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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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@eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien : Do we know whether Snowflake can use Kei's Shadow Element techniques? Has Kei told us anything on the subject? (If she hasn't, I am not suggesting that Hazō should ask - that seems like treading perilously close to Nara secrets, and the kind of thing we should probe at in a proper plan - but if she doesn't consider the answer secret Hazō might already know.)

Context here is that back when we were asking Oro about how non-standard elements worked, he said this:
Paperclipped said:
"Your sister learned the Nara's Shadow Element, I presume?" Orochimaru asked, as he inspected various vials. "They are the only non-standard element users in Leaf, and I do not believe you have traveled far enough to find another clan so willing to share their secrets."

"Yes, Lord Orochimaru."

"The Shadow Element is not a typical example, as it is not anchored to the Nara's bloodline. But that should be a trivial inference, given that you already know about the Five clans.
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One interpretation of this is "The Nara already have a Thinker bloodline, so they can't also have a Shadow Element bloodline, so it should be trivial to infer that Shadow Element is not a bloodline Element". The problem with this is that it requires the Nara to have been hoarding an entire human-learnable Element from everyone else for hundreds of years, and somehow for the secret never to have got out. It's possible, certainly, but it doesn't seem that likely.

The other interpretation is that what Oro is saying is a trivial inference is that the Shadow Element works because it draws its "seed" from the entities on the other end of Thinker bloodlines. Oro was describing nonstandard Elements as working because the bloodline draws in a tiny amount of nature chakra to create a seed of the Element, which then allows aspecting the rest of the chakra. Given that Kei also has a Thinker bloodline, it doesn't seem unreasonable that what he was actually saying is "you have to have a Thinker bloodline to use Shadow Element, but it doesn't have to be the Nara's", and he was calling that a trivial inference because he's Oro.

But in that case, it raises the question of whether Shadow Clones - which lack the bloodline in question - can use techniques hypothetically dependent on it. It wouldn't be definitive if they could - there are other explanations - but it would be evidence towards Shadow Element being learnable by anyone. And if they can't, I think that would be very strong evidence that the Shadow Element requires a Thinker bloodline to use.

As an aside, @Shrooms, you were talking about the Nara teaching all their genin Shadow Element. It occurs to me that Shadow Element not being a bloodline doesn't necessarily mean they're not born with it; if it's genuinely a human-learnable Element just like the other, Nara could be born with it just like other ninja are born with Fire or Earth, and even if it does depend on having a Thinker bloodline the affinity being heritable doesn't seem out of the question.
 
Kyreneryk said:
@eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien : Do we know whether Snowflake can use Kei's Shadow Element techniques? Has Kei told us anything on the subject? (If she hasn't, I am not suggesting that Hazō should ask - that seems like treading perilously close to Nara secrets, and the kind of thing we should probe at in a proper plan - but if she doesn't consider the answer secret Hazō might already know.)
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She can, yes. We actually had her test their interactions with the Instant Darkness seal.
 
Kyreneryk said:
Given that Kei also has a Thinker bloodline, it doesn't seem unreasonable that what he was actually saying is "you have to have a Thinker bloodline to use Shadow Element, but it doesn't have to be the Nara's", and he was calling that a trivial inference because he's Oro.
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Nah IIRC even people who marry in can learn it. It's just a Hiden/Secret technique, not a bloodline. If you needed a bloodline to use it they wouldn't be (as) concerned about people potentially learning their secrets. I do believe we've also been told Snowflake can use their techs.


Kyreneryk said:
As an aside, @Shrooms, you were talking about the Nara teaching all their genin Shadow Element. It occurs to me that Shadow Element not being a bloodline doesn't necessarily mean they're not born with it; if it's genuinely a human-learnable Element just like the other, Nara could be born with it just like other ninja are born with Fire or Earth, and even if it does depend on having a Thinker bloodline the affinity being heritable doesn't seem out of the question.
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It isn't out of the question, I agree, but there's also no evidence to the case and minor evidence to the contrary (that is, that this happens nowhere else.) And the Nara are not the only ones with such hidden techniques so it's kind of a moot point imo.

