Spector29
It Only Gets Worse From Here
Hm. I wonder if there's an ability to make Runes invisible after the fact. Anti-skywalker Runes plus a field of Air Mines would at least catch Deidara, and possibly anyone else in the air with him.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- 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
- Location
- UK
Aha, that's what you need, an OPSEC rune.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ah, Team Anko.
*shudders in memories of blue boxes and terrible pacing*
This has actually been addressed in the story. It's quite possible, perhaps even likely, that Minato's notes were preserved somewhere and then were lost during the Collapse, with what Hazō has being an early draft that happened to survive by being offsite in a corner somewhere, jammed in along with poetry and other random junk.
I've seen multiple complaints about how much information has been lost and how stupid the characters were for not passing it on, etc. This ignores *the entire point*: Rock executed an incredibly well-planned attack on Leaf with the exact purpose of wiping out their institutional knowledge. Consider what got hit:
- The Tower, which was the high-security information repository.
- The Academy, the backup high-security information repository, where the teachers work and maybe live. (Not sure we ever defined that last point.)
- The main clan manors, where live the people with this information in their heads.
Hazō already keeps most of his stuff on the Seventh Path when not in use. It got voted in after Akatsuki looted you.
Officially, it was a sealing failure. Actually, it was the Elemental Mastery jutsu.
Ponwog, but I don't see how the others would disagree: the Scenery Clone Array would do this for you.
- Location
- Yes.
Wait, was that why the Academy was attacked? I'd always assumed it was because it was the center of learning for baby ninja, not because high-security information flowed in a place where Academy students gathered. I'd assumed it would be kept in some manner of ANBU headquarters or similar high-sensitivity something.
Deidara can fly independent of skywalkers.
- Location
- Can’t say. I know my momentum.
A timer would probably be simpler. Though proximity to chakra sources might be good too.
What happens if we die? Would we continue the quest in the afterlife?
He's only a chump when we make him be one.
Yeah. Or he could have been thinking something like "Either Akane and another Hokage get resurrected, in which case it's the other Hokage's problem, or no one gets resurrected and so there's no more EM."
Eh, maybe Shikamaru convinced him.
But then Akatsuki would come down like a hammer on Leaf because of the incredible power they displayed.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
It was noted once or twice that the academy was a location where some backup copies of important information were stored, when we were scrambling to try to collect anything that survived. I don't recall if that was OOC or by Asuma.
- Location
- Yes.
That is fair, though I'd point out that backups for the more sensitive bits sound to be stored elsewhere.
Unless they didn't do that, in which case...
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Eh, the end result is the same: Leaf's horde of tools is in tatters, and only somewhat recouped by Asuma's Competition, Jiraiya's Posthumous Notes, and Hazou the Golden Goose.
You dislike Delve? Would put it up there near Worm and Marked for Death for best web fiction serial.
Maybe we can make a rune that reverses the physical processes damaged documents went through to fix them.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The QMs have said in the past that, should Hazou die, they will attempt to continue the quest in some form.
The previous thought was that we would take control of an existing NPC, such as Mari, Akane, or Noburi. But then the Afterlife Rift opened up, and while the QMs haven't said anything, it does open up other options.
Especially after that (Canonical?) Interlude about Akane and Jiraiya!
Delve is not only a bad webserial, it is one of the worst webserials ever written. The author:
1) Cannot write dialogue or characters, but disguises this for 50+ chapters by making the MC not speak the language. Diabolical
2) Cannot write anything with decent pacing - now is this mostly due to him making dat Patreon money, but it is egregiously bad even so.
3) Cannot even write a likable MC. This dude is weaponized cringe. Perhaps this is a little bit of 1), but seriously Rain (is it Rain? it's been a while) is one of the most annoying characters I've ever had the misfortune to read.
I hate Delve with a fiery passion. It manages to be a bait and switch webserial, which I wasn't aware existed.
I'm confused by this. If Leaf had notes on Minato's hiraishin, it's hard imaging them just sitting on that and not using it, and if they had non-encrypted notes on his bijuu seal, I'd've expected Jiraiya to have learned it at some point and discovered Minatosealing in the process.
Also there's this:
(Interlude, λ Timeline) Chapter 665: A Slice of Torture
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Author's Note: There was confusion two weeks ago about who was writing the update. Both @Paperclipped and I worked on our own versions of it, but when the confusion was recognized his had involved a great deal more effort so we went with that one.
I have been invited to another games day today and thus won't have time for writing, so I'm copping out and sharing the version of chapter 665 that I created. This is an alternate timeline and NOT canon.
"You know we'll have to kill them?" Cancurunchu asked quietly.
"...Yeah," Hazō said.
"It's the mission. We're here to kill them, and it doesn't matter which ones. They've all come across the border at one time or another, killed members of my pack or the pack of someone here."
"Not the cubs."
"These two aren't cubs. And the whole point of this mission is that if we show what we can do to them, we might not have to do any more of it."
"Are you sure we can do it? That fight wasn't the one-sided stomp I would have preferred."
"Really? Two of them dead, two of them fled, and two captured. Canrippu is limping but still combat effective and everyone else is fine. I call that a highly successful combat."
"Really. Two of them waited to attack instead of coordinating, allowing us to defeat them in detail. Two of them used what would have been highly effective jutsu had they landed, but they happened to choose targets who were well suited to defeating those attacks—me because I'm heavily trained in resisting genjutsu and Canzappu because his fragile body means he has heavily trained in dodging. We couldn't even see them well enough to attack for much of the fight. If they had worked together more effectively, some or all of us would have died."
