Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

faflec · Sunday at 1:36 PM

[X] Armageddon Initiative

eaglejarl · Sunday at 1:36 PM

Rafin said:
Slug doesn't have a Boss. Or more correctly, Slug doesn't have anything but different proportions of Katsuyu.

On a related note, did you know that Mist kills half its ninja students during the exam and that their civilians killed a bunch of their ninja, and that's why going from Mist to Leaf is the best possible option?

18scsc · Sunday at 1:38 PM

eaglejarl said:
I tend to agree. It's definitely high-effort from the QM side and, while I don't know from personal experience what it's like on the player side, I'm more than prepared to take your word for it. That's actually a whole discussion that I would like to have at some point... is it high effort because 3.3 million words is too much to read, or because we give you freedom to order a la carte as opposed to off the menu, or what?

As a lurker I feel like the quest is high effort because all the low hanging fruit is gone. Between the simulationist nature of the quest itself and the strength of the player base, it is hard to actually come up with good ideas. Then if you do actually come up with a good idea, you still need to compete with all the long-term questers who also have good ideas that they've been waiting to try for irl months or years.

Idk frankly I get some imposter syndrome. This is honestly one of the more impressive little communities on the internet.

eaglejarl · Sunday at 1:38 PM

T_of_A said:
More generally, ACE is a perfect example of a situation in which the playerbase made real efforts to keep things easy to handle on the QM side (we avoided excessive retroactivity diputes, we decided to have everyone train ACE on a calendar that synced up with Nobs' calendar, etc.). In hindsight, this discussion has shown that our efforts will only be used against us later on.

You can fuck right off for a couple days.

EDIT: Nope, I'll hit pause on that. Yes, being accused of intentional malice and spite when we go all the fucking way out of our way to play fair is one of my hot buttons but that's all the more reason that I should talk to the other QMs before threadbanning you for a while.

It's a pity, because right up until the end of that I was thinking "wow, this is really helpful, and look at how much effort they put into doing the research and clearly communicating it, along with citing sources. Thank you very much!" Then you had to go and snatch assholery from the jaws of victory.

Shrooms · Sunday at 1:39 PM

eaglejarl said:
You can fuck right off for a couple days.

If this is how you're going to treat players who raise reasonable points then I think I'm gonna go ahead and fuck off for a few days too.

FaintlySorcerous · Sunday at 1:41 PM

T_of_A said:
In hindsight, this discussion has shown that our efforts will only be used against us later on.

I was pretty much with you until here.

Everyone is trying to work in good faith. I agree that this is a bit of a mess and that the current QM ruling seems like it doesn't take into account all of the facts and context, but this is something we're all trying to do for fun.

eaglejarl said:
You can fuck right off for a couple days.

EDIT: Nope, I'll hit pause on that. Yes, being accused of intentional malice and spite when we go all the fucking way out of our way to play fair is one of my hot buttons but that's all the more reason that I should talk to the other QMs for threadbanning you for a while.

This is also pretty bad. The edit IMO makes it worse. Hopefully everyone can take a step back and de-escalate.

_The_Bomb · Sunday at 1:47 PM

FaintlySorcerous said:
I was pretty much with you until here.

Everyone is trying to work in good faith. I agree that this is a bit of a mess and that the current QM ruling seems like it doesn't take into account all of the facts and context, but this is something we're all trying to do for fun.

I am with you on this.

That last bit is something I very much disagree with. At the end of the day we are all working in good faith.

Shrooms said:
If this is how you're going to treat players who raise reasonable points then I think I'm gonna go ahead and fuck off for a few days too.

But at the same time…. there were a lot of valid points raised. What T_of_A posted was the result of a lot of player investigation and discussion on discord. The bit at the end aside, I agree with a large amount of the bullet points raised.

I am with you Shrooms. Seeing it all waved aside is very frustrating.

EDIT: Oh nice! Just saw EJ's second edit. Seeing that it was actually being treated seriously was quite validating!

FaintlySorcerous · Sunday at 1:50 PM

T_of_A said:
EDIT: Things are fuzzy and convenient except when it's to our disadvantage, which...

