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Well, now that we can vote i wanted to quote this post.

I really like this. We should write a letter from the perspective of a Hazou who, lacking Primordial Sealing, had really given up on opposing the Akatsuki, stewing in despair. He goes off to research/relax, overcautious because of how his last major sealing failure turned out (bonus points if we can come up with some heartbreakingly prosocial motivation for what he was researching). He gets this missive from Itachi. He immediately interprets it as the Akatsuki wanting to kill him and all his friends, despairs further, gives up on Uplift and all his ideals, and just decides to take his family and hide in the wilderness forever.

Phrasing it this way would potentially exploit Itachi's psychology. He'd previously indicated that he has somewhat self-deprecating views towards the Akatsuki as a force of good in the absence of Pain. And, well, here he goes, clumsily breaking someone who might've been a force for good.

The advantage here is that this might introduce some doubt regarding whether Hazou must be hunted down. If we go missing as-is, that'd be pretty unambiguous. If we provide this explanation for why even an innocent Hazou would go missing at this point? Well, perhaps they devote 85% of the effort to hunting us down, compared to the amount of effort they'd devote without said doubt. That's pretty good.

Have Mari optimize the letter, and we'd hit Itachi with like a Deception 100 attack. It'll almost certainly work.

It's also almost completely risk-free. Send it by civilian mail addressed to the Tower, after we've exfiltrated the rest of Team Uplift, or send it to Condors/Turtles.

Send something along these lines(Content may vary dependings on our objectives). Modify the relevant parts to hit where Itachi is weak to and , here's the fun part send it to Naruto secretly, not Itachi, but Naruto. When Itachi comes knocking demanding answer, he wins the deception score against Naruto and finds out he's hiding something, but doesn't know what, then Naruto gives up the letter.
Itachi will know that Naruto is still hiding something, but he's an Hokage, he cannot reveal state secrets, so it's not like "you're hiding something" is the finishing move that is against us.

More importantly we give Naruto a way to make us missing-nin, but not filthy traitors that betrayed our country(as Hagoromo would absolutely claim): he can waive our expertly crafted letter (by Mari) around explaning how Leaf couldn't protect us from the Akatsuki or something, but not, i don't know, because we sacrificed children to Jashin or something like that.
 
Losing out on a week of XP because the interlude is inexplicably a week long instead of a day long, with no warning... Yikes.

Ah well, at least we read some notes or whatever.
 
I know we talked about sharing CotWG with Tenten if she learns Wind but being totally honest, it is just way too slow to learn another element. Let's say she's jonin track like Hazou with 4 xp a day. If she also benefits from TR150 then effectively that's 6 per day. It will still take her 170 days to learn Wind and will only have COTWG 30, without the buff stunts either. I dunno what else would be more worth learning for her in this time, probably just pumping basic skills tbh.

I'm tempted to discuss amending the cost of gaining an element because I think it taking 6 months for a 6/day genius to create that xp doesn't really suit the narrative, but I also think there are more important mechanics and such that are more pressing for the QMs to discuss, so I would suggest we just move forward with the assumption she will only have access to Fire or Neutral techs.
 
If there are specific things you want to know, then please ask those.
From discussion on discord, it seems that the clan secret situation in Konoha is essentially one of prosecutorial discretion; basically nothing we know is a clan secret and can be demanded by the Hokage if they are willing to face the repercussions we can leverage in response to them doing so. In fact, even if something is a clan secret the Hokage can still demand it (such as Asuma demanding Hazo tell him how he caused that massive frozen storm), it's just that the consequences would be larger for them for doing so.

I really enjoy the "make the Goketsu stronger" aspect of the quest, and wanted to know the specifics of the law so I could advocate in thread for plans that would leave Clan Goketsu in the best place in terms of runecraft and ninjutsu protection upon returning to Konoha with Akatsuki-killing weapons. But....I think that posting my questions about the specifics of what could fall into the case of "clan secret" and what protection those have from the Hokage and the other clans in Konoha (etc.) would cost more of your guys' spoons than it is worth. If you have any information I should keep in mind for that agenda, I'd love to hear it, but otherwise please disregard my previous question.

Sorry to bother y'all.
 
[X] Training Plan Hazou: Sealing Step

Eat those notes! Eat those notes!
 
From discussion on discord, it seems that the clan secret situation in Konoha is essentially one of prosecutorial discretion; basically nothing we know is a clan secret and can be demanded by the Hokage if they are willing to face the repercussions we can leverage in response to them doing so. In fact, even if something is a clan secret the Hokage can still demand it (such as Asuma demanding Hazo tell him how he caused that massive frozen storm), it's just that the consequences would be larger for them for doing so.