Cancurunchu snorted. "That's the thing about leopards: they don't work together. What we saw is typical of their tactics. They strike from ambush and they strongly prefer weak or injured prey, so their natural inclination is to wait for an opportune moment instead of risking themselves in an immediate attack. When you meet a group that's larger than a mated pair you generally get exactly this—one or two courageous ones rush in while others hang back and wait for the first group to injure some targets that can then be picked off. They also don't tend to defend each other."
"Unless they are a mated pair?"
"Unless they are a mated pair."
"You keep using words like 'usually' and 'tend to'. Not reassuring. You said that Hyōhakken is trying to get them to be more social. Presumably that includes actively training them as well as making them live together. Suppose we run into a larger group that has taken the training to heart. We all burned a lot of chakra in that fight, so do you think we could handle six or eight leopards who were working together efficiently?"
Cancurunchu chewed the air unhappily.
"Look, let me interrogate them. We can get a sense of what's in the area and then make the call."
The dog turned his head, eyes flicking to Hazō and then away in discomfort. "The way you described your style of interrogation... Dogs don't usually do that."
"As far as I know, dogs also don't have any experience with what humans think of as war. For which you should be grateful."
Flick, flick. "I know that one of the biggest advantages of having a summoner is that they bring new ideas and new ways, but..."
"Look, I won't do it if you think I shouldn't. We can kill them and move on."
"...No, I see the value. I'm just not comfortable with it."
"For the record, neither am I. Doesn't mean I won't do it."
Cancurunchu chewed the air. Then he sighed and raised his head, meeting Hazō's gaze firmly again. "No, let's do it. What do you need from me?"
"I can do it myself but they likely aren't familiar enough with humans to consider me a threat. It would be helpful to have a big, scary dog standing with me. Who in this group do you think they would find scariest?"
"I'll do it. I'm not going to ask the others to do this."
"If it's that much of an issue, are you sure you want to do this? We can just bail."
"No, it'll be useful. Come on before I change my mind."
"Right."
The two severely wounded leopards, Hyōrōbā and Hyōfajī, had been chased down and encircled by four dogs apiece. The dogs had barked and growled and threatened, but had held back from actually attacking, instead simply keeping the leopard trapped between them until Hazō could arrive and throw a net over them. (Storage seals were so handy!) Both leopards were now staked down a short distance apart, one of Kagome-sensei's wooden barricades between them so neither could see the other. A Silence Mine seal next to each of them muffled sound enough that normal conversation at the other leopard's position should be inaudible, but loud noises would be clear. Loud noises such as screams of pain.
Hazō sauntered up to Hyōfajī, Cancurunchu beside him. The dog leader stood over their prisoner, studying him silently. Hazō crouched down a few feet from the leopard's head and started unsealing object and laying them out in neat rows.
A hibachi full of hot coals and a metal poker with a leather-wrapped handle. He stuck the end of the poker in the coals to heat.
A rolled-up leather case with a dozen knives, chisels, and hammers of various shapes and sizes. It was a woodworking kit intended to be a gift for Kagome-sensei, but the leopard didn't need to know that.
A garrote made from thin ninja wire and oak handles.
A pair of long-handled forceps.
The most recent issue of the News of the Noble Leaf broadsheet.
He arranged the items with fussy precision, ensuring that each was in precisely the right orientation and position relative to the rest.
Hyōfajī, trapped under his staked-down net, watched all this with yellow eyes wide.
"Here's the thing, leopard," Cancurunchu said at last, refusing to use the name that the prisoner had volunteered when captured. "We're here to kill a bunch of you as part of a punitive raid. Personally, I don't really care which ones we kill. Lord Cannai doesn't either, so long as we don't kill cubs. I was going to slit your throat and move on but our summoner convinced me that we should interrogate you.
"We were assigned to kill twelve of you and we've already got two. You and your friend are going to be numbers three and four, so the only question is how it happens."
The prisoner hissed and spit. "I knew you dogs were scum! You—"
He yelped and went silent as Hazō smacked him in the face with the rolled-up broadsheet.
"It will be polite," Hazō said mildly.
"You're both going to die, but one of you is going to die quickly and painlessly," Cancurunchu said, continuing as though he hadn't been interrupted. "The other one..." He shook his head.
"The other one gets skinned," Hazō said. "My slippers have worn out and I need to re-line them."
The prisoner looked at him in disbelief.
Hazō shrugged. "I was going to make a rug, but you're both too cut up already. Slippers are easy." He turned back to check on how the poker was heating.
"Help me out here," Cancurunchu said. "Lord Cannai assigned him as mission leader, so I can't just order him to leave you alone. I did at least get him to agree that if you gave us useful information then he could get his slippers from the next group."
Hyōfajī snorted. "You wouldn't."
Hazō pulled the poker out of the fire and considered the tip. It glowed a dull red, so he pressed it against the leopard's nose.
The cat screamed, the noise tearing through the protection of the Silence Mine and echoing across the landscape. A short distance away, the rest of the dogs shuffled uncomfortably.
Hazō put the poker back in the coals and blew on them to heat them up. He let it sit for a few seconds while the leopard gasped for breath, then he pressed a seal up against the handle of the poker and vanished it back into storage space.
"Be right back," he said. "We need to go do the same thing to the other guy. It's only fair."
He and Cancurunchu walked off.
Two minutes later another scream echoed across the landscape. A minute after that, another. Yet another minute and man and dog were back, Hazō kneeling next to the leopard's head.
"We told your friend that he needed to get burned because you mouthed off," Cancurunchu said. "And we explained the thing about one of you dying easy and the other one hard. He cursed at us, so we burned his eye out. Now we have to do it to you too."