C'mon, man. This isn't helping anything. I will donate $5 (CAD) to a charity of your choice if you can take a couple of breaths, remind yourself that the QMs have a long history of being reasonable and that the tone you are taking here is not advancing the cause.

I am sympathetic to the frustration. Doubling down on venting here is not going to improve the situation.

Sir Stompy · Sunday at 1:51 PM

T_of_A said:
In hindsight, this discussion has shown that our efforts will only be used against us later on.

This is over the line. The rest of your post is great but I would VERY hesitant to accuse anyone of actual malice.

Shrooms said:
If this is how you're going to treat players who raise reasonable points then I think I'm gonna go ahead and fuck off for a few days too.

I feel like 95% of that post was reasonable and the last 5% send EJ over the edge as one of his hot buttons. I'm begging everyone please stay calm and carefully consider your posts. Please

T_of_A · Sunday at 1:52 PM

eaglejarl said:
It's a pity, because right up until the end of that I was thinking "wow, this is really helpful, and look at how much effort they put into doing the research and clearly communicating it, along with citing sources. Thank you very much!" Then you had to go and snatch assholery from the jaws of victory.

To be honest I was mostly writing that as a way to vent. I don't actually expect Paper to be willing to change ACE dates, considering how previous discussion went.
Indeed, I didn't do most of this research. The players who did (and posted them in the #bitching Discord thread) straight-up gave up on posting them to SV, thinking the whole discussion is pointless.

I will apologize for that last bit. I may feel that way considering the way the quest has gone recently, but it was rude of me to say that. And it was also untrue - you aren't deliberately using our efforts against us, and Paper's willingness to try to include time dilation into ACE calendar counting is more effort than I'd expected.

Edit: Actually, feel free to threadban me for a while. After reading the discord for a few hours, I've gone from "I have hope that the next arc of the quest will be better" to being very negative about the fundamental structure of the quest. I've been on-and-off Marked For Death since 2017, and a break from the salt mine might be useful.

_The_Bomb · Sunday at 2:08 PM

T_of_A said:
To be honest I was mostly writing that as a way to vent

If you would like to vent, my DMs are always open to you (and other readers of this thread!). We also have a dedicated thread for it on the discord server that many of us are finding helpful and validating.

I'd like to encourage all players who are feeling frustrated to make use of those resources before posting straight to thread. I am always happy to lend an ear. At the end of the day we are all working in good faith and the thread mirroring that makes the experience more enjoyable for everyone.

eaglejarl · Sunday at 2:10 PM

T_of_A said:
To be honest I was mostly writing that as a way to vent.

Here's a suggestion: if you feel the need to vent in the thread, don't. The QMs here are very reasonable people who are willing to admit when we're wrong and backtrack in your favor if convinced we should. We don't deserve the bullshit insults and there's no reason we should accept them.

T_of_A said:
I don't actually expect Paper to be willing to change ACE dates, considering how previous discussion went.

@Paperclipped is part of a team, not an autocrat. We present a united front but if you can sway two of us then the two can generally sway the third. Insulting all of us is not a good way to make me or @Velorien put in the effort to dig into the issue and talk Paperclipped around.

T_of_A said:
I will apologize for that last bit. It was rude of me to say that, and it was also untrue (you aren't deliberately using our efforts against us, and Paper's willingness to try to include time dilation into ACE calendar counting is more effort than I'd expected to be available for this).

Thank you for acknowledging this.

I'm going to drop some thoughts and information here:

1. The BotG retcon-or-not discussion has been ongoing in QM chat. There is a proposed answer waiting on consensus that could come out later today if all of us have a chance to weigh in.

2. Regarding the ACE thing: the work that all of you did on the research, and that @T_of_A did on collating and presenting all of it, is very helpful and appreciated. I strongly suggest that no one else stir the pot further until you hear back from us. You are very unlikely to improve the situation with further commentary implying that we're being unfair or unreasonable or intentionally abusing the players and anything else is a distraction. We have the information, let us chew on it.

eaglejarl · Sunday at 2:14 PM

Shrooms said:
If this is how you're going to treat players who raise reasonable points then I think I'm gonna go ahead and fuck off for a few days too.

