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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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RandomOTP said:
think that this needs to be reworded to clarify that the it was active and ready to explore the Storm Rune. Yes, it seems fairly obvious, but my concern is that it's just vague enough that the QMs will discount it for trying to game the word count.

This should be fixed if you change it "an activated LFE," though. Doubly so if you include "to destroy the Storm Rune, thus maintaining runecrafting opsec"
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Sir Stompy said:
Declare Hazou set a LFE beneath the Storm Rune to destroy it after it burned out
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Sir Stompy said:
[X] Action Plan: Mari's Big Day
Word count: <299
Duration: Until either Remote Explosiver or Rift-Kicker is complete (Until then / 1.4 Solar)
  • Declare Hazou set a LFE beneath the Storm Rune to destroy it after it burned out
  • Sanity-check with Kei, Snowflake, and Mari:
    • We're considering an alternative to our initial plan. Instead of returning to Leaf, we strike O'Uzu and take the Rift ourselves, then stay missing while we resurrect our people.
      • Sufficiently-scaled Remote Explosivers, plus Rift-Movers and intel-gathering runes should suffice to take the Rift
      • Even if there's an Akatsuki pair at O'Uzu. All of them will go down to massed Explosiver fire (except probably Konan)
    • Pros:
      • Doesn't risk Orochimaru stealing the Rift. (What if Tsunade/Naruto die when facing Akatsuki?)
      • It's somewhat easier. We'd need to kill only 0-2 Akatsuki, and it doesn't paint a target on Leaf while we explore the afterlife.
      • We might be able to disguise it as a sealing failure (Sasori is likely researching at O'Uzu), or even covertly replace the afterlife rift with a different rift.
    • Cons: We'd have no Leaf S-ranker support.
    • We'd have to do the Afterlife exploration unsupported.
    • Is this at all viable?
  • Toad and Snake are relatively close, can Noburi get Gamabunta to agree to to pass a message to Orochimaru? We'd obviously have to circumvent his oaths in a similar way to what we asked Kumokugo to do.
  • Mari can you go to the intel dealer in Demon that Naruto told us about? Should only be a 3-4 day trip. Take a bag of gold and gems and find out what's been happening in the EN
    • End the update if she's late getting back
  • Research
    • No-prep research Air Leadener and Banshee Lover until Air Leadener is complete
    • DoB track 1: Ninja Radar -> Explosiver -> Remote Explosiver
      • If Explosiver is Hard, try a TN120 version. If that is Hard, end the update
      • If Remote Explosiver is hard, consider researching Remote explosives with intermediate TNs for veterancy.
      • Continue if 'pilot thinks he can do it with an Invoke and aggressive rerolling per the SOP
    • DoB track 2: Rift-unanchoring -> Rift-kicking
    • Non-DoB track: finish Banshee Lover -> KISS -> Coloured Strobe
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I'd be happy to vote for this, but I think that LFEs are genuinely more likely to make things worse than better. They're only accurate to within an hour, so there's a significant risk that seal would be discovered, in which case it makes it much more obvious than it would otherwise be that there's something special about the crystal; and I don't think the likelihood of the tag doing significant damage is high enough to risk it.
 
Kyreneryk said:
I'd be happy to vote for this, but I think that LFEs are genuinely more likely to make things worse than better. They're only accurate to within an hour, so there's a significant risk that seal would be discovered, in which case it makes it much more obvious than it would otherwise be that there's something special about the crystal; and I don't think the likelihood of the tag doing significant damage is high enough to risk it.
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I mean I'm happy just getting rid of the Declare entirely. Anybody feel strongly about keeping it?
 
Speaking plainly, the whole "the setting is impossible to sus out" thing is a double edged sword, and I'm not sure a single half-destroyed rune remnant is going to move the needle much in a world where person-sized lumps of chakra metal ore suddenly become intelligent SS-tier village destroying threats.

After a rune is spent the chakra channels in the substrate get burnt out. I don't see someone magically reinventing runecrafting from staring at this for a while without having a lot more information than is actually available to anyone looking at the site of the Storm Rune.

