Alright I stand corrected, he contributed some amount to Uplift after we demonstrated that civvies were more productive if not taxed quite as hard.
Actually this predated the tax stuff, I think. It might have been Kei's baby? I give good odds that Shikaku was involved in the planning stages.
Congratulations Shikamaru, you are more useful than the Hyuuga. My deepest congratulations for this monumental achievement.
Nah Shikamaru personally is definitely less useful than every Hyuuga. Did you forget about their work with the Church of Youth?

Shikamaru has definitely been a cool bro a few times but I think the sloth thing hits him pretty hard. He's also, like, our age and he's always had a pretty supportive family (until he didn't). No shade, and I love that for him, but we're just built out of sterner stuff. Maybe he'll grow into being clan head etc. but he wasn't ready and he wasn't expecting it. Way too much baggage and way too much in the way of expectations. I feel for the guy but he's not an aaskicker and that's what the world needs right now.
 
STOMPY: Destroying Isan was wrong, even in the name of protecting the world from EM nukes.

ALSO STOMPY: I don't see any issue with an unprecedented mass-extermination campaign against not just Hidden Rock, but a significant fraction of Earth Country and it's civilian populace. Why would that be bad?



UPLIFT: If we all work together to improve things for everyone, everyone will be better off! Can we pretty please convince you to try cooperating, so you can see that it's mutually beneficial?

STOMPY: All those times Shikamaru helped us/everyone weren't actually helpful, because he also benefited from the cooperation. We shouldn't take this as evidence of his skills or capabilities, because he didn't find a way to actively sabotage his own interests while working towards our mutual goals.



Maybe I'm misreading you horribly, but your last few replies read like you've been replaced by your evil clone from the mirror universe or something.
 
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STOMPY: Destroying Isan was wrong, even in the name of protecting the world from EM nukes.

ALSO STOMPY: I don't see any issue with an unprecedented mass-extermination campaign against not just Hidden Rock, but a significant fraction of Earth Country and it's civilian populace. Why would that be bad?

This is an incredibly unnuanced take. Rock had previously launched a terrorist attach that destroyed tons of clan and civilian infrastructure and had just started a war with leaf. Isan was a peaceful trading partner and an ally in the war
 
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Isan was a peaceful trading partner and an ally in the war
In fairness, Isan was also a serious threat to the survival of humanity.

could we spend 1 FP to have large quantities of the seals capable of running the underwater experiment included in Kagome's farewell gift (they would be Tunneler's Friend variants used for breathing barely underwater)?
I'm not sure if this was serious or comedy -- if you're serious then I'll take it to the others, but I'm basically certain the answer will be no. That's not something Kagome would have prioritized.

Hard mode would be "can you think of a time when the Nara Forbidden Lore was useful to Hazo" (the answer is never, we have never had any proof that their forbidden lore even exists)
If you don't know their lore exists then how can you reasonably call them lore forbidders?

You, T_of_A, are a unicorn forbidder! You have prevented me from playing with your unicorn! How dare you!

I agree with you in every instance except this. The Nara Future Foundation or whatever was and probably is just as valuable as the idea and execution of till n' fills. Having skilled individuals in villages is a massive multiplier. It doesn't mean a lot unless you have walls and good land, but the potential of those explodes if you're numerate, have someone who can help you through childbirth, and have a dedicated smith/carpenter.
Had we actually put the NFF onscreen more then people would probably think Shikamaru was the greatest thing since fire... Ah well. : amused sadness:
 
Would those clones' pockets within the earth be connected to the pocket containing the Superchiller? I was under the impression that EM has such a large frozen fallout area due to it constantly pushing out the super-cooled air due to physics (cooled air sinks, new air enters the EM zone, repeat till EM chakra effect runs out). We need the area that EM affects in order to potentially shut off the source of the fallout.

With my understanding of EM, the pocket where the Superchiller operates would become super cold, but the other pockets, as long as there is no direct tunnel filled with air to those other pockets, would only have their walls cooled normally by the cold air of the rune via physics. Whether or not the cold pocket of air deep underground would affect the rock or soil walls around it would be a matter now involving geology too I suppose.
I don't know if Superchiller operates through walls or not. I think it does, though. Either way, I think your research methodology is extremely overcomplicating things. We could just bury the rune, and dig a tunnel instead. Put SCs in the tunnel, and during the startup period (before it starts liquefying air), the SCs will be alive and able to observe whether the effect applies or not and find the boundary from that.
 
