As much as I disagree with the instinct to leave one of the Leopards alive, I also disagree with randomly dedicating kills to Jashin. Praising him is entirely a joke imo and not something we want to translate into actual character development.
I am really, really confused about why this is causing so much controversy.
Our mission is to kill 12 Leopards, with minimal, ideally zero, Dog casualties. We are told we're to use any tactic available to us in order to achieve this objective. We're told that if doing something unconventional would decrease the risk of Dog casualties, we should do that and not sweat the details.
Interrogations are aimed to do just that: get intel about the force distribution in the area so that we could decide on the lowest-risk highest-reward strategy (attack Leopard camps vs. fortify and wait vs. retreat and re-attack). In addition, a successful interrogation is the only way by which the first strategy (attack Leopard camps) could be made viable at all.
@Sir Stompy's plan greatly increases the odds that the interrogations would be successful.
I don't think we have much time to extensively torture the kitties.
Our captives already have Severes, meaning we can't extensively brutalize them in the course of torture without accidentally killing them basically immediately.
It's extremely unlikely any of the dogs are torture specialists who'd be able to quickly, safely, and efficiently torture them.
Thus, we need to use psychological interrogation methods.
It is very unlikely we have a social-spec Dog in attendance, who'd be able to improvise a suitable interrogation approach without our input.
Thus, we're offering the Leopards a carrot, which is intended to exploit their individualistic nature: the one who betrays the others the most lives. I'm pretty optimistic that this will work, and that we'd get fairly extensive intel.
The Seventh Path has a Thing about oaths, including oaths made to pitch-black-evil entities. That is, the norm of "don't break oaths" overrides pretty much any object-level concerns.
Even the Pangolins, known warmongers, would be very hurt geopolitically if they were perceived as oathbreakers, and thus take care not to violate oaths.
Cannai almost definitely does not want the Dogs to be perceived as oathbreakers. Thus, his "use deceit" likely did not imply "break promises".
Thus, in order to use the only promising interrogation tactic that we have available, and whose success promises to reduce expected Dog casualties in this outing, we need to follow through on the carrot and let the Leopard live.
Cannai's orders permit leaving adult Leopards alive if they're the single parent of a cub. We are not to go on a rampage and mindlessly kill the first 12 Leopards we see. As far as any perceived "bleeding-heart-ness" is concerned, complying with Cannai's orders to leave single parents alive would look far worse than letting a Severe'd prisoner go. Cannai is not concerned about appearing too soft.
Two Leopards who witnessed the battle already escaped. Since we've completed at most 4/12 of our objective so far, there will doubtlessly be more survivors. The marginal cost in leaked information of leaving one of our prisoners alive is minuscule.
One thing I would grant is that crippling is likely unnecessary. The Leopard Clan would almost definitely not care about the cripple, meaning they'd die anyway and in greater misery (which means it won't function as a carrot; and if we don't tell them we're about to cripple them, that'd verge on oathbreaking), and a Severe'd Leopard would be taken out of the current conflict as surely as a crippled one. The concern about them returning in 2 years to take revenge is far-fetched, and we'd be either a high-tier S-ranker or dead by then anyway. So @Sir Stompy, I'd advocate for not doing anything more to the Leopard which we decide to let go.
But in all other respects? This plan seems clearly correct to me. I'm kinda confused about the controversy here; I suspect people are arguing not about the object-level approach, but are pattern-matching to some past missteps of ours, in a way that doesn't actually apply to our present situation.
Don't take what Ipsos said literally. In the context we're discussing, the meaning is still clear and has little to do with dictionary-definition cruelty.
If you don't care about deontology very much I guess. From a consequentialist perspective I think there's a decent chance that showing mercy (edit: continuously as a game plan. not just in this prisoner instance) will actually give better results towards the overall goals of averting war and less lives lost. But most of the gains would be different from how Cannai intended the mission to get gains (surviving with no hazou/dog casualties. instilling fear with 12 deaths). And those potential gains in the overall war effort of dogs/leopards saved come at a cost of putting the current dogs at greater risk in combat. Which may anger Cannai if any dogs do actually die, which has consequentialist repercussions
edit2: although if we are including the conseqeuentialist repercussions of angering cannai. the mercy route could also have consequentialist repercussions beyond just the war. extending to hazou's reputation and inspirational force as he deals with human path.
One thing I would grant is that crippling is likely unnecessary. The Leopard Clan would almost definitely not care about the cripple, meaning they'd die anyway and in greater misery (which means it won't function as a carrot; and if we don't tell them we're about to cripple them, that'd verge on oathbreaking), and a Severe'd Leopard would be taken out of the current conflict as surely as a crippled one. The concern about them returning in 2 years to take revenge is far-fetched, and we'd be either a high-tier S-ranker or dead by then anyway. So @Sir Stompy, I'd advocate for not doing anything more to the Leopard which we decide to let go.