At least half of the cool stuff we run into seems to be uninteractable (or very difficult to interact with) chakra bullshit anyway from a research perspective.

My priors are that the buck stops somewhere around "Ah the storm kami is incredibly displeased", "Sealing failure??", or "Oh no, the lightning in that storm came alive! Lightning chakra elementals???" or something like that. Lets just not be too sloppy in the future.
 
MMKII said:
Speaking plainly, the whole "the setting is impossible to sus out" thing is a double edged sword, and I'm not sure a single half-destroyed rune remnant is going to move the needle much in a world where person-sized lumps of chakra metal ore suddenly become intelligent SS-tier village destroying threats.
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I'd rather not rely on the setting being confusing/imperceptible... we already have a bad time modeling the world, which is why Hazou-pilot has gained ever-increasing agency over the life of the quest. Relying on the worldbuilding to be confusing would be, like Jack Sparrow said, a dishonest man to be dishonest.

I could equally see the Storm Rune husk being some rando's platinum level loot drop, like Itachi and his Big Fuckoff Shield that he discovered while wandering the world. Wish we stumbled into some of those while traveling the world
 
RoadWild said:
I have a thought but why don't we give Mari a carte blanche on getting info? I'd be interested in seeing what the upper limits of info available are
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Sure I'll rewrite.
Left-Hand Mutant said:
I suggest also putting a normal explosive tag + tripwire underneath, so that if someone moves the Storm Rune husk(which would reveal the LFE) the tripwire explosive goes off.
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The QMs need to approve this Declare. I'm really not sure this is acceptable. Even the LFE is pushing it, why would we rig this to explode if touched while infusing it for the first time?

@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped

Mind ruling on this Declare too?
 
RandomOTP said:
I'd rather not rely on the setting being confusing/imperceptible...
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Me neither, but I'm not really convinced we have other options at this point. Hazou's internal monologue seems consistent with "The thing wasn't destroyed" so it seems like it might be a problem to cleverly circumvent the issue with a declaration— at least, I dont see the QMs letting it fly. Thus, we might be stuck with it.

It's just probably not going to be the end of the world.
 
MMKII said:
Speaking plainly, the whole "the setting is impossible to sus out" thing is a double edged sword, and I'm not sure a single half-destroyed rune remnant is going to move the needle much in a world where person-sized lumps of chakra metal ore suddenly become intelligent SS-tier village destroying threats.

After a rune is spent the chakra channels in the substrate get burnt out. I don't see someone magically reinventing runecrafting from staring at this for a while without having a lot more information than is actually available to anyone looking at the site of the Storm Rune.

At least half of the cool stuff we run into seems to be uninteractable (or very difficult to interact with) chakra bullshit anyway from a research perspective.

My priors are that the buck stops somewhere around "Ah the storm kami is incredibly displeased", "Sealing failure??", or "Oh no, the lightning in that storm came alive! Lightning chakra elementals???" or something like that. Lets just not be too sloppy in the future.
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The Akatsuki know we're at large doing research, and they have extensive spy networks. It's fairly likely they have agents in whatever jurisdiction we set off the Storm Rune. Upon reading the report about the massive sealing failure, they'd strongly consider the possibility we're involved. It's fairly likely they'll come to investigate, in the hopes of finding a trail we left. It's possible (though not likely) that they'd discover the rift scar we came there for (for example, if its location is known to the local ninja village), in which case they'd be all-but-certain it was us. It's possible they'd discover the runic husk, and drag it over to Sasori. Sasori knows about the Great Seal, and he'd seemed interested in it (recall that he isn't as debilitated by the Yodomi's curse as the actual Yodomi). He'll at least strongly suspect that the husk isn't the result of a sealing failure, but us successfully reverse-engineering 3D sealing.

