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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Cariyaga said:
I'd rather give Keiko a few more days, then let her ask on her own time if Tenten is interested in talking shop, sealing wise.
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Sure, we can wait on talking to TT about sealing, especially since she's not exactly the type to accidentally let classified info slip.

I'd still like Hazou to ask after her, if only so the team can learn about the pacifism thing IC. (And because Friendship and curiosity, in character.) Gotta be careful not to seem like we're stealing Keiko's friend or denying her agency, though.

Re: contacting Hana, I like the idea of using the first couple seconds of the 'Coming Home' song. (Or a larger part of the song sped up, if that's not enough to identify it.) Ideally played like Hazou did, which means using a flautist or a recording device, or (less practical) using sense-affecting genjutsu on Hana or bringing Hazou along.

Actually, I guess the easiest thing to do would be have an agent hear the piece, go to Mist, and use genjutsu to put the sound in a civilian's head and convince them to replicate it near Hana. To jog Hana's memory it'd ideally be a flautist civilian, but that might raise suspicions--I'm sure the Mist spies assigned to Hana know that Hazou used to play the flute. Anyone with enough musical talent to replicate the melody (including Hazou's specific pattern of childish pauses) could do it.

(Or, if the agent had precise enough genjutsu, they could direct the civilian to perform particular motions to replicate the sound.)

@OliWhail mentioned creating recording seals on Discord, and it seems like recording+playback a short snatch of sound should be possible with a modified storage seal, assuming sealed stuff doesn't change at all over time. In that case, we could record by storing the vibrating air before the sound dissipates, as long as we could release the air in a way that preserved the waves. Maybe play music into a small hole in a crate, then immediately seal the crate? (I'm not clear on how instantaneous sealing is, so maybe this doesn't work.)

Final thought - it'd be a nice twist to play the song backwards, to indicate Hana should think about leaving home.
 
Langevin said:
I'd still like Hazou to ask after her, if only so the team can learn about the pacifism thing IC. (And because Friendship and curiosity, in character.) Gotta be careful not to seem like we're stealing Keiko's friend or denying her agency, though.
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Asking, "So what's Tenten like?" should be enough to get her started. We can ask Akane about her as well, see what kind of intel we can dig up there, so that we have cause to ask after meeting her to talk sealing.

e:

Oh, also, re: Kabuto, we should be able to frame the asking to learn techniques from him well. Something like, "Oh, hey, Kabuto-sensei, I spent a few hours last night working at Inoue-sensei, and convinced her to let me show you how I learn. She insisted on being in here while I did, but I can show you how I learn new techniques if you have any you'd like to teach."

...probably not that, exactly, but someone can frame it better than me.
 
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Langevin said:
Final thought - it'd be a nice twist to play the song backwards, to indicate Hana should think about leaving home.
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I got a different idea. You make the seal vibrate sounds. Somehow.

This would be the descendant of a noisemaker seal.

Gradually, Hazou develop seal varients, which combined together, are advanced enough to play or intimate musical instruments.
 
Kiba said:
I got a different idea. You make the seal vibrate sounds. Somehow.

This would be the descendant of a noisemaker seal.

Gradually, Hazou develop seal varients, which combined together, are advanced enough to play or intimate musical instruments.
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If we had seals that simply emit a specific amount of force upon a certain area, making a simple music device should be do-able. All the seal has to do is emit a set amount of force upon some air for a set amount of time to power the musical bits of the device, just like how a musician supplies the air necessary to play a brass or woodwind instrument.

Hazou should have enough understanding about explosive seals (since they, at their most basic level, are all about emitting force in a specific way (explosions release all of their energy at once, so we would have to tweak the design so that the new amount of force is weaker and gets emitted over a longer period of time)) and he knows how flutes (a woodwind instrument) work since he played them since he was a small child.

There are further applications of such a tweakable force emitting seal as well. If we can make a seal with variable thrust and a toggle-able On/Off switch (like a storage scroll) we suddenly have the best rocket engines ever (no fuel needed, no exhaust, no problems). Kagome has already proven that one-way explosive seals can work, so altering different aspects of the basic explosive seal should be possible, especially under his supervision and with his design input (once he has gotten done screaming of course).
 