"Wait, hold on—AGGGHHHH!"
Cancurunchu waited a moment and then asked, "In case it's not clear, any time either of you lies, both of you get punished and we switch who we're talking to. You can't control whether or not he lies, so your best chance is to be honest with us so that we don't switch back to him." He paused, studying the prisoner. "We have some questions if you feel like talking."
"What do you want to know?" The words were broken up by gasping breaths.
"What was your target in Dog?"
"No specific target. We were just going to find a pack and kill them." He cringed as Hazō frowned.
"I'm telling the truth!"
Hazō lifted the poker out of the hibachi consideringly.
"He means it," Cancurunchu said. "They never have a specific target."
Hazō grunted in disappointment and put the poker back in the coals.
"How many Leopards are nearby?"
"I don't know. I don't! Keep him back!"
"I'm really not allowed to do that," Cancurunchu said. "I'm sorry. I don't like it any more than you do, but what can you do? Humans are savages. Getting him to promise to kill one of you easy was the best I could manage."
"We move around! There aren't any fixed camps like the pangolins have. I don't know who's in the area!"
"Not very helpful," Hazō mused, studying one of his knives.
"There was a pride north of here two days ago," the prisoner said quickly. "Two dozen of them, assuming they haven't had any more internal fights. And there's probably a few other raiding groups around."
"How big is an average raid group these days?"
"Eight to ten. Sometimes more."
Hazō sighed in disgust and reached for the poker.
"Come on, now," Cancurunchu said. "Don't lie to us. There were only six in your group."
"No, wait—AAGGGHHHH!"
"Be right back," Hazō said, sealing up the poker and the hibachi again.
Moments later another scream echoed forth from the other leopard. The world was silent again thereafter, until five minutes later another scream shattered the day.
When Hazō and Cancurunchu returned, the prisoner started gabbling out words as fast as he could, hoping to prevent what was about to happen. It was to no avail.
"Sorry about that," Hazō said, putting the poker back in the fire and adding some more charcoal while the prisoner sobbed and recovered from the agony. "The other guy lied to us and it's not fair to only punish one of you."
"How many did you say were in an average raid group?" Cancurunchu asked.
"It varies! Lord Hyōhakken wants us to work in groups of eight to ten, but usually there's an argument and some people break away, go off and do their own thing. I don't know what the average is going to be...six, maybe? Five?"
Cancurunchu nodded. "You said there was a settlement here a few days ago. How far away?"
The prisoner hesitated. "Maybe...two hours? Less if you run."
"What sort of skill levels should we expect from that group?"
"Lord Hyōhakken is putting a lot more effort into compelling the prides to stay together than he is for the raid groups. There's typically at least one senior warrior for every six members of a pride. Sometimes more. It depends on where the pride is. He forced some people to migrate in order to join their assigned pride, but he tried not to make them go too far. He wanted them to stay on terrain they were familiar with as much as possible."
"And the prides are how big?"
"Usually a couple dozen. Sometimes as small as one, sometimes as large as three. One dozen and three dozen, I mean." The last words were hasty, the prisoner wanting to ensure that he couldn't be accused of deception for simple unclarity.
"What protections are the sites going to have?"
"Protections? What— AAAGGHHHH!"
"Hazō," Cancurunchu said, his voice filled with reproof, "don't do that when the poor thing is simply confused. Asking clarifying questions isn't the same as lying."
Hazō snorted. "It's a standard Academy-level technique for interrogation resistance. Pretend to be stupid so that the interrogator spends all their time clarifying things instead of asking questions. If you're good at it you can get them so tangled up they forget what they originally asked."
Cancurunchu sighed. "You humans. All right, let's go punish the other one and then see if he'll answer the question."
The grisly night wended on, much to the dismay of the two prisoners.
Two of the leopards from the original raid, Hyōspotto and Hyōkamumono, had escaped the pack's pursuit. Hyōkamumono kept running for an entire day and night, but Hyōspotto was made of sterner stuff. He found a nearby pride and convinced them to send a strong force to deal with the intruders. Nine experienced leopard warriors ranged across the land, casting about until they found the trail of the dogs. They traced it to a place that smelled of blood and burned meat and urine. It wasn't hard to tell why; there were four leopard corpses, two of them covered in small burns. One of the burned ones had been cleanly decapitated, the head left leaning against its rear so that it appeared from a distance to be facing the wrong way. The other of the burned corpses had died...less cleanly.
All four corpses were drenched in the urine of a troop of dogs, and one other source that smelled unfamiliar.
The leopards growled their seething anger and loped off, following the trail. The dogs showed little skill at concealing their trail; their scent was barely concealed and they left occasional pawprints or disturbed stones and grasses in their wake.
The night was passing by the time the leopards caught up to their quarry. Their leader, Hyōmanuke, snorted in disgust at the sight of the dogs' encampment.
In fairness, the dogs had found a steep-sided swale that protected them from the wind and prevented their scent from being blown outwards across the prairie. The floor of the swale was lush grass, knee high and undoubtedly making comfortable beds.
So comfortable, in fact, that the sentry had fallen asleep. All eight dogs were curled up, tails over noses, motionless as the dead. In the center of the camp was a rectangular metal thing filled with dimly-glowing coals that undoubtedly filled the immediate area with blissful warmth to ward off the night's soft chill. The weird biped that Hyōspotto had described was asleep closest to the metal thing, its disgustingly pale, furless skin obviously more vulnerable to the cold than a sensible Seventh Path coat would be.
