I think it is entirely possible, even likely, that at least one of the trader guards has some ninja training. After all, the IC document tells us that 70-90% of non border-crossing caravans hire ninja, and this caravan is of the border crossing variant, which would probably need them even more.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
I think it is entirely possible, even likely, that at least one of the trader guards has some ninja training. After all, the IC document tells us that 70-90% of non border-crossing caravans hire ninja, and this caravan is of the border crossing variant, which would probably need them even more.
- Location
- Europe
You mean she has more Awareness than we have Deception. Even that is only 1 more than the old lady in the village had.
The suspicious thing about the caravan is that it is here. Earlier the villagers said this:
That means we either got supremely lucky that they are here now or that someone is playing us.
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- Location
- Canada
yes, this sounds like a great idea and then-
...well, now I see what eaglejarl means about us being unnecessarily bloodthirsty. why are we planning on using tactics equivalent/worse than the bloody mist, if we're supposed to be against their methods?
- Location
- Yes.
There's only 3 of them, from what the story actually writes. Baikan, Miyu, Aya. They don't seem especially rich since otherwise they'd have more than 3 wagons. They're either ninjas disguised as merchants, in which case they're more than likely missing-nin hiding from hunter-nin instead of hunter-nin pretending to be merchants to find missing-nin, or just a bunch of merchants we can eat alive.
@Xyzarach We're not going to Rice and not taking the risk of them remembering us when we inevitably have to part ways. Just because an option is bloodthirsty doesn't mean it's a bad option. Get rid of your morals.
@Xyzarach We're not going to Rice and not taking the risk of them remembering us when we inevitably have to part ways. Just because an option is bloodthirsty doesn't mean it's a bad option. Get rid of your morals.
And note that he asked the youngest to do this.
Not the oldest, who's usually the head guard, as the person with most experience.
And again, the whole picking up guards with no references thing.
Odds are, frankly, that the Caravan is a cover for someone's NOCs who use the trade trail to visit intelligence drops and get a read on general conditions.
Almost certainly not for us; I doubt we're that important in the scheme of things.
What is curious is what the local political situation is like.
Do you remember me using the term Stupid Evil to describe that plan?
You have no idea what the capabilities of this group are. You don't know who backs them. You have no idea of the local political situation. You know nothing about the wildlife.
You don't know who is waiting for them at their other stops along the road. You have no med-nin in the event of injury.
And you want to pick a fight with someone secure enough in their strength to welcome a group of four teenage fighters into their caravan.
And you think that even if you pull it off, the disappearance of a convoy at the same time that your group leaves the village won't be noted by whoever comes looking.
Or do you intend to slaughter the village too, to make sure noone remembers you?
I won't even go into the problems with unit cohesion which happen when your teammates decide you are unnecessarily bloodyhanded, and start wondering if you'll apply the same to them.
I repeat: Stupid Evil.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, let's not jump towards the evilest possible path with gleeful abandon. It's super off-putting, and it's clear that the vast majority of us don't want to give such a big priority towards clearly evil options. If we need to make hard decisions to protect our team and ourselves, fine, but that is different from what is being proposed here. It is not nearly as incognito as we need to be, and this isn't putting our lives at risk. Attacking them will.
I'm inclined to decline their offer, at least. We are not well-specced enough in Infiltration to maintain a cover when our Deception is currently relying entirely on the RNGoddess to trick untrained civilians.
I feel extremely hesitant to approach, as I will refer to him for the foreseeable future, Sparky Sparky Boom Man. Several exploding tags to the face is a rather unambigous message that he really isn't interested in tea parties. He's clearly very dangerous, even to Inoue, and tempting that seems stupid. I'm inclined to leave the village soon, maybe get some last minute jobs in, and move on to a different Iron village. That was the original plan, after all. Only when we are better specced in Awareness/Deception should we start thinking about establishing long-term Caravan Escort identities.
I'm inclined to decline their offer, at least. We are not well-specced enough in Infiltration to maintain a cover when our Deception is currently relying entirely on the RNGoddess to trick untrained civilians.
I feel extremely hesitant to approach, as I will refer to him for the foreseeable future, Sparky Sparky Boom Man. Several exploding tags to the face is a rather unambigous message that he really isn't interested in tea parties. He's clearly very dangerous, even to Inoue, and tempting that seems stupid. I'm inclined to leave the village soon, maybe get some last minute jobs in, and move on to a different Iron village. That was the original plan, after all. Only when we are better specced in Awareness/Deception should we start thinking about establishing long-term Caravan Escort identities.