I'm going to be positive-outlook and assume that you read this as "EJ is telling @T_of_A to fuck off because T_of_A pointed out issues in the timeline". If so then you're right, that would be unreasonable of me.

That was not what I was telling them off about. I was telling them off for accusing the QMs of being intentionally spiteful and unfair, which is a personal hot button of mine. The QMs do play fair to the very best of our abilities, we admit our mistakes when convinced we have made one, and we would appreciate a minimal assumption of good faith.

FaintlySorcerous · Sunday at 2:16 PM

eaglejarl said:
I'm going to be positive-outlook and assume that you read this as "EJ is telling @T_of_A to fuck off because T_of_A pointed out issues in the timeline". If so then you're right, that would be unreasonable of me.

That was not what I was telling them off about. I was telling them off for accusing the QMs of being intentionally spiteful and unfair, which is a personal hot button of mine. The QMs do play fair to the very best of our abilities, we admit our mistakes when convinced we have made one, and we would appreciate a minimal assumption of good faith.

I think even reading it as 'I'm upset you're telling players to fuck off and threatening to ban them' is pretty reasonable. Two wrongs, and all that.

While the Internet flattens tone, your response came off very sharp and (IMO) equivalently shitty to ToA's response, for which they have now apologized.

E: none of this is to say that how you feel about it is out of line, unreasonable, inappropriate, or unmerited. In your shoes I would have been incensed. But even knowing all of that, I was really surprised by your response as I would generally characterize you as an individual who is calm, measured, and committed to being kind/thoughtful even when not met with kindness and thoughtfulness.

Lysbeth Succubus · Sunday at 3:37 PM

People can get frustrated or irritated when things don't go 100% right here - be it in communication, suspected intentions, results, ideas of good-faith action - ultimately because we care a lot about this.
Obviously the QMs do, and right now everyone who's deep enough in it to influence the outcome and what's going to happen has also spent a lot of time lately just grinding numbers and facts and mechanics and models, which may be a labour of love but is still labour. Especially for the QMs, of course.
Being "deep enough to influence the outcome" speaks both of personal involvement and a lot of work integrating the community after the start or helping create it during the early stages.
Saying this as a complement to "remember we do this for fun" - it doesn't mean that it doesn't matter, that it's not deservedly high-effort.
Just, best keep in mind no one is in here to torch others (as far as I'm aware). No one is on the ship trying to sink it - QMs don't want to see the players fail by any means necessary, that would be ludicrous after this quest overtook the New Testament in number of words and started lapping it several times. Players, conversely, wouldn't be still playing if QMs didn't prove time and again their commitment to integrating player choices in the story fairly and faithfully - making positive-action players central. This isn't the early stages of Prequel where failure was a foregone conclusion.
The stakes here are high, the effort intense, and it's also a time of the year where bad feelings can run deep.
Please let's all remember we're here to continue this awesome game with awesome people, and everyone just wants it to go well - with feelings proportionate in intensity to the hope for things to advance well. We can wield this positively and constructively, we know that because it's happened a lot in this thread.

Orisha91 · Sunday at 4:27 PM

eaglejarl said:
Important announcement herein, please read.

Greetings all, I fear we come to you with bad news and apologies. But, also XP and hope for the future.

We sat down to model the upcoming battle and realized we had painted ourselves into something of a corner. There were a lot of things to explain and predict, but the most important was this: given that chūnin-level Hazō with one young 'Wakahisa' is almost able to summon a Clan Boss, why were there not half a dozen Clan Bosses on the field at the Battle of the Gods, given that the entire Wakahisa clan was available to fill up Jiraiya, Tsunade, Orochimaru, Asuma, Gai, and Kakashi? Why were there no other summons shown aside from Ma and Pa?

We kicked around various ideas but couldn't find a satisfactory one that covered all the issues, so here's where we finally landed; we're willing to do something different if anyone comes up with a better answer that fits all the facts:

(Minor point) Bosses cannot be summoned away from their territory without some prep time. The amount of time can vary widely depending on numerous factors but is generally very roughly on the order of half a day.