At a gesture from Hyōmanuke, the leopards backed down the hill to take a quick council.
"You two, circle around to the south. You and you, the east. You and you, west. The rest of us will stay here. I'll give you five minutes and then we attack on my signal. One rush, kill all of the little fuckers and crunch their bones. Got it?"
There was a chorus of affirmatives and warrior shadows disappeared into the night.
Hyōmanuke waited, counting silently to himself. When he reached three hundred he charged over the hilltop, bounding down the steep sides of the swale in a skitter of disturbed earth that was too quiet to waken the idiot canine invaders. He waited until he was halfway down the hill to pull shadows around himself, trusting his compatriots to see his charge and follow. With many groups he wouldn't have done it this way, but he knew this group and they worked well together.
The steps of the leopards were too silent, their shadow protection too thorough, to give any hint of the attack. The stupid dogs didn't so much as twitch as an unstoppable avalanche of furred death rushed down upon them—
Hyōmanuke's death was so sudden he didn't even know he'd been killed. One moment he was leaping to the attack, the next he was coming apart into blood and chunks of meat small enough to be put in a stew.
His shadow cloak vanished as he died, allowing the other leopards to see what had happened. They were so shocked that, just for an instant, none of them thought to stop their charge. Two more passed through the screen of skyslicers that wrapped around the pretended canine encampment.
The remaining six leopards slammed on the brakes, struggling to turn aside or reverse course, but it was difficult to do on the steep slopes. Another passed through the invulnerable and ontologically immobile spider-silk netting and splashed into stew meat.
One leopard, luckier and stronger than the rest, leaped upwards with all her might and managed to clear the netting that she couldn't see and dropped into the middle of the 'encampment'. A short distance from the ground she passed through a shudder of chakra and saw the truth concealed by the illusion of the Scenery Clone Seal Array.
The array captured the image of an area at a given instant and projected an illusion of that image over the protected area. Hazō had captured the image of himself and the dogs asleep and helpless, then set up skyslicers around the image, after which he and the dogs trotted off (this time exercise rather more trail discipline than they had while baiting in the enemy) over the border into Dog to sleep for the night and recover chakra. They would check back in the morning to see if their trap had caught anything.
Eight.
Voting remains closed.
I have been invited to another games day today and thus won't have time for writing, so I'm copping out and sharing the version of chapter 665 that I created. This is an alternate timeline and NOT canon.
"You know we'll have to kill them?" Cancurunchu asked quietly.
"...Yeah," Hazō said.
"It's the mission. We're here to kill them, and it doesn't matter which ones. They've all come across the border at one time or another, killed members of my pack or the pack of someone here."
"Not the cubs."
"These two aren't cubs. And the whole point of this mission is that if we show what we can do to them, we might not have to do any more of it."
"Are you sure we can do it? That fight wasn't the one-sided stomp I would have preferred."
"Really? Two of them dead, two of them fled, and two captured. Canrippu is limping but still combat effective and everyone else is fine. I call that a highly successful combat."
"Really. Two of them waited to attack instead of coordinating, allowing us to defeat them in detail. Two of them used what would have been highly effective jutsu had they landed, but they happened to choose targets who were well suited to defeating those attacks—me because I'm heavily trained in resisting genjutsu and Canzappu because his fragile body means he has heavily trained in dodging. We couldn't even see them well enough to attack for much of the fight. If they had worked together more effectively, some or all of us would have died."
Cancurunchu snorted. "That's the thing about leopards: they don't work together. What we saw is typical of their tactics. They strike from ambush and they strongly prefer weak or injured prey, so their natural inclination is to wait for an opportune moment instead of risking themselves in an immediate attack. When you meet a group that's larger than a mated pair you generally get exactly this—one or two courageous ones rush in while others hang back and wait for the first group to injure some targets that can then be picked off. They also don't tend to defend each other."
"Unless they are a mated pair?"
"Unless they are a mated pair."
"You keep using words like 'usually' and 'tend to'. Not reassuring. You said that Hyōhakken is trying to get them to be more social. Presumably that includes actively training them as well as making them live together. Suppose we run into a larger group that has taken the training to heart. We all burned a lot of chakra in that fight, so do you think we could handle six or eight leopards who were working together efficiently?"
Cancurunchu chewed the air unhappily.
"Look, let me interrogate them. We can get a sense of what's in the area and then make the call."
The dog turned his head, eyes flicking to Hazō and then away in discomfort. "The way you described your style of interrogation... Dogs don't usually do that."
"As far as I know, dogs also don't have any experience with what humans think of as war. For which you should be grateful."
Flick, flick. "I know that one of the biggest advantages of having a summoner is that they bring new ideas and new ways, but..."
"Look, I won't do it if you think I shouldn't. We can kill them and move on."
"...No, I see the value. I'm just not comfortable with it."
"For the record, neither am I. Doesn't mean I won't do it."
Cancurunchu chewed the air. Then he sighed and raised his head, meeting Hazō's gaze firmly again. "No, let's do it. What do you need from me?"
"I can do it myself but they likely aren't familiar enough with humans to consider me a threat. It would be helpful to have a big, scary dog standing with me. Who in this group do you think they would find scariest?"
"I'll do it. I'm not going to ask the others to do this."
"If it's that much of an issue, are you sure you want to do this? We can just bail."
"No, it'll be useful. Come on before I change my mind."
"Right."