- Location
- Yes.
I'm sorry, what part of "wait until we're about to get into Rice" didn't you understand? I don't want to kill them as soon as we leave the village, I want to trade with other places in Iron for some period of time, and then kill them. By that point we'll have a great view of their capabilities, backing, etc. and at the very worst (i.e., we realize we're up against ninjas) we can just back off and look for opportunities in the last place we visited, and hope nobody talks.
You want to travel with them across multiple stops, establish a trail of people who will remember your team across multiple stops, have your team come to see them as people and possibly like them, eat from the same pot, and THEN try to kill them.
How long do you expect a genin's henge to last continuously without dropping?
No offense, but this is an even more Stupid Evil plan than the last one.
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I wouldn't make that decision yet. Frankly, i think it is likely that the village knows quite a bit more about the Explosion man than they are telling us, and i think that Inoue is well capable of finding things out. Plus, there is the caravan to consider. Even if Explosion man is hiding from something, it is almost certain that he still needs certain goods, especially when you consider the amount of explosive seals he used. He certainly needs sealing paper and ink for that, at least.
As we know that this caravan is the only one that regularily comes to this village, it is a possible point of contact with him. Sure, as a ninja he could range farther out and get his stuff elsewhere, but it just seems like a powerful and isolative ninja might arrange to have his stuff brought to him instead of risking going to cities that might be other shinobis turf.
We should definitely keep a close watch on the caravan in case they try to make contact or arrange a dead drop. Plus, we should have Inoue try to charm more info on explosive man out of the villagers, we could maybe even ask her to use use the memory erasion genjutsu to question someone she thinks might know more than they are willing to tell straight up. If it doesn't have requirements that cripple her combat ability for a while, of course.
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ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
Waiting or not waiting does not really matter for discussing if we want to lol-kill them and hope we get lucky when we loot the bodies.
What actual major goals do we accomplish?
What actual major goals do we accomplish?
This is a given.
If he wanted to live somewhere without people, there's plenty of forest.
The only reason I can think he'd be here is because there are people here.
Alternatively, there's something in the forest he wants to be close to.
This too.
Sealing ain't cheap, and you can't make paper on your own.
Or ink, come to think of it.
You had multiple villagers not wanting to get close to the deadly ninja, and the team could come and go at will.
That is a very different situation from living in the same caravan as multiple other people, eating the same food, sharing the same water, and watching each other's backs against shit like gypsy moths.
If you don't think your henge will fall at the worst possible moment, you are a lot more optimistic than I am.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I completely agree with @uju32, our henge/deception just isn't good enough to maintain a longer term identity on the move, and our combat skills aren't good enough to deal with Border ninjas who probably have more than 2 Awareness. Or safely kill this caravan without facing any negative reprocussions whatsoever. We should stay in Iron until we've shaped up.
Before as decide on anything though: @AugSphere, @eaglejarl, @Velorien, did our training yield results? The character sheets haven't been updated yet, but you said that we may have enough time after the last update to train and spend XP, right?
I think Hazou with his potential stealth 6 awareness 8 might be the best choice of the team to stealthily keep an eye out for the merchants while Inoue shakes the villagers down for as much information as she can without resorting to torture. Depending on Moris new statline (minimum 6 stealth) she might be suited to backing him up here. If Nobby has gotten some deception points we might want him talking to the merchants openly, but i am not sure if his personality allows him to ever invest into social stealth...
I think Hazou with his potential stealth 6 awareness 8 might be the best choice of the team to stealthily keep an eye out for the merchants while Inoue shakes the villagers down for as much information as she can without resorting to torture. Depending on Moris new statline (minimum 6 stealth) she might be suited to backing him up here. If Nobby has gotten some deception points we might want him talking to the merchants openly, but i am not sure if his personality allows him to ever invest into social stealth...
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- Location
- Europe
I don't think we should join the caravan thing, we still suck too much at the deception game to believably hold our facade for a whole caravan trip. I think our best options are either to head for the next village (maybe that place with famous booze?) or investigate the Black Hunter.
The Black Hunter is the high risk but high reward proposition. Risk being him blowing us to bits and the reward being possibly wrangling him to teach us sealcraft. I could get behind it if we manage to come up with a really nice plan.
I guess the first step would be to get some information out of the villagers. How do we do that? If we don't find out anything from them our chances of finding the guy and surviving the experience drop to pretty low.
