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I don't get this vote, this is a single action that can be done in less than a minute and it can probably just be a question we ask someone when we get to town.

It's not going to produce an interesting update that progresses the story.
I'm pretty satisfied if the update is, "Do this one thing, then Hazou messes around according to autopilot priorities."
 
[X] Devouring Daiji
  • Hazou does not use chakra unless necessary to preserve his continued existence. Chakra is a precious resource and ought to be conserved, and we are in the afterlife (death = irrelevant).
  • Hazou attempts to grab Daiji's escaping memories, and attempts to absorb some of his knowledge of the afterlife, the way that he said you could absorb chakra from shimmers.
  • Hazou memorizes/attempts to map out the location, taking note of where he is and the possible location of the original rift site (read: find a source of water) in addition to the shimmers and area where the settlement could be.
  • Hazou goes to the settlement.
 
[X] Action Plan: First Steps

@Sir Stompy I'd like to start fishing for plot hooks, can we ask around about Jiraiya/Akane (and when we get nothing, other settlements) when we get into town?

I'm also committing to vote against plans which have us loot either the memories or corpse of the dead until we have a better grasp on what this world's culture looks like. Maybe it's totally cool, or maybe it's a mortal sin. The upside is minimal: the world is not so deadly that civilians can't survive, meaning that we can probably forgo whatever incremental advantage we'd get by sucking up his knowledge of the afterlife, and someone on their way to for-real kill themselves still took 15 minutes out of their day to tell us how stuff works. It's only one data point, but I expect everyone else is going to be equally-happy to share their knowledge if we're polite and don't start immediately ranting about how we need to get out of here. As for the downside, showing up wearing a dead guy's shoes (or with his memories in our head) in a presumably tight-knit community seems like a great way to blow a default-friendly interaction.
 
[X] Find Kota and kill him again.
"What is going to happen to Kōta?" Inoue-sensei asked again.



"He is the only grandson of Gasai Mikoto. Like most of the elders, Gasai believes you are the greatest threat to this village in living memory. Unlike most of the elders, she is open to being proved wrong. But if her grandson dishonours her family with attempted murder, it'll be all the opening her rivals need to force her off the council. That isn't in your interest or mine."
Takahashi Sahō smiled to herself for a fraction of a second, before smoothing her face into a pleasant neutrality. For the third day in a row, Gasai was out in the front yard of his house, practicing his morning stretches and his basic taijutsu kata. This was slightly improper, as front-facing taijutsu practice was meant primarily for youth who had not yet achieved the first rank of mastery, but none could doubt Gasai's skill. No, the part that interested Sahō was that Inoue had told Gasai that Sahō took morning walks just after dawn on this route exactly three days ago. Three mornings had passed, and of all the times she had taken this walk, it was these three days alone that she'd seen him training.

Sahō lowered her eyes respectfully as she passed his house. He stopped his training to give her a slight bow.

"It is auspicious for the morning sun to cast its rays upon the land like so, is it not?" she asked.

"Your wisdom is evident," he said, raising his eye level slightly, to be staring at her feet rather than his own. "Perhaps the day will be pleasant and bring us fortune."

She raised her eyes too, little by little, taking in the way that he also slowly drew his gaze upwards without pausing anywhere immodestly.

Their gazes met for two and a half-seconds. Something supernatural passed between them, and Sahō felt tingles go all over her body. It took all her self control to break her gaze away from his rich, brown eyes.

"Perhaps it will be," she said, struggling to keep her voice from faltering even as she flushed. "May our morning at least be pleasant."

"Indeed," he said, bowing again. Unnecessary, but perhaps he needed something physical to break his side of their eye contact. "May our paths cross again, Takahashi."

"If Ui wills it so," Sahō said.

Ui's blood, Inoue had been right! Maybe if she followed her friend's advice, Sahō could have Gasai propose within the month!