The two severely wounded leopards, Hyōrōbā and Hyōfajī, had been chased down and encircled by four dogs apiece. The dogs had barked and growled and threatened, but had held back from actually attacking, instead simply keeping the leopard trapped between them until Hazō could arrive and throw a net over them. (Storage seals were so handy!) Both leopards were now staked down a short distance apart, one of Kagome-sensei's wooden barricades between them so neither could see the other. A Silence Mine seal next to each of them muffled sound enough that normal conversation at the other leopard's position should be inaudible, but loud noises would be clear. Loud noises such as screams of pain.
Hazō sauntered up to Hyōfajī, Cancurunchu beside him. The dog leader stood over their prisoner, studying him silently. Hazō crouched down a few feet from the leopard's head and started unsealing object and laying them out in neat rows.
A hibachi full of hot coals and a metal poker with a leather-wrapped handle. He stuck the end of the poker in the coals to heat.
A rolled-up leather case with a dozen knives, chisels, and hammers of various shapes and sizes. It was a woodworking kit intended to be a gift for Kagome-sensei, but the leopard didn't need to know that.
A garrote made from thin ninja wire and oak handles.
A pair of long-handled forceps.
The most recent issue of the News of the Noble Leaf broadsheet.
He arranged the items with fussy precision, ensuring that each was in precisely the right orientation and position relative to the rest.
Hyōfajī, trapped under his staked-down net, watched all this with yellow eyes wide.
"Here's the thing, leopard," Cancurunchu said at last, refusing to use the name that the prisoner had volunteered when captured. "We're here to kill a bunch of you as part of a punitive raid. Personally, I don't really care which ones we kill. Lord Cannai doesn't either, so long as we don't kill cubs. I was going to slit your throat and move on but our summoner convinced me that we should interrogate you.
"We were assigned to kill twelve of you and we've already got two. You and your friend are going to be numbers three and four, so the only question is how it happens."
The prisoner hissed and spit. "I knew you dogs were scum! You—"
He yelped and went silent as Hazō smacked him in the face with the rolled-up broadsheet.
"It will be polite," Hazō said mildly.
"You're both going to die, but one of you is going to die quickly and painlessly," Cancurunchu said, continuing as though he hadn't been interrupted. "The other one..." He shook his head.
"The other one gets skinned," Hazō said. "My slippers have worn out and I need to re-line them."
The prisoner looked at him in disbelief.
Hazō shrugged. "I was going to make a rug, but you're both too cut up already. Slippers are easy." He turned back to check on how the poker was heating.
"Help me out here," Cancurunchu said. "Lord Cannai assigned him as mission leader, so I can't just order him to leave you alone. I did at least get him to agree that if you gave us useful information then he could get his slippers from the next group."
Hyōfajī snorted. "You wouldn't."
Hazō pulled the poker out of the fire and considered the tip. It glowed a dull red, so he pressed it against the leopard's nose.
The cat screamed, the noise tearing through the protection of the Silence Mine and echoing across the landscape. A short distance away, the rest of the dogs shuffled uncomfortably.
Hazō put the poker back in the coals and blew on them to heat them up. He let it sit for a few seconds while the leopard gasped for breath, then he pressed a seal up against the handle of the poker and vanished it back into storage space.
"Be right back," he said. "We need to go do the same thing to the other guy. It's only fair."
He and Cancurunchu walked off.
Two minutes later another scream echoed across the landscape. A minute after that, another. Yet another minute and man and dog were back, Hazō kneeling next to the leopard's head.
"We told your friend that he needed to get burned because you mouthed off," Cancurunchu said. "And we explained the thing about one of you dying easy and the other one hard. He cursed at us, so we burned his eye out. Now we have to do it to you too."
"Wait, hold on—AGGGHHHH!"
Cancurunchu waited a moment and then asked, "In case it's not clear, any time either of you lies, both of you get punished and we switch who we're talking to. You can't control whether or not he lies, so your best chance is to be honest with us so that we don't switch back to him." He paused, studying the prisoner. "We have some questions if you feel like talking."
"What do you want to know?" The words were broken up by gasping breaths.
"What was your target in Dog?"
"No specific target. We were just going to find a pack and kill them." He cringed as Hazō frowned.
"I'm telling the truth!"
Hazō lifted the poker out of the hibachi consideringly.
"He means it," Cancurunchu said. "They never have a specific target."
Hazō grunted in disappointment and put the poker back in the coals.
"How many Leopards are nearby?"
"I don't know. I don't! Keep him back!"
"I'm really not allowed to do that," Cancurunchu said. "I'm sorry. I don't like it any more than you do, but what can you do? Humans are savages. Getting him to promise to kill one of you easy was the best I could manage."
"We move around! There aren't any fixed camps like the pangolins have. I don't know who's in the area!"
"Not very helpful," Hazō mused, studying one of his knives.
"There was a pride north of here two days ago," the prisoner said quickly. "Two dozen of them, assuming they haven't had any more internal fights. And there's probably a few other raiding groups around."
"How big is an average raid group these days?"
"Eight to ten. Sometimes more."
Hazō sighed in disgust and reached for the poker.
"Come on, now," Cancurunchu said. "Don't lie to us. There were only six in your group."
"No, wait—AAGGGHHHH!"
"Be right back," Hazō said, sealing up the poker and the hibachi again.
Moments later another scream echoed forth from the other leopard. The world was silent again thereafter, until five minutes later another scream shattered the day.
When Hazō and Cancurunchu returned, the prisoner started gabbling out words as fast as he could, hoping to prevent what was about to happen. It was to no avail.
"Sorry about that," Hazō said, putting the poker back in the fire and adding some more charcoal while the prisoner sobbed and recovered from the agony. "The other guy lied to us and it's not fair to only punish one of you."
