You know what'd be hilarious? If we decided to go out and do punching things for the update that Velorien comes back to us, and then went back to diplomacy for eaglejarl's.

e: But that's too mean to do, even to them.
 
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You know what'd be hilarious? If we decided to go out and do punching things for the update that Velorien comes back to us, and then went back to diplomacy for eaglejarl's.

e: But that's too mean to do, even to them.

Well, I mean, if we go out and punch out a bunch of the other teams then there will be fewer active seals in circulation. This goes double if we target Mist-nin who know the trick of the seals (and therefore are saving all their chakra for the last 24 hours. We take them out, they don't activate any seals).

It would even reinforce our trading plans, because if we leave alone people who trade their seals for party tricks but actively hunt the others then trade also provides a level of safety.
 
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Well, I mean, if we go out and punch out a bunch of the other teams then there will be fewer active seals in circulation. This goes double if we target Mist-nin who know the trick of the seals (and therefore are saving all their chakra for the last 24 hours. We take them out, they don't activate any seals).

It would even reinforce our trading plans, because if we leave alone people who trade their seals for party tricks but actively hunt the others then trade also provides a level of safety.

Except we made a promise not to attack anybody. Although that isn't necessary the case for other Leaf teams.
 
A few reasons.

1) Hazou's estimation of sealing failures is artificially high due to his experiences in the woods - A village's resources to contain and deal with sealing failures are far superior to a missing-nin's. This means that while a seal may fail, it will, at worst, kill a few genin before being contained.
2) The chances of something going bad are actually fairly low - it's not how many seals are in play, it's how many seals are hit by aoe attacks - we can actually reduce this via disencentivizing violence via our current plan

The above means that the danger is not as large as Hazou thinks it is from his experiences. Additionally, let's examine other options of what might be the case:

1) The single seal Hazou saw might be different from the other seals, meaning they don't have the same failure problems
2) It's possible that, as Hazou's specialty is not sealing failures, the person who designed this seal manipulated it such that it doesn't fail unsafely (i.e. Hazou might have messed up a sealing background check leading to errant conclusions)

So, all the above means it is likely not as bad as Hazou made it out to be. Now let's examine the political capital that needs to be burned to stop this:

To the average ninja, this (night light seals) doesn't seem like a dangerous thing, and it is difficult to demonstrate the danger. It will require trusting Jiraiya (or whomever Hazou uses) to stop the exam. The danger also cannot be well demonstrated beyond to a small subset of people (i.e. sealmasters). This means Mist will likely be able to spin the story such that Leaf and/or Hazou thought the exam was too hard and were too weak ninja to continue it. Mist will not just graciously say "oh yeah, my bad." In fact, there's a strong chance that Mist will resist attempts to stop the event until either the event is over or a sealing catastrophy occurs (in which case Hazou's warning did little to nothing, though he'll recoup the political capital spent).
Okay, this is from a few pages back, but this stood out to me enough that I have to respond to it.

There is no such thing as a "safe" sealing failure. Period. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a stinking stinker. Who stinks. Kagome and Jiraiya would know. You cannot make a sealing failure safe or controlled in any way, or any appreciable way; all you can do is try to mitigate the chance of one.

Furthermore, the Kages of the Hidden Villages will invariably have at least some knowledge of sealing, considering how potentially powerful and potentially dangerous it is. They'll understand how catastrophic a chain sealing failure on this scale could be, and non-Mist Kages will have no reason not to want to take advantage of a sudden unexpected political weakness on Mist's part.
 
You know what'd be hilarious? If we decided to go out and do punching things for the update that Velorien comes back to us, and then went back to diplomacy for eaglejarl's.

e: But that's too mean to do, even to them.

If we tried that, I'd predict Hazo would mysteriously trip and break all his arms that update only to be miraculously healed for the next update.
 