I don't know if Superchiller operates through walls or not. I think it does, though. Either way, I think your research methodology is extremely overcomplicating things. We could just bury the rune, and dig a tunnel instead. Put SCs in the tunnel, and during the startup period (before it starts liquefying air), the SCs will be alive and able to observe whether the effect applies or not and find the boundary from that.
There's a wind-up, so just put it in a tunnel with markers every 50m and observer SCs, capped with a Force Dome, then set it off. We can tell what the AoE is by looking for CO2 snow.

The rest is just overcomplicated nonsense IMO, but I thought it was a joke soooo..
 
STOMPY: Destroying Isan was wrong, even in the name of protecting the world from EM nukes.
It was unnecessary and we argued against it. Wrong or right is hardly relevant here. Those are the facts.
ALSO STOMPY: I don't see any issue with an unprecedented mass-extermination campaign against not just Hidden Rock, but a significant fraction of Earth Country and it's civilian populace. Why would that be bad
Who said civvie populace? Rock is the ninja village. If I had meant the Land of Earth I would have said it.

Rock had just started a war of aggression with Leaf after several attacks meant to weaken us. They were certainly out to destroy Leaf. Is self-defense wrong now?

If no lasting peace is possible (and it sure seems it isn't to me) then you're only taking pauses to rearm, and it's fucking stupid not to destroy your adversary the first time around.
 
There's a wind-up, so just put it in a tunnel with markers every 50m and observer SCs, capped with a Force Dome, then set it off. We can tell what the AoE is by looking for CO2 snow.

The rest is just overcomplicated nonsense IMO, but I thought it was a joke soooo..
That's what I meant, yeah. We really don't need to do anything complicated.

Also i'm skeptical of the other idea, where we turn it off by filling the AOE with liquid. For one, the AOE is filled with hyperhurricane-force winds. Two, the AOE comprises millions of cubic meters and a storage seal holds not even one cubic meter.
 
Can you explain why this is necessary when my plan

1) Never has us mention superchillers out loud
2) Never refers to superchillers at all except for an object to prepare and then store away in secret
Your plan is great. I am asking now because we invented Project Twilight last chapter and Hazō referenced instances of Project Twilight as "Superchiller Runes" twice in it. Thus, the previous wording which we thought would be sufficient to switch the nomenclature clearly wasn't.

Now that they actually exist, we absolutely should implement this bit of OPSEC!
 
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Who said civvie populace? Rock is the ninja village. If I had meant the Land of Earth I would have said it.
@Left-Hand Mutant said it, in the post you were originally replying to.
Shika also stopped Asuma from pursuing a war of total extermination against Earth Country, with even more disastrous fallout.
I don't see how this helped Hazou. He was looking out for himself/Leaf. Also, I don't see how pursuing a war of extermination against Rock is bad for us.
So if you did not mean the Land of Earth, then you misread the post you were replying to.
 
Yes. It comes up a lot on the discord and never sees pushback there.
For example, can you think of a time when the Nara (not including Kei) were useful to Hazo ? Hard mode would be "can you think of a time when the Nara Forbidden Lore was useful to Hazo" (the answer is never, we have never had any proof that their forbidden lore even exists).
He pointed out holes in 7path chakra farm
"What happens to water that is left behind when you change Paths?"
Told us info about the sage's companions
we've come across multiple references to the Sage's band of five companions. Does that ring any bells with you?
Based on forbidden lore, he said Jashin is more dangerous than we think and advised to have no contact
"It is essential that you avoid all contact with both Jashin and Hidan," Shikamaru told him. "I cannot overstate the danger you–and, indirectly, all of us–have been exposed to. I do not wish to be unnecessarily alarmist, but in the event that Jashin is real and not merely a charismatic madman's obsession, it is far more dangerous than you know. All beings of that order are, and none of those remaining consider humanity's welfare to be relevant to their considerations unless it is in the active negative.
But really specific examples aren't the important part. What is important is they are smart from thinker bloodline, have forbidden lore, and you should have smart knowledgable advisors when making important decisions. The Nara are advisors to the Hokage.
 
@roobee here's a counterpoint.

I strongly suspect that Shikamaru may have been responsible for the death of Asuma and/or Akane. If he finds out we can make WMDs on mass, we might be next. We don't currently have the combat ability to survive what he might be able to arrange.
 