"How many did you say were in an average raid group?" Cancurunchu asked.
"It varies! Lord Hyōhakken wants us to work in groups of eight to ten, but usually there's an argument and some people break away, go off and do their own thing. I don't know what the average is going to be...six, maybe? Five?"
Cancurunchu nodded. "You said there was a settlement here a few days ago. How far away?"
The prisoner hesitated. "Maybe...two hours? Less if you run."
"What sort of skill levels should we expect from that group?"
"Lord Hyōhakken is putting a lot more effort into compelling the prides to stay together than he is for the raid groups. There's typically at least one senior warrior for every six members of a pride. Sometimes more. It depends on where the pride is. He forced some people to migrate in order to join their assigned pride, but he tried not to make them go too far. He wanted them to stay on terrain they were familiar with as much as possible."
"And the prides are how big?"
"Usually a couple dozen. Sometimes as small as one, sometimes as large as three. One dozen and three dozen, I mean." The last words were hasty, the prisoner wanting to ensure that he couldn't be accused of deception for simple unclarity.
"What protections are the sites going to have?"
"Protections? What— AAAGGHHHH!"
"Hazō," Cancurunchu said, his voice filled with reproof, "don't do that when the poor thing is simply confused. Asking clarifying questions isn't the same as lying."
Hazō snorted. "It's a standard Academy-level technique for interrogation resistance. Pretend to be stupid so that the interrogator spends all their time clarifying things instead of asking questions. If you're good at it you can get them so tangled up they forget what they originally asked."
Cancurunchu sighed. "You humans. All right, let's go punish the other one and then see if he'll answer the question."
The grisly night wended on, much to the dismay of the two prisoners.
o-o-o-o
Two of the leopards from the original raid, Hyōspotto and Hyōkamumono, had escaped the pack's pursuit. Hyōkamumono kept running for an entire day and night, but Hyōspotto was made of sterner stuff. He found a nearby pride and convinced them to send a strong force to deal with the intruders. Nine experienced leopard warriors ranged across the land, casting about until they found the trail of the dogs. They traced it to a place that smelled of blood and burned meat and urine. It wasn't hard to tell why; there were four leopard corpses, two of them covered in small burns. One of the burned ones had been cleanly decapitated, the head left leaning against its rear so that it appeared from a distance to be facing the wrong way. The other of the burned corpses had died...less cleanly.
All four corpses were drenched in the urine of a troop of dogs, and one other source that smelled unfamiliar.
The leopards growled their seething anger and loped off, following the trail. The dogs showed little skill at concealing their trail; their scent was barely concealed and they left occasional pawprints or disturbed stones and grasses in their wake.
The night was passing by the time the leopards caught up to their quarry. Their leader, Hyōmanuke, snorted in disgust at the sight of the dogs' encampment.
In fairness, the dogs had found a steep-sided swale that protected them from the wind and prevented their scent from being blown outwards across the prairie. The floor of the swale was lush grass, knee high and undoubtedly making comfortable beds.
So comfortable, in fact, that the sentry had fallen asleep. All eight dogs were curled up, tails over noses, motionless as the dead. In the center of the camp was a rectangular metal thing filled with dimly-glowing coals that undoubtedly filled the immediate area with blissful warmth to ward off the night's soft chill. The weird biped that Hyōspotto had described was asleep closest to the metal thing, its disgustingly pale, furless skin obviously more vulnerable to the cold than a sensible Seventh Path coat would be.
At a gesture from Hyōmanuke, the leopards backed down the hill to take a quick council.
"You two, circle around to the south. You and you, the east. You and you, west. The rest of us will stay here. I'll give you five minutes and then we attack on my signal. One rush, kill all of the little fuckers and crunch their bones. Got it?"
There was a chorus of affirmatives and warrior shadows disappeared into the night.
Hyōmanuke waited, counting silently to himself. When he reached three hundred he charged over the hilltop, bounding down the steep sides of the swale in a skitter of disturbed earth that was too quiet to waken the idiot canine invaders. He waited until he was halfway down the hill to pull shadows around himself, trusting his compatriots to see his charge and follow. With many groups he wouldn't have done it this way, but he knew this group and they worked well together.
The steps of the leopards were too silent, their shadow protection too thorough, to give any hint of the attack. The stupid dogs didn't so much as twitch as an unstoppable avalanche of furred death rushed down upon them—
Hyōmanuke's death was so sudden he didn't even know he'd been killed. One moment he was leaping to the attack, the next he was coming apart into blood and chunks of meat small enough to be put in a stew.
His shadow cloak vanished as he died, allowing the other leopards to see what had happened. They were so shocked that, just for an instant, none of them thought to stop their charge. Two more passed through the screen of skyslicers that wrapped around the pretended canine encampment.
The remaining six leopards slammed on the brakes, struggling to turn aside or reverse course, but it was difficult to do on the steep slopes. Another passed through the invulnerable and ontologically immobile spider-silk netting and splashed into stew meat.
One leopard, luckier and stronger than the rest, leaped upwards with all her might and managed to clear the netting that she couldn't see and dropped into the middle of the 'encampment'. A short distance from the ground she passed through a shudder of chakra and saw the truth concealed by the illusion of the Scenery Clone Seal Array.
The array captured the image of an area at a given instant and projected an illusion of that image over the protected area. Hazō had captured the image of himself and the dogs asleep and helpless, then set up skyslicers around the image, after which he and the dogs trotted off (this time exercise rather more trail discipline than they had while baiting in the enemy) over the border into Dog to sleep for the night and recover chakra. They would check back in the morning to see if their trap had caught anything.