I really enjoy the "make the Goketsu stronger" aspect of the quest, and wanted to know the specifics of the law so I could advocate in thread for plans that would leave Clan Goketsu in the best place in terms of runecraft and ninjutsu protection upon returning to Konoha with Akatsuki-killing weapons. But....I think that posting my questions about the specifics of what could fall into the case of "clan secret" and what protection those have from the Hokage and the other clans in Konoha (etc.) would cost more of your guys' spoons than it is worth. If you have any information I should keep in mind for that agenda, I'd love to hear it, but otherwise please disregard my previous question.

Sorry to bother y'all.
I think primarily your problem is the Gōketsu's specific secrets are mostly not clan secrets. This is in no way surprising, since the entire way of the hivemind is to pick up already-available things and extract unusual levels of value from them, and already-available things don't tend to be protected by clan secrecy laws. And then there are cases like runecrafting, where the hivemind consciously chose to forgo clan secret protection instead of finally taking the opportunity to adopt dear Uncle Orochimaru.
 
As if Orochimaru would ever have agreed to adoption. At best he'd take over the clan, tell us to stop wasting money so much, and turn the compound into something Akatsuki-safe but not civilian-safe.
 
Kei might. I would really like to avoid introducing social friction where it can possibly be avoided - we're going to go nuts in close quarters and a stressful environment in a few months and unnecessary unhappiness is going to accelerate that.

Kei is objectively the right person to take point on this. We should support her, but she should lead.

We also need to shake Mari and Kagome down for their techniques. Anything they have that could help us - more to the point, Yuno - is going to be critical.

Then Kei can deal with it like a reasonable adult. If she's not going to deal with it like a reasonable adult, then we toss Mari at her.

We're fighting against the Akatsuki, a gang of Essies hellbent on unlocking the Rift and ruling over the setting as bloodsoaked tyrants.

Team Uplift has been through hell and back, several times, for and with each other. That should create a wellspring of trust and understanding that will smooth over any perceived blunders, allowing Kei to deal with an instance of Hazō "accidentally being offensive when actively going out of his way not to be" like a mature and reasonable friend and sister.

Full Transparency: I have absolutely zero interest in trying to micromanage the team's mental and emotional wellbeing while also trying to come up with and research exotic WMDs to combat the Akatsuki. The team are all experienced ninja that knows what at stake.

If Kei, for some reason, decides to get unreasonable while we're on the biggest do-or-die mission of our lives, then that's on her.

As for jutsu: I highly doubt we're going to get any more jutsu from the QMs. They'll either find a narrative reason not to, or we'll get them, narratively, but won't get them, mechanically (such was the case for Jiraiya's Hoard for IRL years). Sounds like a waste of QM time and energy that would be better spent on adjudicating difficulty checks and research rolls.
 
As if Orochimaru would ever have agreed to adoption. At best he'd take over the clan, tell us to stop wasting money so much, and turn the compound into something Akatsuki-safe but not civilian-safe.
Hazō did in fact once try to adopt him, only to be told that Orochimaru interpreted this as wanting to give him the clan.
 
[---] Interlude: Honoka's Perspective

I'd honestly like this, but it's probably better from a Let-EJ-Have-Fun-For-XP perspective to just let him have free reign.

What I'm hearing is that we are not missing-nin at this moment and long term won't have been considered to be such at this moment.

I happen to really like Gōketsu power-building and want this to be addressed as well as possible.

@eaglejarl, by the way, is there any chance we can get an extension to tomorrow afternoon for voting? This seems like a plan that's going to need to address leadership issues (with Kei and Noburi seeming to want to push the bounds) and that seems like it's going to take a bit of time to write.

From discussion on discord, it seems that the clan secret situation in Konoha is essentially one of prosecutorial discretion; basically nothing we know is a clan secret and can be demanded by the Hokage if they are willing to face the repercussions we can leverage in response to them doing so. In fact, even if something is a clan secret the Hokage can still demand it (such as Asuma demanding Hazo tell him how he caused that massive frozen storm), it's just that the consequences would be larger for them for doing so.

I really enjoy the "make the Goketsu stronger" aspect of the quest, and wanted to know the specifics of the law so I could advocate in thread for plans that would leave Clan Goketsu in the best place in terms of runecraft and ninjutsu protection upon returning to Konoha with Akatsuki-killing weapons. But....I think that posting my questions about the specifics of what could fall into the case of "clan secret" and what protection those have from the Hokage and the other clans in Konoha (etc.) would cost more of your guys' spoons than it is worth. If you have any information I should keep in mind for that agenda, I'd love to hear it, but otherwise please disregard my previous question.

