Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Hey, no worries. You're of course absolutely free to disagree; I don't have any particular expectations of being convinced or of convincing you on the object level disagreement, and I actually think we're collectively better off when airing meaningful disagreements. I do however apologize if I come across as a bit overbearing (or even downright dickish) in my quest to encourage more productive/useful discussion.
Look, people, absolute worst case scenario, we get a new GM.
-but, seriously, Ren already knows about this. She comes from a clan of professional sealmasters. The only people she can really trust right now are her clan. She did not make these the centerpiece of an event without running them by somebody who knows what they're doing. The questions we should be asking are along the lines of why she used them anyway, and what is in our best interests to do about it, because even if I'm wrong and this turns into a rampaging-tailed-beast-level catastrophe, that is still very good for Leaf.
-but, seriously, Ren already knows about this. She comes from a clan of professional sealmasters. The only people she can really trust right now are her clan. She did not make these the centerpiece of an event without running them by somebody who knows what they're doing. The questions we should be asking are along the lines of why she used them anyway, and what is in our best interests to do about it, because even if I'm wrong and this turns into a rampaging-tailed-beast-level catastrophe, that is still very good for Leaf.
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Given that people were absolutely wrong about certain things in the past(*cough* Minami's assassination by JIraiya), I suggest not looking too hard to believe an answer over another.
Instead, we should believe what Hazō said when a seal is dangerous, because he actually know about seals and we don't and react accordingly.
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
For the record, that was our response too, and I think we just narrowly won out on "plan: for the love of jashin please don't"
We've already killed several dozen in our quest for global uplift. What's a few hundred more?
What I mean is that the statement "Hazou thinks that destroying them has a higher likelihood of sealing failure" is false. That's what I mean by "he doesn't think that it is more dangerous" not "hazou thinks it's not more dangerous"... Unfortunately English is a bit ambiguous,since my sentence really could mean both. It sounds like we do agree though.
@huhYeahGoodPoint
I completely agree that [Undefined Behaviour] is the opposite of harmless. In fact I think [Undefined Behaviour] IS going wrong. That's why Hazou's statement "I have no idea what would happen, or if it would be more or less likely to go wrong." is saying "I have no idea if it's more or less likely to cause [Undefined Behaviour]". He IS sure that it will cause the chakra packet to collapse right away but that is not the same as saying he is sure that it will cause Sealing failure = going wrong = [Undefined Behaviour].
Which to me makes sense because all the seals we've seen so far do not cause [Undefined Behaviour] when destroyed, so Hazou Is not claiming that this one is likely to either. But frankly, he has no clue
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will408914
(slouching towards bethlehem)
- Location
- California
Okay, immediate response: no. Ren does not come from a clan of professional sealmasters.
The Kurosawa have had a sealmaster in every generation. One sealmaster. Possibly more, but unlikely to be greater than two, a sealmaster and their apprentice. It has been heavily implied that this generation's Kurosawa sealmaster was killed in the succession crisis.
There was also a quote in which Hazou talks about how the Kurosawa intentionally didn't become a clan of sealmasters, because they wanted to be on the front line, but I can't find the quote right now.
So, no. This event was slapped together on the cheap, most likely nobody bothered checking because everyone assumed they'd already been checked at some point in the past, and if we do nothing then not only are we are in serious danger but Mist will be able to deflect some blame onto us for not doing anything despite being a sealmaster who clearly should have been able to tell.
Edit: Found the quote.
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- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
Uh, I think when someone says "I have no idea what would happen" as the subject matter expert, I think that means what happens next *is* [UNDEFINED BEHAVIOR]. Like, [UNDEFINED BEHAVIOR] is the catchall category for "I have no idea what would happen", so when Hazou says that I think it means we go straight to [UNDEFINED BEHAVIOR].
