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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Here's how I imagine this conversation is going to go.

Hazo: Mr. Orochimaru, sir, I have to admit I've had some concerns that you might try to kill me to protect the secret of runecrafting after this crisis is done.
Oro: Well obviously.
Hazo: ... Excuse me? Did I hear that right? What do you mean obviously?!?
Oro: Don't be an idiot boy, you've had those concerns because it's clearly the correct thing to do. I imagine you've taken some precaution or other to ensure I have no valid reason to kill you, yes?

*rolls to intimidate Hazo into telling the truth.*

At this point Orochimaru will try to figure out whether he can kill the dog boss before the notes get spread, or otherwise work around our preparations, and only if the proliferation of Runecrafting notes are solidly beyond his control would he say

Oro: Hmph, I suppose you've thought that out well enough. You do realize that those notes getting out could lead to the end of the civilized world?
Hazo: All the more reason to ensure I don't die here, sir.
Oro: It seems my hands are tied. Well done.


So uhhh yeah personally I'm not sure if just leaving notes with Cannai would be enough. Better would be leaving notes with Cannai who would then issue orders that Hazo doesn't know about so Hazo can't spill the beans and Orochimaru can't even properly weigh the odds of being able to prevent those notes from being spread.

If Hazo, for some forgetful reason, has no protection of that sort, I'm not sure how that conversation would go at all. Promising in front of summons isn't going to change anything, whether he agrees to it or not. He might be willing to put on a show for Hazo to let his guard down and then break the promise anyways because his relationship with the Snakes doesn't seem like it would be significantly harmed if Oro was known as an oathbreaker. Oro would probably call us an idiot, seriously consider killing us on the spot, and then probably reconsider and instead arrange for us to die during the Akatsuki assault. There might be some interrogation for Rune designs involved at some point.
 
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FaintlySorcerous said:
What do you mean by 'give him an option'? We're not going to try to stop him if he walks off with the Rift (unless we're seized by some suicidal urge) and if we do intend to get a posse together in Leaf and track him down, we're not going to shake our fist and declare vengeance then and there.

What do you think we could do that would force his hand?
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Making it clear that we intend to destroy him in the fullness of time, for one. :p

(I don't, for the record! But some of the hivemind does.)

That said, I am 100% down for setting up a dead man's switch with Cannai. It's responsible, even! There's a big rune there that if Akatsuki kills both Hazou and Oro, someone has to fix. We don't even need to make it a combative thing.
 
I think there's a decent chance that Oro will indeed treat that as a reasonable and expected precaution, such that he'd be pissed off at our idiocy if we didn't do it. I also think there's a decent chance that he will get murderously enraged the moment we hint we're threatening runecrafting proliferation/defying him, condemning our idiocy for risking leaking the secret and outlining how killing us is obviously not in his interests, acting offended at the very idea. Essie brain, you know?

(I suggest we just ignore the latter possibility. If Oro decides to act like a child, we shouldn't reward that behavior.)
 
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redzonejoe said:
Well I've already stated my opinion on the topic but since we're still talking about it all these pages later, might as well repeat myself mindlessly to the brick wall of nobody caring;

Orochimaru has no incentive to keep the rift for himself and go missing unless Hazo/Leaf seriously fuck up their relationship with him. When comparing the two possible timelines, one where Oro is the hero of leaf, top scientist, given everything he wants which includes infinite access to the rift, vs the timeline where Orochimaru goes missing and has to handle the rift on his own while the entire rest of the world is searching for him, I see absolutely no rational path towards Orochimaru choosing the second option. It just doesn't make any sense.

"What if Orochimaru wants to keep Runecrafting for himself?" somebody might ask. I'm glad I did, thanks, because that is actually yet another reason why Orochimaru should cooperate actually. Basic precautions taken could result in Runecrafting spreading out of his control if Orochimaru acts against Hazo's interests here.

"What if the rift is the secret to immortality (which Orochimaru naturally wants as much or more than anything else)?" I've seen paraphrased here or there. Well yeah, what if Hazo and/or Jiraiya had incentive to head into the rift to fish out Orochimaru should the worst ever come to pass? Forget the what-ifs of some distant hypothetical line of research, the rift already promises immortality so long as Orochimaru has competent allies who have a reason to want him back.

"Something something world domination with an army of Essies maybe?" No. I'm not even going to dignify this line of questioning by actually inventing a question to try an answer, it's not realistic.