Eight.
Voting remains closed.
Last edited by a moderator:
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
Hello, Zampano here (again).
In my post yesterday, I argued that we will not get a contour map of difficulty by conducting prep days across a random sampling of Rune ideas. My primary evidence was that Hazopilot has not deduced any principles of TR difficulty even after doing prep days on several magnitudes of TR### plus two Rune variants (the "unchained" version with no range controls and the "array" version that was "beyond capabilities"). I also noted that the (modal) TR prep days are substantively different from the other difficulty checks we have done, because the TR research started from the beginning of a Veterancy Chain and was mostly carried out after completing TR103. Our other prep days have been targeting completed runes with multiple features of the sort that would be at the end of a Veterancy Chain. These difficulty checks have not had a completed Rune with a similar effect to reference.
Noumero asked whether the catalogue of Rune effect difficulty classes is meant to be a Player-facing challenge, and expressed optimism about our ability to meet that challenge. So let's do that.
I am proposing three major changes to the way we conduct Runic Research. First, Runes being researched in an action plan should be written in the form of a Veterancy Chain. Second, the SOP for the SSA research tracks themselves should include a conditional for how to proceed based on Hazo's estimation of difficulty on the first prep day of the research cycle. Third, we should conduct prep days to check the difficulty for variants of Runes that are early in the Veterancy Chain for multiple different already-researched projects.
I believe that our success with Time Runes comes partially because we began with the minimum detectable effect, a 3% time differential. Hazo's initial brief for Time Manipulation was much simpler than the Runes that we have been difficulty checking: "Speeds up time by a weak factor in a small radius." Sir Stompy explicitly wrote this as the start of a chain. By comparison, the Optical Beam Collimator Rune's brief was "A rune that works by warping space to take light that is emitted in or focused into an AoE and output it at a tightly focused beam." It is ambitious to specify that the effect uses warped space, AND that it captures a certain kind of light, AND that the output is a tightly focused beam.
Consider the Veterancy Chain that I suggested for the Optical Beam Collimator Rune:
The first two Runes in this chain are intended to match Stompy's original phrasing, which only asks Hazo to verify that Runes are capable of effects in the domain of [time manipulation] or [projecting illusions]. This is the version that I wrote yesterday on a time-crunch, so the actual Veterancy Chain that gets voted in could do even better at isolating each of the three features that the original brief included.
I recognize that this is an additional Spoon Tax imposed on contributors, but the Hivemind tends to be collaborative so I'm optimistic that we can crowdsource these veterancy chains for most already-prepped Runes in Noumero's difficulty tracker.
Once the Veterancy Chains are defined, we will be able to give Hazo a backup option if the chosen starting point is too difficult. Consider an action plan where the proposed Beam Collimator chain above is voted in as the first SSA research track. He begins on the second Rune in the chain: a rune that warps space to create a one-way visual distortion. If the prep day reveals a difficulty of "... could maybe do..." then he stops research on that link. On day two of the research track, Hazo does a prep day on the first Rune in the chain: a rune that warps space to create a visual distortion. Because we wrote down the earlier link in the chain, Hazo can commence research without waiting an entire vote-cycle to decide what to do. If the first link in the Veterancy Chain is not "... well within..." then the update can end before infusion. (Or the action plan could specify an alternative SSA Rune, or any other behavior ofc.)
I think that embracing the idea of Veterancy Chains has a knock-on effect that makes exploring the difficulty of individual Rune features much easier. Both TR103 and Runic HOWS were created at the minimum level of difficulty (afaik). Neither of them has the ability to be toggled on and off. It would be incredibly valuable to prep both with an I/O feature to find out whether the increase in difficulty for adding a feature is the same across Runes with different types of effects. I believe we have prepped the remote explosion Rune in the most recent action plan. If that gets researched, will it also contribute Veterancy to a Remote Time Rune?
_______________
Separate from the effortpost above, I think that we should use one of the SSA tracks for weapon development, and the other SSA track for weapon delivery. E.g.
SSA1: Draconic Decay Rune
SSA2: Remote Explosion Rune v2.0
...but this depends a lot on what kind of payload the Hivemind ultimately decides on. My belief is that we just need a good start to the engagement: something that imposes a Severe on at least two Akatsuki in the first round, or something that imposes a truly crippling debuff on all enemies. We should stop thinking as though Hazo is going to eliminate Akatsuki & the Jashinists at the Rift-site all alone. Naruto + Oro + Tsunade (+Zoo Rush?) really just need an opening.
In my post yesterday, I argued that we will not get a contour map of difficulty by conducting prep days across a random sampling of Rune ideas. My primary evidence was that Hazopilot has not deduced any principles of TR difficulty even after doing prep days on several magnitudes of TR### plus two Rune variants (the "unchained" version with no range controls and the "array" version that was "beyond capabilities"). I also noted that the (modal) TR prep days are substantively different from the other difficulty checks we have done, because the TR research started from the beginning of a Veterancy Chain and was mostly carried out after completing TR103. Our other prep days have been targeting completed runes with multiple features of the sort that would be at the end of a Veterancy Chain. These difficulty checks have not had a completed Rune with a similar effect to reference.
Noumero asked whether the catalogue of Rune effect difficulty classes is meant to be a Player-facing challenge, and expressed optimism about our ability to meet that challenge. So let's do that.
I am proposing three major changes to the way we conduct Runic Research. First, Runes being researched in an action plan should be written in the form of a Veterancy Chain. Second, the SOP for the SSA research tracks themselves should include a conditional for how to proceed based on Hazo's estimation of difficulty on the first prep day of the research cycle. Third, we should conduct prep days to check the difficulty for variants of Runes that are early in the Veterancy Chain for multiple different already-researched projects.
