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
I don't disagree, however based on what the Toad Sages said, and what we just found out about the Great Seal, spuriously bringing runes onto the 7th Path might accelerate the deterioration of the Great Seal.
I still hope we can help Cannai through non-existential-death means. Maybe seals for other functions?
Can some of the people voting for:
[] Cancel Microrift rune, but do something else. (Finish Ninja Radar, use other DoB track for Explosiver, research Banshee Lovers on non-DoB track)
explain your thinking to me?
It seems to me that staying in our current camp for weeks without progressing on rift runes seriously increases the chance that we run out of time to finish the rift sealchain.
And rifts/necromancy has been one of our main goals for... most of the quest, really. We have a chance to pull it off, why aren't we taking it?
Instead of taking ~5days to make a Micro rift rune, we spend ~5days running to an existing rune. This means wasting ~5days of research that would have happened on the non-rift research track, but lets us try to actually win the game. Seems like a much better deal than delaying for weeks to save 5 days on one research track.
Like I said, can someone explain their reasoning to me?
Thanks.
[] Cancel Microrift rune, but do something else. (Finish Ninja Radar, use other DoB track for Explosiver, research Banshee Lovers on non-DoB track)
explain your thinking to me?
It seems to me that staying in our current camp for weeks without progressing on rift runes seriously increases the chance that we run out of time to finish the rift sealchain.
And rifts/necromancy has been one of our main goals for... most of the quest, really. We have a chance to pull it off, why aren't we taking it?
Instead of taking ~5days to make a Micro rift rune, we spend ~5days running to an existing rune. This means wasting ~5days of research that would have happened on the non-rift research track, but lets us try to actually win the game. Seems like a much better deal than delaying for weeks to save 5 days on one research track.
Like I said, can someone explain their reasoning to me?
Thanks.
Sure, I think we'll finish Rift Runes in time and I think stealing the Rift ourselves is pure cope.
So while I'd like them to start soonish, the next time we shift locations is good enough. That means we don't waste the week of travel time to the Southern Isles
- Location
- Texas
Only if the rune messes with space, right? Not necessarily runes in general.
When explaining your reasoning, it might help to explain "I don't think X will work, for the following reasons". Just dropping "X is cope" without elaboration didn't explain much(and feels rude/dismissive).
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- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I hope we go to the rift in lightning since that's the last known location of the Kraken scroll. Since we will need to unstagnate combat eventually it would be a potential avenue that would potentially give us much greater rewards than getting into random fights
I recall asking yesterday on Discord- there might be further reasoning but Stompy mentioned that the chance of Akatsuki being present as part of either a regular patrol or a random visit was high enough that he would want long-range sensory capabilities before risking it.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My intention is to respond to the abstract complaint, which in this case is (to my reading) 'we cannot indulge the emotions of our compatriots when the stakes are so high'. That would be true if we didn't need to continue working effectively with everyone, but we do. I actually think that he's being reasonable in his reaction to what we proposed.
We have Word of God that Kagome won't push back in this specific instance. The quote says he'll feel slighted and accept it. He previously felt slighted and accepted it. That didn't stop it from significantly impacting our working relationship.
If you want to say that you're inferring based on past behaviour that he isn't reasoning clearly in this instance, that seems fine, but I disagree - rifts are a whole other ballgame and I think Kagome is accurately calibrated here. Specifically, I think the odds of us eating a Consequence as a result of opening random runes are pretty high and that's going to eat into the time budget pretty badly (as I understand the mechanics, at least). Alongside all the other risks, I'd rather look for a Rift that we know is usable to a reasonable degree of safety - at least, where Kagome can
I'm not Sir Stompy but let me take a hack.
Stealing the Rift requires (IMO) three things:
- We can get the Rift site all to ourselves, free of prying eyes, for a reasonable period of time.
- One of the following:
- We can replace the Rift with a dummy Rift which is indistinguishable from the original Rift.
- We can sell the idea that the Rift closed naturally.
- We can pull off both of the above without implicating ourselves or Leaf.
I personally think that we're going to get afterlife access faster by building good Leaf defense runes then returning to Leaf and collaborating with Orochimaru to seize and open the Rift.
That notwithstanding, I think that 1 and 3 are both high-risk propositions that we should probably avoid. Sufficiently de-risking them would require a lot of time and effort I'm not confident would transfer effectively to the overall effort.
If we can pull that off it would be pretty great, and potentially make Kisame a better matchup.
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1. We don't have enough chakra or substrate to infuse more than 10-20 runes while attacking the rift site ourselves. A sharp upper bound on massed barrages of RERs for example.
2. We don't have firepower to fight more than 1ish members of Akatsuki.
3. Many of Akatsuki are not particularly likely to be killed by our WMDs. Konan burrows and survives a Superchiller, Hidan doesn't die, Kisame/Itachi RS etc.