Action Framework: Steal This, Don't Vote For It

Goals:
  1. Keep the team alive, healthy, and free
  2. Stay in the good graces of Leaf in general and Jiraiya / Team Asuma / Auntie in particular
Methods
  • On-screen
    • Try to repair the damage from our outburst yesterday
      • Apoligize to the team at breakfast, apologize to Team Asuma when they pick us up in the morning (especially to Sarutobi), and request a brief stop at the library so we can apologize to Auntie.
        • Because we sincerely are sorry for causing a scene, raising tensions, damaging the books, and disrespecting Sarutobi
        • Plus, Kagome and Auntie can be nerds together if we go back to the library.
    • Continue making friends!
      • Talking to Nara about what we read in Vol 1 so far
        • To show our investment in his recommendation, and because he seems enthusiastic about it.
      • MORE TALKING TO INO GOES HERE
    • Next visit to Akane.
      • Continue light topics by default, including the library and printing press, good times from the past (beach episode, games, fun sparring and snowball fights, if we haven't before then mention how impressed J was with the towers she helped build). If her conviction that she is not good enough, remind her that she did much better in that most recent fight than we did.
        • To help keep her mood up! Because she is important and we want our important people to be happy!
      • HOW TO TALK ABOUT FEELINGS HELP?
        • We really need to clear up any confusion created by that parting shot.
  • Offscreen
    • Inform J we're ready to discuss rewards when he has time. Reference the plan in Contingencies if this happens this update.
    • If we can afford an Akimichi Lore book, get it for Kagome. If we can't afford that, see about the woodworking book. If we can't afford either, wait until we get paid.
    • Some actual stealth training while Noburi is at the hospital (is he starting to spend med XP yet?). Tell Keiko we are happy to see her getting along with Tenten.
      • The hivemind has reason to think that Kei really likes spending time with Tenten. We don't know if she throws kunai that way yet, or at all, but we should probably still encourage them to spend time together.
    • Learning Akane's song request, ideally before visiting her.
    • Noburi should offer Kabuto the chance to observe us learning techniques in the next couple days
    • Continue de-stressing
    • Noburi finishes barrel, if not already complete
  1. Opsec Contingencies
    1. Don't mention family or bloodlines unless someone in a position of authority is specifically demanding we discuss them
    2. Don't mention training or techniques except in the context of being about-to-train or rewards
    3. Continue randomized dispelling
  2. Default to CCnJ for any nontrivial interpersonal interactions (discussing the ramifications of our prank with Ino, bringing up our romantic difficulties to Mari, suggesting we sell copies of the macerator, asking to borrow Nara's book...)
  3. Don't piss off Leaf
    1. Be polite to everyone we meet
    2. Listen to our handlers and follow their (reasonable) instructions to the letter
  4. However, be suspicious of any Leaf nin who are not Akane, Jiraiya, or Team Asuma.
  5. Try to minimize Kagome's stress level by not making him talk too much / interact with non-teammates if he doesn't feel like it, keeping close-by, encouraging him to eat any of the nice food we get that have already been checked for poison, esp. sweets and chocolate.
  6. Safety and Security Rules
    1. Default to not splitting the party
    2. Keep a watch in our room even at night
    3. Make sure we all have whatever the local equivalent of white flags are
    4. When in public, try to stick to areas with a reasonable number of civilians and other ninja
  7. Combat contingencies
    1. White tactics by default
    2. Use any panic buttons Jiraiya has given us (none yet, sounds like)
    3. Try to leave the city or converge on Jiraiya's office to turn ourselves in. Make sure we're doing the equivalent of waving white flags.
    4. If we aren't able to immediately disengage, end the update for combat planning.
  8. Assume we are being spied on at pretty much all times by multiple parties
    1. Our desire to arrange our mom's extraction from Mist, and our concerns about how that could impact the rest of the group.
      1. Does Inoue-sensei think this is even a feasible thing to ask with a favor, or stacked favors, given Hana's large motivation to defect to work for J specifically and the additional utility she provides to our team in the form of jounin combat strength and decades of experience?
      2. Ask if there is anyone else we would need to extract at the same, and whether we should avoid doing so at all to avoid putting Inoue-senei's family at risk.
        1. Any Wakahisa or Mori clan members would be more difficult to extract but also less likely to provoke huge reprisals from Yagura.
      3. Mom would be a valuable resource, but also an addition to the team - are others okay with that idea?
  10. If the topic of why Fire isn't a model for what Hazou wants to acheive comes up again, consider drawing from
    When you asked why Fire wasn't a utopia, I was confused because you had practically just said the answer yourself: none of the major players can trust each other, because each of them consider only their own people to have any moral weight. And that is what you said, that you would sleep well after killing a foreign citizen to save a Leaf one. Not that you would consider it a necessary tragedy to protect the people you care about, and not that you would devote so much as a second of thought toward avoiding having to make that choice again in the future, and you said all your counterparts in other villages feel the same way.

