- Location
- United States
Just bring most of the clan (including Hazo and Kagome to do PS research while everyone else is out scroll hunting) and then come back to leaf when done. Then, go on another mission.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or, alternatively, we simply don't bring 15 people on a covert mission
- Location
- United States
Whoops. Meant to say "inner circle" there!
- Location
- USA
It would not be too metagamey for Hazou to try to replicate Elemental Mastery with a rune.
- Location
- USA
Voting is open.
Per Orochimaru's condition in your deal with him, the hours of conversation-time you wanted from him must be used productively:
As Hazou has now learned Bones of Creation (and presumably Geode Coffin) from Orochimaru, please vote in the plan covering what topics you'd like to have spoken with him about while learning these techniques. Voting ends at the usual deadline: .
Per Orochimaru's condition in your deal with him, the hours of conversation-time you wanted from him must be used productively:
As Hazou has now learned Bones of Creation (and presumably Geode Coffin) from Orochimaru, please vote in the plan covering what topics you'd like to have spoken with him about while learning these techniques. Voting ends at the usual deadline: .
- Location
- United States
"How would you spend the next twenty minutes of conversation if you were me?"
Follow his advice from there.
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
So, hear me out. Necromancy.
Orochimaru has definitely heard by now of the rift, of our account of the other side, of the Akatsuki's own plans, and how he's been ordered-not-ordered to close the rift before they can retrieve Pain. He knows more than enough to hold a proper conversation with him about it without breaching OPSEC.
Our interests and his mostly align here. We both want to stop Akatsuki and we both want Jiraiya back if at all possible. Orochimaru's internal preference ordering likely shares the same broad structure as ours, "I control the rift > I close the rift > I do nothing" with the main caveat being the difference between "Hazou controls the rift" and "Orochimaru controls the rift". I'll come back to that in a second.
It would be unwise of us, I think, to share with him that we intend to go missing and steal the rift for ourselves. We don't want him to decide we will henceforth be his agent in enacting his own necromancy. But it's also true that Orochimaru is an ideal contact to have when we do go missing. He's strong enough to keep the Akatsuki from poking into his business, we can tracelessly contact him on the Seventh Path from anywhere in the world, he's an S-Rank sealmaster in a sealing race, and our interests broadly align here. Once we are already missing, Orochimaru cannot boss us around but he can cooperate with us to mutually beneficial ends.
So, if we're not sharing our plans right now but we want to build up to that end-state of cooperating with Orochimaru while we're missing, what do we do here? The main thing I want to do is sound out his perspective on things. Does he think the rift really leads to the afterlife? Is he really interested in resurrecting Jiraiya? Does he think Pain coming back is a credible threat? What would he do, in general, if he could obtain sole access to the rift? We have a pretty fair justification to be asking these questions, too. With us being forbidden from necromancy research, Orochimaru becomes our only hope for stopping Akatsuki, it's only natural that we'd be anxious to know his plans on the matter.
As for why it's beneficial to us, this is a high-stakes gambit we're planning and we need our information to be as accurate as possible. If Orochimaru isn't taking the rift seriously then that's very important to know before we bet on him being willing to cooperate with us about it. More broadly, our overall objective here is to create a scenario where Orochimaru is content helping us steal the rift, knowing that he won't have sole control of it. I estimated his preference ordering above but we need more detail, more information, if we're to align his incentives in the right way. Once we're missing we want to be able to contact Orochimaru on 7Path with a deal that goes "I will give you 90% of what you want in exchange for your help getting me 100% of what I want" and we can only do that safely once we know what that 90% of what he wants is.
This will be an important conversation in more ways than one. Not only does it scout out vital information for our necromancy plans, but raising the topic to Orochimaru also gives him opportunity to inject his own perspective on the matter. I don't think it's likely that Orochimaru would tank the brunt of Akatsuki's wrath to keep us safe so we can research without going missing, but it's not out of the question that the Snake Sannin, with his extensive knowledge and even more extensive skillset, has some advice or offer that opens up routes that seemed previously unviable. I think it's at the very least worth the low cost of dedicating some of our discussion time to the matter.