4. We don't have to tools to infuse runes close (<0.5km) to the site without being detected.
5. We cannot reliably depend on Akatsuki being absent from the Rift site.
Now some of these are surmountable, certainly we can develop observational tools to gather intelligence and go in when we're very confident Akatsuki is not there. But can we reliably depend on such? I say no.
By all means, try to steal the Rift, certainly. However, we cannot depend on it, and so we should aim to develop the tools to take it with Leaf's assistance first, and then on our own afterwards.
Since it will take some time to develop the observational countermeasure necessary for us to steal the rift ourselves, I feel comfortable delaying Rift research by ~3 weeks to be more efficient in how the rest of our time is spent.
Since I think it is very likely that the Rift Stealing chain is not the limiting factor on our attempt it makes sense to seek efficiency where we can, rather than wasting more time elsewhere.
Any Consequence other than a Severe is meaningless with Noburi around. What specific sequence of events do you envisioning inflicting this Consequence?
How did it significantly impact our working relationship? He contributes to the team and is willing to respect our leadership. Our working relationship doesn't seem impacted in the slightest to me. Do you have a specific instance of him not taking our orders etc. that backs this claim up?
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I feel like if you toss my post in a pot to boil the trimmings off, it doesn't really condense to "oh no, character dumb". I think you could read it that way, but that that reading is about as accurate as "oh no, character dumb" is as a response
I'm not saying he's being irrational here, I just think his argument is lackluster and he's probably getting triggered a bit since sealing failures are obviously a touchy subject for him. The last time he caused one, it fucked him up so badly he hid in the woods alone for 1.5 decades. I imagine he's got some serious baggage there.
I get where he's coming from, but that doesn't mean I have to think it's a particularly healthy steady state or something that he doesn't need to address.
From an interaction standpoint, it's no different to me than Kei's bizarrely self-centered double standards when it comes to certain actions and topics. Some people in thread go on at length about that with (in my opinion) a rather irritating lack of substance beyond "grumble grumble Kei dumb grumble grumble". I personally think that is a shitty and exhausting way of engaging with flawed characters not being perfect, but if all anyone is going to take away from what I'm saying is "grumble grumble Kagome dumb grumble grumble", then it's not really incentivizing me to do anything but keep the posts on those topics to "grumble grumble [Character] dummy!" while slapping the cave floor with a big rock lol.
The problem with examining things from this lens is that it renders a lot of analysis meaningless. Many questions a la "Why did this happen?" could be answered with "Because we are in the Golden Timeline." This takes the concept of simulationism out back and buries it in a ditch. It's like looking at Worm and going "Okay, so why doesn't something different happen?" and the IC answer is "Thinkers" or "the Simurgh" or "a precog did it", except it's worse than that, because the answer is "Because it didn't." with no further elaboration. That is less an explanation than it is a shrug.
When you get to the point of cherrypicking universes out of the uncountable tapestry of universes, it just makes actively engaging with something difficult. "We just happen to live in a universe that hasn't killed itself yet" isn't an answer there, since it means all the fuckups that happen offscreen don't play ball on the same scale as the ones that happen onscreen. In short, if the explanation is that simple, then it means we play by drastically different rules for some reason than everyone else.
If we exist in a universe where the odds of universal sealing failure instant-kill (or anything similarly bad at the tail end) is meaningfully larger than the chance of car accident fatality, and there is nothing else going on under the hood there besides "and it just hasn't happened yet", then either 1) we would have all died by now or 2) for some reason or other, when random people in this setting fuck up, its by fiat not that impactful. Neither of these are particularly satisfying conclusions IMO.
Kagome doesn't even argue against the anthropic principle argument that Hazō brings forth. He just says "Yeah but you don't know for sure man!". This is not an argument, you can say "Yeah but you don't know for sure man!" when someone is trying to talk you out of the Earth being 5000 years old but constructed perfectly such that it looks like its billions of years old (dinosaur bones and all). It isn't a position that can be engaged with.
I am not saying that the world has to work any particular way, just that it has to be more complicated than "You just happened to live in one universe amongst a kajillion that didn't kill itself yet and that is the beginning and end of the story as far as that topic goes." There is a lot of gray area in between that and "Okay these aren't actually likely to be all that dangerous insofar as ending the world goes".
True, but if messing with space is bad... imagine what might happen if we mess with time
EDIT:
Also, bringing runes to the 7th Path might mess with the dimension itself, not just the Great Seal
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1. We have BoC and the possibility of THing ES. It adds more time but so do other solutions.
2. A large enough number of runes is sufficient to kill or subdue any Akatsuki member without a way to GTFO really quick.
