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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Hmm, I'm generally in favor of @Icehawk78 's plan, especially the contents of the note, but I wouldn't call him a village guardian or anything. They've had some interactions, but there is plenty of things that he didn't do for the village, like all the stuff we've been doing since we got here. The village gives him some supplies and hides his existence as a likely missing nin and he takes care of dangerous monsters. We should indicate our willingness to enter into a mutally beneficial arrangement, and doing it with a clone allows us to make that offer without threatening him or putting ourselves in greater danger.
 
Edit 2/2/16 4:45 PM PST

Alright, so as far as I can tell, there's four basic ways I can see this quest going right now. First, we stick around the village, this is where we really need a way to contact the Black Hunter. It's unlikely that the Black Hunter will follow us if we leave, so is only a problem if we stick around (or communicate terribly). Second, we can go to another random village and attempt to repeat what we did here. Third, we can move to the bandit village and see what's up there. Fourth, we can join the caravan and see what happens there. I honestly don't think we're going to get a great plan of contacting the Black Hunter. It's got fairly significant risks associated with it for quite probably minimal gains. I'm not for it. Likewise, I don't really like the idea of going after the caravan, since we're terrible at deception and there's a lot we'd need to deceive them about. For that reason, I'm an advocate for going to another village: either a random village like this one, or the bandit village. Going to another random village we could just do what we did here. Going to the bandit village requires a bit more planning, but also seems like an actually ninja thing to do. Here's what I see the two good options being.

[] Go to another small village on the map we got. Recreate what we did here.

[X] Bandit Infiltration
The bandit village needs ninja, we should be able to get a lot from interacting with them (at the least a bunch of XP). This also likely leads to more interaction with the world at large. That said, we shouldn't jump into it without knowing anything. Let's do the ninja thing and gather information.
  • Finish up at current village
    • Decline to join caravan
    • Leave the village amicably
    • Don't leave a message for Black Hunter
    • Trade for some pots with the village before we leave
  • Gather intel on the bandit village (ask team for revisions and corrections to this part)
    • Go to the village nearest the bandit village (on our map) and ask about the bandit village while disguised as travelling hunters (basically exchange rumors)
      • If discovered as a ninja for some reason, revert to "be nice ninja" plan at this village.
    • Watch bandit village from afar (find out number and type of people, activity, habits of guards etc.)
      • If discovered while observing, evade and escape
    • If there are excursions out from the bandit village which result in one or two people alone for a period of time (e.g. hunters, gatherers, farmers, messengers) approach and ask about the village (disguised as hunters)
      • Ask about when the bandit leader came and how life changed
      • Ask about availability of work (as hunters)
      • Ask about weapon quality (e.g. Iron)
      • Ask about various rumors (ninja, gold, number of people etc.)
      • If Inoue is willing and able and if the cost is not too large, use memory erasing genjutsu to ask.
      • Compare with information gathered from observation and rumors from neighboring town
      • If we fail deception roll and they discover we are ninja, maintain interview, just now as potential ninja. Do not commit to anything without another vote.
    • If there are not excursions from the village, and if it seems safe (e.g. no evidence of hostility) go back to the nearest unaffiliated village and offer to defend a caravan to the bandit village (disguised as competent civilian warriors, potentially ninja school dropouts)
      • While leading unaffiliated villagers on a trade mission, observe how the bandit village interacts with them and observe how decked out the village is (numbers, presence of ninja, supplies)
        • If unaffiliated vilagers discover our ninja-ness, act as ninja guards instead of civilian guards
      • Ask people in town about village, as if considering moving there (once we finish our contract) and ask above questions
        • If discovered as ninja while escorting as civilians, roll with it and ask about employment, but emphasize a need to finish our contact with the civilians we're escorting (so we have an exit strategy)
      • Escort unaffiliated villagers back to their town and finish escort mission before leaving unaffiliated village
      • If the bandit village discovers us as ninja (or if we are acting as ninja guards for the other civilian village), and the bandit village is not obviously evil, offer services for a price (once we finish our contract with the other village)
  • Make decision on how best to interact with bandit village based on the intel gathered
 
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faflec said:
--Are any of the villagers here willing to trade food (meat) for paper? Actually, can we have a general idea of what these people have, besides pottery-items, fish, and shit-quality iron?
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Normal things that you'd expect from a feudal-era village, but in particular the following:

  • Food, much of it from the lake, much of it vegetarian
  • Plentiful fruit
  • Decent quality iron goods, although not a lot of them since available iron is sharply limited (e.g. they don't use nails for building)
  • Middling-high quality clay goods with attractive colorful glazes. Not super high grade but valuable enough to be worth trading.
Yay784 said:
How do you vote? I'm new.
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@faflec gave a good answer to this one, but I wanted to add one point: if you're proposing a plan it's a good idea to give it a short and descriptive name, followed by explanatory text. Jamming all the text onto the same line makes it more error-prone for people to vote for it.