Fair, but we can't have them warning the Leopards that they give us intel on that we're coming, so I'll make it clear that we just make sure they're injured enough they can't travel more today.
It does sounds like a bad idea, to me. We do not fully know all the details, but the Seventh Path has among other things a strong prohibition against "summoning death". This may not refer to Jashin specifically, and the Dogs we are with may not be versed enough in lore to care, but I feel this breaches past "sensible negotiation with divine entities" and towards "messing with powers of which you know not" and "calling up that which you cannot put down". It just causes that sort of itching feeling, that we're getting overconfident that our actions couldn't possibly have consequences.
Also, didn't we recently have Hazou earnestly and honestly denounce Jashin and all he stands for? I remember us doing that in the wake of Asuma's death. I can't recall if we've had Hazou renege on that in the time since, but I think having Hazou offer sacrifices to Jashin of his own volition is very much not a given behaviour nowadays, and I'm not sure I want to set the precedent of "Hazou is too much of a Jashinist to hold to his promise to reject Jashin".
I am really, really confused about why this is causing so much controversy.
Our mission is to kill 12 Leopards, with minimal, ideally zero, Dog casualties. We are told we're to use any tactic available to us in order to achieve this objective. We're told that if doing something unconventional would decrease the risk of Dog casualties, we should do that and not sweat the details.
Interrogations are aimed to do just that: get intel about the force distribution in the area so that we could decide on the lowest-risk highest-reward strategy (attack Leopard camps vs. fortify and wait vs. retreat and re-attack). In addition, a successful interrogation is the only way by which the first strategy (attack Leopard camps) could be made viable at all.
@Sir Stompy's plan greatly increases the odds that the interrogations would be successful.
I don't think we have much time to extensively torture the kitties.
Our captives already have Severes, meaning we can't extensively brutalize them in the course of torture without accidentally killing them basically immediately.
It's extremely unlikely any of the dogs are torture specialists who'd be able to quickly, safely, and efficiently torture them.
Thus, we need to use psychological interrogation methods.
It is very unlikely we have a social-spec Dog in attendance, who'd be able to improvise a suitable interrogation approach without our input.
Thus, we're offering the Leopards a carrot, which is intended to exploit their individualistic nature: the one who betrays the others the most lives. I'm pretty optimistic that this will work, and that we'd get fairly extensive intel.
The Seventh Path has a Thing about oaths, including oaths made to pitch-black-evil entities. That is, the norm of "don't break oaths" overrides pretty much any object-level concerns.
Even the Pangolins, known warmongers, would be very hurt geopolitically if they were perceived as oathbreakers, and thus take care not to violate oaths.
Cannai almost definitely does not want the Dogs to be perceived as oathbreakers. Thus, his "use deceit" likely did not imply "break promises".
Thus, in order to use the only promising interrogation tactic that we have available, and whose success promises to reduce expected Dog casualties in this outing, we need to follow through on the carrot and let the Leopard live.
Cannai's orders permit leaving adult Leopards alive if they're the single parent of a cub. We are not to go on a rampage and mindlessly kill the first 12 Leopards we see. As far as any perceived "bleeding-heart-ness" is concerned, complying with Cannai's orders to leave single parents alive would look far worse than letting a Severe'd prisoner go. Cannai is not concerned about appearing too soft.
Two Leopards who witnessed the battle already escaped. Since we've completed at most 4/12 of our objective so far, there will doubtlessly be more survivors. The marginal cost in leaked information of leaving one of our prisoners alive is minuscule.
One thing I would grant is that crippling is likely unnecessary. The Leopard Clan would almost definitely not care about the cripple, meaning they'd die anyway and in greater misery (which means it won't function as a carrot; and if we don't tell them we're about to cripple them, that'd verge on oathbreaking), and a Severe'd Leopard would be taken out of the current conflict as surely as a crippled one. The concern about them returning in 2 years to take revenge is far-fetched, and we'd be either a high-tier S-ranker or dead by then anyway. So @Sir Stompy, I'd advocate for not doing anything more to the Leopard which we decide to let go.
But in all other respects? This plan seems clearly correct to me. I'm kinda confused about the controversy here; I suspect people are arguing not about the object-level approach, but are pattern-matching to some past missteps of ours, in a way that doesn't actually apply to our present situation.
(Ready to eat my words if the QMs say the Hazoupilot says "this is absolutely treason, I'm not sparing or crippling the Leopards", of course.)
I just have a couple fuzzy intuitions for why I'm not fond of this strategy, so please bear with me.
