As I understand it, developing practical biosealing requires a steady stream of live, disposable bodies.
Not inherently. Note that Orochimaru was able to use biosealing to create Superhealthy Rice, which Hiruzen ordered Fire Country's farmers to switch to. Hazou, himself, noted that Orochimaru has likely saved the lives of more ninja than he's killed with that one invention (which isn't a statement of support, but more an indication of the good that biosealing can do).
I suspect (but do not know, as I am not a QM) that learning the biosealing stunt requires a certain amount of human sacrifices (so that you know how to do human biosealing at all), but that much in the same way, you also need chakra beasts and chakra plants, to learn how to do Beast-specific and Plant-specific Biosealing.
The general plan, as I understand it, is to focus on biosealing plants and chakra beasts to our needs, rather than relying on human experimentation.
An example of what I'm talking about might be a vine that is inert until sprayed with a paired biosealed liquid mixture, causing the biosealed vine to coil around our legs, aiding in movement add a bonus to our movement.
MadScientist, in particular, had some really solid ideas, way back, but they've asked us not to ping them in the thread.
Is the plan to announce that we're joining his lab after the riftwar to have him or Kabuto teach us biosealing?
As I understand it, the plan is to ask Orochimaru to order Kabuto, or one of his other disposable assets, to teach us biosealing (Endou Sora is my preferred choice, since Mari said that she seemed Uplift-adjacent, and we have a good track record with converting people to the Light Side... but I could also see narrative potential in learning from Kabuto, or a different mook).
Obviously there's is a reputational and caldera risk since immediately deciding to join Oro's lab looks exactly like he's corrupted us. But more importantly, if we're learning biosealing because we're worried that Oro didn't act in good faith, putting ourself under his thumb for weeks/months on end in the seat of his power seems like a disastrous play.
I think the reputational threat is less than you may think. Hazou is already considered insane by nine different metrics, and Shino proved that people already fear interacting with Hazou. Biosealing isn't really going to change that, it'll be just another thing for them to be concerned about (which will go away once they realize we bioseal plants and chakra beasts,
not people).
Besides: Jiraiya and Tsunade are biosealers, too, they just didn't specialize as hard into it as Orochimaru did. And the Sannin are worshipped by Leaf as a whole. So "scary biosealer" is something that can be overcome... and Hazou's Uplift projects will certainly help in that regard
Further, once we kill the Akatsuki, we'll be swimming in so much political goodwill that we can afford to spend a little bit of it. Especially if Mari can spin it to the public in a better light. And that spinning will be doubly effective once we start using biosealing for Uplift purposes (more nutritious crops, more docile chakra cattle for civilians, etc).
And as for the Caldera Threat? I don't think it's really all that high. Explain that we're learning it to dismantle Orochimaru's bioseals, and that we can use it, cautiously, as a tool for Uplift. That's sufficiently Hazou-esque that it'll draw aggravated sighs and hands-through-hair, but not murder plots.
Do we have anything he wants that badly and if so would we be willing to give it to him?
Honestly, I think we're going to be building a lot of goodwill with Orochimaru, here. We also gave him, like
hella good research notes for a lot of solid runes that Orochimaru wouldn't be able to do on his own (from time constraints, if nothing else).
If we were going to ask Orochimaru for his personal tutorship,
then I'd say we need to break out the shinies for trade. But if we're just asking Orochimaru to give us a biosealing minion for a few weeks? Well, Orochimaru is going to be laser focused on Runecrafting, so it's not like he needs a
biosealing research assistant right now.
And Orochimaru is also hella vulnerable to rationalism and flattery, so if we play those up during the initial conversation, I could see him loaning us a disposable mook (like Endou Sora) for free. Or at a hecking reduced price that's more about "not being seen giving stuff away" than any actual profits or gains.
an opposed biosealing roll
FWIW, between DoB, the inherent Sealing cross over bonus (similar to Runecrafting's bonus), and Biosealing being a single cost stat under Sealing, itself, we could easily get Biosealing to the eff 60s. After that, we just drop invokes on pre-prepared Aspects, and boom, there ya go.
I don't think that beating the roll is going to be the difficult part here, but if it is, then yeah, we can always just ask Tsunade (who is also a biosealer) to help us out.