(Major point) Akatsuki knew that they were likely to face off against summons and prepared countermeasures. The Nagi Island report states: "Although the Leaf contingent had a large number of summons with them, when they reached the battlefield all of the summons popped at a specific point, as though they had run into a brick wall. Jiraiya was able to quickly re-summon Ma and Pa but no other summoner was able to duplicate the feat." Hazō doesn't know for certain how this was done, but since he is one of the few people who know that summons' chakra envelopes are made of nature chakra he can infer that Akatsuki invented a seal array that pushes nature chakra from a large area and generates a bubble that prevents it from flowing back in. If Jiraiya had nature chakra in his body then perhaps he was able to use it to re-summon Ma and Pa. Hazō does not know why Jiraiya did not summon Gamabunta in addition to / instead of Ma and Pa. (Note: we normally prefer not to have Hazō do all the deduction work for you; we are offering it in this case as a gesture of good faith and part of our apology.)

As mentioned above, this information was (should have been) in the Nagi Island briefing that was widely distributed and should have been known to Hazō before now, but we never had reason to think about it before. As such, we are going to do the following:

Award you 50 XP as an apology for the screwup

Offer you the chance to unwind any XP spend that you have recently made that would have been affected by this missing information (e.g. buying CR to summon Cannai) Rewinding the CR purchases would give you an additional 552 XP to spend on whatever you want, no delay required.

If anyone can come up with a better explanation for why there were no Boss Summons (or summons at all) except Ma and Pa at the Battle of the Gods, without contradicting something else in the quest, then we're happy to go with your version. (In this case you might or might not lose the unwinding-XP option but would keep the 50 XP apology.) Suggestions welcome.

If you want to undo the XP spending, vote:
[] Undo XP spending on CR.
[] Do not undo XP spending on CR.

Aside from the more popular explanation of Summoning injunction, I think another plausible justification for the lack of summoning at Nagi can be based on the presence of the machine. Hazou's personal encounter with the chakra remnants of this device a year later had him bent over, vomiting on the ground (End of Chap 523). If we look past the obvious vulnerabilities of being an IN user, we can assume that it contributed to Nagi island's unique chakra atmosphere most summoners couldn't handle, one similar to locations near the Great Seal, the Honey Cave, or the Miasma Cave.

As for the upcoming rift-war, I would assume that Akatsuki would have tried to improvise a summoning injunction by either using Hazou's stolen work on dimensionalism/rifts, hardening their fortifications defenses by replicating the Skyslicer. I'm leaning more towards Akatsuki adopting the latter since such a potent static defense directly contributed to the death of Kakazu.

FaintlySorcerous · Sunday at 4:44 PM

Orisha91 said:
Aside from the more popular explanation of Summoning injunction, I think another plausible justification for the lack of summoning at Nagi can be based on the presence of the machine.

Fucking with one of the Sage's creations (the Tailed Beasts) fucks with the other ones (Summoning).

This is because the Sage is bad at everything and his creations are rife with hacked together dependencies.

CommunismWillWin · Sunday at 6:20 PM

The Sage was actually a burned out software developer who had given up on quality and just shipped an increasingly unmaintanable pile of garbage.

I can relate to be honest

Edit: just noticed autocorrect had switched unmaintanable with unmistakable 🤦‍♂️

Cariyaga · Sunday at 7:21 PM

CommunismWillWin said:
Edit: just noticed autocorrect had switched unmaintanable with unmistakable 🤦‍♂️

No, no, that works too. Autocorrect knows what's up.

eaglejarl · Sunday at 7:34 PM

Chapter 692: Pre-Mortem

Hazō stared down at the scarred body of Gamahebigai in what he felt really should have been shock, but honestly was more of an exhausted nonsurprise. Of course this is how Orochimaru would pass along a message when simpler avenues had been taken from him.

"I'll be back. I want to check on his real body," Noburi said. "C'mon, dude." He placed his hand in Gamahebigai's and both man and toad disappeared back to the Seventh Path.