If you don't know their lore exists then how can you reasonably call them lore forbidders?
The difference between me and Shikamaru is simple. Shikamaru claims to hold superhuman genius and forbidden lore, and gives orders based on this lore. I claim nothing but big brain moments !

We've seen Shikamaru discuss his forbidden lore with Kei (no specifics of course). And when the topic of forbidden lore came up he's rich in implications that he has some (and low on actual revelations, of course).

However I no longer believe that he actually has any such lore, especially lore that isn't about his bloodline and its safety guidelines. Indeed, a lot of his "proven lore" could boil down to basic bloodline guidelines on how to enter contact with Out entities.
Based on forbidden lore, he said Jashin is more dangerous than we think and advised to have no contact
See this example robee quotes. Does this include any forbidden lore at all, beyond "careful, the god of murder is bad and shouldn't be associated with" or "Out entites are dangerous and you can't actually outwit them or come out ahead" ? No. If you read his statements without assuming that he's got forbidden lore then none of them convince me that he has any such lore.

A good way for him to prove that he has forbidden lore would be to predict anything non-obvious with it, ever. Or for him to offer a provable explanation for something non-intuitive. Our experiments with the light spectrum would have been a good opportunity to reveal some "deep lore about how reality works" without actually revealing anything the QMs consider too important, for example. Or a weird prediction like "if you roll bone dice on the night of the full moon, you roll a statistically improbable number of 6s", that reveals literally nothing useful but is verifiable.
Even if he doesn't explain how he made that prediction or what his lore is, it'd still be a lot more convincing than "yeah I totally have deep lore, trust me".




Some unrelated responses to roobee:
He pointed out holes in 7path chakra farm
That's not deep lore, that's just him being smart as usual. Kei-level analysis - which is good, but not worth bringing a Nara when we already have Kei.
And we'd have noticed that during our first test, so it's not exactly super useful to us either...

Told us info about the sage's companions
That's neat, yes. It also neatly fits the "every clan has a small collection of lies about their founders" thing, and once again proves nothing at all.
We also keep finding random lies about the sage's brother and/or companions, because apparently every single clan has myths like this which are all mostly lies.
Are "The Five" Out entities real ? It's a neat theory and to be honest I believe it. But it's entirely possible (and likely!) that the Nara don't actually know much more than that.
We've seen how clans like the Yamanaka can lose a lot over time (they've lost most of their clan jutsu !) and we've seen that Lore is stupidly hard to gather. Do I believe that the Nara have managed to preserve useful deep lore for eons, or do I believe that they've preserved the basics + some of the usual deformed lies ? In the absence of any proof otherwise, I don't want to give the Nara more credit than they deserve.
 
Who said civvie populace? Rock is the ninja village. If I had meant the Land of Earth I would have said it.
So if you did not mean the Land of Earth, then you misread the post you were replying to.

I did in fact mean Earth Country.

The war plan was to begin by massively rerouting rivers, 'leaving essentially every population center in Earth Country without water". Asuma also intended for Orochimaru to spend months mass-exterminating civilian settlements.

The phrases "depopulate Earth Country before spring planting", and "By this time next year, Earth Country will no longer exist." also appear.


Several characters point out that this won't end well for Leaf, and Shikamaru fortunately convinces Asuma to change strategy.
For more, read CH 457
 
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@roobee here's a counterpoint.

I strongly suspect that Shikamaru may have been responsible for the death of Asuma and/or Akane. If he finds out we can make WMDs on mass, we might be next. We don't currently have the combat ability to survive what he might be able to arrange.
Damn. That's a good point. I wouldn't expect Naruto to kill his golden goose, but Shikamaru acting independently? Hmm.
 
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped What is Orochimaru's knowledge of how much Team Uplift knows about runecrafting? There are currently two contradictory statements (below), in which Orochimaru confirms that Hazou has/will leak runecrafting knowledge to Team Uplift; and makes the claim that he and Hazou cannot afford to leak runecrafting knowledge to "ordinary Leaf ninja" (read: Team Uplift).
"I'll take my time and consult with my clan before I make any final decision," Hazō said as Orochimaru returned. "After all, it's not like I'm actively doing runic research, as I mentioned."

"So, your clan also knows about runecraft?" Orochimaru asked. "Interesting.