The first is, do we even really need this carrot-and-stick approach? We know how much Resolve they have, they're Resolve 20 chumps the lot of 'em. And they're rocking a Severe each. And they're not particularly social creatures, such that they have a personal emotional investment in their fellow raiders. We might be overcomplicating this, the stick may work just fine, and the carrot may provide only marginal gains.
The second is, can we even convince the other Dogs to go along with this? We run this by the leader Dog, but we kinda just assume they're on board with not killing this Leopard in exchange for more information and I don't actually think this is likely to be true. The plan (probably) fails gracefully, sure, but if I think it's more likely than not to just get veto'd that kinda undermines the potential expected value I might see out of it.
I see your point that oathbreaking is probably taboo enough everywhere on the Seventh Path that we couldn't get away with promising freedom and then killing them anyways. But I think even accounting for that, I'm just not persuaded that the expected value gained by "promise one of them freedom to try and improve interrogation efficiency" is higher than the cost of letting that one Leopard go free. It feels like tossing away a sizeable direct advantage for marginal advantage that we might not need, and which we might not even get to try in the first place because we are not unilaterally in charge here.
Even the intel we could get, it's like, are we really going to gain if we hear that there exists a Leopard camp over thataway that contains too many strong Leopards for us to consider a safe assault? Do we actually for real think that this will let us pick fights with smaller, weaker Leopard groups? I'm not convinced. Toss in the fact that we might get most relevant information anyways by torturing these Resolve 20 chumps while Hazou sets up prepared ground, or that these Dogs are here to kill Leopards that they have strong personal grievance against and may not agree with our plan even if we took the time to fully explain our rationale to them (which, again, we kinda don't), and it just seems like a lot of hot air to me.
(And the icing on the cake is that I'm like 70% sure this would get spun as "Hazou is suddenly struck with the urge to not let them die", which, yeah I do like that side of Hazou, but I really don't want to make it a habit of his that, even after coming to terms that he's accepting a mission to do these things he doesn't agree with, he'll still grind the mission to a halt to spend an update or three angsting over whether he can really go through with the thing he already agreed to do knowing it's a bad thing that he doesn't want to do. If this was strategically valuable I'd hold my tongue, but when I feel like the idea is already strategically a bunch of hot air I can't help but feel unpleasantness at the idea of cementing "wait, stop, stop the mission, Hazou needs to grapple with his indecisiveness first" as a thing Hazou regularly does every time he commits to doing something distasteful.)
The first is, do we even really need this carrot-and-stick approach? We know how much Resolve they have, they're Resolve 20 chumps the lot of 'em. And they're rocking a Severe each. And they're not particularly social creatures, such that they have a personal emotional investment in their fellow raiders. We might be overcomplicating this, the stick may work just fine, and the carrot may provide only marginal gains.
What is our stick, though? They already have full sets of Consequences, they're going to expire if we breathe at them wrong. By the same token, it should be easy for them to kill themselves if we threaten to e. g. drag them into Dog and give them medical attention so that we can subject them to a lengthy fate worse than death.
I guess a Dog rolling Intimidation against them might work out mechanically, but I don't quite see how it should work socially.
In addition, I expect more high-quality intel out of a Leopard that enthusiastically tries to give us as much information as possible, motivated by something positive, rather than out of a Leopard we're torturing/pressuring.
Do we actually for real think that this will let us pick fights with smaller, weaker Leopard groups?
Yes. Raids are common and raiding parties are not usually dozens-of-Leopards big. I think it's fairly likely there are some groups of 4-6 Leopards scattered across the area and that our prisoners would roughly know where they are.
For some context about reasonable assumptions, I thought only Hyūga could do this because it's useless for everyone else. Like, you can't make hand seals with your elbows, so what are you training this for, the ability to water-walk like a dog?
This holds even if you include sealing, since the majority of people only use explosive and storage seals, neither of which you really have want to trigger from the side of your face.
Thus, we're offering the Leopards a carrot, which is intended to exploit their individualistic nature: the one who betrays the others the most lives. I'm pretty optimistic that this will work, and that we'd get fairly extensive intel.
Could offer them the additional option that, if they can hand us a safe way to kill at least ten other combatant leopards, and swear that they themselves personally won't attack Dog in the future, we'll let both of these two live - that way, even if one of them is clearly "in the lead" on magnitude of betrayal, the other would have a clear incentive to chime in and point out factual errors, and thus whatever intel we get is less likely to be complete bullshit. Also, helps make it clear that our goal here is proportionate retribution rather than something more maximalist, which would be a significant benefit in future negotiations.
Even if there's no time for torture or it proves ineffective, I don't think it's a huge loss. We don't need intel on Leopard locations to continue our mission. We can retreat back to Dog then cross the border elsewhere and hunt another group of kitties. And even if the captives give us intel it might be false or a trap and we'd have no way of knowing.