Panashe said:
"Ah, excellent. I was afraid I'd need to explain it. Well, as you are probably aware, Summoner Keiko's brother is a sealmaster. He knows how to modify the seals so that they can be switched on and off. My Summoner and her family intend to set up a fortress somewhere near or around one of the proctors. It won't be hard to find; just look for the explosions going off overhead. The Summoner is prepared to trade. For every two lit seals, or three burned-out seals, they will give you one seal that can be turned on and off. That means you could get the seals today before much of the competition is going after them, then trade them for seals that will last until the end of the event. So long as you do not attack the Summoner or her family, they will not attack you and therefore I will not need to gut you and bury your eviscerated body in the muck for the leeches to consume. Have I been clear?"

The deal is with respect to approaching our base and trading the seals, not as a whole

e: That said, I'm just as fine with not doing that.
 
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The deal is with respect to approaching our base and trading the seals, not as a whole.

Wrong. The deal is with respect to the intention of our plan, not with respect to approaching our base. The whole point was to turn this exam into a cooperative game rather than a competitive one and to implement Hazō's diplomatic vision.
 
Wrong. The deal is with respect to the intention of our plan, not with respect to approaching our base. The whole point was to turn this exam into a cooperative game rather than a competitive one and to implement Hazō's diplomatic vision.
Yeah, fair enough.

...Hm. doublechecks the chapter

...Uh-huh.

Okay, so, horrible idea, but on a personal level, Hazou can make a bunch of Night Light seal blanks, store them in storage scrolls, and infuse and activate them at the end of the exam in front of the proctors or whatever. Past that point, what happens to the things are out of his hands, and in Mist's.
 
So far I believe our discussions have been too optimistic. Far too optimistic. Optimistic to the point where we have essentially any priority that slots ahead of "get ourselves out of this Swamp of Death (Name now Earned)". Passing this portion of the exams is of negligible importance if a sealing failure of the magnitude Hazou fears has even a small chance of occurring.

EDIT: Nevermind, missed @huhYeahGoodPoint 's plan

[X] Action Plan: CODE Z! CODE Z!

Old post in the spoiler for posterity.

As such, a proto-plan that places stopping such a failure (and getting away from it in the meantime) above all else is in order, I think. I'm open to making some light edits, but the the thrust of the thing will remain "abandon any pretense of participating in the exam in favor of getting the message out."

[] Action Plan: Measured urgency in Kagome

Goals:
-Survive
-Verify that we're not overreacting
-Get out of the spash zone for if a seal goes critical
-Inform Jiraiya and/or the relevant authorities of what's going down

First, take a breath. Take an hour or two, eat a snack, chat about something with Akane, maybe take a brief nap. Acquire some more instances of the Night Light seal to make sure this isn't an isolated occurrence. Then come back to the problem of the Night Light seal and look at it again.

Is the situation as bad as we first thought? If so, will any sealmaster besides us and Kagome see this as as monumentally bad as we do?

If we still believe that these Night Light seals pose an existential risk that other sealmasters will recognize/do something about, then act appropriately. Grab Akane and anyone else who wants out (the more the merrier, as it'll add weight to our arguments if we show how serious we are) and book it for the edge of the swamp as quickly/safely as possible. If there are any passphrases/signals we can use for medical emergencies, forfeiting the exams, etc. that would get us faster/safe passage then use those.

Once there, make all effort short of something that could start a war and/or get us killed/maimed to get a message to Jiraiya as quickly as possible. Assume a calm, but urgent tone and don't come across as hysterical.
-If for some reason we can't reach Jiraiya settle for another sealmaster who's not an idiot, though preference dear old Dad as he's credible/knowledgeable/powerful/allied with us.

Once in contact with Jiraiya inform him of our findings and encourage him to handle it in whatever way he thinks best balances Leaf interests and the possible destruction of the surrounding area. Encourage him to err on the side of humanitarianism, but respect his judgment.
 
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I can say, personally, that I would not feel significantly disappointed if we tweaked the intentions of our grand plan for the purpose of safety. Hunting and taking out uncooperative shinobi before they activate more seals will be more aggressive than we intended, but will reduce the chance that the swamp blows up in our face. In broad strokes, it still carries the message of international cooperation if we spare anyone who trades with us and only take out the ones who contribute nothing beyond activating more deathlights.