Sorry to bother y'all.

I, too, really love powerbase-building, and found Goketsu shenanigans and reputation to be one of my favorite parts of the quest.

Hazō did in fact once try to adopt him, only to be told that Orochimaru interpreted this as wanting to give him the clan.

If we could trust him to not start dissecting our people, we would absolutely give him the clan before fleeing.

As it is, adopting our dear snuncle is... difficult.

I suspect that making a thousand-yards-stare rune and becoming the high priest of Jashin may help with that. I hope that vision we had wasn't caused by anything from the Out that was eating our mind(s).
 
Losing out on a week of XP because the interlude is inexplicably a week long instead of a day long, with no warning... Yikes.

Was this mechanical interaction made apparent to the players beforehand, and did the voters understand the risks thereof? Or were people blindsided?

If the voters were blindsided on a matter of mechanics rather than in-universe happenings related to in-universe actions, I think a discussion on mechanical adjustment (restoring the lost XP) should be on the table. This is not the same as misreading an IC interaction and being killboxed for it.
 
OK, so some brainstorming about build plans has happened. Thanks to Shrooms and Punchy for their ideas and correction, I mostly just mathed this out.

Sealing 51->54 (42 XP plus 276 notes XP). Chosen to maximize crossover bonus with PS softcap.
PS 20->32 is 636 XP.

CR 30-> 33 is 192 XP. Chosen to theoretically summon Cannai with a moderate for more chakra from Noburi/overdrawing.

Ath -> 49 (50) is 522 (572) XP. A little juggling of the skill pyramid may be needed depending on the exact path circumstances dictate.
TJ -> 49 is 405 XP.

TH 10 -> 40 is 530 XP plus 1k notes XP.
Currently we're at 2,377 XP for local maxima for research and combat ability.

MS is uncertain, but similarly Discord discussion estimates we'll want to softcap it at MS 32 for 1,056 XP.
Currently at 3,433 XP.

Lightning is 1,000 XP for SotS 30 and 35 leftover XP to spend on halfcost lightning jutsu (enough to get one to 10 and another to 5).
Currently 4,433 XP.

The estimated XP rate is 3.5 base XP per day with some amount of FOOM and TR150, giving us (3.5 + (3.5 x 1.1) + 1) x 1.5 = 12.5 XP per day. The final amount is 355 days' worth at this rate. If we estimate 6 months before we really have to worry about Akatsuki and the rift, we can get up to TJ 49 and raise TH some amount depending on the pyramid and when we run out of notes, probably in the 30s?

Feedback welcome. This would involve 5-10 stagnancy barriers, Sealing-Combat-Sealing-Combat-Sealing-Combat-Sealing-Combat-Sealing-Combat. Sealing barriers should be easy to clear with runic research, so combat barriers are the main issue. The 6-month plan ending at TJ 49 would have two combat barriers, and the overall plan would have five total.

Raising Sealing to 55 instead would be 110 more XP, have a crossover bonus 1 higher, and not result in a higher softcap. I leave the question of whether this would be worth 9 days of XP up to the thread, since my collaborators disagree and I have no strong opinion.

Similarly, leaving PS and MS at 30 each and Sealing at 54 would be 252 less XP needed, or three weeks of XP. The circumstances are the same, so I leave it to the thread.
 
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Was this mechanical interaction made apparent to the players beforehand, and did the voters understand the risks thereof? Or were people blindsided?

If the voters were blindsided on a matter of mechanics rather than in-universe happenings related to in-universe actions, I think a discussion on mechanical adjustment (restoring the lost XP) should be on the table. This is not the same as misreading an IC interaction and being killboxed for it.
We were aware of interludes not getting XP, however, I don't think a single interlude has ever been this long in the 9 year history of the quest, so it was unexpected.
 
it's really not a big deal... we aren't getting FOOM, it would've probably been a low base rate from the plan literally just being wait for them to do the thing, it probably would've been like 20 xp. It's not literally nothing but it's peanuts and there's much more important things we would like them to litigate sooner.

EDIT: and they're still giving us notes xp and research which frankly matters a lot more in this timespan...
 
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[X] Action Plan: Welcome to Uplift
[X] Training Plan Hazou: Sealing Step

Losing out on a week of XP because the interlude is inexplicably a week long instead of a day long, with no warning... Yikes.

I honestly do not understand how y'all could ask for an interlude about the rest of the Goketsu going missing again and not at least suspect that time might pass. I can see an argument I guess that you wanted just the slight snippet of them leaving the Leaf, but...that's the issue with not being super specific and voting for interludes. XP is lost.
 