Maybe I'm being paranoid but I'm still concerned that these skyslicers we leave behind might kill a cub. I could see it coming back to bite us later during something like Cannai's peace negotiations with the Leopard Boss.
"Hey there, squirt," Noburi said, smiling at her and then turning aside to busy himself with unsealing two lawnchairs, a side table, and a basket of noshies.
"Hi, Sasha!" Honoka called, waving so hard she almost flipped herself over.
Gōketsu Sasha, veteran genin of the Leaf (a month counted as veteran, right?), struggled not to let herself be distracted by the interlopers on her training field.
"Don't lose it," Reo said. "Distractions happen in the field. You need to keep focus. Fly through the hoops."
"All of them, sensei?" Sasha asked, dismayed.
Reo smiled. "Yup. All of them. If I told you that you only had to do one then you wouldn't be able to do two. So do all of them."
She took a deep breath and focused, pressing her chakra down into a tiny ball just behind her hara. She went through the appropriate imagery one careful tick at a time, formed the pattern, held it in frantic balance so that she could check it over quickly, and pushed the chakra up and out of her mouth with a loud cry of "Fire Element Technique: Hotaru no Jutsu!"
(It was a bit silly, if you asked her. After all, 'whatever no jutsu' was simply an alternate way of saying 'whatever technique', so why had Reo-sensei told her to say both? Adults! So ridiculous.)
The chakra wobbled and bobbled as it bumbled up her throat and out into the world, but it held together long enough to collapse into a tiny yet incredibly hot pinprick of flame. She tethered it to her right index finger and raised the finger. Sure enough, the little firefly rose as well. It kept moving after she stopped raising her finger, skidding to a halt a few inches farther on as her will clamped down on it.
Moving the spark up and down, left and right, was easy. Relatively. Tie it to the finger, move the finger, the spark moves. Moving it closer and farther needed to be done purely with chakra control and she didn't even remotely have the hang of it. She didn't even have the hang of it enough to move the spark in smooth curves, the way Reo-sensei had repeatedly demonstrated. He had demonstrated with five sparks at once. He could make them weave smoothly around one another in elegant and high-speed curves that left trailing lines of light in the air. He could even overlap them on one another, concealing the number of sparks he was running until an opportune moment to surprise an enemy.
Sasha, on the other hand, could manage only one spark and could move the spark on only one axis at a time. Even that was clumsy, which made the hoops exercise an absolute nightmare.
Which, of course, was the entire point of the exercise, she thought with a sigh. She started the spark moving through the first fragile paper hoop.
"You can do it, Sasha!" Honoka shouted in her obnoxious little-girl voice. Honestly, didn't Honoka realize that Sasha was much too grown-up to have tea parties where they chatted about the gossip on the estate, or to climb around in tree forts playing Kill the Rock Ninja? Besides, wasn't it illegal for a veteran genin such as herself to share details of her training with a youngling? The Hokage would probably have her executed.
There were ten hoops, the total intended to match the ten sparks that she would eventually be able to control. They were made of delicate paper and, because teachers were all giant meanies, they were soaked in highly flammable oil. If the spark brushed against the hoop, the hoop would cease to exist a few moments later. Sensei was being nice and using the biggest hoops, meaning their inside diameter was about the same as his full-stretch handspan.
"Go Sasha, go Sasha!" Honoka shouted. "You've got this!"
Of course she had this! Honestly. The implication was offensive, suggesting that she couldn't thread the spark along a complicated path and through all ten hoops without brushing any of the hoops. Which, okay, maybe wasn't the easiest thing in the world, given the angles of the hoops and the short distances that Reo-sensei had set between them.
"Sensei, is this really necessary?" Sasha asked. "You said this wasn't going to be my primary combat jutsu. Wouldn't it make more sense to jump straight to that one?"
"Nope." His grin was insufferable.
"Sensei, are you making fun of me?" she asked after a moment of suspicious surveillance of said insufferable smile.
"Not at all! The Hotaru Technique is one of the best methods for gaining mastery at controlling chakra constructs. The jutsu that I intend to teach you for your primary technique requires excellent control. It's very powerful and very flexible, but it needs to be tightly controlled or it could be dangerous." He smiled a little bit at the last words, suggesting there was some joke she had missed.
Over Sensei's shoulder, Sasha could see Honoka perking up. For a moment, Sasha couldn't help but be amused. She remembered what it was like when she was Honoka's age, when every detail or even hint of a detail about jutsu or ninja training was the most fascinating thing in the world. Powerful techniques that were also dangerous? That was simply catnip.
"Dangerous how, Sensei?" she asked, choosing her tone carefully so as to sound adult, mature, interested but not overly interested, and not at all like she was trying to get out of the work.