    When the whole world does that, then everyone looks like monsters to everyone else. At that point, it's even easier to say all foreigners are morally irrelevant, trapping the entire world in a spiral of indifference and hatred, so we get the current state of the world even from initial conditions where everyone cares about people outside their clan or their village just slightly too little. And at that point, it becomes impossible to trust one another to do things like build utopias, since all that power looks like a threat.

    Which gives us the answer to your original question: the reason Fire isn't a utopia is that even though it's strong, it's not as strong as everyone else all at once, and if you withdraw resources from maintaining your current military dominance to focus on things like civilian wellbeing, other nations will see that apparent weakness as an opportunity to help their people by hurting yours, who as we've established they don't care about. Boom, the next shinobi war. And if you did anything with your vast resources that would put you on a clear trajectory to become strong enough to fight them all off at once, like letting civilians live well enough to lead to significant population growth, the entire world will throw everything they had at you, even though they'd be eviscerated afterwards and have an even harder time stalling civilization's collapse.

    They'd do it even if you weren't being hostile, like the world did to Whirlpool. It's probably pretty easy to see from the reversed perspective - if Mist suddenly became insanely good at sealcrafting, and started using it to protect their civilians and grow more food and help all their citizens live comfortably, would you be glad your neighbors were growing happy and prosperous? Or would you see the impending population boom as a threat to be sabotaged and undermined? And if you find a low-risk method that sabotages your enemies' future strength without going to war, well, how could you not take it, even if it's morally horrific and accelerating the gradual downfall of the human race.

    You can't build up because you would get smacked down. You can't truly work with other nations to break out of the downward spiral because you won't be trusted and won't trust them, since you both know that trust would be exploited. So Leaf ends up having to contribute to the status quo, even if you guys are better about humanizing the enemy than others, according to Akane. But it isn't working, and something has to change, or everything is going to crumble into dust, and everyone is going to die - including Leaf. So, again, will you help us?
    1. Part of that is why we need him on board - preventing wars from breaking out while the fixing is happening, and then figuring out a way to change the incentives that result in things like distrust and scorch squads. Make it so that "cooperate" becomes the winning option even in the non-iterated case of this prisoners' dilemma. (Massively improve agriculture per area to allow consolidation of civilian population? Set up a neurtral third party to arbitrate disputes and hand out the uplift tech on the basis of good behavior?) That, or make Leaf so strong so fast that everyone's best option is to give up, but even then people won't actually be reasonable since they're scared and angry and distrustful. Even if there were a jutsu to magically restore everyone's view of each other as people deserving moral consideration, it wouldn't be anything like a permanent solution, because the cycle would start all over again.
    2. Also, compared to slowly dying villages in the wilderness, and to some extent compared even to Kirigakure, Leaf is fairly utopian already.
  11. Current plan for talking about rewards with Jiraiya, in case he calls us in
    1. Most of these rewards are centered around making us stronger and better assets, so it's against Jiraya's interests to be stingy here
    2. Check if he is okay with us discussing fairly frankly some admitted longshots first; if not, skip this section.
      1. Kurosawa Hana
        1. Getting her out of Kiri
          1. Jounin taijutsu expert with huge reasons to defect to work for him specifically, and would cause Team Uplift to be stronger, safer, saner, enormously grateful, and probably more stable due to her greater experience and mediating influence.
          2. If this is gonna start the Fourth Jashin-damned Shinobi War, obviously not worth it, and is obviously a huge ask in terms of difficulty and risk, but is this a thing we that is even on the table as far as favors, or even accumulated favors?
        2. If not getting her out, how feasible is an attempt to get a message to her, even just "your son is alive and loves you"? In addition to or barring that, could we get information on what she is up to and what her position is in Mist?
      2. Does any kind of pass to cross Fire borders come packaged with Akane's reinstatement and our continued loyalty?
        1. We recognize that this is unlikely due to the need to maintain deniability, but Akane is much less of a carrot if we can't come to see her (if she does not stick with us) / will need to be able to access Leaf resources and her friends and family if she does stick with us.
        2. If J gets smug / team gives us shit for saying we're loyal to Leaf/J, maintain that since we are loyal to Akane who is presumably loyal to Leaf, we are at least second-order loyal to them, and in any case they appear to represent the best chance at fixing things.
        3. If J asks why we're now uncertain whether she'll stick with us, maintain that we are simply planning for all possibilities and that the choice remains hers.
    3. Check if he is okay with us discussing some generalities of less-longshot options before asking for a specific thing
      1. Seal designs: are these even on the table? Would he be willing to give us either an array of low-to-medium level utility seals that he thinks would contribute most to our effectiveness, or to do a deeper dive into e.g. storage seals and the extremes of what they can be used for?
        1. Examples of utility seals ordered by preference
          1. Communication range, especially surreptitiously
          2. Night vision or other sensory enhancements
          3. Advanced alarm seals
          4. Sound muffling seals / other stealth enhancements
          5. Self Contained Breathing Apparatus
            1. Something that lets us breath when there is no clean, breathable air around
          6. Eye, ear and environmental protection
            1. Protection against bright lights and noise
            2. Protection against extreme temperatures
            3. Protection against gas or liquid toxicants that only require skin contact
      2. Jutsu: he said he would get us a teacher at the end of our interactions with him in Yuni - if that no longer holds, how much is he willing to teach us now (e.g. # of techniques at particular ranks - describe the jutsu plan quoted below if prompted)
      3. Can we safely assume we will be given / at least have the chance to buy new ninja gear and essentials, what with our old stuff being potentially biosealer-contaminated?
        1. An up-to-date bingo book or comparable intel would also be really nice but we're not about to spend a favor on it.
      4. Technique Hacking
        1. Is it something we could learn from a favor?
        2. Jiraya's analysis on its usefulness for a team like ours
    4. Are there missions he has planned for us that he can tell us about before we make our decision?
    5. The update should then end for a vote on our reward