Would he be able to reverse-engineer runecrafting from the runic husk? No, of course not. But:
  • This still leaks information. A few more screw-ups like this, and he'd have the pieces needed to start figuring it out.
  • This would put the Akatsuki on high alert. They'd know we have outside-context tools at our disposal.
  • This might draw the Akatsuki's interest to Orochimaru, strongly suspecting that he was either the one to invent 3D sealing to begin with (and Hazou somehow bought it from him or something), or that it was developed by Leaf-nin in general, et cetera.
    • This might either directly give the Akatsuki runecrafting (if they loot-pinata Oro hard enough), or at least make Oro extremely pissed off at us.
Is this sequence of actions particularly likely? No. But I think it's likely enough we should spend marginal resources on destroying the husk, if possible.
 
I'll be honest, I much prefer Left-Hand Mutant's way of taking out the Storm Rune over Sir Stompy's, if only because there is a sanity-check involved. A likely failure state in destroying the rune by using an LFE not only leaves behind the burnt-out rune but also leaves behind a seal, which absolutely confirms a ninja/sealmaster's presence. Noumero commented on the potential dangers of Akatsuki being notified of our involvement above.

@Sir Stompy, I would caution you to use a sanity-check/optimize on the Declare to ensure we put the best possible "destroy this rock" plan forward.

EDIT: Actually, what's stopping Hazou from prematurely detonating the Storm Rune with a Remote Explosive Rune, modulo the risk of runic failure?
 
faflec said:
I'll be honest, I much prefer Left-Hand Mutant's way of taking out the Storm Rune over Sir Stompy's, if only because there is a sanity-check involved. A likely failure state in destroying the rune by using an LFE not only leaves behind the burnt-out rune but also leaves behind a seal, which absolutely confirms a ninja/sealmaster's presence. Noumero commented on the potential dangers of Akatsuki being notified of our involvement above.

@Sir Stompy, I would caution you to use a sanity-check/optimize on the Declare to ensure we put the best possible "destroy this rock" plan forward.

EDIT: Actually, what's stopping Hazou from prematurely detonating the Storm Rune with a Remote Explosive Rune, modulo the risk of runic failure?
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Does a sealing failure not indicate a sealmaster was present?

Nothing is stopping Hazou from blowing it up with an RER, except the possibility of a runic failure.
 
@Sir Stompy is the "intel broker in demon" this guy in Marsh:
Paperclipped said:
Syōma is an information broker and priest of some weird religious order on the Eastern Continent. Apparently he's a straightforward guy – put ryō in, get answers out. Jiraiya said he once tried to force answers out of him, but he resisted Jiraiya's killing intent better than most jōnin. Jiraiya half-shit himself thinking he'd overextended himself pissing off a powerful ninja at arm's length, but the guy apparently didn't even notice that Jiraiya had done anything! His intel on the Elemental Nations is mediocre, but Jiraiya says he sometimes knows stuff that no civilian has any right to. Go to Red Moon Inn in Marsh's capital and ask for an 'iron nail stew'.
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or some other dude?
 
Left-Hand Mutant said:
Leave a Remote Explosive on an SCSA'd skytower so someone(Kei?) can stay behind and destroy it
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I'm not a fan of this idea as well. Why would we leave a single person there? If anyone is staying, it'd make more sense to have the entire team wait, so that if something goes wrong and the RER skytower is discovered, we can just kill the people who came to investigate. The Akatsuki almost certainly aren't gonna show up here in <24 hours, and we can handle any squad that doesn't contain S-rankers.

By contrast, leaving a RER guarded by a single person raises the risk profile immensely: not only can one of us get captured, it also gives the captor a working live sample of a rune.
 
Wouldn't it be hilarious if Ami was secretly Syoma the whole time, and has been waiting for months wondering what the fuck we've been doing?
 
faflec said:
Wouldn't it be hilarious if Ami was secretly Syoma the whole time, and has been waiting for months wondering what the fuck we've been doing?
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No, Syouma is just Hidan again. I mean, a weird priest with magic powers? C'mon. Surely we won't fall for that one a second time.

(Fuck, all the memes we made about Zabuza actually have a grain of truth to them in Hidan's case. We're really playing New Game Plus now.)
 
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