He gave her a raised eyebrow, looking deliberately from her innocent face to the spark that was hovering in place instead of wobbling forward towards the hoop. He switched his disapproving eyes back...and then shrugged.
"Fine," he said. "The technique I want you to learn is called Fire Lash. Lord Gōketsu recommended it, actually. It creates a long, flexible whip made of fire. It causes a lot of damage and it can be used defensively to hold off multiple opponents."
"The problem is that it's not properly a chakra construct," Noburi said from the ground a couple yards away. He stood up, brushed off his pants and came to join them.
"Water Element: Water Whip!" Water appeared from thin air, binding itself into a long cord. He snapped his wrist and the whip snapped out, the end popping loudly at a notional opponent's eyes.
"The Water Whip is a physical construct," Noburi said, holding the construct in question out so that she could run her fingers along it. They came back wet, and she marveled at the way the water circulated along the length of the whip, around and around again, even as it hung limp across Noburi's palm. "I control it partially with my muscles and partially with my chakra control. When I was first learning it, I smacked myself in the face multiple times. That's fine with the Water Whip—you get wet and that's it. Fire Lash, on the other hand..."
Sasha gulped; behind Noburi, Honoka's face had gone white as she realized the implications.
"I could hit myself with it in practice," she half-said, half-asked.
"Right," Reo said. "So, you need to learn Hotaru no Jutsu first to get the chakra control you need."
Sasha just barely managed to keep her disappointment from showing. Sadly, Honoka had no such control.
"Aww!" the little girl said. "Isn't there anything good you can teach her, Mr Reo? There's gotta be something that isn't a waste of time like the silly butterfly jutsu!"
Reo chuckled. "Fireflies, not butterflies, Honoka. And don't underestimate the little fireflies. They are quite useful. For example, suppose you want to restrain someone." He twiddled his fingers and suddenly Noburi's throat was encircled by eight burning hot points, none of them closer or farther than an inch from his skin. The final two hovered just in front of his eyes. They stayed in place for a moment and then all ten sparks zipped away, hovering over Reo's head in a steadily-spinning halo of gold-red light.
"How come I have to be the test subject?" Noburi grumbled.
"With respect, My Lord, which of the girls would you have wanted me to use? I doubt either of them has your self-control in the face of a potentially dangerous surprise."
"Yeah, okay. Fair point."
"Ptthbt," Honoka said, blowing a raspberry at the older ninja. "That's no good! You aren't going to be able to—"
"Honoka!" Sasha snapped, appalled. "Do not speak to your elders like that!"
Reo ruffled Honoka's hair in amusement but gave Sasha a grateful bow of the head. "Thank you, young lady. In any case, the fireflies are very versatile. They can apply controlled amounts of heat in order to burn an enemy, or burn through bindings, or light things on fire at a distance, or many more uses. They are a good tool for assassination if you catch your target unawares. Send a firefly up their nose and into their brain; there will be no evidence it was murder aside from some scorched nose hairs. Contrast that with Fire Lash; yes, it's an excellent weapon but it lacks the versatility the fireflies bring."
"More importantly, the fireflies are a great way to not burn your face off when you start practicing with Fire Lash," Noburi said.
"I see. Thank you for explaining this to me," Sasha said, bowing deeply. Fire Lash? That was a melee attack. Wasn't the point of being a ninjutsu master the ability to destroy your enemies from far away?
"Of course, good as it is for a melee jutsu, Fire Lash is just that: a melee jutsu," Reo continued. "We'll want to get you some ranged as well."
Eeeeee!
Noburi laughed, probably at the expression of delight that Sasha had failed to keep from her face.
"I'm a little torn," he said, rubbing his sparsely-haired chin. "On the one hand, I could send you to Mari for emotion control training so that you aren't so easy to read. On the other hand, you're just so cute—whoa!" He raised his hands to ward her off. "Scary! I meant scary. Yup. Very scary and mature. Absolutely."
Sasha wasn't certain, but she got the feeling that maybe he wasn't completely sincere about that last part. That wasn't the issue to pursue, however.
"Do you think I could?"
Noburi and Reo frowned. "Think you could what?" Noburi asked.
"Study, um, study with Lady Mari? A little?"
The men's faces curved back into smiles as their confusion fell away.
"I don't see why not," Noburi said. "What did you want to learn from her?"
Sasha thought about that. What did she want to learn? She wasn't super interested in politics per se, but she liked the idea of understanding what her opponents would do before they did, of being to read their every intention in their faces. She liked the idea of being able to conceal her own thoughts and intentions so that no one could laugh at her, or anticipate her attacks. How did one encapsulate that though? She struggled for the words.
Noburi raised a hand to stop her. "Doesn't matter," he said. "You and she can figure it out and I don't need to know. Shall we go find her? I'm sure she'd be glad to show you a few things." He caught himself and glanced to Reo. "Sorry, my bad. After you guys are done. I didn't mean to crash your session."