"Regardless, you will take every effort to prevent Akatsuki from discovering anything about runecraft. Is that clear?"

"I have no interest in letting them find it out either, Lord Orochimaru."
Orochimaru watched her departure for half a second before busying himself rearranging the privacy seals to make that opalescent dome snap into existence around the runemasters.

"There is another reason for requiring you to see me first," Orochimaru said. "We must discuss how we intend to prevent the secret of runecrafting from disseminating beyond the two of us. I understand you have told both Tsunade and the Fox – and I presume that you have no intention to obey the Fox's orders if you are instructed to teach it to another Leaf sealmaster – but we cannot afford to be using runes in ways that are highly visible to ordinary Leaf ninja."
 
It was unnecessary and we argued against it. Wrong or right is hardly relevant here. Those are the facts.
I'm not sure I agree. There are, to my understanding, two actually good arguments against the destruction of Isan being necessary (or at least I do not remember being impressed by any others):
  • Asuma could have fully cooperated with Takahashi, shared intel about the nuke, and worked together to properly lock down Isan and suppress proliferation.
  • With runes we can put up anti-nuke wards that keep major population centers safe. Without the ability to target them, an EM Nuke ninja becomes only about as problematic as a scorch squad.
The first route is... possible, I'll give it that, but it also strikes me as pretty optimistic. Setting aside that Asuma at the end of the day wasn't willing to give up a monopoly on the nuke and assuming he went all-in on this, there are still multiple major points of failure along the way. Takahashi already demonstrably did not have enough control over Isan to prevent proliferation, so in order to actually succeed here we'd need to give Takahashi a much greater amount of power over Isan's famously uncooperative people. Maybe doable, but from where I'm standing hardly a sure thing. All it takes is one breach and the jig is up, after all.

It's not that it was an outright foolhardy gamble, but it was a gamble, with the fate of the world on the line. It is, in my opinion, a defensible position to err on the side of caution when it comes to such things.

The second route, rune wards, I must first say we did not have at the time when the choice must have been made. We did not even have runes, merely a hope that if we keep pushing our Earthshaping high enough we'll figure out how to make them work. I remember discussions of nuke wards at the time, we did not have reason to believe they would be a realistic goal.

But my true objection to the second route is that I cannot see us actually succeeding at warding every major city against the nuke. Leaf and its cities, most certainly. Perhaps Fire's allies as well. I'm not concerned about rune proliferation (apparently mere samples aren't enough) and I'd willingly go public about runes for this cause, but I do not think, even with AMITY on our side, we could convince our enemy villages to allow Goketsu Hazou of the Village Hidden in the Leaves to install a permanent mega-seal in every major city of theirs, a mega-seal that Leaf claims will protect them from nuclear war but cannot be meaningfully verified without actually attempting to nuke them. And that's not even getting into the Eastern Continent and all the villages there that would need protection yet if anything are even harder to diplomatically reach out to.

In practice, I expect this route to lead to half the world shielded and the other half dying in bitter cold. Isan gets to be one of the survivors, sure, but that's a pretty cold comfort.

Does this mean nuking Isan was the only viable option? No, I wouldn't go that far. If we really buckled down we could've taken the risks, played our cards, and done our best to steer the world to a golden ending where nobody gets nuked. But unless y'all have been holding out on me all this time, there was no way to save Isan without wagering other villages as the buy-in price. And it's fair if you wanted to make that gamble, if in true Team Uplift fashion you refuse to buckle down and compromise, but that hardly makes the safe option that guarantees no proliferation "unnecessary".
 
a mega-seal that Leaf claims will protect them from nuclear war but cannot be meaningfully verified without actually attempting to nuke them.
We can easily enough show that the nukes are real by demonstrating one in a suitably remote area of their choosing. At that point they don't need to believe that the ward rune actually works - it could just as well be a purely symbolic concession to a protection racket based on our proven ability to unilaterally destroy them. If they frantically develop alternate means of defense, cryohurricane-resistant bunkers or whatnot, that probably still counts as a win.
 
@roobee here's a counterpoint.