Hazou saying "if you do this I don't know what happens; if it's more or less likely to go wrong" isn't the same as saying if you do this, sealing undefined behaviour will occur. I was using [Undefined Behaviour] to mean random crazy seal shenanigans are happening: we are rolling on the seal failure table. That's very different from your (new?) use of the term to mean "Hazou doesn't know the result". An example: If you had asked Hazou a year ago what happens if a storage seal is destroyed, he would say "I don't know". That's different from him asserting that [Undefined Behaviour] will occur.
This is especially true because Hazou ISN'T an expert here. He's explicitly said that he has very little knowledge of this part of sealing specifically, whereas Kagome does. So his stating that he doesn't know what happens here is even further removed from his stating that cthulu style "undefined behaviour" will ensue.
This may just be a miscommunication due to terms? I can agree to use "random cthuluing" to describe this instead of "undefined behaviour" if you did/do want to include "Hazou doesn't know the answer" in "undefined behaviour" although I would prefer to agree to use "undefined behaviour" since cthuluing implies the worst case scenario on the random sealing failure rolls table, rather than just indicating that we are rolling on the table
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They, unlike every other clan, have an intact, internal, accumulated institutional knowledge of sealing going back for as long as they have records. Even though not every Kurosawa gets full-time formal training they will all be tested for aptitude and learn a few basics through cultural osmosis if nothing else, and it's likely that quite a few continue to dabble on the side. Somebody there has at least an amateur understanding, and in an environment where everybody compromised on her specifically because they believed they could assassinate her when it was more convenient Ren is not going to let something as dangerous as unvetted seals in a deathworld warzone be the centerpiece of her political gambit without running them by the only people she can trust: her clan. She did not get to be Kage by spending literal fortunes on potential WMDs with less consideration than she puts into her lunch order.
Heck, for all we know, the answer to shouting about this is going to be Mist's notoriously Spartan attitude of, "Yes, and? What's the matter? You Leaf pussies can't handle properly controlling your fire or a couple of gobblemonsters in the 'Swamp of Death'? This is a forfeit, an attempt to sabotage the games, and you're all ejected for being dishonorable cowards."
Remember, this is a village whose academy graduation ceremony was a literally murderous free-for-all until one candidate recently won by killing every single other one in the entire graduating class. They don't have the same testing risk valuations that you do. A couple of scrubs are supposed to get killed. That's the only way to be sure that it's a good simulation of the real world.
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- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
Hm. Rereading the quotation, it does carry the connotation that Hazou doesn't know enough seal failure modes to know what happens, but I do consider it a large enough risk to think that we really shouldn't take the chance, especially since when we did research for the PMYF and Macerators, I think, things ended up going sideways in a hurry; this seal is both simpler and seems far more dangerous than those.
Correction: the Academy graduation "test" isn't a thing in MfD. I don't think there are enough ninja candidates to ever allow such a practice to continue for more than five years, tops.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Actually the bloody mist Genin exam was actually abolished by Yagura
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will408914
(slouching towards bethlehem)
- Location
- California
I sincerely doubt that process of choosing a sealing apprentice has anything to do with any kind of aptitude tests; it's probably more asking a room full of fresh chuunin "Who here is insane enough to want to learn sealing?" This also applies to your "dabbling" comment: nobody dabbles in sealing. It's completely insane to do so, you have a higher chance to die from a sealing failure and you're not even making any especially useful seals. Remember, successfully infusing your first explosive seal is basically the line between apprentice and sealmaster.
There's not really going to be any cultural osmosis, because of the very small proportion of sealmasters to regular Kurosawa. If there is, it's not enough to actually analyze a seal, because that requires actual training.
Certainly, there's someone with an amateur understanding of seals. You know who made these deathtrap night-lights? Somebody with an amateur understanding of seals.
Like I mentioned earlier, whoever put in the order for the night-light seals probably assumed that they had been checked for safety a long time ago, since they've been in circulation amongst rich households. Never underestimate bureaucratic laziness.