"It's fine, My Lord. We were about done anyway, and I desperately need some lunch. If you wish to take her that will be fine."
"Thanks, man. For being so cool about it, I mean. I didn't mean to step on your toes."
"No trouble at all, sir. My young student, young mistress Honoka, Lord Noburi, I shall take my leave." He bowed, florid and overdone, and disappeared into a Substitution. A chunk of rock dropped to the earth where he had stood.
"Right!" Noburi said. "Let's make this happen. I'm pretty sure Mari will be in the hot springs right now, so let's check there first."
Sasha's eyes went wide. She had never dreamed that Lady Firehair might be willing to actually devote time to her! Surely they weren't going to go right now? She hadn't thought that Lord Noburi meant he would take her to Lady Mari now. At some point in the future, once Sasha had demonstrated her competence, perhaps. But not now.
Noburi smiled and offered her his hand. "I promise, she won't bite." He held out his other hand to Honoka, who took it promptly and with confidence.
There was no way Sasha was going to be upstaged by a third-former.
"Thank you, Lord Noburi," she said, bowing deeply. "I am very grateful. Shall we?" She gestured in the direction of the hot springs, making it clear that a veteran genin such as herself did not need to be lead by the hand.
"You are most welcome, Lady Sasha," he said with a grin. He swooped Honoka up without warning and plonked her onto his shoulders. "Onwards!"
And thus Noburi galloped off in search of a legendary heroine, one young girl squealing with delight on his shoulders and a very mature and experienced young woman jogging beside him while trying not to be obvious about neatening up her hair and clothing.
What is our stick, though? They already have full sets of Consequences, they're going to expire if we breathe at them wrong. By the same token, it should be easy for them to kill themselves if we threaten to e. g. drag them into Dog and give them medical attention so that we can subject them to a lengthy fate worse than death.
I guess a Dog rolling Intimidation against them might work out mechanically, but I don't quite see how it should work socially.
In addition, I expect more high-quality intel out of a Leopard that enthusiastically tries to give us as much information as possible, motivated by something positive, rather than out of a Leopard we're torturing/pressuring.
Mechanically speaking, if we deal any more stress they'll be Taken Out, which is not lethal unless the attacker intends it to be lethal or is using always-lethal weapons like explosives. Narratively speaking, they've both suffered wounds that are likely fatal if they don't receive treatment, but not fatal immediately, or in a way that means any more pain would make them immediately kick the bucket. I'm pretty sure we can subject them to a meaningful interrogation session right here and now if we so choose, and if Hazou begs off to instead spend his time setting up prepared ground then there isn't even any time-cost to the action.
Yes. Raids are common and raiding parties are not usually dozens-of-Leopards big. I think it's fairly likely there are some groups of 4-6 Leopards scattered across the area and that our prisoners would roughly know where they are.
I worry that you're maybe overestimating how coordinated the Leopards are here. We talk of camps but, like, would they even have camps? The picture we have of Leopards sounds a lot like Dogs, in the sense that they do not have any meaningful technology or worldly possessions, and source food from the environment wherever they are. Even the very idea of not fighting solo appears to be a contentious innovation in their coordination skills. I'm not sure they have the need, nor the inclination to have centralized positions of force and coordination where they manage logistical resources and arrange for organized deployment of troops. (I know they're living together in villages now, as another one of Hyohakken's innovations. But the fact that such is a very recent innovation makes me feel like the basic Leopard strategy for conducting war does not depend on anything like this.) It feels more likely to me that the Leopard M.O. is "if you happen to meet another raiding party, just go in different directions so you wind up raiding different places" and other than that they have no real organization to their raiding beyond what Hyohakken personally tells them to do.
(And I think Hyohakken personally tells them what to do, because I doubt there exists any middleman who could command enough respect from these Leopards to get them to work together and obey orders. The war here seems small enough in scale that one Boss could keep up a minimally-organizationally-complex strategy like "shove some Leopards into a group and tell them to raid this part of the border", so I don't think it's implausible.)
This is all to say, I have a strong suspicion that the only thing we actually get out of these Leopards even in the best case scenario is a list of the raiding parties they've previously met, and when and where they met them. Most of it will be hopelessly out of date as said raiding groups went on their own way and are currently playing things by ear who-knows-where. The information we get will be barely distinguishable in utility from "this is the part of the border where raids are happening", which we already knew.
It just, I still really don't feel like this has an expected value of 1 Leopard kill, and the commensurate probabilistic likelihood of having to engage in one more fight than otherwise. As a general rule more information leads to better decisions which leads to better outcomes, but I genuinely do not think the necessary assumptions for that to be true hold in this case.