Paranoid theory:
Of course it could be that these caravan fellows and the Black Hunter are one and the same. Baikan caravan might just be a cover they worked out with the village. If ninjas come to snoop around, the villagers drop a hint of the caravan in their conversation. If the Black Hunter then wants to come and personally inspect the ninjas he can use the caravan as a disguise.
The Black Hunter is the high risk but high reward proposition. Risk being him blowing us to bits and the reward being possibly wrangling him to teach us sealcraft. I could get behind it if we manage to come up with a really nice plan.
I guess the first step would be to get some information out of the villagers. How do we do that? If we don't find out anything from them our chances of finding the guy and surviving the experience drop to pretty low.
Paranoid theory:
Of course it could be that these caravan fellows and the Black Hunter are one and the same. Baikan caravan might just be a cover they worked out with the village. If ninjas come to snoop around, the villagers drop a hint of the caravan in their conversation. If the Black Hunter then wants to come and personally inspect the ninjas he can use the caravan as a disguise.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Can you link me what the training decision was? I didn't think there was a consensus.
This was already pointed out, but I wanted to second it: the guard had more Awareness than Hazou had Deception. Hazou's Awareness is much higher.
+1 XP for GM laughter
Given the right skills you can. After all, someone makes the stuff, and there's no reason a ninja couldn't learn how.
general discussion said:
Let me throw some info out there: I don't mind being teased about this stuff (looking at you, @MadScientist), but I don't want to write a quest for evil characters. If you want to play Robin Hood, or be assassins for hire, or be thieves, great. If the group starts regularly choosing options that involve gratuitous murder, I quit.
- Location
- Yes.
@eaglejarl
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest | Page 152
Also a question, do we have to make seals on paper? There've been canon examples of seals being put on non-paper things, like humans. Is this advanced sealing, and/or do we know this?
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest | Page 152
Also a question, do we have to make seals on paper? There've been canon examples of seals being put on non-paper things, like humans. Is this advanced sealing, and/or do we know this?
Takes multiple people to do it right, unfortunately, and a fair amount of obvious machinery, as well as a flowing water source.
Even papyrus, which is much worse than paper, is a pretty involved process.
Best you could probably do on your own is parchment.
Of course, with [Water] Clones, the labor issues are simpler.
Assuming our reclusive sealmaster knows how to use them, of course.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Goddamn, I am on a roll.
- Location
- Phoenix, AZ
Edit: 1/29/16 5 AM PST added and removed parts of plan
Edit: 1/29/16 3:30 PM PST added identification protocal to plan
Edit: 1/29/16 6:30 PM PST added asking village about caravan
Analysis of update: So, science is hard and requires safety precautions in MfD universe. Seems accurate.
On being evil: can we not be evil? I will crusade against doing evil actions, especially if they're stupid. So far, I've only seen evil plans which seem evil for the express purpose of being evil. Also, when making joke votes, we should use [jk] instead of an actual vote. There's no reason to risk someone misunderstanding us.
On actual plans: We need more XP. Remember when we agreed we want substantially higher deception before we go to places relying on deception? Going with the caravan puts us in places where we need deception. In particular, I'm curious how exactly we hope to explain to our fellow guards our combat abilities without everyone having high deception in our group. Also, we'll need to reroll deception each town we enter, this is all avoiding the fact that we will likely be discovered by Aya (she has more awareness than we have deception). For this reason, I don't think we should join the caravan as guards, at least, not in the traditional sense (if we wanted to follow them, we could probably manage that).
This means there's a few options I see us having, any plan could use a fair number of them (mostly, I just want us to be able to discuss valid options):
Given that, the question becomes what we should do. I think contacting the Black Hunter is not net worth it, given the likelihood of us just trying to kill each other. That said, we could leave a note at the explosion site or something, assume they'll eventually see it, and leave and later (when we're stronger) return. Hopefully that won't cause them to track us once we leave.
To me, there are a three main questions to answer in this vote. First, is there good information/materials we can get from the caravan? Second, is there more XP we can get from the village? Third, what is our next play?
I think the best information we can get from this caravan is a map of the surrounding area, and a synopsis of the local villages. This would help immensely in finding other villages to help/get free XP. Other than that, if there's some easy stuff we can get from them, it might be worth it. However, we probably want to minimize our interaction with them just to minimize our chance of revealing ourselves. We should have a good cover for why we want the maps.