I believe that our success with Time Runes comes partially because we began with the minimum detectable effect, a 3% time differential. Hazo's initial brief for Time Manipulation was much simpler than the Runes that we have been difficulty checking: "Speeds up time by a weak factor in a small radius." Sir Stompy explicitly wrote this as the start of a chain. By comparison, the Optical Beam Collimator Rune's brief was "A rune that works by warping space to take light that is emitted in or focused into an AoE and output it at a tightly focused beam." It is ambitious to specify that the effect uses warped space, AND that it captures a certain kind of light, AND that the output is a tightly focused beam.
Consider the Veterancy Chain that I suggested for the Optical Beam Collimator Rune:
- A rune that warps space to create a visual distortion
- A rune that warps space to create a one-directional visual distortion
- A rune that redirects all light crossing a plane Y1 into a single direction
- A rune that captures all light crossing a plane Y1 and emits it in a single direction from a subset of the plane, Y2 [with the area of Y2 < Y1]
- A rune that captures all light within a volume Z1 and directs it in the same direction
The first two Runes in this chain are intended to match Stompy's original phrasing, which only asks Hazo to verify that Runes are capable of effects in the domain of [time manipulation] or [projecting illusions]. This is the version that I wrote yesterday on a time-crunch, so the actual Veterancy Chain that gets voted in could do even better at isolating each of the three features that the original brief included.
I recognize that this is an additional Spoon Tax imposed on contributors, but the Hivemind tends to be collaborative so I'm optimistic that we can crowdsource these veterancy chains for most already-prepped Runes in Noumero's difficulty tracker.
Once the Veterancy Chains are defined, we will be able to give Hazo a backup option if the chosen starting point is too difficult. Consider an action plan where the proposed Beam Collimator chain above is voted in as the first SSA research track. He begins on the second Rune in the chain: a rune that warps space to create a one-way visual distortion. If the prep day reveals a difficulty of "... could maybe do..." then he stops research on that link. On day two of the research track, Hazo does a prep day on the first Rune in the chain: a rune that warps space to create a visual distortion. Because we wrote down the earlier link in the chain, Hazo can commence research without waiting an entire vote-cycle to decide what to do. If the first link in the Veterancy Chain is not "... well within..." then the update can end before infusion. (Or the action plan could specify an alternative SSA Rune, or any other behavior ofc.)
I think that embracing the idea of Veterancy Chains has a knock-on effect that makes exploring the difficulty of individual Rune features much easier. Both TR103 and Runic HOWS were created at the minimum level of difficulty (afaik). Neither of them has the ability to be toggled on and off. It would be incredibly valuable to prep both with an I/O feature to find out whether the increase in difficulty for adding a feature is the same across Runes with different types of effects. I believe we have prepped the remote explosion Rune in the most recent action plan. If that gets researched, will it also contribute Veterancy to a Remote Time Rune?
_______________
Separate from the effortpost above, I think that we should use one of the SSA tracks for weapon development, and the other SSA track for weapon delivery. E.g.
SSA1: Draconic Decay Rune
SSA2: Remote Explosion Rune v2.0
...but this depends a lot on what kind of payload the Hivemind ultimately decides on. My belief is that we just need a good start to the engagement: something that imposes a Severe on at least two Akatsuki in the first round, or something that imposes a truly crippling debuff on all enemies. We should stop thinking as though Hazo is going to eliminate Akatsuki & the Jashinists at the Rift-site all alone. Naruto + Oro + Tsunade (+Zoo Rush?) really just need an opening.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm probably going to make my vote have a prerequisite of "only if we're actively researching a previously difficulty checked WMD rune."
It's the only way I can see us getting out of difficulty check hell.
I have an admitted preference to the Draconic Decay Rune, but will not make that specific rune part of my requirements.
It's the only way I can see us getting out of difficulty check hell.
I have an admitted preference to the Draconic Decay Rune, but will not make that specific rune part of my requirements.
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
if you get a chance, could you flag which of the already prepped runes count as WMDs?
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
YOU MONSTER
Oh, it's not for reading. Moral horizon not crossed.
MANDA: I take umbrage to that.
Okay, seriously, that shook me. Are we
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Sure, no problem. I'm out running errands and Doing Tasks, but I'll get to it later this afternoon?
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
No rush at all. I just think they'd be a good place to start brainstorming veterancy chains.
Yeah we don't have good options for this. It's nice to want, but we don't have the PS to do this safely.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Killing the baby ninja if lucky, killing the instructors, destroying records, destroying books and other training materials... Multifaceted attack.
I am so flattered that you put us at the same level as Worm. I'm not a fan of it but it's wildly popular, so the comparison feels great.
To answer your question: the first 50ish chapters of Delve are absolutely brilliant, among the best webserials I've read. Somewhere after that it falls off a cliff and the pacing becomes glacial.
The other QMs can answer for themselves, but I'll note that conditionals in plans give me the heebies. I won't ban them at this point but I ask that they be used VERY sparingly and kept very simple. They absolutely must not be nested.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm willing to spend the 100xp to get DoB if it means we get to actually work on WMDs --despite my actual feelings regarding DoB.
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
Roger that. My thinking was something like a SOP:
Conduct prep day difficulty checks starting on the N-th link of this veterancy chain, proceeding backwards to the N-1th, N-2th, etc.
Do an SSA research cycle with full prep for the first Rune that returns "…well within" and end research if no such Rune exists in the veterancy chain.