"Everyone, on me," Hazō said, waving the family in towards the campfire. They gathered around, sober expressions all.

"I'm sorry about this, everyone," Mari said, shaking her head. "This is my fault."

Hazō cocked an eyebrow, waiting for the punchline as he restoked the fire. The day was nippy.

"How is this your fault, Mari?" Yuno asked. "You did not carve those words into the toad. Orochimaru did."

"Yes, but earlier today I..." Mari's voice caught. She hung her head, hair cascading down around her face for a moment, before visibly forcing herself to look up at Yuno. "Earlier today I...I felt bored."

Groans went around the fire.

"Mari, I am very disappointed in you," Snowflake said, shaking her head with mock solemnity. "Very, very disappointed. Have I taught you nothing in all our time together?"

Tenten's head tipped in confusion.

"Did Kei ask you to work on impersonating others as a means of improved social modeling, and that was your effort at impersonating me in one of my more humorous moments?" Mari asked. Her smile said that it wasn't really a question.

Snowflake nodded. "Exactly! What did you think? I'm sure both she and I will appreciate accurate feedback."

"Seven out of ten," Mari said. "Content was spot on and you got the mannerisms." She did the whole headshake-of-regret thing again for demonstration. "I'm keeping one point because you overplayed the head-shake a bit, and you can't get higher than eight out of ten without doing the voice, which would have been inappropriate in these circumstances, so that was pretty much perfect."

Snowflake smiled in delight.

"Ahem," Hazō said. "Evil psycho murderhobo demigod sent us a message, fate of the world, control of the afterlife, all that stuff...?"

"Sigh. Fine, very well. What have you got for us?" Mari asked.

"A little stream of consciousness here," Hazō began. "Bear with me if I don't get things correct on the first go. Offer some patience, listen charitably, all that good stuff."

Kei cut a hand from side to side in a gesture of impatient acknowledgement, which was somewhat ironic in the context.

"Orochimaru fled Leaf," Hazō began. "Probably for the same reason we did—so that he could work on research without being hassled by Akatsuki. He's clearly opposed to them and planning to attack this facility that he says they've set up on the rift site. He wants our help."

"Your help," Mari corrected. "He views the rest of us as background characters at best. No interest in our continued existence unless we have something specifically useful to him. At which point he would prefer to simply take it instead of bargaining." She held up a hand to cut him off. "Yes, he has shown that he's smart enough to realize that bargaining and giving good value in a bargain is useful, but he cares about it only because it's useful to him, not because it's a good principle. If he can simply take something, that's the way to expect he'll act."

Hazō thought about that for a moment. "Okay... I was going to say that I don't think he wants to betray us before the rift assault, but it sounds like maybe you disagree?"

Mari chewed her lip for a moment, her indigo eyes uncertain. "Not sure. You don't have the combat power to participate in the assault yourself, so all he's going to want from you is your runes. Can he steal them?"

Hazō shook his head. "No. Runes and seals are unique to each sealmaster, it's not possible to directly produce someone else's design." Unless you had the Iron Nerve, but that was a distraction. "If I gave him my research notes and detailed instructions, he still couldn't directly create one of my runes. He could use them to create a version of his own that behaves the same way, but he would still have to do the work." A thought struck and he hurried to add, "Unless you meant could he steal my literal runes? The answer is still no. If I actually had a bunch of infused runes he could activate them or deactivate them, same as anyone else. He couldn't infuse my designs and runic drag means that he can't physically walk off with one of my runes."

"In other words, if he thinks you have anything to contribute to the assault then he will need your willing cooperation," Kei said.

"Cooperation," Snowflake corrected. "'Willing' is a very flexible word."

"Thinking about precautions now," Hazō said. "I'm obviously going to meet him. Any reason not to send a Shadow Clone?"

Kagome-sensei snorted. "Obviously you send a Shadow Clone to meet that stinker. Obviously!"

"From a safety perspective, I agree that it's the right move," Hazō said. "I'm trying to think about social impacts, like whether he might be pissed at the gesture of distrust."