(Again, to be clear, we do not share any of our plans to go missing in this conversation. We leave off at the part where Itachi told us not to do any more necromancy research and Naruto told us to obey that order. We don't want Orochimaru deciding our plans aren't to his liking and that he'd really rather if we enacted this other plan that gives us 50% of what we want and him 100% of what he wants. We keep that card in our back pocket and focus on how our own research has been forced to an unceremonious halt, framing ourselves as a non-issue while Orochimaru remains the only person capable of making a difference, the type of story he's most likely to believe due to his massive ego).
Orochimaru has definitely heard by now of the rift, of our account of the other side, of the Akatsuki's own plans, and how he's been ordered-not-ordered to close the rift before they can retrieve Pain. He knows more than enough to hold a proper conversation with him about it without breaching OPSEC.
Our interests and his mostly align here. We both want to stop Akatsuki and we both want Jiraiya back if at all possible. Orochimaru's internal preference ordering likely shares the same broad structure as ours, "I control the rift > I close the rift > I do nothing" with the main caveat being the difference between "Hazou controls the rift" and "Orochimaru controls the rift". I'll come back to that in a second.
It would be unwise of us, I think, to share with him that we intend to go missing and steal the rift for ourselves. We don't want him to decide we will henceforth be his agent in enacting his own necromancy. But it's also true that Orochimaru is an ideal contact to have when we do go missing. He's strong enough to keep the Akatsuki from poking into his business, we can tracelessly contact him on the Seventh Path from anywhere in the world, he's an S-Rank sealmaster in a sealing race, and our interests broadly align here. Once we are already missing, Orochimaru cannot boss us around but he can cooperate with us to mutually beneficial ends.
So, if we're not sharing our plans right now but we want to build up to that end-state of cooperating with Orochimaru while we're missing, what do we do here? The main thing I want to do is sound out his perspective on things. Does he think the rift really leads to the afterlife? Is he really interested in resurrecting Jiraiya? Does he think Pain coming back is a credible threat? What would he do, in general, if he could obtain sole access to the rift? We have a pretty fair justification to be asking these questions, too. With us being forbidden from necromancy research, Orochimaru becomes our only hope for stopping Akatsuki, it's only natural that we'd be anxious to know his plans on the matter.
As for why it's beneficial to us, this is a high-stakes gambit we're planning and we need our information to be as accurate as possible. If Orochimaru isn't taking the rift seriously then that's very important to know before we bet on him being willing to cooperate with us about it. More broadly, our overall objective here is to create a scenario where Orochimaru is content helping us steal the rift, knowing that he won't have sole control of it. I estimated his preference ordering above but we need more detail, more information, if we're to align his incentives in the right way. Once we're missing we want to be able to contact Orochimaru on 7Path with a deal that goes "I will give you 90% of what you want in exchange for your help getting me 100% of what I want" and we can only do that safely once we know what that 90% of what he wants is.
This will be an important conversation in more ways than one. Not only does it scout out vital information for our necromancy plans, but raising the topic to Orochimaru also gives him opportunity to inject his own perspective on the matter. I don't think it's likely that Orochimaru would tank the brunt of Akatsuki's wrath to keep us safe so we can research without going missing, but it's not out of the question that the Snake Sannin, with his extensive knowledge and even more extensive skillset, has some advice or offer that opens up routes that seemed previously unviable. I think it's at the very least worth the low cost of dedicating some of our discussion time to the matter.
(Again, to be clear, we do not share any of our plans to go missing in this conversation. We leave off at the part where Itachi told us not to do any more necromancy research and Naruto told us to obey that order. We don't want Orochimaru deciding our plans aren't to his liking and that he'd really rather if we enacted this other plan that gives us 50% of what we want and him 100% of what he wants. We keep that card in our back pocket and focus on how our own research has been forced to an unceremonious halt, framing ourselves as a non-issue while Orochimaru remains the only person capable of making a difference, the type of story he's most likely to believe due to his massive ego).
