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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Rafin said:
I'm a bit surprised that Noburi did so much (and subjected himself to so much memory divergence) on his first Shadow Clone try. I remember that Hazō was made to lay on the ground and immediately dispel his clone after summoning it. And that Kei was supposed to do similar but didn't. I assume that's because Noburi's Resolve is so much higher than theirs was at this point? Still, I'd expect the reintegration pain to be novel to him the first time around, even if he has no real trouble withstanding it.
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Probably helps that his bloodline has few if any full-time mental effects, so divergence due to immediate internal changes would be less noticeable.
Inferno Vulpix said:
That is to say, if we want to actually keep the secret we'll need a more precise secrecy plan. A way to convey enough about it to satisfy without giving him what he needs to understand and replicate it. I don't off the top of my head know what that should look like, but I certainly don't think Hazoupilot is up to the task.
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Seems like the way to go would be splitting our known runes into a short whitelist (describe capabilties up front, and theory in as much detail as relevant, with expectation they'll become defining pillars of the strategy),
a similarly short blacklist (would doom us all, so don't even imply),
and leaving the rest as gray, volunteered only when they'd patch some critical deficiency in an already half-formed plan. Gray-list stuff should also be left vague between "I already have a proven trick for that" vs. "I could invent it on short notice," where possible, since that'll make it harder for Oro to estimate our exact research rate and thus how many more designs of a given difficulty we might have plausibly come up with in a given span of time.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Looking over Stompy's protoplan...

No shot this works, right? Like, Kei got upset at how WMD-y our Storm rune was and by our own admission we didn't even think it'd be that bad. Right as a sudden impending deadline strikes us we go off to do an unexplained super-destructive rune that we hadn't seen fit to do before yet also don't think will take so long to interfere with the deadline. She's gonna figure it out, or Mari if she doesn't, or she'd just start worrying from the simple fact that a rune Hazou expects to be especially destructive is also likely to be a WMD.

In short, I don't think we can fool them here, and we probably shouldn't even try.

Speaking of, even though this is only one day of waiting, I'm a bit leery about it. How is this more to our advantage than meeting Oro ASAP and then taking a day to research if he confirms we have that much time? It feels like it's hedging against Orochimaru being stupid and pushing us to attack earlier even though we can spare a day to do the research. In other scenarios (we don't have a spare day, Oro sees the merit in letting us research for a day, etc.) it seems like a pretty straight loss.

(Also, I feel like we shouldn't be committing ourselves to Superchillers until we've talked with Oro and know what our odds look like. I'm of the opinion that we should only go for them if our odds look bad without, which we cannot determine beforehand.)

Edit: hmmm, looking back from the end of the plan, it seems like the intention here is to only get halfway through the research and then put it on ice until and unless we need it? I suppose that's fair, though we run the risk of accidentally completing it in one go. And I guess, if we imagine we can't move out immediately since it'd take a day to put our affairs in order (i.e. the rest of the plan), it doesn't really cost us time. If that's what you're going for, I think I can agree with it.

I'm uncertain that we should do a test summon here. Not wholly against, given that the travel time to Rice and then O'Uzu probably leaves enough time to recover with good treatment, but I'm not certain. If the numbers work out, it should be fine, but if doing a test summon now would risk delaying the assault in worlds where it turns out we don't have any spare days, we might want to hold off.

In a similar band of worrying, "when we know more in a few days" might give the wrong impression in worlds where, a few days from now, we're already at O'Uzu and about to fight. I wouldn't want to have Cannai falsely expect to have more time than he does to be ready for the battle.

What, exactly, is this referring to? The radar rune? Just the rift runes? This could probably be clearer as something like "All of our plans are shaky without further inventions to synergize with", which also feels like it casts Hazou in a bit of a better light.

Does this need to be said? I'm not sure what practical consideration it's really referring to. Is it "Hazou can't just YOLO a bunch of his RER2 runes because he might run out of FP halfway"? If so, pointing out our lack of substrate doesn't seem super salient, and we could reframe the line a bit better as "We still need to be careful when crafting our best runes, so it might take some time" or somesuch.

I agree with the spirit, but, no shot this works, right? The being vague part, to be clear. Oro's going to very reasonably need to know the specs of our weapon, what kind of devastation it'll deliver and how to plan around its deployment. We won't be able to keep to a "maximally vague" standard, and odds are if he does Intimidate us into giving up secrets we'll end up giving him enough pieces to figure out the insights we're trying to keep from him.