And finally: you are intentionally understating the danger of sealing failures. Stop. Nobody in-universe with any kind of understanding of seals is going to go "what's the matter, you can't properly control your sealing failures?" because a) it's just stupid to say that to Jiraiya, and b) sealing failures are undefined behavior in the world.
When you cause a sealing failure, you're not causing a fire or summoning chakra beasts or whatever. You are opening a rift to the Out. Remember those chakra blade monsters? The invincible chakra blade monsters with perfect coordination that couldn't be physically touched because they were made out of blades and constantly spawned more of themselves? The ones we only managed to defeat (for a relative definition of "defeat") because we had the perfect jutsu, and if we didn't have that exact jutsu we'd have been thoroughly screwed? I'm pretty sure that's a low-end sealing failure, for a much less dangerous seal. Kagome has experienced and lived through much worse sealing failures than that, and he is significantly more paranoid about sealing failures than Hazou is. If Kagome took a look at this seal, he wouldn't go "oh, don't worry about it, that's safe", he would start screaming at the top of his lungs.
Sometimes the Kagome reaction is the right reaction, and this is one of those times.
Either way, they're still ruthless bastards who won't bat an eye at a couple of volunteer kids getting themselves killed through their own incompetence.
J had that exact casual response to the risk of a failure. That was because, under the correct conditions, they're really not that dangerous. A major world capital full of more that 7 nations worth of ANBU, S-Class, and jounin with the failure occurring on expendable, worthless swampy territory they can afford to nuke is just such a condition.
Whether she wants failures to happen, wants to be able to plausibly blame failures, knows they won't, or simply doesn't care is an open question, but they're all viable. What isn't is, "Let's spend half our budget on these unknown seals, throw them in a combat environment, and never think about this again."
If that's the level of thought happening in the highest echelons of Mist leadership we have nothing to worry about, because before this test even finished J is going to walk out literally owning Leaf's new colony of Moist.
J had that exact casual response to the risk of a failure. That was because, under the correct conditions, they're really not that dangerous. A major world capital full of more that 7 nations worth of ANBU, S-Class, and jounin with the failure occurring on expendable, worthless swampy territory they can afford to nuke is just such a condition.
Whether she wants failures to happen, wants to be able to plausibly blame failures, knows they won't, or simply doesn't care is an open question, but they're all viable. What isn't is, "Let's spend half our budget on these unknown seals, throw them in a combat environment, and never think about this again."
If that's the level of thought happening in the highest echelons of Mist leadership we have nothing to worry about, because before this test even finished J is going to walk out literally owning Leaf's new colony of Moist.
- Location
- USA
Is it really though? How on earth do you think you have substantial evidence from the text to think such an idea is probable? Like I can't even imagine 10% certainty let alone >50%.
Like an easy off-the-cuff counterargument is that in such a world tons of ninja's from less fortunate clans would volunteer with the hopes of elevating their station regardless of being told of great involved risks.
There's a lot of VERY confident statement being made by a lot of readers in general this update. Remember that we're working off Hazou's perspective, not an omniscient narrator's (barring QM out-of-text statements). And also remember that this is supposed to be a rational world - things are to some degree thought through behind the scenes. We shouldn't be arrogant enough to think we can invent loopholes and tricks with our ninja abilities willy-nilly (Skywalkers being an exception). And we shouldn't be arrogant enough to just assume a village with more experienced ninja including likely better Sealers than us are absolutely shit at safety precautions regarding Sealing. Could they be? Sure, but occam's razor doesn't necessarily jump to that interpretation first
I can totally see some dilettante cobbling together some shiny bauble to shill for spare cash on the grey market to people with more money than sense while escaping the notice of qualified sealmasters because they weren't stepping on their toes. What I can't see, is Ren not foreseeing this possibilty and placing a rush order for tens of thousands to be thrown into a combat environment with a bunch of children without getting at least some of the lot independently checked for QA purposes if nothing else.