CR 30-> 33 is 192 XP. Chosen to theoretically summon Cannai with a moderate for more chakra from Noburi/overdrawing
Math for the curious:
Toad Sages cost 505 CP and 510 CP, and they're S Rank summons. Cannai should cost around the same, maybe less since they're much older than him.

Hazou has 315 CP right now. With CR 31, he would have (310 + .05×310 = ) 326 CP. With a mild consequence overdraw, he gets another 16 CP. With a Noburi overcharge moderate consequence, he can gain another 163 CP for a total of exactly 505 CP. We're thinking of getting CR 33 as a bit of an overshoot just in case Cannai is a bit pricier.

His totals with CR 33 is (330 + .05×330 = ) 347 CP, plus mild overdraw 17 CP, plus Noburi moderate overcharge 174, for a total of 538 CP. This means if we get a round of prep, Hazou can take a mild and medium in exchange for having a Boss summon. If we run into Akatsuki early and they're chewing through our defenses, this could turn an unwinnable encounter into a tossup.

Noburi may also be able to convince the Sages or Gamabunta to help fight Akatsuki since they killed Jiraiya, no consequences needed. I don't think Kei is getting Pantsaa to help more than likely. Kumokogo would probably help Kagome but I think his reserves are even worse than Hazou's. Worth checking though.
 
The Sage did do this. He created the Veil of Maya which has made interpath travel more difficult.
Right, but he didn't make it strong enough to withstand sealing failures.

"I've been doing runic weapons research to kill Akatsuki, on Naruto's orders. Everything else was just a cover. The message you gave me last time was a contingency trigger to go missing because he couldn't stall them any further."

Noburi silently absorbed this.

"I guess that tracks. The others–Kei, Snowflake, Kagome–did they know when they signed up?"
I have this odd feeling that Nobs is getting genjustu'ed by Itachi. Maybe I'm just being too paranoid, though.

Depending on Mari's CR we should start teaching her Summoning.
Why? Are you thinking that we give Mari the Dog scroll temporarily or something?

Send something along these lines(Content may vary dependings on our objectives). Modify the relevant parts to hit where Itachi is weak to and , here's the fun part send it to Naruto secretly, not Itachi, but Naruto. When Itachi comes knocking demanding answer, he wins the deception score against Naruto and finds out he's hiding something, but doesn't know what, then Naruto gives up the letter.
I like the idea in principle, but I don't see a way to get this delivered to Naruto privately. What we might be able to do is get it spread across Fire as some kind of notice or something. Seems easier than getting into contact with Naruto.
 
Why? Are you thinking that we give Mari the Dog scroll temporarily or something?
We could probably get the Squirrel scroll in like a week if we go all out. There are complications though, like how the Squirrels (7th Path and human path both) apparently don't trust Leaf ninja. OTOH Mari is a master social specialist and could probably persuade the Squirrel boss, especially due to how useful and powerful of a Summoner she would be. We've seen time and again the 7th Path clans will defy ideology in the face of pragmatism and self gain.

I don't want to get ahead of ourselves just yet though. If we aren't committed to doing that there's no need to train Mari.
 
The XP is lost then, I take it? That's a shame, since time has passed can we have read sealing notes? All of the last few plans specify reading notes in Hazou's free time. Since we can't FOOM that would have been a significant amount of notes.