That is to say, if we want to actually keep the secret we'll need a more precise secrecy plan. A way to convey enough about it to satisfy without giving him what he needs to understand and replicate it. I don't off the top of my head know what that should look like, but I certainly don't think Hazoupilot is up to the task.


But overall, taking into account these criticisms, I like the general thrust of the plan. I would also like to add in a line about splitting the party so we can have quick comms with Leaf, but I think this covers all the bases we need it to.
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This action plan is throughly depreciated. Superchillers can be contained by Force Domes and essentially become "create vacuum" rune. They're also 1 Zone in AoE and 10 min in duration and this plan accounts for none of that.

I also think we gotta discuss our next actions with the team first rather than going to Oro, and I think we're going to probably going to split, Mari, Hazou, Nobs to Oro and Yuno, Tenten, Kei, Kagome to Leaf to act as a dead man's switch.

I also am significantly soured on bringing up Superchillers with Oro in a plan until we're sure we need them.
 
I think the message from Urichimaru is pretty clear on the fact that he wants to cooperate with us. However, I do not think this was voluntary on Gamahebigai's part. I think the interaction probably went more like this:

Gamahebigai: I have this stone for safe keeping...
<Orochimaru gives Gamahebigai a look like a cat who thinks you're crazy>

Orochimaru: F the stone, tell them this...

Gamahebigai: But I have an oath...

Orochimaru: This is more important than your oath.

Gamahebigai: I can't...

Orochimaru: Okay, we'll do it this way...

Maybe we will have an interlude about this interaction at some point.
 
OrthernLight said:
Arguably it'd be smart to have one summoner on-site and one off, so they can quickly get in contact if need be, but other considerations could easily outweigh that.
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That assumes summoning works in that Path. The Summoning Scroll might be a Human Path-Seventh Path connection, and simply doesn't work if the user is trying to connect from a different path.
 
Ipsos Custodes said:
That assumes summoning works in that Path. The Summoning Scroll might be a Human Path-Seventh Path connection, and simply doesn't work if the user is trying to connect from a different path.
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I think @OrthernLight meant one Summoner in the fortress and one somewhere else, not one in Naraka and the other on the Human Path. Agreed that Summoning is unlikely to work on the Naraka Path (and in fact we probably shouldn't bring our Summoning Scrolls through in the first place).
 
Adhoc vote count started by Velorien on Nov 13, 2024 at 1:18 PM, finished with 261 posts and 13 votes.
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Voting is closed.

(Please ignore @Left-Hand Mutant's late vote, as I can't be bothered to run the more tiresome post-number-to-post-number tally. They're all interlude votes anyway.)

 
@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @Paperclipped

So the Great Seal is deteriorating, and we need to fix it. Unfortunately, sealing/runecrafting as a discipline is blackboxed from the playerbase. Fortunately, Hazou-the-character has a great amount of knowledge, skill, and veterancy in these magical research disciplines.

Back when we-the-playerbase were trying to unlock Runecrafting, it was an often repeated line that we felt the only way to engage with the project was to level Earthshaping ever-higher, and wish for the best (simply because Sealing is blackboxed from the playerbase, and the terminology used in the updates are confirmed to be meaningless technobabble).

The following questions are a good-faith attempt to try and circumvent this pitfall, and to provide a meaningful way for the playerbase to engage with the Great Seal subplot.

  • Using modern dimensionalism sealing knowledge, and pilot's blackboxed runecrafting knowledge, does he think it's possible to...
    • ...Create a dimensional blanket/shield to prevent the GS from being affected by paper seals? The shield would cover the rune, folding dimensional space in such a way that the folded space prevents the dimensional effects of paper seals from reaching the Great Seal, thus stopping the paper-seal-souced deterioration
    • ...create a rune that takes the chakra leaking out of the Great Seal and uses it to fortify the Great Seal, shoring up the Weakening structures of the Great Seal
    • ...create a rune that takes the chakra leaking out of the Great Seal, and pulls it through dimensional space in such a way that the chakra does not brush up against/have of corrosive effect on the Great Seal? The question would become how to safely dispose of said chakra.
To clarify: I am not asking for a free difficulty check. I'm asking if Hazou-pilot (with the relevant stats that he has) believes that this would be a valid path to pursue, or if this would be like trying to make an electric battery using tree bark and eyelashes (i.e. utter nonsense that has nothing to do with the goal at hand).
 