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Mmmmm personally I'm hesitant to discuss the rift (at the very least we should actually verify he was looped in - if he wasn't I'm not exactly jumping to tell him), but a compromise I think is worth discussing is discussing resurrection more generally. He obviously cares a lot about immortality, and one of the best failsafes is a way to return from the dead if you die. Wouldn't mind plumbing his thoughts on how feasible this is and how he feels about it
- Location
- United States
It will be, yes. You have about a day to write a really good version of it. If you can produce something amazing that quickly, I'll vote for it. Otherwise, let's not rush that conversation half-cocked.
We have plenty of Orochimaru time available after this.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Would you justify that foundational assumption? I don't immediately see why he'd know anything related to the Akatsuki taking the rift seriously. Naruto was explicitly reluctant to share rift-related information with him, and I don't think we pushed to change his mind. I also don't think we have reason to believe that Orochimaru has some advanced spycraft capabilities that would've let him learn the contents of that meeting despite everyone involved trying to maintain OPSEC. The Akatsuki's request for dimensionalism research was public, but he might not have connected the dots.
I don't even know that he knows of the rift's existence? We didn't shout about our experience from the rooftops, last I recall, and Kabuto doesn't have Kage-level access nor would he have been informed on a need-to-know basis. And even if Oro did hear about it, he might've dismissed it as crazy exaggerations: for a while, he held that position regarding the Dragons even after he saw Leaf taking it seriously.
I'd put like 80% on "Orochimaru doesn't even know the rift is a real thing".
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- Location
- Washington, USA
We could ask him "why do you think Akatsuki wanted all our dimensionalism research," then.
- Location
- Pacific standard
Okay so I thought it was super obvious Orochimaru already knows we're going missing, and is giving us good stuff to help. Is that not the common read?
- Location
- United States
Why would we go missing instead of just killing Akatsuki as an authorized, deniable mission with as much support as Konoha can provide?
Makes no sense from his perspective.
- Location
- Pacific standard
Hmmm you're right, he did care an awful lot about coming back to Leaf
- Location
- United States
Orochimaru probably thinks we're going to be setting up runic traps for Akatsuki members so that Konoha's jōnin and S-Rank ninja can sweep up the remainder of the group.
He's been pretty clear about his opinion about trying to kill someone from within the range they can attack you back from.
He's been pretty clear about his opinion about trying to kill someone from within the range they can attack you back from.
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- Location
- Yes.
@eaglejarl Any chance we can get the vote counter?
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I maintain that Orochimaru doesn't care right now, and isn't thinking about it too deeply (he's too distracted by the "shiny shiny shiny shiny" goblin brain going on right now).
Once we actually go missing, of course, my theory is that Orochimaru's going to be like "Ah, yes. Nephew is following my advice about getting stronger, and isn't allowing this time of peace to stop him from seeking combat. What a good nephew, I'll have to track him down in six months to see how he's doing. It'll be stepping into Jiraiya's shoes after I went missing... heh, how the tables have turned."
I have a combo seal idea. What if we replicate EM nuke conditions in a relatively small (ish) area with a seal, while also erecting a barrier around the area that prevents exit. Now we either geode coffin ourselves in to prevent us getting killed while the EM seal deals with our opponent (with air masks and warming seals ect) or we reverse summon while the effect plays out? Seems like it should be within our sealing skill to do.
- Location
- Pacific standard
Hm. Okay, I don't think he'll go there by default, but I think Mari could definitely put him in that frame of mind, if we even have to roll for it.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I think he's far more likely to connect the dots, shrug, and go "Let nephew cook." tbh
Depends how interested we get him in PS development imo.
[X] A Conversation with Uncle Oro
Word Count: 599
Word Count: 599
- Sanity check all with Mari, overall aim to interest Orochimaru. Don't approach this as a scattershot conversation.
- Orochimaru
- Oro's little asides during PS training are indicators of his overall mindset. Consider them, and try understand things from his perspective.
- Initial tone: a collaboration between peers.
- Clarify that lithosealing is now called runecrafting.
- Ask him what initial ideas he intends to pursue with runes.