    The winning plan from the jutsu vote:
    [X] Jutsu Hazou: Whack-a-Mole Madness

    Follow Whack-A-Mole, but prioritize Tremor Sense over Nintaijutsu.
    [X] Jutsu Hazou: Whack-A-Mole
    "Now that you asked, I do have a short list..."

    This is Hazou's jutsu preference list assuming that the winning action plan has him acquire a new jutsu.

    In general, Hazou doesn't have the time the get too invested in one jutsu. He would prefer jutsu that use his general attributes instead of deep jutsu mastery to make use of the techniques. (Attribute requirements > Dice needed for usefulness)

    List of Earth Jutsu Hazou wants ranked in order of preference.

    Primary requirements are what we want the jutsu to have at minimum. If those requirements are not met, move to the next jutsu on the list.

    Hazou also doesn't have that much chakra, so prioritize chakra efficiency over the secondary and especially over tertiary requirements. We trust J's judgement in this.

    1. Earth Nintaijutsu
      • Primary requirements
        • Doesn't hinder mobility
        • Provides high damage resistance or enhanced mobility or speed
      • Secondary requirements
        • Lets us punch dangerous surfaces (Lava, acid, metal spikes, horrors beyond the realm of man etc.)
        • Adds to Taijutsu dice even with specialized taijutsu styles (No, we totally don't have one. Stop smirking.)
    2. Tunneling jutsu
      • Primary requirements
        • Fast, combat useful movement underground
      • Secondary requirements
        • Ability to leave the tunnels open
        • Ability to vary the the size of the tunnel created
      • Tertiary requirements
        • Long distance travel without absolutely insane chakra cost
        • Ability to detect what is going on in the surface
        • Provides protection from suffocation for extended periods of time
    3. Tremor Sense no Jutsu
      • Primary requirements
        • Ranged detection without line of sight
        • Usable while fighting, so no active channeling required at least for close range detection
      • Secondary requirements
        • Enables us to read opponent movement in melee combat with zero vision
      • Tertiary requirements
        • No handseals at level reachable for Hazou
        • Heart and respiratory detection for social awareness
    4. Skidmark no Jutsu
      • Decription: A jutsu that moves a patch (or patches) of ground around very quickly; used for moving ninjas and objects around the battefield
      • Primary requirements
        • The batch of ground doesn't have to be right next to the caster at start
        • Ability to move at least a ninjas worth of mass on top of the patch
      • Secondary requirements
        • We can change the size of the patch of ground
        • The moving patch of ground is stealthy and non-obvious

THINGS NOT ADDRESSED HERE:

Now that we know the team is, in principle, okay with getting mom out, we should put forward and prune plans to suggest to J when we meet him about rewards.