So much planning remained to be done. Before she could let the devious plots in her mind run free, though, there was a morning walk that needed finishing. She continued with a slight spring in her step. Slightly improper, but what did it matter?
Sahō carefully stepped forward through the snow, holding Gasai's gaze far, far beyond what was merely slightly improper. She walked until she was inches from his chest, looking up into his eyes. The cold air made her fingers numb, but she still reached out and took his hand in hers.

The cold wind around them intensified, but the fire within her heart made her heart beat faster and faster, keeping her warm. She took another step closer, now chest to chest with the man of her dreams. Horrendously improper, but the needs of survival in a cold night made certain sacrifices of decorum necessary.

Would he crane his neck down and kiss her? It would be fast, too fast for a courtship barely out of the cradle, but she still looked up at him, aware that he could take her lips if he wanted them. Perhaps she had gone mad. Perhaps she should have stepped back, lowered her eyes, and preserved her modesty. That fire within her heart refused to let her do so.

The wind grew harder, and she used chakra to pull her feet down to the mountainside. It was unnaturally strong. In the span of a heartbeat, Sahō turned to face downhill, towards Isan.

Through the fog, she barely got the impression of a vortex of ice and water forming in the air above and slightly beyond them.

A heartbeat passed. She felt a spray of something over her face and clothes. It was cold beyond cold. She tried to move.

A heartbeat. The cold gave way to numbness. She could not escape.

A heartbeat. Numbness gave way to nothingness.

Her heart beat no more.
On a completely unrelated note: Suck it, Kota, you fucking shit.
Animosity. Detecting a smidgen. :p
 
[X] Attempt to exploit the memory-removal feature by seeing if it interacts with Hazou's TLITF'd memories. See if it lets Hazou view them after he removes them. See if Hazou can view grue'd memories in this way.
 
TBF I am reading all of the "research takes a backseat" stuff as "Okay well this will happen in between cool adventures to a limited degree" or something. Is that accurate? I worry that the QMs have updated very,very, very strongly towards "Research is the problem" when this is not really true IMO. Strong positive incentives for doing cooler, more active things means that the incentive gradient will sort itself out, I think, and this was all that was really needed. Getting the XP directly from the cool stuff you do sounds like it will do enough heavy lifting from my perspective.
It's been said, but I just want to reiterate that this continues to be an over-correction. Research spam is not possible anymore with the changes to prep days. I fear this is going to feel like playing an entirely different character who's one available action is "Punch", since as you said, techniques are much less replenishable and research is most likely not happening at all.
I agree with this, research will already be vastly reduced if there are other ways to advance our goals. This just feels like a dramatic overcorrection after we were presented with no other options IC to advance our goals.
Our general intention is not to explicitly ban research, but to:
  1. Try to design problems that don't require research to interact with, and
  2. Not go out of our way to lift the existing natural barriers to research that exist in the afterlife.
Which should hopefully be enough to make it take a backseat without ruling it out when it does makes sense.
 
@faflec Do you remember a scene between Hazo and Kagome where they were talking about carved seals and Kagome mentioned knowing someone who had tried drawing seals on stone or ceramic or something?
Kagome is familiar with the following materials that seals can be written on:
• Paper, vellum, and other paper-like things
• Clay tablets
• Smooth stone like polished marble
• True masters have put seals on flesh. In Kagome's words, this is done by "Bone-headed retards. Skin changes shape, gets a sunburn, gets a cut, gets old, seal gets distorted, everything goes boom or slurp or splat or some other godawful noise and then we're all running for our lives and cursing stupid idiotic boneheaded retarded stinking 'expert sealmasters'. Ptui."
 
I was thinking we'd do a whole update in town, rather than trying to cram too much into it I thought I'd wait to get there before doing this.
I guess we'll see how tough it is to get from A to B, then - my impression was that the journey probably wouldn't take an entire update but I guess we'll see?

@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped can you give us an idea as to whether 'slurp up the visible Shimmers, get to town' is enough plan content for a full update or if we should be specifying more?
 
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