"I think it'll be fine," Mari said. "It's complicated, he's unpredictable, I can't be certain of how he'll respond to anything, but the idea doesn't immediately push my 'danger' button so we might as well go for it."

"Your confidence is, as always, a bright light of reassurance," Hazō said. Beside him, Kagome-sensei grumbled. "Is there any reason you think he might betray us?"

Mari shrugged. "He's a runecrafter, you're a runecrafter. The only other runecrafter aside from him. If he kills you, he keeps the discipline to himself."

"And doesn't have to fear you causing a failure," Yuno added.

"Okay, so we're thinking that he probably won't doublecross me before the assault and probably will afterwards?"

The form of everyone's reactions varied from helpless shrug to uncertain faces, but the content was entirely unified: no one had a clue.

"No clue," Mari said. "Still, we have to assume he will and act accordingly. Better to take a precaution you don't need."

"Fair. We'll approach as Shadow Clones. What about splitting the team? I could go meet him, maybe with Noburi and Yuno, while everyone else goes back to Leaf to bring Naruto and Tsunade to the party."

"Why that composition?" Snowflake asked.

"Noburi and Yuno are excellent bodyguards who can keep me safe while I work, and Noburi's chakra transfer is incredibly useful for runecrafting." Plus, it meant that Mari didn't have to look Orochimaru in the eyes again. Given what the Snake Sannin had done to her last time, Hazō wasn't above a bit of chicanery to prevent a repeat performance while concealing the fact that he was protecting her.

"I'm against splitting the party," Mari said. "We're stronger as a team."

"Hazō's suggestion does have the advantage of time-efficiency," Snowflake noted. "Orochimaru will undoubtedly wish to reach out to Leaf for additional manpower before the assault."

"Or at least chakra power," Hazō said. "All our best combat tactics depend on huge amounts of chakra. The Zoo Rush that we used to break the fortress in Rock where the Arachnid Scroll was kept. The Sannin Army that we used to break the Dragons. Manpower or not, we will definitely need a lot of chakra. And Leaf is the best bet for that. Hence why I was thinking we might want to have things organized in advance."

"As a momentary aside, I suggest avoiding the term 'Zoo Rush' in discussion with denizens of the Seventh Path," Snowflake said. "The implications of the term are rather pejorative."

"Noted," Hazō said, refusing to be distracted. "So. Split the party, yea or nay?"

Before anyone could speak, there was a faint puff of smoke and Noburi appeared.

"Hey," Noburi said, sinking to the ground beside his wife. (She promptly took his arm and firmly looped it around herself, still somehow managing to seem diffident and bashful while doing so.) "What did I miss?"

It took a few minutes to catch the family medic up, but as soon as he was, Noburi shook his head.

"No way. We are not splitting the party."

"Why not?" Hazō asked. "It ensures that no single thing catches all of us, it's time-efficient as Snowflake said, it—"

"Simple," Noburi said, running over him. "Because there is nothing definitely and unarguably the right way to go as to staying together or splitting up in this situation. Unless there is a clear and decisive reason to split up, you stay together. Time-efficiency doesn't matter when we don't know what Orochimaru is going to want to do. We could spend a lot of effort and it's wasted, or we could accidentally sabotage something he's planning by spreading the word too fast. Plus, the minute we arrive back in Leaf a timer is counting down to when Akatsuki hears about it and reacts. We don't want to start that timer any sooner than we have to."

"Fair enough. What about setting up some deadman switches?" Hazō asked.

"That sounds...unwise," Snowflake said carefully. "Without knowing the specific nature of your intention, there are a number of potential flaws to the general category of plans."

"I know," Hazō said. "The most obvious being that if one of the deadman switches goes off accidentally, we're screwed."

"Indeed."

"We still need to have something," Hazō said. "Any ideas?"

Silence reigned for a moment before Kei spoke. "You seek an idea the consequences of which would be so awful that Orochimaru would wildly inconvenience or disadvantage himself in order to prevent it from happening, yet the release of which we can closely control."

"Yup. Anything?"