We should also consider when to have that conversation, since asking for training might let us stay in Leaf longer were we to get kicked out.
  1. Things to do while in Leaf
    1. Look out for a gift for Keiko, and one for Panchipaama (Tenten has suggestions, maybe?)
  2. Lingering Jiraiya Questions
    1. What purpose did lying to us about not knowing the identity of the summon clan serve?
    2. Set up protocols for refreshing code words if we are ever off on long missions again
    3. Advice on uplift plans? ("I want your advice as someone who has spent multiple times my lifespan preserving peace and gathering knowledge about the world: in what way can I maximally contribute to improving the state of the world, by which I mean to reduce the exploitation of civilians by ninja, to improve the quality of life for both civilians and ninja, and to reduce and eventually reverse the erosion of civilization by the forces of nature and war?")
    4. How to acquire power inside the current system / Any organizations/groups/polities Jiraya and Leaf would not mind us getting rid of?
      1. You know, just in case we need to acquire limited resources (land, vassals, political legitimacy etc.)
[] Brainstorm Everyone: Scorch Squad Squash
Background
  • Kagome suggested that the sparseness of the population is the fundamental reason behind the effectiveness of scorch squads.
    • Can we fix either or both of the contributing problems?
      • The difficulty of patrolling large areas of populated land
      • The difficulty of growing enough food in a small area to support a condensed population
    • Make that technique or technology available
      • globally?
      • to our allies?
    • Doing this might be a quick way to modify the tradeoffs for that method of warfare.
  • As discussed in the thread, there is an additional underlying problem of lack of empathy and trust between nations which prevents simple de-escalation.
Some initial brainstorming:
  • Teleportation tech like the safety poles/safety sticks in Significant Digits (which we may want to keep for ourselves/Hidden Heaven)
  • Automated defenses against ninja (golems? seal-based clones?)
    • Would need to be good enough to stand up to jounin, which implies that this would only be a good solution at much higher power levels than we're currently playing with
  • TH-ing plant growth jutsu, or creating relevant seals, or combining existing jutsu and seals in a clever way that optimizes plant growth, or in any way enabling large numbers of people to be fed while being secured against invasion, seige, crop burning...
  • Bigger-on-the-inside tech to let people farm in their own homes within cities (heavily modified storage seals?)
Further Steps
  • Get others' thoughts/critiques/contributions, and start working on the approach we judge to be most promising
  • Learn about current agricultural practices and try to figure out improvements to equipment or techniques (e.g. better fertilizers, seed drills, focused selective breeding...)
 
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Velorien said:
Because Jiraiya, Auntie and the Hokage would take turns murderising you. Printing presses are expensive.

Edit: No, wait, there are more than three party members. No turn-taking required.
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You once made a seal that spawned chinchillas everywhere, even if you won't let us replicate it. I'm sure sooner or later we'd find a seal that makes more printing presses.
 
[X] Lore Update: History of the Elemental Nations, Vol. 1

(Going back into the woods for a few days + Christmas = not MfD planning :p )
 
Bah, and here I was hoping to write Hazō's desperate attempts to make it clear that he didn't mean to imply anything by his parting shot to Akane, except for the stuff he was implying, which, no, it wasn't meant to be a statement that he like liked her, but that is not to say he doesn't not like like her, and obviously he was just trying to express his deep affection for her as a friend and as her master without in any way denying other possibilities which may or may not be appropriate in the future and Akane why are you beating your head against the wall?
 
Cariyaga said:
Asking, "So what's Tenten like?" should be enough to get her started. We can ask Akane about her as well, see what kind of intel we can dig up there, so that we have cause to ask after meeting her to talk sealing.
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Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Velorien said:
Bah, and here I was hoping to write Hazō's desperate attempts to make it clear that he didn't mean to imply anything by his parting shot to Akane, except for the stuff he was implying, which, no, it wasn't meant to be a statement that he like liked her, but that is not to say he doesn't not like like her, and obviously he was just trying to express his deep affection for her as a friend and as her master without in any way denying other possibilities which may or may not be appropriate in the future and Akane why are you beating your head against the wall?
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;_;

(For the record, I think we should not CCnJ this, nor even necessarily discuss it unless Akane brings it up. Ambiguity is okay in situations like this, and I'm not sure we'll reach consensus on what the underlying reality is anyway. Obviously ambiguity is less okay in the specific situation of Akane being bedridden and depressed and not having other things to think about, but we're working on the latter two at least?

But my judgment has already proved suboptimal here, so.)
 
Guyyyyys I know I voted for it first but we should at least try to come up with a plan!
 
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OliWhail said:
Guyyyyys I know I voted for it first but we should at least try to come up with a plan!
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[X] Action Plan: Simple Rewards
Ask Jiraiya for technique hacking training. Keep all our past contingencies.

Ya know, to move the plot along and stuff. Just ask for one scene (the rewards scene).

Edit: I assume that people would want a more detailed plan than this (including things like "how should we talk to Jiraiya," and "are there things we should avoid?" and "Do we want to ask Jiraiya about Kabuto or other suspicious things?" and "should we mention anything about handlers and/or libraries?" and "Should we mention the paper we stole?"). This and much more could be expanded upon. I don't have the time to make such a plan, but I encourage those who do to do so. Point being: just ask for a short update instead of a lore update if we don't have the time to hash out the full rest of the day's activities.
 
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