On XP from the village: I don't think there's too much danger to staying in the village. If the Black Hunter didn't act on us thus far, they're unlikely to act on us if we stay an additional month. Nobody else is looking for us, and we haven't tipped off the caravan to our ninja-ness yet (though they'll find out once they trade with the town). That said, I honestly don't want to spend a ton of time here. If it all could get covered in one update, I'm fine. But I'd rather not spend more than another one or two updates in the village unless we're trying to change this quest into a "lead the village" quest (which I'm not particularly inclined to do). We could just provide the village with a bunch of logs (to build walls on their own time) and meat and then leave. If someone can figure out a good long-range communication system available to us, we could try to get that set up (make like, a bat-signal for them in exchange for answering future questions we have, building an information network).
For out next play, I think we should try to repeat what we've done here. Especially if we have a map from the caravan, it shouldn't be risky to find another village (aside from death-monsters), and I find it unlikely the Black Hunter will try to stop us doing this.
With all that in mind, here's my protoplan for future improvement.
[X] Finish up and move out
We've done all the easy stuff at this village. Lets take our quest rewards, lay some contingencies for the future and head out. Here's the bare bones.
Edit: 1/29/16 3:30 PM PST added identification protocal to plan
Edit: 1/29/16 6:30 PM PST added asking village about caravan
Analysis of update: So, science is hard and requires safety precautions in MfD universe. Seems accurate.
On being evil: can we not be evil? I will crusade against doing evil actions, especially if they're stupid. So far, I've only seen evil plans which seem evil for the express purpose of being evil. Also, when making joke votes, we should use [jk] instead of an actual vote. There's no reason to risk someone misunderstanding us.
On actual plans: We need more XP. Remember when we agreed we want substantially higher deception before we go to places relying on deception? Going with the caravan puts us in places where we need deception. In particular, I'm curious how exactly we hope to explain to our fellow guards our combat abilities without everyone having high deception in our group. Also, we'll need to reroll deception each town we enter, this is all avoiding the fact that we will likely be discovered by Aya (she has more awareness than we have deception). For this reason, I don't think we should join the caravan as guards, at least, not in the traditional sense (if we wanted to follow them, we could probably manage that).
This means there's a few options I see us having, any plan could use a fair number of them (mostly, I just want us to be able to discuss valid options):
- We stay with the village and do stuff. Unfortunately, we've done all the easy things at this village, so it'll be harder to do stuff. Here are potential things we could do
- Invest in the traders for the town
Replace Kanda: This would likely mean selling monster bits, it seems like that might be what Kanda was doing (after all, he was apparently alone in a body of water with monsters and was killed by monsters and was known by name by a random group of merchants) - Train town members in ninja arts
Offer to train the town members in the basics of ninja training (whatever they can do). This may mean just improving their awareness, but that's likely to help them as well.
This would let us find out more about what ninja arts can be taught to civilians and which require large chakra coils. For example, can civilians get awareness as high as ninja? - Make a private caravan run with just the townspeople
This has the advantage of not needing to hide our ninja status, and not introducing new variables. - Figure out a way to build more meaningful defenses or irrigation for the village
We had some decent ideas on irrigation which may or may not be helpful. It might be worth trying them.
The primary problem with making a good wall was just time. If we think it's safe to stay in the village, we can actually spend the weeks/months to build a wall the hard way (cut down trees, bury in ground, lash together). - Solve the Black Hunter Problem
Talk to the townspeople about the Black Hunter more, figure out what he wants, see if they can have a better coexistence
- Invest in the traders for the town
- Do something with the Black Hunter
- Get in contact with the Black Hunter
Might see again just by staying around
Maybe leave a note at the explosion site? - Have a beneficial exchange with the Black Hunter - hopefully our interests align
- Fight the black Hunter - hopefully we're stronger
- Get in contact with the Black Hunter
- Strike out again
- We got something like 30-ish XP from going to one village. This village is not unique. Let's find another.
- Go to another small village
- Go to a larger village
- Go to the large town
- Follow the caravan to the next village, talk with village a couple days after the caravan leaves.
- Trade for a map from the caravan
- We got something like 30-ish XP from going to one village. This village is not unique. Let's find another.
Given that, the question becomes what we should do. I think contacting the Black Hunter is not net worth it, given the likelihood of us just trying to kill each other. That said, we could leave a note at the explosion site or something, assume they'll eventually see it, and leave and later (when we're stronger) return. Hopefully that won't cause them to track us once we leave.
To me, there are a three main questions to answer in this vote. First, is there good information/materials we can get from the caravan? Second, is there more XP we can get from the village? Third, what is our next play?