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Just want to point out that the thing which has Hazou really spooked is the fact that with 5-10 CP in them instead of the negligible amounts a normal seal has, any given sealing failure has the potential to magnify enormously.
So we aren't talking a small rift to the dimension of blade horrors that fades in a few weeks. We're talking about a large chunk of the swamp being turned into a giant rift to the dimension of blade horrors that won't fade for centuries. Even beyond his normal horror about sealing failures that he got from Kagome, the amount of chakra being tossed around in these seal batteries creates the risk of a sealing failure that the Elemental Nations' best ninja simply cannot handle.
- Location
- Minnesota
[X] Action Plan: We prevented Armageddon and all we got was this stupid Chunin vest
She could very well just assumed that it's safe. After all, they were bought by rich families for years with no problem. She might have assumed that it was inspected.
Anyway, we don't know enough. People have made very confident assertions about things in the past, including the idea that Jiraiya might have Minami assassinated, and they were very wrong.
As I have said before, I am inclined to trust Hazō's technical opinion, because that is really the only pieces of information we can trust, and we can plan around that, as opposed to assuming and guessing at how the world and the Kurosawa clan works.
will408914
(slouching towards bethlehem)
- Location
- California
Jiraiya of the Sannin got desperate in a battle, so he failed a sealing infusion as a last-ditch desperation move. Yep. Casual.
Especially the part where the Watcher tell him that sealing failures could endanger the survival of civilisation.
No biggie.
And Ren doesn't think that they're unknown seals. She thinks that they're night-light seals. They've been in circulation amongst the rich for years, why would she question whether or not they might be disasters waiting to happen? She's a diplomat, not a sealmaster. Probably. I mean, it's theoretically possible that she could be a sealmaster, but probably not.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
What seems obvious to us might not be obvious to her.
She has very tight time and money constraints here. Spending either one on checking whether a long-used, well-known, very basic seal has a fundamentally flawed design? Not going to be on her radar. That would be like buying bulk paper towels from a reputable supplier, and paying to have them checked for anthrax, lead and salmonella.
It really shouldn't be possible for this to have gone undetected for so long. She wouldn't assume it's possible either. No one would, until a seal master actually held the evidence in his hand.
And I can't believe that she would know they're dangerous, but still choose to use them in the exam. Not when lots of wealthy and influential people are blithely activating these things in their children's bedrooms. It wouldn't just be the exam participants at risk if a seal catastrophically failed; every past and present purchaser of a night light seal would royally freak out. Ren has only just been elected and could not possibly weather such a scandal.
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- Location
- Yes.
@Radvic Some suggestions for your plan, as follows:
I'm mostly worried because 300 Nightlight seals cost 1500-3000CP to activate, and must be activated to count as points. I don't know if our teams have that much chakra between them. Would suggest scrapping this in favor of Party Trick seals.
Could you clarify why we want to make Nightlight seals, instead of Party Trick seals? Are they faster to make, or...?
I'm mostly worried because 300 Nightlight seals cost 1500-3000CP to activate, and must be activated to count as points. I don't know if our teams have that much chakra between them. Would suggest scrapping this in favor of Party Trick seals.
Two suggestions:
- Consider using Henge to give the Pangolin a description of our allies' faces, hitai-ate, and unique features (bugs, Byakugan...).
- Emphasize to the Pangolin that they are not to do any permanent damage. We don't want them paralyzing a group of Genin for life like Panashe threatened to do (even if I do believe she was bluffing).
I've already made my opinions known regarding using Ino or higher-Deception individuals. Would also suggest sending in some groups without Henge (e.g., Team Asuma) with the same story, pretending they don't really know Hazou all that well. This is because of my worry that the proctors (ANBU-level) will see through the Henge instantly and believe our story less because of it.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Why do we care if a pangolin inflicts a permanent injury on our opponents? A crippled enemy is an enemy who can't cripple you.
- Location
- Yes.
Because Mist will take offense and even if they don't have us arrested for the deed it'll look poorly on us.