I'm torn, a bit, between spending our time making Party Trick seals and making deathlights. After all, they're fairly safe as long as we avoid combat, so we can keep them stowed away in the fortress and minimize the danger they pose while maximizing our seal output. I wouldn't be disappointed, though, if we took 20% seal output from Party Trick for the sake of safety.
 
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I'm torn, a bit, between spending our time making Party Trick seals and making deathlights. After all, they're fairly safe as long as we avoid combat, so we can keep them stowed away in the fortress and minimize the danger they pose while maximizing our seal output. I wouldn't be disappointed, though, if we took 20% seal output from Party Trick for the sake of safety.

Personally am against making any death lights. They will cost us chakra to activate which we might need for the next stage of the exam
 
Personally am against making any death lights. They will cost us chakra to activate which we might need for the next stage of the exam

Yeah, that's fair. At 5-10 chakra per seal, even if every ninja were willing to invest ~100 chakra into it, severely draining them, we'd drain all of the Leaf-nin dry with a couple hours of sealwork and we'd be making Party Tricks for the rest of the time anyways only with a paper tiger of an alliance.
 
So still relatively new to making plans but can I ask what is preventing people from voting for this plan? Any key actions missing or just generally opposed to something in it?
 
Personally am against making any death lights. They will cost us chakra to activate which we might need for the next stage of the exam
If we spend 30 hours making seals, we will be able to produce 360 more party trick seals. Depending on how many people take us up on trading, it may be difficult to produce sufficient quantities -- additionally, producing enough to give us an edge in points will be difficult, too.

On the other hand, if we produce, say, 60 Death Lights we could spread those out between the Leaf teams, infusing them just before leaving the Death Swamp so bolster our scores.
So still relatively new to making plans but can I ask what is preventing people from voting for this plan? Any key actions missing or just generally opposed to something in it?
I just generally don't vote until it's getting toward the end of the voting time -- I don't want to bias myself against other plans by doing so.
 
So still relatively new to making plans but can I ask what is preventing people from voting for this plan? Any key actions missing or just generally opposed to something in it?
I for one think that this plan is too noncommittal; the current situation's central statistic is so magnified that either the entire Death Swamp becomes a sealing failure clusterfuck or nothing at all happens; your plan fails to commit to either resultant plan of action. Obviously I belong to the "sealpocalypse imminent, shut the whole damn thing down", but I don't think your plan accomplishes the other thing either.
 
So still relatively new to making plans but can I ask what is preventing people from voting for this plan? Any key actions missing or just generally opposed to something in it?

I won't vote for anything that has a forfeit as a possibility. Also think it should either be heavier on keeping our old plan of trading or double down on taking out other teams

Edit: though if it's a choice between your plan and throwing away our political capital for no reason I'd vote for it
 
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Thanks for the replies, folks. I don't intend to change the major parts of the plan so there will be a variety to choose from instead of multiple plans with slight variations.

I for one think that this plan is too noncommittal; the current situation's central statistic is so magnified that either the entire Death Swamp becomes a sealing failure clusterfuck or nothing at all happens; your plan fails to commit to either resultant plan of action. Obviously I belong to the "sealpocalypse imminent, shut the whole damn thing down", but I don't think your plan accomplishes the other thing either.

If I understand correctly, you would prefer we leave immediately during the night instead of relying on the fact that not much seal infusion activation will happen during the night? My plan has an exit strategy but it tries to solve the issue of contacting Jiraiya without leaving the swamp first. I get that though.
 
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@huhYeahGoodPoint Might I suggest a few tweaks to your plan, so long as you don't think they violate its spirit?

For one, I think that we desperately need a "take a breath, take a walk, re-evaluate" phase before anything else. Hazō, for better or worse, is a pupil of Kagome, and has a hair-trigger about these things. We should take a moment to re-center and make sure things are actually as dangerous as we think before committing ourselves.