I think the best information we can get from this caravan is a map of the surrounding area, and a synopsis of the local villages. This would help immensely in finding other villages to help/get free XP. Other than that, if there's some easy stuff we can get from them, it might be worth it. However, we probably want to minimize our interaction with them just to minimize our chance of revealing ourselves. We should have a good cover for why we want the maps.
On XP from the village: I don't think there's too much danger to staying in the village. If the Black Hunter didn't act on us thus far, they're unlikely to act on us if we stay an additional month. Nobody else is looking for us, and we haven't tipped off the caravan to our ninja-ness yet (though they'll find out once they trade with the town). That said, I honestly don't want to spend a ton of time here. If it all could get covered in one update, I'm fine. But I'd rather not spend more than another one or two updates in the village unless we're trying to change this quest into a "lead the village" quest (which I'm not particularly inclined to do). We could just provide the village with a bunch of logs (to build walls on their own time) and meat and then leave. If someone can figure out a good long-range communication system available to us, we could try to get that set up (make like, a bat-signal for them in exchange for answering future questions we have, building an information network).
For out next play, I think we should try to repeat what we've done here. Especially if we have a map from the caravan, it shouldn't be risky to find another village (aside from death-monsters), and I find it unlikely the Black Hunter will try to stop us doing this.
With all that in mind, here's my protoplan for future improvement.
[X] Finish up and move out
We've done all the easy stuff at this village. Lets take our quest rewards, lay some contingencies for the future and head out. Here's the bare bones.
- Trade for a map from the caravan
- Trade for a barrel from the caravan (for Wakahisa)
- Trade for a weapon for Mori from the caravan
- Preferably a quality bow and rapier
Leave a message for the Black Hunter (probably expressing desire for cooperation, potentially by leaving a note at the explosion, or something for the villagers to carry and abandon when they see BH)- Leave a way for the townspeople to get in contact with us, or recognize "our associates" (us henged once we're better at deception)
- Leave an identification drawing (of a waterbug) with the villagers, and tell them to not show it to anyone.
- Tell them we or friends we send to them will have an exactly identical drawing to verify it is them, which they can and should compare to at their leisure.
- Have Hazou memorize the drawing to reproduce if we return here.
- Leave the villagers with a surplus of logs and meat and suggestions for how to build a wall if they have the time (we can give them the materials)
- Ask the villagers if the caravan which just came is odd in any way (e.g. timing, guards, supplies, mannerisms etc.)
- Go to another village of comparable size to this one and help them out
- Finally tell Inoue about our seal abilities, because there's very little reason for us to hold out on her anymore
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- Location
- Mu
Seeing how Mori experiences the use of her power was interesting, @Velorien. Really enjoyed that.
That's not going to happen with the current group. Too many of us don't want that either, so the vote would never be passed. I think mostly those suggestions have been meant to provoke arguments about real world morality not applying to fictional settings. Morality is a useless constraint, don'tcha know, something something optimal decision making, something something rationalist-virtue signalling.
What happened to poor Kanda?
There's a lot of reasons to be suspicious of the caravan, as others have already discussed. If the caravan are actually ninja, they will be better at resisting probes for information than the villagers, so we (read: Inoue) should ask around the village for more information on the caravan. If there's something suspicious about the caravan, especially if it's arrived at an odd time of year, the villagers will have noticed. This can be weaved into whatever plan we choose. It's a very low cost action that could result in potentially life saving information. Even if we don't go with the caravan, we still need to be aware of a potential threat if something is off.
That's not going to happen with the current group. Too many of us don't want that either, so the vote would never be passed. I think mostly those suggestions have been meant to provoke arguments about real world morality not applying to fictional settings. Morality is a useless constraint, don'tcha know, something something optimal decision making, something something rationalist-virtue signalling.
What happened to poor Kanda?
There's a lot of reasons to be suspicious of the caravan, as others have already discussed. If the caravan are actually ninja, they will be better at resisting probes for information than the villagers, so we (read: Inoue) should ask around the village for more information on the caravan. If there's something suspicious about the caravan, especially if it's arrived at an odd time of year, the villagers will have noticed. This can be weaved into whatever plan we choose. It's a very low cost action that could result in potentially life saving information. Even if we don't go with the caravan, we still need to be aware of a potential threat if something is off.
- Location
- Europe
The plan was to do stuff in the village for a week and then assess whether to make a trade trip with the village or not. Maybe I missed something while reading the updates, but that there was an actual caravan coming through was a surprise to me. One would assume that the caravan takes care of the villages immediate need for trade, making the trade trip unnecessary.