- Only if he seems interested, share our own possible short-medium term plans. Avoid blathering
- Storage Runes - Progress towards GS.
- Air Dome Runes - Compound or city level defenses
- 5SB Rune - Vastly scaled up effect? Supports that are impervious to damage?
- It's fair to call this derivative work - and it is, but we're exploring a completely new discipline.
- Has his plan changed from complete replacement of the GS after learning runecrafting?
- Acknowledge that we have not yet done much runic research
- Akatsuki have a habit of dropping by unannounced...
- Does he have any suggestions to mitigate the risk?
- Despite self-describing as antisocial he's had at least a couple students.
- Kabuto and Anko at least
- Does he enjoy teaching? Or is it pure pragmatism, the crafting of useful assistants?
- What is his philosophy of teaching the next generation? He's said before that he thinks that secrets and power are for those who earn them. A reasonable philosophy.
- Yet without someone to point the way at least, counterproductive flailing is likely to result.
- In his opinion, what made his most successful student stand out?
- Secondary tone: Contemplative - keep in mind Oro's answer to the previous questions, don't ask questions that Hazou suspects will annoy him.
- Hazou has been continuing to think on bloodlines. Some, like the Five, seem to operate as a sort of seal on the cognitive fragments of the Tenfold Abomination. There's a reason that Hazou was warned that none of the Five clans must ever completely die out.
- The next thought is that other bloodlines operate the same way, seals on smaller fragments of the TA, or other entities, designed by the Sage, yet that can't be completely right.
- Deviant bloodlines exist, like the mongrel Iron Nerve. They emerged centuries after the Sage.
- As an aside, in his estimation, would deviant bloodlines reject a transplant of the original bloodline the same way they would an unrelated bloodline? (e.g. Minami with Byakugan, Kurosawa with Sharingan).
- And how does that explain the existence of the expanded Elemental palette some bloodline users have access to? Like the Terumi Clan and their Lava Element. It seems to be a common thread across many bloodlines.
- Deviant bloodlines exist, like the mongrel Iron Nerve. They emerged centuries after the Sage.
- We know the Summon clans have access to more elements than humans, including some accessible only by certain human bloodlines. Multiple Summon authorities have said it is consequence of the nature chakra of the Seventh Path.
- Yet a few humans can use those same elements, so it cannot be exclusive to the Seventh Path
- Then their bloodline is the ability to use (perhaps partially?) the nature chakra of the Human path?
- We have it on reputable authority that there are additional elements than the basic five, that are themselves learnable by ninja of different bloodlines.
- Such would imply that some humans can be trained to use nature chakra, perhaps not as naturally or fluidly as those of the Seventh Path, but with some effort. Is that correct?
- Regardless, is it necessary to learn nature chakra manipulation to TH Seventh Path ninjutsu? Are there additional barriers?
- We've had difficulty learning Dog ninjutsu due to anatomical differences, and we hypothesize that part of the purpose of his body modifications is to allow him to better cast Snake ninjutsu.
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I could see it going either way. "Give time for results, then send slaves/patsies/time-wasters to investigate for me" or "Cool, anyway, back to being elbow-deep in research substrate."
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hand-crafting useful assistants. Will want to say this.
Don't say this.
It's politics.
He won't care, or will be annoyed we're asking.
Doesn't give anything useful, since we're about to go missing.
Not worth.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Naruto says it during the big meeting, right before he takes us aside and tells us we could go missing:
During our private meeting with Naruto afterwards he does say "I don't want to hand Orochimaru the rift", but given the context I believe that to mean that he's hoping Hazou renders the point moot rather than saying he's going to not inform Orochimaru after all on the expectation that Hazou does go missing and then win the day.
All in all, while I don't know when Naruto intended to tell Orochimaru about everything, I take it as granted that by now Orochimaru has been informed of approximately everything. "Approximately" in the sense that I believe Naruto likely omitted the option of moving the rift and definitely omitted the prospect of Hazou going missing. But he should know enough to hold a coherent conversation about the matter, at the very least.