Kei, her inventiveness crippled by her bloodline, looked helplessly at Snowflake. Her clone made a complex facial expression that Hazō mentally translated as 'What? Why is this my problem?! Okay, fine, I know why it's my problem but how is this fair?! Why me?! How am I supposed to pull a miracle idea out of my ear with no time to think? This is so unfair but fine I'll work on it.'

Having been in that situation once or thrice before, he found himself both sympathetic and weirdly filled with schadenfreudic glee.

"For the record," Hazō said, "my first thought, which I am not going with, was to write up treatises on runecrafting and have them widely disseminated if anything bad happens. Then—"

"Are you insane?!" Kagome-sensei shrieked. "You are not publishing the secrets of runecrafting! You would absolutely destroy the world if you did that! People trying to learn from a book—"

"—would definitely end up screwing it up, yes. I know, Sensei, that's why I led with the fact that I'm not going to do it. You taught me better than that." Honestly, it had been a close-run thing, although he wasn't going to admit that to his teacher. Presuming that Orochimaru wanted to be the world's only runecrafter, threatening to broadcast the knowledge would cause him to back down, but the risks simply weren't worth it. Hazō had barely managed to not kill himself while working out the foundations of runecrafting, even though he had been an exceptionally skilled sealmaster with the entirety of the Great Seal stored directly in his bloodline to provide reams of example material. So many times during those early days he had very nearly done a chakra exercise wrong that would have caused a runic failure had he not caught himself in time. Learning to do it from a book, with no human teacher or bloodline-based guidance? He simply didn't think it was possible to do without runic failure. He had yet to see the results of a rune failure but given the power of runic effects in general he was confident that such a failure would be fatal both to the runemaster and everyone for miles around. Potentially even the entire world.

"As I was saying, widely publicizing basic instruction on runecrafting is a no go...but. Suppose we set up a dead man's switch that would inform Akatsuki that Orochimaru was going to attack them?"

"Why would you do that?" Yuno asked. "I thought we wanted him to succeed?"

"We do," Hazō said. "But succeeding against them is probably his number one priority right now. That means it might have enough leverage to constrain his behavior, prevent him from betraying us."

"I dislike the idea," Kei said. "For many reasons. First, it pushes the boundaries so far that it could be seen as insulting as well as threatening. It also is so opposed to your goals that it would reduce the credibility of the idea that you had established the switch in the first place."

"...Okay," Hazō said after a minute. "Let's keep thinking about other options. Noburi, the next time you see them, could you ask the Toad Sages and Gamabunta if they're willing to come help avenge Jiraiya? Not sure there will be an opportunity for them to do so, but it would be good to get them onboard first."

"Why no opportunity?" Tenten asked.

"The report on the Battle of Nagi Island," Hazō said. "It came out a couple of weeks after everyone got back from the Chūnin Exams and it was circulated to all the Clan Heads including, for my sins, me. The Kage and their people did summon a lot of firepower from the Seventh Path. All of the summons popped the moment they came within a certain distance of the battlefield, as though they had run into a brick wall. Apparently it was one of what appears to be a ludicrous grab-bag of powers possessed by that Pain kid who was leading the Akatsuki. He confirmed it in the discussion that happened between the end of the battle and the resurrection of his people." One corner of his mouth smiled as he added, "The exception, of course, being Ma and Pa Toad. Somehow, Jiraiya kept them on the field even when all the other big bads were popping. The report has no mention of how he did it, but I'm sure he was incredibly smug."

"But, if it was one of his powers and he's dead...?" Yuno asked.

"Then hopefully it really was his power and not some seal array that they had buried under the field, or a power of one of the others, or something about the ritual or that machine that they were using to run it, or something that can be duplicated with a seal array. Because if it wasn't his power then there's a chance we could see it again. Which, if we've built our strategy around bringing in Boss Summons, would really suck."

"Ah." Yuno said faintly.

Author's Note: Out of energy for this. Here's a few things I didn't get to:

Clarification: The players wanted to use copies of "How to Runecraft 101" as a deadman switch. The QMs discussed this in some detail and decided that Hazōpilot would overrule you and refuse to do it. Being trained by Kagome, whose incredible levels of caution can actually provide a game-mechanical bonus on sealing, and having experienced some bad runic failures, there was simply no way Hazō would be willing to risk the number of failures that would also happen. Also, for clarity, we have not come to consensus on "it is completely impossible to learn runecrafting from a book" but that is definitely the way the conversation is leaning so if we are ever required to make a decision that's probably where it will land.