Gaku shifted uncomfortably. "I was unable to discover much in the short time available, sir. I have rectified the issue by beginning to put together profiles on all the clans, including the minor ones."
@eaglejarl@Paperclipped@Velorien
It's been roughly two in-game years since Gaku started to gather information on all of the clans in Leaf. Is there any chance Gaku will have this dossier ready for us when we return to Leaf, or maybe even gave it to us at any time in between now and then and Hazo just hasn't looked at it yet?
I worry that you're maybe overestimating how coordinated the Leopards are here. We talk of camps but, like, would they even have camps? The picture we have of Leopards sounds a lot like Dogs, in the sense that they do not have any meaningful technology or worldly possessions, and source food from the environment wherever they are. Even the very idea of not fighting solo appears to be a contentious innovation in their coordination skills. I'm not sure they have the need, nor the inclination to have centralized positions of force and coordination where they manage logistical resources and arrange for organized deployment of troops. (I know they're living together in villages now, as another one of Hyohakken's innovations. But the fact that such is a very recent innovation makes me feel like the basic Leopard strategy for conducting war does not depend on anything like this.) It feels more likely to me that the Leopard M.O. is "if you happen to meet another raiding party, just go in different directions so you wind up raiding different places" and other than that they have no real organization to their raiding beyond what Hyohakken personally tells them to do.
(And I think Hyohakken personally tells them what to do, because I doubt there exists any middleman who could command enough respect from these Leopards to get them to work together and obey orders. The war here seems small enough in scale that one Boss could keep up a minimally-organizationally-complex strategy like "shove some Leopards into a group and tell them to raid this part of the border", so I don't think it's implausible.)
This is all to say, I have a strong suspicion that the only thing we actually get out of these Leopards even in the best case scenario is a list of the raiding parties they've previously met, and when and where they met them. Most of it will be hopelessly out of date as said raiding groups went on their own way and are currently playing things by ear who-knows-where. The information we get will be barely distinguishable in utility from "this is the part of the border where raids are happening", which we already knew.
It just, I still really don't feel like this has an expected value of 1 Leopard kill, and the commensurate probabilistic likelihood of having to engage in one more fight than otherwise. As a general rule more information leads to better decisions which leads to better outcomes, but I genuinely do not think the necessary assumptions for that to be true hold in this case.
Cogent and plausible. Nevertheless, even in the case of Dogs, there's generally a way to pinpoint a given pack geographically, and something similar might be true for the Leopard parties as well.
One thing that might require them to stay in a specific place is cubs. Cannai's orders imply that parent + child combinations could be encountered on the borders, and presumably they don't take cubs to raids. That would imply they're left in the care of Leopards not participating in a given raid, who stay in a specific location to which the raiding party then returns. That would be a "camp".
Of course, it's possible that these camps also move around constantly, but I think we might get information of the form "there's a group of 4-6 Leopards generally camping in a small valley over there".
That said, fair enough, you've articulated a concern that's been sitting in the back of my mind as well, so I've revised my estimate of the interrogations' utility downwards.
Even if there's no time for torture or it proves ineffective, I don't think it's a huge loss. We don't need intel on Leopard locations to continue our mission. We can retreat back to Dog then cross the border elsewhere and hunt another group of kitties. And even if the captives give us intel it might be false or a trap and we'd have no way of knowing.
We're separating the prisoners and questioning them separately. We'll only trust the information that they both independently share. It seems extremely unlikely that they know each other well enough to come up with similar lies, or that they coordinated lies in advance on the off chance they're captured and interrogated.
Imo the implementation of the sanity check is a little off since the suggestion itself can do damage. We're basically sanity checking with the same person we're proposing the thing to.
There's some potential damage in being taken a little less seriously or being seen as less decisive. But we can chalk it up as cultural differences. The damage of deciding stuff that then gets angrily objected to or resentfully obeyed is potentially larger IMO.
I also am very fuzzy on the chain of command in this mission. Are we just a specialist atachee or are we the raid leader?
Inferring from official general definitions, and groups have disagreements on the definitions, cultural genocide could fit. Although one group, the United Nations, does specifically single out cultural genocide as not genocide.
Worth noting is that it's genocide according to Sufficient Velocity ruling precedent as far as I understand it after reading a bunch of administrative tribunals.
I don't get this take anyway. Every Leopard we spare just means that we have to kill a different Leopard to reach the full twelve. Every Leopard we kill immediately means we stop raiding the Leopards sooner. The point behind sparing one of them isn't kindness. It's having an extra interrogation tool while also sticking to our promises in spirit and letter. Like in that early scene in the Inglorious Basterds movie, where the guerillas carve a swastika into one German soldier's forehead before letting him go.
Fair, but we can't have them warning the Leopards that they give us intel on that we're coming, so I'll make it clear that we just make sure they're injured enough they can't travel more today.