For another (though this is a quibble) I think the whole "throw all the explosives everywhere" bit lacks some nuance. Something more general like "get out of the swamp as quickly/safely as possible and get an official's attention" as a goal with a few ideas as sub-points (throw explosives, shout emergency-forfeit passphrases, claim it's an emergency, etc.) gives the QMs/team a bit more leeway on how best to accomplish our core aim of quick egress from the swamp.
-I also think explosive-throwing might be counterproductive, and encourage proctors to treat us as hostile or the like, thus ultimately slowing us down.
 
Personally, my preference is for a plan that sticks to the idea of trading, but also makes efforts to contact Jiraiya. If we could also get other teams to ask the proctors to take a look at the seal (in hopes one of them is a sealmaster too) that woudl be ideal.
 
@huhYeahGoodPoint Might I suggest a few tweaks to your plan, so long as you don't think they violate its spirit?

For one, I think that we desperately need a "take a breath, take a walk, re-evaluate" phase before anything else. Hazō, for better or worse, is a pupil of Kagome, and has a hair-trigger about these things. We should take a moment to re-center and make sure things are actually as dangerous as we think before committing ourselves.

For another (though this is a quibble) I think the whole "throw all the explosives everywhere" bit lacks some nuance. Something more general like "get out of the swamp as quickly/safely as possible and get an official's attention" as a goal with a few ideas as sub-points (throw explosives, shout emergency-forfeit passphrases, claim it's an emergency, etc.) gives the QMs/team a bit more leeway on how best to accomplish our core aim of quick egress from the swamp.
-I also think explosive-throwing might be counterproductive, and encourage proctors to treat us as hostile or the like, thus ultimately slowing us down.
As far as I can tell, we've done the reevaluation just now; the final scene in that chapter is Hazou going over his knowledge. Admittedly, Hazou hasn't studied failure modes heavily, but I suspect that multiple seal failures compounding each other is nothing you want to be near.

The throwing explosives was meant to tell other teams "fuck the hell off, we're throwing around twice your salary in explosives and we're not afraid to abuse it". We cannot afford to get bogged down in combat, or even get near another team with active deathlights and clip them with a jutsu. It's also a signal to the other Leaf teams that "something has gone very wrong, converge on their position, stat".

Speed and safety are the two most important priorities, with attention grabbing as a very close third. So long as we don't actually attack the proctors, it should be fine. Primarily, though, we need attention and we need to signal things have gone very wrong very fast.
 
See, the thing is, while this has the potential to be very, very bad...

...if we can get information to Jiraiya about it quietly, he'll have one HELL of a piece of blackmail to hold over Mist for the duration of the exams.
 
As far as I can tell, we've done the reevaluation just now; the final scene in that chapter is Hazou going over his knowledge. Admittedly, Hazou hasn't studied failure modes heavily, but I suspect that multiple seal failures compounding each other is nothing you want to be near.

My read of that scene was to an extent one of deescalation: when Hazō first sees this seal he goes nearly full Kagome, but in that last scene he's calmed down quite a bit. It's possible that he'll calm down even more if he thinks about it more, though I admit not very likely.

I feel that to an extent we're (or at least I am) basing our own "holy crap we need to get out of here" reaction on his initial Kagome-level reaction, so I'd appreciate one last in-universe gut-check before going all in.
 
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Between three and four hundred ninja.

At maximum, that means the chakra for 36'000 - 48'000 potential activations, meaning all twenty thousand.

If we say that ninja are only spending a quarter of their chakra on activations instead of all of it, which is much more realistic, then that's still 9'000 - 12'000 active Night Lights we can expect around the swamp.

If a super-conservative estimate of 1% of those seals catastrophically fail, (it will be higher than this, most likely, because of combat conditions and failure chain reactions) then that's 90 - 120 seal failures. If we say that a more realistic number like 10% fail, then that's 900 - 1'200 failures.
 
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