Please, somebody, anybody find an argument that you couldn't easily poke a hole in yourself if you're being honest before presenting it. I haven't seen any yet.
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What if Orochimaru, knowing that the Rift might allow a vast number of people to live indefinitely (depending on whether or not it fixes ageing) and will definitely cause the return of pre-existing S-rankers, decides that he doesn't like the idea of a future where there are a large number of people strong enough to interfere with his primary objectives? He doesn't have to try and retrieve anyone from the Rift; he could just keep it around himself in case he ever wants it, or use it to reduce his need for biosealing subjects.

And there will be interference; I dispute your claim that Orochimaru will get everything he wants if he returns to Leaf, because as far as we know, what Orochimaru wants can be effectively summarized as "omnipotence". Will Hiruzen put up with Orochimaru's experiments, when that was what got him banished the first time? Will the clans put up with him demanding secrets from their coffers?

Orochimaru believes that there is no possible peaceful long-term equilibrium between immortals. He has every motive to prevent something that would cause more people to become immortal, because that would create more competitors; the only things that would prevent him from closing the Rift outright are that he probably does want Jiraiya back, and that he wants to understand the universe and the Rift is extremely useful for that purpose.

I do think it relatively unlikely that Orochimaru will steal the Rift, just because our deadman's switches can stop killing us from being a sensible idea, and if he doesn't kill us he's opening himself to being hunted by a rune-empowered Leaf (and can't move quickly because he can only move the Rift a few miles every twenty minutes at absolute maximum and if he leaves it behind somewhere he risks us inventing a Rift-locating rune or something to that effect). But he absolutely does have incentive to.

Noumero said:
I think there's a decent chance that Oro will indeed treat that as a reasonable and expected precaution, such that he'd be pissed off at our idiocy if we didn't do it.
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Agreed, though my thinking goes a step further in that I think Oro might consider that so much of a reasonable/expected precaution that he'd be annoyed at us for even telling him about it because we'd be implying that he wasn't intelligent enough to realize that we'd do it. This is why I think we shouldn't bring it up unless he does first, since there's no way it doesn't occur to him that we might have set up deadman's switches and it might be taken as unnecessarily confrontational to volunteer the information to him.
 
Kyreneryk said:
what Orochimaru wants can be effectively summarized as "omnipotence"
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Don't we all.
Agreed, though my thinking goes a step further in that I think Oro might consider that so much of a reasonable/expected precaution that he'd be annoyed at us for even telling him about it because we'd be implying that he wasn't intelligent enough to realize that we'd do it. This is why I think we shouldn't bring it up unless he does first, since there's no way it doesn't occur to him that we might have set up deadman's switches and it might be taken as unnecessarily confrontational to volunteer the information to him.
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Hmm, I think he has a low enough opinion regarding everyone else's intelligence that he actually wouldn't obviously think that doing that would be obvious to us.
 
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Kyreneryk said:
Orochimaru believes that there is no possible peaceful long-term equilibrium between immortals. He has every motive to prevent something that would cause more people to become immortal, because that would create more competitors; the only things that would prevent him from closing the Rift outright are that he probably does want Jiraiya back, and that he wants to understand the universe and the Rift is extremely useful for that purpose.
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On the other hand, most of what got him into trouble before was killing people in order to further his research, which Leaf has a lot less reason to care about if they can be resurrected. On top of that, the potential to resurrect people from other Villages to access and study their bloodlines would be a pretty enticing reason to keep it open, and cooperating with Leaf would make recovering such individuals a lot easier.
 
[] Protoplan: Desperate Measures
Word Count <299
Intended Duration: ~1 day
  • Discuss the Orochimaru situation with the team.
    • Hazou thinks that it's likely Orochimaru fled Leaf for the same reason we did -- to research in peace.
    • Hazou doesn't think that Orochimaru is likely to betray us at this point (prior to the Rift Assualt)
    • However, it makes sense to take some precautions. Go to the meeting with just a Hazou SC to minimize exposure to a potentially hostile Orochimaru?
      • Should we split the team to get into contact with Leaf sooner? Hazou favors Noburi (for runic preparations) and Yuno with him, and Mari to make contact with Leaf but remaining composition is flexible.
    • Hazou also thinks it would be prudent to prepare a couple deadman switches giving Leaf/TU resources to learn Runecrafting in case Orochimaru decides to eliminate his only peer
    • All of our Rift Assualt strategies require extra chakra from Leaf, how likely is it that Orochimaru is attempting this without drawing on them for support?
    • Noburi, can you ask the Toad Sages and Gamabunta if they'd be willing to avenge Jiriaya?
  • Research
    • Loop in just Kei and Mari
      • Intent: Asking for harm mitigation, not permission.
      • Kei, apologies, but our other ideas didn't pan out and we need to know if this is viable. We don't plan to inform anyone or finish research unless things are desperate.
      • Can you two brainstorm ways to disguise the effect?
    • Spend one day no-prep yes-DoB researching Superchillers (referred to only as Project Twilight) and KISS
      • Fully enclose the prototype rune with a Force Dome to prevent a storm forming. Brainstorm other preparations with Kei.
  • Misc
    • Attempt to Summon Cannai, Noburi on standby for immediate treatment.
    • Make sure Kagome has enough reference material/substrate to learn Runecrafting if Orochimaru betrays us.
 