[X] Action Plan: Welcome to Uplift
Word Count: ???
  • Uplift
    • Thank Tenten for leaving Leaf on Kei's word alone. We'll do our best to be worthy of it.
    • Welcome to Team Uplift, Hazou has some new seals he'll need to scribe for everyone, and we'll get you read into to all of our codes/combat strategies ASAP.
    • Ask Kei to read her in. We have seals to scribe.
      • Scribe seals (RRBs, Force Blades, skywalkers etc.) for everyone for the rest of the day.
  • Team meeting once Noburi and co. arrive
    • We need to work out a chakra budget for FOOM, explain FOOM to Tenten, Kagome, and Yuno
      • Now that we're missing-nin, Hazou will teach Shadow Clone to anyone who wants to learn it.
      • Depending on the chakra budget it, it likely makes sense to funnel it all to Hazou so that he can learn Runecrafting faster and research runes in parallel.
    • Yuno you'll be in charge of hunting nests of beasts so Noburi can drain them for FOOM, quietly.
    • Noburi, can you still keep your apprenticeship with the Toad Sages?
    • Next, we're heading to the Oro's chakra cave in Wind, any suggestions for how to get there undetected?
  • Research
    • Stop by the bladehorror site in Iron for a day or two and take observations with the team, use MS 8 and chakrascope.
      • Do prep days with SC on Oro's 3 Rift Runes described by Naruto.
    • FOOM as much as the budget permits, read notes with extra blocks.
  • Head for the chakra water cave after wrapping up at the bladehorror rift.
I'm broadly skeptical of the FOOM stuff here, from two directions. First, I don't think we're likely to be able to FOOM much at all, even optimistically, once you account for how much chakra we'll need for runecrafting and how much the team will want to keep in reserve for emergencies. Hunting down chakra beasts en masse to drain them feels both insufficient and problematic: I don't think even Yuno can hunt quick enough to source a lot of chakra per day, and leaving a trail of nonlethally-incapacitated-and-only-then-killed chakra beasts sounds ill-advised from an OPSEC perspective (I presume that the kind of fight we'd have Yuno doing would leave different physical evidence than regular kills. If we're doing this in enough volume to meaningfully FOOM, I think we leave way too big a signal to any hunter-nin who happen to be nearby. Unless we hunt aquatic beasts, which should leave no meaningful evidence behind.)

The second is that, unlike runes and the rift, FOOM actually isn't relevant to our mission parameters. It's not secret anymore, not our secret, but it's still enough of a secret that we shouldn't share it around without good reason. Kagome in particular, we've covered this before in the SC talks but we really can't outright ignore the fact that he's inherently an OPSEC leak. Sharing Shadow Clone itself is of course fine, there's ample benefit to having such a powerful ninjutsu in more of our team's toolkits, but if FOOM essentially doesn't exist for us (and it doesn't, I believe) then there's no benefit to talking about it other than going full-disclosure on all our secrets just for the sake of it.

I'm open to being convinced that we do actually have enough chakra budget to meaningfully FOOM even without mass-draining land-borne chakra beasts and even after leaving our team with enough chakra for emergencies. Maybe the numbers look better than I think they do, either on the face of it or after we explore how much Noburi can bring in from the oceans. Even if that's true, though, I still remain skeptical about sharing FOOM here. Even if there's ample chakra to go around somehow, raising SC to 30 would take long enough that they essentially don't get to FOOM anyways.

(Unless, of course, you mean by this that we're making Yuno and Tenten core Team Uplift members in that "we hide nothing from each other" way, and that we'd obviously cut them into FOOM even after returning to Leaf, which I can see as a fair perspective, though the Kagome OPSEC connundrum remains a problem.)

In terms of tangible requests, I would like the FOOM angle (not the SC stuff, just the FOOM stuff) scaled down to figuring out how much chakra budget we have. Discuss emergency reserves, ocean chakra farming, and the costs of Hazou's runecrafting. We can figure out after that if anything resembling FOOM is still possible, and talk about whether to share it or not.
 
[X] Action Plan: Welcome to Uplift
Word Count: ???
  • Uplift
    • Thank Tenten for leaving Leaf on Kei's word alone. We'll do our best to be worthy of it.
    • Welcome to Team Uplift, Hazou has some new seals he'll need to scribe for everyone, and we'll get you read into to all of our codes/combat strategies ASAP.
    • Ask Kei to read her in. We have seals to scribe.
      • Scribe seals (RRBs, Force Blades, skywalkers etc.) for everyone for the rest of the day.
  • Team meeting once Noburi and co. arrive
    • We need to work out a chakra budget for FOOM, explain FOOM to Tenten, Kagome, and Yuno
      • Now that we're missing-nin, Hazou will teach Shadow Clone to anyone who wants to learn it.
      • Depending on the chakra budget it, it likely makes sense to funnel it all to Hazou so that he can learn Runecrafting faster and research runes in parallel.
    • Yuno you'll be in charge of hunting nests of beasts so Noburi can drain them for FOOM, quietly.
    • Noburi, can you still keep your apprenticeship with the Toad Sages?
    • Next, we're heading to the Oro's chakra cave in Wind, any suggestions for how to get there undetected?
  • Research
    • Stop by the bladehorror site in Iron for a day or two and take observations with the team, use MS 8 and chakrascope.
      • Do prep days with SC on Oro's 3 Rift Runes described by Naruto.
    • FOOM as much as the budget permits, read notes with extra blocks.
  • Head for the chakra water cave after wrapping up at the bladehorror rift.
Can I suggest explicitly mentioning the possibility of showing the Toad Sages Naruto's letter (under "Noburi, can you keep ...")? We've talked about it before, but might not make it into the discussion if it isn't in the plan.
 
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