I strongly suspect that Shikamaru may have been responsible for the death of Asuma and/or Akane. If he finds out we can make WMDs on mass, we might be next. We don't currently have the combat ability to survive what he might be able to arrange.
Even if true, he'll wait until we fix the Great Seal to do so. And if we beat Akatsuki, it's looking like the rift will be explored before the Seal is fixed. Resurrecting people will throw enough chaos into the situation for Shika to have more priorities to consider, to benefit from our help for addressing the chaos, and to make it more expensive to keep Hazou dead.
See this example robee quotes.
Do you think Shika is lying to Hazou when saying such entities are more dangerous than we think. Or that that is just bloodline safety guidelines for such entities?

That's not deep lore, that's just him being smart as usual. Kei-level analysis - which is good, but not worth bringing a Nara when we already have Kei.
And we'd have noticed that during our first test, so it's not exactly super useful to us either...
How can you acknowledge he is smart, and not consider it worth it to bring him in?
Nara could catch something Kei misses.
How much effort would the hive mind have done, such as raising koi fish population on the 7path, before testing it?
As for actionable lore. The thinker clans try to prevent the extinction of the other thinker clans. If I recall because that would release the entities. Yes you can't verify if the prediction is true until it happens. But probability wise it is worth taking into account and avoiding. Along with whatever other predictions the thinkers make.
Also I think I recall someone claiming one aspect that differentiated Pain from Hazou. Was that Pain didn't have access to thinker advisors. We have access to 2 types, let's use em.

two actually good arguments against the destruction of Isan being necessary
Also isan forbidden lore to help with dragons and other existential threats. You can say that's Asuma's mistake for continuing after realizing the OPSEC prevents retrieving the information. But could also say our mistake for trusting in Asuma's judgement during execution of the operation.
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also if you talking about safe cautious options. The isan nuke plan had a followup to deal with any out of village or banished Isans. With all that's occurred I don't know if Shika has been able to execute that well. So whether it is actually more safe is to be seen
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But probability wise it is worth taking into account and avoiding.
I mean this as an example of lore causing useful results. Not saying that preventing Nara extinction is why we need one as a designated survivor. They are gonna have a designated survivor outside the village at all times anyway. Aside: leaf getting nuked and losing all Nara in leaf. Will still increase the probability of eventual Nara extinction
 
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As an additional note here, Isan apparently only contained, like, 500 people (at least according to Kei's guilt-driven pseudo-hallucination).
"Oh, nonsense," Takahashi-sensei touched his forehead in an Isanese gesture of dismissal. "The Nara have Shikamaru. The KEI has Ami. The Gōketsu have Mari. What value could someone of your talents possibly think you were adding versus the value of five hundred lives only you could save?"
Five hundred people is … insignificant. We (probably) killed a comparable number of people by accident when we first tested the EM nuke; Akane killed many more people when she burned that town/city in Rock; scorch squad missions in war kill that many people in … well, I don't know exactly how long, but probably a relatively short amount of time. Granted that "lots of other people die" does not imply "it's fine for these people to die"; but still, five hundred deaths is trivial, relatively speaking.

The only thing that makes this decision seem hard is that Isan was a politically relevant entity with a unique culture and not just some random mid-sized civilian town. That is a reason for its destruction to weigh more on the scales; but not a lot more. When compared to the proliferation risk represented by EM nuke, I tend to think that, sad as it was, nuking Isan was unambiguously the correct choice.
 
The only thing that makes this decision seem hard is that Isan was a politically relevant entity with a unique culture and not just some random mid-sized civilian town. That is a reason for its destruction to weigh more on the scales; but not a lot more. When compared to the proliferation risk represented by EM nuke, I tend to think that, sad as it was, nuking Isan was unambiguously the correct choice.
We saw them, we knew them, and for that alone it was hard.
 
Do you think Shika is lying to Hazou when saying such entities are more dangerous than we think. Or that that is just bloodline safety guidelines for such entities?
Second option. I think he might just know the safety guidelines for his bloodline and not much else.

How can you acknowledge he is smart, and not consider it worth it to bring him in?
Nara could catch something Kei misses.
Not worth the OpSec risk. More people = more opsec risks. We should only bring people if the gain is significant.
I also think that the way the QMs model smart advisors mean we don't actually need a dozen of them. We need one good one with Nara training, and we already have that. Her name is Kei.

How much effort would the hive mind have done, such as raising koi fish population on the 7path, before testing it?
Nah, we'd have tested it fairly fast.
Incidentally "koi fish on the seventh path" would have been really useful this arc. Sure it wouldn't have been as good as we had initially hoped, but it would still have been great !
 
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