kabuto) tied up in medical research/work, 2 Summoner as sealmaster, 1 Summoner as chakra distributer and one Infiltration/Genjutsu jonin as mommycaretaker Spymistress for Hazou.

It's actually quite the worthwhile investment to have 1 jonin + 2 chunnin to wait a while for a signal and then ambush and hopefully capture a high priority target with knowledge of Goketsu seals, rare ninjutsu and possible insight into a large number of summoning scrolls.

Still voting for the plan,
[X] Action Plan: Let's Run Those Numbers Again
 
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