A speculation of my own is that the Yamanaka for example also use Yin release (as it happens YSJ applies to both Yam techs and Nara techs, it's Yin release in canon the same way Nara jutsu are, etc). I'm less confident but fairly confident the Akimichi use Yang release for their jutsu since this is also true in canon. And neither the Yams nor Akimichi have a (known?) bloodline ability, just secret techniques. Wouldn't surprise me if the body transformations of the Inuzuka are also Yang, though this one is the most tenuous.

Or, say you're a Motoyoshi mf and your clan has a ton of awesome earth techniques but you're born with Fire like half of everyone else in the village, you probably get earth (well, if you can survive a year or more of not getting better and not using clan techs anyway.) Etc etc.

Hence why I think 500 refund 250 suits the narrative a bit better than 1000 refund 500. Spending 250 on the stunt again has parity with all of the other big 250 xp stunts, 500 total xp is something that can reasonably be raised in 6 months by ~25% or less of ninja, rather than 1%>. It's still a pretty big detour that probably isn't worth it before you've got skills in the 40s or Clan techniques to take advantage of, but it's also something that you would at least consider doing before pyramid locking your build.

I think I was replying to Halberdier when I said this but to some extent I think the status quo kind of benefits us more - nearly everyone else can't reasonably expect to raise that much in a timely manner, but we can. So just want to be clear that I'm not saying all this bc I'm begging for powerups, I just genuinely think it improves the system as a whole :V
 
_The_Bomb said:
She can, yes. We actually had her test their interactions with the Instant Darkness seal.
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Velorien said:
Snowflake performed the Nara ninjutsu tests in private, explaining that if Hazō, in learning more about how they worked, inadvertently discovered a Nara clan secret, or worse, a hard counter to a Nara clan secret (e.g. if Nara ninjutsu were unusable in the vicinity of a darkness dome), Kei would be obliged to report this to Shikamaru, and then things would get complicated for all concerned. In the event, she found that the techniques she knew either did not interact with the seal (because they did not rely on environmental shadows) or had a weak synergy (because the domes blocked the Nara user's line of sight to the target as normal).
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Oh. Well, that's a memory failure for me. (Though in fairness, we technically don't know that Snowflake actually did the tests, since she did them in private, and plausibly a reason for that could be that actually she can't cast them; but I agree it seems unlikely.)

Shrooms said:
Or, say you're a Motoyoshi mf and your clan has a ton of awesome earth techniques but you're born with Fire like half of everyone else in the village, you probably get earth (well, if you can survive a year or more of not getting better and not using clan techs anyway.) Etc etc.
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This specific thing reminds me of something, actually. Do we know anything about the heritability of elemental affinities? Specifically:
  • Are they actually heritable at all? They're clearly not just random, because people in Fire are much more likely to have Fire affinity than anything else, but do we know that's because of genetics? If a bunch of ninja from Cloud come and settle in Leaf, are their children still more likely to get Lightning?
    • Alternative hypotheses: culture dependence (e.g. foods eaten during pregnancy), some property of the ambient chakra in the area, some other difference in the place or behaviour rather than the biology.
  • If they're heritable, what level does the inheritance act at? Possible cases (not a complete list):
    • The heritable trait is likelihood of being born with particular elements and varies ~continuously (polygenic, if it's controlled by genes and not chakra shenanigans), so the child of e.g. Hazō and Kei (Earth and Wind) is still more likely to be born with Water than any other element, because Hazō and Kei both have a high genetic likelihood of getting Water affinity (being from Mist). Which affinity you actually get is then random/dependent on environmental factors.
    • The heritable trait is your base affinity, which is discrete (likely monogenic, if controlled by genetics), so Hazō and Kei's child is more likely to get Earth or Wind than other elements. There may or may not still be some degree of randomness involved.
      • Note that if it really is genetic and monogenic each person should have two alleles for elemental affinity (assuming it's not X-linked), and plausibly Hazō and Kei are [Earth/Water] and [Wind/Water]; in that case, the probabilities for their child depend on how the relative dominances work (if it's not just "you get a random one of the two you inherit"), but it might still be more probable for the child to get Water than anything else.
    • The heritable trait includes your learned affinities (Lamarckian inheritance). That is, if Hazō has a child after learning Lightning, the child is more likely to have Lightning affinity than it would have been if he'd had it before learning Lightning.
      • Obviously in this case the inheritance can't be genetic. But it could be something like "the elements the mother uses during gestation influence what affinity the child gets" or similar; it could also be epigenetic, though this seems less likely, or chakra-based, which seems somewhat more likely.