In terms of the great seal it would probably be easiest to just take it's exit shunt it as far out as we can and the just empty it out. We can use the rift veterancy hazou already has for this and if it can survive the out it probably would've been able to atomism hazou anyway.
 
Solceror said:
In terms of the great seal it would probably be easiest to just take it's exit shunt it as far out as we can and the just empty it out. We can use the rift veterancy hazou already has for this and if it can survive the out it probably would've been able to atomism hazou anyway.
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I'm... not entirely comfortable with this. The Dragons that have already escaped are suspected to be the weaker ones. The stronger ones are esoteric enough that they might manage to Claw their way back, somehow. And then, we'd merely be pushing a problem back by an unknown amount of time (could be years, could be days).

Like Kei once said, "you store what you cannot kill." And "dump it into the Out" sounds like an obvious solution, so why didn't the Sage do that? The most likely answers are either "it won't work" or "it'll worsen things."

And, even if we're able to do this, there's a chance that the contents of the Great Seal are dumped... on some innocent people of the Multiverse. Maybe they'd be fine, maybe they'd die, but it would be our fault.

We're not the Sage, we can do better.
 
@eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien , bumping some (mostly non-urgent) questions I asked a while back. No hurry on the answers, I just want to make sure they haven't got lost.
Kyreneryk said:
Thinking about rerolls; @eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien , when considering whether to reroll on a TH project, do you get to see what the TN rolled before you decide? Presumably you don't get to see the TN itself; but do you get to know what its fudge dice were? (In-world; "chakra seems recalcitrant today" or "chakra seems cooperative today".)
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Kyreneryk said:
Surging Seas? Seems like a good technique, and it's half-cost. Although ... @eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien , could Noburi deliberately reduce his roll on Surging Seas? I'm worried that if we level it too high, he and allies may lose the ability to ride the wave (since they'd no longer be able to make the required Ath check); since this would amount to losing capabilities from getting better at a skill, can we assume he'd be able to cast it with a lower TN if he wanted to?
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Kyreneryk said:
Screw it. @eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien , what's the ruling on this? Is Kei's character sheet violating the pyramid rules a special case, or an example of a general rule that you can break the number-of-skills-at-AB requirement (bolded below) as long as you're not trying to raise a new capstone?
In order for a skill list to be valid, the number of your skills with Aspect bonus N must be >= the number of skills with bonus N+1. Additionally, if your highest level skill has Aspect Bonus N, you must have at least 2 stats at AB N-1, 3 stats at AB N-2, and so on. Your skill list must be valid in-between times you are actively spending XP, but you can spend large amounts of XP to jump between valid states. You are assumed to have an arbitrarily large number of skills at level 0-9 (that is, AB 1).
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Kyreneryk said:
@eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien Question for Noburi: do civilians have elemental affinities? They don't have a usable level of chakra, but IIUC they still have chakra systems, and we know from Sasha's case that Noburi can identify someone's Element without them ever actually having cast an elemental technique. On the other hand, that did require her to channel her chakra to her hands, which civilians can't do; but Noburi can still drain them, so maybe he can still tell?

Actually, follow-up question; how much chakra does Noburi get from draining the average civilian, relative to ninja reserves? Alternative framing; how many civilians would Noburi have to drain to unconsciousness to refill one genin? (I feel like this one's probably already been answered, so if anyone else knows the answer please feel free to jump in - but I can't easily find it.)