Bits from the plan, posed and responded in Q/A format:

Q: Our Rift Assault strategies all require extra chakra from Leaf, how likely is it that Orochimaru is attempting this without drawing on them for support?

A: No one can has enough information to tell.

Q: How likely do you think Orochimaru betraying us is? Both before we assault the Rift and afterwards. Does the assessment change if he doesn't want to involve Leaf?

A: The first part was hopefully addressed in the update. If he doesn't want to involve Leaf then it's more likely (but not certain!) that he doesn't intend to go back, so treachery becomes more likely.

Q: If Orochimaru is unjustifiably insisting that we don't include Leaf, can we force the issue? That is, insist on Leaf's involvement as a condition for Team Uplift's participation.

A: Go for it. Orochimaru is well known for his gracious and prosocial behavior when thwarted.

Q: [what about other deadman switches?]

A: In private, after everyone else went to bed, Mari approached you about a failsafe. If you die, she is willing to spread the knowledge about Elemental Mastery nukes. Although she does not know the actual jutsu, all that anyone really needs is "if you make a jutsu that cools the air enough, this is what happens" and you're off to the races.

Research issues: I'm sorry I didn't get to this part, I suspect it would have been the most fun piece of the plan. Maybe if I get some spoons I'll write it as a bonus scene.

You told Kei and Mari that you were going to work on Superchillers and that you weren't asking permission. Kei was upset, obviously. She understood where you're coming from. She'll think about how to disguise it. Neither she nor Mari are able to predict Orochimaru's actions with confidence, although Mari thinks that the knowledge Hazō can make runic WMDs would be behavior-determinative for Orochimaru, meaning that his other plans would reshape themselves and shuffle priorities in accord with whatever reaction he makes. He probably wouldn't put the rift assault on hold but everything else would likely stop until he had addressed this issue. He might want to buy the secret from Hazō and then keep him alive in as 'no killing the golden goose' way, he might want to kill Hazō to prevent the spread of WMDs, and he will definitely start seeking them himself once the idea is made available to him.

You researched Superchillers. We'll get back to you with the results.

XP AWARD: 3 This update covered a few hours in the evening and all of the following day. The plan was difficult to write for as meetings are hard to make interesting and a few lines ended up seeming out of order as to when they should organically happen in the conversation, meaning I needed to double back and work to bridge between sections.

Brevity XP: 0 Plan was 399 words.

"GM had fun" XP: 0

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Dec 4, 2024 at 7:00 AM .

_The_Bomb · Sunday at 7:34 PM

WOWO UPDATE!

faflec · Sunday at 7:39 PM

[X] Armageddon Initiative

_The_Bomb · Sunday at 7:40 PM

eaglejarl said:
Q: [what about other deadman switches?]

A: In private, after everyone else went to bed, Mari approached you about a failsafe. you die, she is willing to spread the knowledge about Elemental Mastery nukes. Although she does not know the actual jutsu, all that anyone really needs is "if you make a jutsu that cools the air enough, this is what happens" and you're off to the races.

Is Hazō at least going to provide Cannai with enough information (EDIT: and examples) for a future Gōketsu Sealmaster to rediscover the craft without further input from us?

EDIT: It seems like a scaled down contingency that he would accept.

EDIT: Pinging also @Paperclipped and @Velorien

DanZapman · Sunday at 7:43 PM

[X] Armageddon Initiative

T_of_A · Sunday at 7:49 PM

Honestly, I expect Orochimaru will have already thought of basic WMDs. Making citykillers seems to be really easy with runes - the hard part is making WMDs that can actually kill jonin.

So we probably shouldn't try to sell him the concept of WMDs. I would also prefer that we didn't bring up Superchillers unless we think we can have them ready in time. We'll see how the rolls went, and how close we think we are to completion.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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