3. I don't want to rely on WMDs anyway, high-TN remote explosives seem like a workable strategy. A TN of 100 is sufficient to injure/kill Akatsuki after their Substitutions are exhausted. Either researching TN 130 or producing enough runes to bomb a wide enough area to cover everywhere they could Substitute to should work.
4. We don't need to unless you have something in mind that requires it. One mile is 1.6 kilometers.
5. If we can figure out a long-range sensory seal/rune, would it satisfy you? I don't think Akatsuki can afford to dedicate a pair of their members to constantly guarding the rift, and we have enough sensory stuff that boosting something up to km/miles should be doable.
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Yeah most of these are doable eventually but relies on research we haven't done and will slow things considerably.
So I don't think dropping everything and doing Rift Rune research is particularly desirable or necessary as I would say @Left-Hand Mutant seems want.
Like I said, I do want to develop these capabilities and attempt to steal the Rift, but we should finish sufficient things to defend Leaf and assist the assault first. Doing it without those capabilities is just foolish.
Thanks for all the substantive explanations.
Akatsuki is worse than Oro is worse than Naruto is worse than Uplift.
I think you're umderateing our WMD abilities.
My ideal second-track research program would be 5-minute Superheaters, followed by remote 5-minute Superheaters. Set one off underground to catch tunnellers, and one off on/above the rift camp.
In all of these cases we can set of the runes more than 1km from the rift, and rely on the huge AOE to encompass the rift. But Remote superheaters would be nice if we have time, which we probably will.
Did I miss something in my assessment?
And am I correct to understand that your main objection was/is "We can't reliably(ish) secure the rift site via WMDs with Akatsuki present, without needing to research a prohibitive number of runes." ?
These aren't 3+ independent variables, they all resolve to "yes" if we can WMD the rift site, which I (and Hazopilot) thinks is pretty easy.
I think this frames it wrong. The key Issue isn't whether the rift gets opened in 2 months vs 4 months, it's who controls the rift for the first few months after it's opened(and can thus resurrect thier teams badasses).
Akatsuki is worse than Oro is worse than Naruto is worse than Uplift.
Using a superheater over/under the rift site. Seems fast and safe, certainly safer than plans that have Uplift+Leaf repeatedly throwing down with Akatsuki+AMITY.
I think you're umderateing our WMD abilities.
My ideal second-track research program would be 5-minute Superheaters, followed by remote 5-minute Superheaters. Set one off underground to catch tunnellers, and one off on/above the rift camp.
- Sasori and Deidara just die.
- Hidan dies when his body is totally destroyed(see Dust Release being a lethal threat to him by his own admission).
- "hot enough to melt lead" is enough to completely destroy a human body, and massively chemically alter any remains for good measure.
- If a runic superheater takes effect slowly over 60 seconds like EM does, Itachi or Kisami will be able to escape via reverse summoning.
- They are then stuck on the 7th path until they can verify that their unsummoning point is safe. They don't know how long the Superheater death zone will last. If they guess 5min, like a really long jutsu, they die when they unsummoning. If they wait to contact the other Akatsuki summoner and have them verify the exit is safe, they're stuck on the 7th path for days while we steal the rift and leave.
- We can use the graphosealing track to make personnel AC seals, so that the death zone cools to "surviveable for uplift" temperatures before it reaches "surviveable for Akatsuki" levels.
- Konan is admitably risky. I hope the molten earth will get her, helped by setting off another superheater beneath the rift site, but it's possible she'll escape.
In all of these cases we can set of the runes more than 1km from the rift, and rely on the huge AOE to encompass the rift. But Remote superheaters would be nice if we have time, which we probably will.
Did I miss something in my assessment?
And am I correct to understand that your main objection was/is "We can't reliably(ish) secure the rift site via WMDs with Akatsuki present, without needing to research a prohibitive number of runes." ?
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Not even that, just that it'll take long enough that Rift Runes aren't a limiting factor and don't need to be top priority.
5 minutes of this won't destroy a human body. Especially not once that can function at just chakra coils and brains.
Not far enough to infuse a rune in safety from Kisame or Itachi. They can likely see/sense chakra from that far
Konan will flat out get away I think. Superheaters don't even affect the ground anyway.
For the Reverse Summoners, you're risking that they won't appear in the middle of us absconding with the Rift. I wouldn't take that bet.
- Location
- Washington, USA
A WMD wouldn't need to kill them to serve its role in a heist plan, just compel them to flee the area, then stay out long enough for Uplift to come in and grab the prize.
Skywalker bioseals might let him endure extreme air temperatures almost indefinitely, and then grow back from the soles of his feet. Seems unlikely, but if we're assuming there's an Out entity rigging probability toward his survival...