Follow-up to the follow-up; has Noburi (or anyone else in Uplift) ever heard of civilians learning to use chakra, even if they're stuck with barely any reserves? Or are they fundamentally incapable of doing it? If the latter; does Noburi (with his MedKnow 60 and surgical experience) know how exactly civilian chakra systems differ from ninja ones?
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Kyreneryk said:
@eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien , does Hazō know how fast, and/or how chakra-efficiently, Bones of Creation can make substrate? It's not specified in the jutsu doc - the casting cost is, as is the additional sustain cost to make substrate, but not how fast the technique can convert how much material. (In particular, is the fixed thing "time for 1 unit of substrate" or "time to convert all affected material to substrate"? If it's the latter, that would mean the technique becomes massively more efficient at higher levels.)
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Cariyaga said:
TNs don't roll dice, for one of those.
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Paperclipped said:
  • Every research day, you make a single contested check with your Technique Hacking against the jutsu's difficulty TN (instead of two checks with Sealing and Calligraphy) to make progress.
  • Saying that again:
    • In Sealing, it's: (Base Score) + (bonuses) + 4dF vs. TN
    • In Technique Hacking, it's: (Base Score) + (bonuses) + 4dF vs. TN + 4dF
    • Shifts generated = (your roll - TN's roll)/3, as usual.
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We're facing a big choice with almost zero information. Here's an attempt to gather as much intel as possible without alerting Akatsuki(or other hostiles) or prematurely restricting our options. it will slow us down by less than 48 hours, hopefully more like ~30 hours.

Split into two teams.
The Oro-talking team will go near the meeting point in Rice and reach out on the 7th path, while the Intel team go to Fire to figure out what the current situation is.

Oro Team:
- Hazou: team leader, only one who can seriously talk to Orochimaru.
- Yuno: bodyguard in case of normal threats/combats
- Noburi: contact Tsunade via 7th path while waiting for intel team.

Intel Team:
- Mari: team leader, information specialist
- Kei: some intel analyst skills, extra summoner for communication redundancy
- Kagome: analyst skills, would make talking to Orochimaru more difficult
- Tenten: additional combat power

Mari's instructions for the intel team:
  • Priority 1: Don't get caught
  • Priority 2: Learn if it's safe to make contact with Naruto, and why Orochimaru went missing again.
    • If you can quickly and discreetly contact(or abduct and interrogate) info dealers or ninja, consider doing so. We need intel fast.
    • Naruto might be incapacitated or under extreme Akatsuki surveillance. But if he isn't, we need a discrete way to make contact ASAP.
      • Making contact with Shikamaru also counts
  • If you can safely make contact with Naruto, brief him on our relevant runes (Force Dome, Iron Earth, RE2.0, ninjadar, Rift Runes), and our contact with Orochimaru, then ask for orders.
  • If you can't safely make contact with Naruto, report what you've learned to Hazou via 7th path, and move to link up with Hazou+Orochimaru on the way to Todoroki Shrine.
Oro team:
  • Right away: Return Gamahebigai with the message "Received. ETA [time it takes Intel team to get to Fire +2 days]. Prefabricate and store several thousand substrate units. Can we expect Leaf support during/after the assault? Please treat Gamahebigai as comfortably as possible."
  • Give Cannai our old notes of completed PS research and ~100 points of substrate, under oath to only return them to Kei or Kagome.
  • Set up a secure (SCSA+skytower) camp at least ~50 miles(2.5 hours run) from the meeting site with Oro.
  • Noburi sky-runs over Turtle to Slug. The stakes are high enough to warrant skywalkers.
    • Have Akai try to contact Tsunade and ask WTF is going on, while Noburi skywalks ready to bug out if Tsunade gets violent.
    • If she's there, confirm the Leaf situation and let her know that we have strategically-transformative runes.
    • If either Tsunade or Naruto are able to help for a rift assault, tell her [all the stuff the Intel team wants to tell Naruto].
    • If Noburi thinks it would go better, have Kei do this instead (swap Kei+Tenten for Noburi+Yuno)
  • Wait for word from Intel team.
  • End the update when the Intel team gets in contact with Naruto/Shikamaru (or deems it infeasible), misses a check-in, or spends more than 48hours trying to make contact.


I'd like feedback on this general approach, and specific thoughts on how we can tune it better. If any particulars strike you as odd or unhelpful, let me know, I'm happy to listen and/or explain what I was thinking.

Not yet written as action plan, but "sanity check all with uplift" would go in at the top somewhere.
 
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Spector29 said:
I imagine if we include a clause like that, we'll want to add to the oath that Cannai give the new summoner an extensive vibe check before letting him in on Runecrafting.
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Why does this have to be an oath, let alone an oath that we word for him? Can't we just explain our intentions and trust Cannai to do what he thinks best serves Hazō's memory, plus maybe let him make an oath of his choosing in order to ward of external pressure to act against his own will?

Like, our goal for this is that Oro doesn't have a Rune monopoly in the case of our death. And that we can safely tell Oro that we have made sure that that is the case. Details around that can be left to Cannai, no?
 
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