By the way, folks: the very late posting was due to being invited to a games day by one of the players. Said player may step forward if they wish but otherwise I won't name them.
It was an absolutely delightful time, the best social event I've been to in quite a while. Thank you very much.
I am curious as to whether he thinks "promising to spare a prisoner as a ruse to extract information" would be a step too far for the Dogs. To me it seems likely that that falls under Cannai's "use deceit" order here. But the Seventh Path clans have issues about "oaths", I am not sure this would qualify, but I'd like to know what Hazoupilot thinks.
Yes, Hazou thinks making a promise and breaking it, even to your Leopard prisoners, would be an abhorrent act to Cannai as well as to the dogs on his team. He thinks Cannai intended to encourage you to lay misleading trails or conceal ambushes, rather than encourage you to make and break oaths.
If he does think that it would qualify as an oath, does he think Cannai would have serious issues with sparing a prisoner if they cooperated? The word "treason" is being floated around to describe that, and that seems an absurd overreaction to me, so I want to check with Hazoupilot in case I've missed something. We can always kill an extra Leopard to make up weight.
Cannai probably wouldn't have serious issues with that -- it seems within Hazou's remit to make such a decision. However, remember the mission objective is to kill 12. Your fellow dogs might also have something to say about you sparing a leopard that killed who-knows-how-many-Dogs.
Lastly, does Hazou think that doing an Arikada style interrogation of let's-see-how-many-body-parts-I-can-slice-off is more likely to work here? Or will the Dogs have issues with permanently crippling a Leopard so that they can't fight or get word to other Leopards we're coming?
don't want to move our trap that much, since the entire point is to draw enemies to the site of the battle, if we move 20km to a nice flat stretch of grassland, there's no point.
Fair. I am mildly salty that this is the second time my Cool IdeaTM has made it into a winning plan and (probably) not actually been prepped, but I understand the reasoning; probably is better really to have the two extra days.
Yes, Hazou thinks making a promise and breaking it, even to your Leopard prisoners, would be an abhorrent act to Cannai as well as to the dogs on his team. He thinks Cannai intended to encourage you to lay misleading trails or conceal ambushes, rather than encourage you to make and break oaths.
Cannai probably wouldn't have serious issues with that -- it seems within Hazou's remit to make such a decision. However, remember the mission objective is to kill 12. Your fellow dogs might also have something to say about you sparing a leopard that killed who-knows-how-many-Dogs.
Thanks for the answer, I intend to rewrite my plan accordingly. No wink wink nudge nudge fucking around anymore.
I'll suggest we make the offer to Cancurunchu and we go ahead with it if he agrees. We'll make sure the Leopard in question can't warn anyone we're coming.
Right, but what was desired was whole grid of Zones devoid of cover so that we could set undodgeable explosive traps that the Leopards would need pass through. Not a single Zone devoid of cover -- there's no guarantee the Leopards would pass through that to attack.
Them being solitary doesn't mean they don't know those things exist. They, or their ancestors at least, split from the Feline clan together. So there is some culture and unity there, even if it's a form of primitivism.
(And I think Hyohakken personally tells them what to do, because I doubt there exists any middleman who could command enough respect from these Leopards to get them to work together and obey orders. The war here seems small enough in scale that one Boss could keep up a minimally-organizationally-complex strategy like "shove some Leopards into a group and tell them to raid this part of the border", so I don't think it's implausible.)
Sure that does sound plausible based on what we have seen.
But most dogs only interact with the raiders, we don't know if something more complex is going on. This isn't mission critical, but it might change our assumptions about their military.
I guess if Hyohakken really just wants to send small parties like this, then Cannai was probably right about them not being a terrible threat. Unlike the Pangolin.
but I really don't want to make it a habit of his that, even after coming to terms that he's accepting a mission to do these things he doesn't agree with, he'll still grind the mission to a halt to spend an update or three angsting over whether he can really go through with the thing he already agreed to do knowing it's a bad thing that he doesn't want to do.
that wouldn't have to be hazou's characterizations. we could spin it that hazou agreed to kill 12 leopard murderers, but never agreed to and is frankly shocked that cannai would be fine with him killing leopard non-murderers. although there is conflict with that and cannai's instructions to ambush. how does hazou expect to determine guilt before an ambush? and if he doesn't, why didn't he speak up when cannai mentioned it? we could say hazou didn't think of it at the time, which is why he is retreating to dog and talking to cannai again. not thinking of the details of something is different characterization from knowingly accepting a mission he knew he wouldn't want to do.
edit: i mean that doesn't work for these particular prisoners who tried to kill us. but it could work for hazou explaining to cannai why he retreated and is talking to cannai again instead of ambushing some leopard camps