If we know the spot they departed from, either by relatively conventional observation or some spinoff of rift-finding tech, could use Earthshaping to set up a burial mound just like the Bear Summoner's.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think that opening the Rift as quickly as possible is secondary only to 'don't die'. On those grounds I think two vs. four months matters.
The Rift being under the control of a neutral or friendly party is definitely a key requirement but IMO everyone but the Akatsuki satisfies that retirement. The issue with Orochimaru is that he might want permanent and exclusive access for immortality purposes but we don't actually know if his plans are compatible with bringing Jiraiya et. al. back.
Part of the ticking clock here is that Sasori is probably also working on getting the Rift to a secure location. Albeit with paper, but he's surely trying. Getting the Rift to Rain is basically as good as getting it open from the perspective of the Akatsuki.
Dropping a nuke only satisfies condition 1 if we can operate in the environment and we're sure that Hidan isn't just going to charge into the hellscape we've created. 'Secure the asset', or at least 'get eyes on the asset', would be pretty high up the list if something like this went down.
A nuke only satisfies condition 2 if our timing and intelligence are good. If it just explodes while it's sitting there then it doesn't look like a random failure and Goketsu 'WMD' Hazo is high up the list of suspects. And the Rift 'failing' dramatically and then disappearing or showing up on sensor seals in a materially different way is going to prompt the Akatsuki to ask who benefits and scrutinize them no matter what - point three is a matter of degree, not whether or not we can avoid it.
I disagree per the above. I think the move is to head back to Leaf and coordinate a snatch. We don't have to worry about appearing innocent and we have bigger resources to bring to bear on the problem.
Do you find my position consistent?
I agree, but I also don't think we can assume that they'll flee rather than stay and fight.
Yeah this will take a couple hours, 30 minutes at least, and relies on having observational runes in place.
Now what if they pop back 15 minutes into that time pissed off and ready to fight? What is our recourse there?
This is not a low probability either. They know that we know to cover their exit points. They know that they must return soon to preserve their ability to every return. They will be aggressive about returning.
If they do this we can nuke Rain. I know it's not what most people want, but IMO it's preferred to letting Akatsuki win.
I think this is probably overcautious? Oro's description of Kisame's sensory capabilities was:
For his chakra sensing, "massive range" might mean "a mile". But it could also mean "half a mile" or even just "a few hundred metres"; compared to other sensory techniques in the setting, that is a massive range, but it's also not nearly enough to detect a Remote tech-tree rune. As for his conventional senses, it's definitely an issue; but we have SCSA, I'm sure we can figure something out.
Itachi-wise ... why do you think Itachi can see chakra from a mile away? That seems ... kind of unbelievable, honestly, I don't think we've seen anything about the Sharingan that would make us believe that. The main concern I have about Itachi is his crow summons, and he has to pay for them so I think he probably doesn't just have them around all the time; not to a range of a mile, at least.
This doesn't really work. Mareo was at a difficult-to-find location, got trapped in an age of much lower inter-Clan communication than we have now, and isn't an S-ranker; it would delay them short-term, at best. If only one of Itachi and Kisame are trapped this way, they'll find the other one and tell them to move the mound; if both are trapped, they'll go and bully another Summoner into compliance (and/or bribe them with S-rank ninjutsu, which both of them probably have in abundance).
Somewhat key problem with this that I don't think anyone's raised yet. Suppose we get the Rift and we start pulling out Jiraiya and Minato and Hiruzen etc. What happens next?
Well, what happens is that we've just resurrected a bunch of S-rankers (who are all loyal to Leaf) while not being S-rankers ourselves. It sort of doesn't matter whether we theoretically have control of the Rift; the moment our first resurrected S-ranker regains full strength, we don't have control of the Rift anymore, they do. Stealing the Rift is still advantageous in that it avoids the "the entire EN descends on Leaf" scenario, but it doesn't let us maintain control over the afterlife. In order for that to work, we would either have to be S-rankers ourselves, or we would have to pull off some shenanigans like getting Jiraiya fully on-side or resurrecting Nagato under life-debt oath.
Seems like a reasonable enough assumption that "massive range" might actually be a literal mile. A few hundred meters does not seem to be enough for descriptor to me.
He can literally see chakra. I assume large concentrations of chakra looks very bright to him, and runes contain lots of chakra.
If we're setting up in they sky above and he happens to glance up? He's gonna wonder what the bright spot is.
Now this is mitigated by distance and intelligence, if we can observe him sleeping. Then we can set up runes knowing we're not likely to be interrupted.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Isn't Sasori part of the "Good enough" Thinker clan? If what he's doing now is working I don't think he would bother trying to improve the setup (IE, he can already do research, I'm doubtful he'll try to move it with that in mind.)