The reason I bring this up is that, if affinities are heritable, it's totally plausible that the Motoyoshi clan actually mostly produces Earth-affinity children, even though Leaf as a whole is mostly Fire. Which would help explain how you can have an Element-specialist clan in a population mostly not of that element, actually, given that - as we've been discussing! - elements are hard to learn.
 
Kyreneryk said:
This specific thing reminds me of something, actually. Do we know anything about the heritability of elemental affinities?
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I don't think we know anything beyond the 5 great nations having a 60% chance to be born with their respective element and the 4 remaining being a 10% chance each.

I do think that when you're born with a bloodline element you are born with that element. That being said, e.g. Ice is Wind + Water, so... are you also born able to use Wind and Water? Are they half-costed for you?
 
I wish we had demographic data on how many people's second element was driven by build decisions (like picking the one that's strong against their counter and getting elemental journeymen against it to cover a weakness), versus accessibility of the element itself (if you and a sibling each have a different element and you teach each other, for example), versus access to specific techniques (Hazou learning SotS because it's really strong and plays nicely with his (long-neglected) attack Strat).

I REALLY wish we had survival rates cross-sectioned by that data. But either the Nara has it and wouldn't want it to get out, or they don't have it and really wish they had it as well. Especially if pre-packaged build suggestions was something they were making for the masses.

...I wonder if large chunks of the Nara get higher base XP due to clan-based build/training optimization, and they put most of that XP into deceit so they can keep all their cool strategies and lore an actual secret.
 
Shrooms said:
I do think that when you're born with a bloodline element you are born with that element. That being said, e.g. Ice is Wind + Water, so... are you also born able to use Wind and Water? Are they half-costed for you?
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Is it even in MfD? I couldn't trivially find anything saying so - seems more likely that it's just another bloodline element, maybe with some connection to Wind and Water but not a literal combination of the two.

Shrooms said:
I don't think we know anything beyond the 5 great nations having a 60% chance to be born with their respective element and the 4 remaining being a 10% chance each.
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Hmm. Alright, then.

[] Plan Fragment: Elementary Genetics (93 words)
  • Ask Kei if she knows anything about whether and how Elements are inherited.
    • If not and if he has time, ask Cannai how it works on the Seventh Path.
  • If not: ask the team if they know any ninja families (not Wakahisa!) well enough to know what Elements the parents and children had.
    • Kei's parents included, if she knows their affinities.
    • Importantly; which were they born with?
    • Be sensitive - families are a touchy topic right now.
  • If the team doesn't know enough examples, ask the Dusk Willow pack the same thing for dogs.
That's quite a lot of wordcount, so here's a shorter version (less good IMO but easier to fit in):

[] Plan Fragment: Elementary Genetics (42 words)
  • Ask Kei if she knows anything about whether and how Elements are inherited.
  • If not: gather Element data from the team (Kei's parents, ninja families known, etc.)
    • Be sensitive!
  • Failing the above: ask Cannai (if available) and gather data from Dusk Willow.
 
Kyreneryk said:
Is it even in MfD? I couldn't trivially find anything saying so - seems more likely that it's just another bloodline element, maybe with some connection to Wind and Water but not a literal combination of the two.
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I don't recall for certain but I think this was one of the things that was true in canon that they didn't choose to change, at least initially

I don't know if that's still the case, that's something minor enough that I could see them changing the explanation later to something that fits better. Some of them are more obviously related than others too, like Lava is fiery Earth? Makes sense. Boil is fiery water? Makes sense. Ice is windy water? Hmm fine I suppose. Magnet is windy earth? Uh, okay...? Explosion is earthy lightning? WHAT

(Notably, Deidara does in fact have explosion release, Earth, and Lightning IIRC. Lends a bit of credence I suppose.)
 
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped

Do Kumokogo's oaths of not-passing-messages include any way for Uplift to release her from the oath, or any other exit condition?

Kei implied she was going to wordsmith the oath, and Kumokogo is no rookie to oaths, so I'd expect something like this to be factored in.

If not, does this mean we messed up and permanently bound our 7th path allies to never pass messages for us again? Or is there some other condition to end the information blockade?
 
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