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Sir Stompy said:
Spend one day no-prep yes-DoB researching Superchillers (referred to only as WMD #6) and KISS
  • Fully enclose the prototype rune with a Force Dome to prevent a storm forming
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Wait wait wait
I expect this will create a very large vacuum which will implode violently whenever the force dome gives out.

Can somebody estimate how damaging that will be? It might be better to try this underground instead
 
redzonejoe said:
Wait wait wait
I expect this will create a very large vacuum which will implode violently whenever the force dome gives out.

Can somebody estimate how damaging that will be? It might be better to try this underground instead
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Superchiller is supposed to last 10 minutes. That's not enough time to cool the ground. The FD lasts much longer. It should no longer be in vacuum when the FD expires (by months)
 
Sir Stompy said:
Research
  • Spend one day no-prep yes-DoB researching Superchillers (referred to only as WMD Sunset) and KISS
    • Fully enclose the prototype rune with a Force Dome to prevent a storm forming
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I'd suggest telling Kei and Mari about this and getting some brainstorming done regarding how we can disguise the nature of the effect from Oro/Naruto if we do need to use it. (To be clear, we wouldn't be asking their permission, just giving them advance warning regarding what we're up to so they can think through the implications/process it/etc.)

It'd be stupid to fuck up some implementational detail and end up equipping Oro with Superchillers just because we wanted to avoid making Kei sad a few days earlier.
 
Noumero said:
how we can disguise the nature of the effect from Oro/Naruto if we do need to use it
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Hm. Idea: we might imply that this rune replicates the sealing failure we caused? (The "sealing failure" that is a cover story for our first EM use.) This might both provide a defensive explanation to Oro regarding why we're reluctant to use it, and make him reluctant to reverse-engineer it as well. The tricky part is, of course, how to imply this to him without a Deceit check...

Oooh. Kagome! Kagome also thinks that the EM deployment was a sealing failure, right? And he would also be horrified at the idea we're replicating a sealing failure, which makes it plausible that we'd hide it from him. So we should have Mari "accidentally leak" to Kagome what we're up to, then trigger Kagome into ranting about it in Orochimaru's earshot.

Thoughts?
 
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Sir Stompy said:
Superchiller is supposed to last 10 minutes. That's not enough time to cool the ground. The FD lasts much longer. It should no longer be in vacuum when the FD expires (by months)
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superchiller cools all the air into a frozen liquid state; what heats it back up afterwards? Does the force dome let in enough energy to heat the area back up? Natural state of a closed system is to lose energy over time, after all.

If the force dome does allow heat transfer, then will it be entirely effective in blocking the superchiller? The wave of liquid frozen death caused by the movement of air, yes, but the immediate area around the force dome might lose a fair amount of energy as it feeds into the chilled dome. Maybe that's just not enough of an issue?

Yes dad, I am trying to cool the outside stop telling me to close the door THERE IS NO DOOR IT'S A SOLID DOME.

Edit: I'd just be a lot more confident about this if we could run a test to see if we can heat things up from the other side of a force dome before commiting to this. Maybe use a weaker seal for the experiment assuming they work mostly the same way without wanting to waste valuable substrate, or running the dome test before the shadow clone moves to infuse the superchiller prototype.

edit2: Wog assuming Hazo is already familiar with the dome's properties would work too,
 
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Noumero said:
Oooh. Kagome! Kagome also thinks that the EM deployment was a sealing failure, right? And he'd be also horrified at the idea we're replicating a sealing failure, which makes it plausible that we'd hide it from him? So we should have Mari "accidentally leak" to Kagome what we're up to, then trigger Kagome into ranting about it in Orochimaru's earshot.

Thoughts?
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>Oro agrees with Kagome and kills Hazou on the spot
 
Sir Stompy said:
[] Protoplan: Desperate Measures
Word Count <299
Intended Duration: ~1 day
  • Discuss the Orochimaru situation with the team.
    • Hazou thinks that it's likely Orochimaru fled Leaf for the same reason we did -- to research in peace.
    • Hazou doesn't think that Orochimaru is likely to betray us at this point (prior to the Rift Assualt)
    • However, it makes sense to take some precautions. Go to the meeting with just a Hazou SC to minimize exposure to a potentially hostile Orochimaru?
      • Should we split the team to get into contact with Leaf sooner? Noburi might be needed for runic preparations and Mari for defense, but we could keep the rest of the team in Fire ready to contact Naruto if Oro betrays us.
    • Hazou also thinks it would be prudent to prepare a couple deadman switches giving Leaf/TU resources to learn Runecrafting in case Orochimaru decides to eliminate his only peer
    • All of our Rift Assualt strategies require extra chakra from Leaf, how likely is it that Orochimaru is attempting this without drawing on them for support?
    • Noburi, can you ask the Toad Sages and Gamabunta if they'd be willing to fight for Leaf?
  • Research
    • Spend one day no-prep yes-DoB researching Superchillers (referred to only as WMD Sunset) and KISS
      • Fully enclose the prototype rune with a Force Dome to prevent a storm forming
  • Misc
    • Attempt to Summon Cannai, Noburi on standby for immediate treatment.
    • Make sure Kagome has enough reference material/substrate to learn Runecrafting if Orochimaru betrays us.
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Do we have enough time to recover from a medium for trying to summon Cannai? If we want the assault to happen with a couple days, and we tried to summon him again, wouldn't that give us a severe? Or are we relying on Noburi healing us quickly enough and the assault taking long enough that it'll clear by then?

Because summoning him for the first time in battle would be pretty rad. And give our reserve increase, seems like it would have a decent chance? But I do get how risky that is, if it fails.

Also agreed, we pitch to Gababunta that we're summoning him to help him Avenge Jiraiya. Though the toad sages may want in on that action instead, and could help de-frost them towards us? May be worth asking Noburi about.
 
Halberdier said:
Do we have enough time to recover from a medium for trying to summon Cannai? If we want the assault to happen with a couple days, and we tried to summon him again, wouldn't that give us a severe? Or are we relying on Noburi healing us quickly enough and the assault taking long enough that it'll clear by then?
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Nah, overcharging with Noburi would give us a Medium at best, and with his healing that'll heal within three days. Although... if he was charging us for healing it occurs to me Noburi would be making a great profit constantly chakra overcharging and then healing us.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Should we split the team to get into contact with Leaf sooner? Noburi might be needed for runic preparations and Mari for defense, but we could keep the rest of the team in Fire ready to contact Naruto if Oro betrays us.
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We might not be able to swing this if Mari has to come with Hazou. Getting in touch with Naruto from our position is no easy feat, not without the rest of Leaf realizing that some of the most wanted missing-nin in the world are right at their doorstep.

Mari I imagine would expertly disguise herself as an ordinary Leaf-nin, sneak inside, and bluff her way to Naruto's front door. Or maybe Shikamaru, or someone she trusts to send messages securely. She has the skills to make this mission work.

Without Mari, I'm genuinely not sure they make it inside Leaf. We might be able to work something out, maybe sending in a summon with a message of some sort (they pop the summon with extreme prejudice, the message remains, ???? profit), but I'd rephrase this line in the plan to be asking Mari and Kei if they can come up with a viable strategy.
 
redzonejoe said:
superchiller cools all the air into a frozen liquid state; what heats it back up afterwards? Does the force dome let in enough energy to heat the area back up? Natural state of a closed system is to lose energy over time, after all
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The superchiller doesn't cool the ground and the ground contains plenty of energy to boil the liquid air -- over the course of hours.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Without Mari, I'm genuinely not sure they make it inside Leaf. We might be able to work something out, maybe sending in a summon with a message of some sort (they pop the summon with extreme prejudice, the message remains, ???? profit), but I'd rephrase this line in the plan to be asking Mari and Kei if they can come up with a viable strategy.
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I don't think they have a kill on sight order... I&S would want to find out what they've been up to. Once apprehended Naruto would be notified and go talk to them.

The only downside of this compared to Mari sneaking in is an Akatsuki spy might notice and send word, but given how quick the timeline seems like it'll be anyways and that we'll need an almost immediate assault force, not sure it even matters.
 
Shrooms said:
I don't think they have a kill on sight order... I&S would want to find out what they've been up to. Once apprehended Naruto would be notified and go talk to them.

The only downside of this compared to Mari sneaking in is an Akatsuki spy might notice and send word, but given how quick the timeline seems like it'll be anyways and that we'll need an almost immediate assault force, not sure it even matters.
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[] Declare: Naruto gave us a variety of passwords/passcodes in his many letters, should Hazou and Co have to return for a variety of reasons.
 
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