By way of example, this is good:

[X] Do all the things!
We need to do all the things! Because things are awesome! So let's do the first thing, then do the next thing, then proceed by induction until we've done all the things!


This is less good:

[X] Do all the things! We need to do all the things! Because things are awesome! So let's do the first thing, then do the next thing, then proceed by induction until we've done all the things!
 
Icehawk78 said:
So you don't like the ideas of reaching out to BH or going Caravanning? Mind if I ask why?
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Ultimately, reaching out to BH seems like high risk for small reward, and caravanning seems like setting ourselves up for failure at the moment.

Pretty much any plan to reach out to the Black Hunter requires a certain amount of trust for it to work, which we aren't going to be able to get in the near future. We don't trust the Black Hunter (or at least we shouldn't) not to try to ambush us, and the Black Hunter doesn't trust us. It also seems to require us to stay at the village for an unnecessarily long time. I'm opposed to contacting the black hunter until we know more about their motivations. Right now, we have reasonable reason to believe BH may be a hunter-nin, a missing-nin, or an Iron ninja. Each of these ninjas would have substantially different motivations. Until we can actually figure out a way to differentiate between the different possibilities, initiating contact has a reasonable chance of leading to them going after us or attempting to kill us when we meet them. If there were a plan which addressed these concerns, I'd consider it, but I don't really see one.
Specific critiques of the current contact plan:
  • There isn't a chakra monster threatening the village, they would have mentioned it (unless you want to count the waterbugs)
  • What exactly do we do to leave a message in entrails? Aside from just saying magic. Given that we don't know what background BH has, we don't know what they may or may not know. We also don't know anything about if they would investigate it for poison. I find it unlikely that they would
  • If we actually follow the instructions of this, it forces us to send a clone to a location at a time. I'm mildly unclear on the extent to which clones work, so suspect there may be problems with how far away we can be when this happens, and how we could communicate with it.
Ultimately, I don't think this plan is terribly likely to actually achieve anything, and if it does achieve something, it's only a positive if the Black Hunter's primary goal is to protect the village, which I honestly think is unlikely (it's a small village). It does however require us to remain in the village for a while, leaving more opportunity for BH to observe us and denying the possibility of doing other things.

Going on the caravan I'd prefer not to do because we don't have a reliable way to deceive people yet. If we had that, I'd probably be on board with it. Admittedly, losing our cover is not terribly likely to cause us problems while with the caravan, but seems like an unnecessary risk.
 
Since I'm not advocating for it, I'll pass over the caravan parts, I was just curious what the objections to that are, so I'm fine with it.

Regarding BH:

Possibilities
  • Hunter-nin
  • Missing-nin
  • Iron-nin
  • Something else that we haven't thought of
Probabilities, predicated on observed behavior (villagers have infrequent but non-scary contact with him, open missing-nin were warned of his presence and told what he would require to escape him, he has killed a Chakra-beast and left its corpse for the village to use, tried to scare off our team rather than directly attack us until Inoue chased him)
  • Hunter-nin: 5%
    • He could be fostering relationships with the villagers in a symbiotic manner in order to have them feed missing-nin to him in exchange for protection
    • Doesn't explain why he didn't try to capture or attack us, despite operating relatively openly for a while
    • Requires a higher level of deception on the part of the village that we likely would have detected
  • Missing-nin: 65%
    • Could have gone missing-nin due to disagreement over ninja-superiority, or due to him or his team somehow being betrayed by his country. 80% likely based on observed behavior.
    • Other forms of desertion (most notably, greed or grandiosity) don't really match his actions, so only 20% likely.
    • Most common type of ninja in Iron, given the background of the country that we have.
  • Iron-nin: 15%
    • Could be the source of the "samurai" stories we heard earlier.
    • If any are left, protecting or haunting random towns in Iron country is where you'd expect to find them.
    • Would match observed behavior.
  • Something else: 15%
    • We don't actually know that these are the only possibilities
Of these possibilities, our trust in BH is misplaced if he's a Hunter-nin, one of the "bad" forms of Missing-nin, or possibly the "something else" (deathworld is scary, so I'll count that as 90% likely that it's not trustworthy). Given this, I'd give us around 69% chance of being able to "trust" BH without that trust being misplaced.

I'll admit that this isn't really ideal, but I'll also say that I was extremely pessimistic with the numbers I gave. Additionally, migrating to a new village to repeat the process of "help out the locals and gain some experience and training time" both sounds just as likely to have similar results, as well as being narratively less interesting (which I'll admit is certainly biasing me in favor of reaching out to BH)
 
@Radvic Might I suggest adding to Finish up at current village: "trade pots for clay in this village"? eaglejarl said that the town has pretty good-quality pots that could be useful for trading...so maybe offering to get clay for the potter in exchange for trading pots, and storing them in the storage seal, would be a great way to start relations off on a high note. Obviously we can't sell all of them at once without risking showing our ninja status but we could select some of the higher-quality goods and bring them with hand, or make a miniature caravan.
 
I'm leaning towards contacting the BH in a manner similar to that note, and just heading out for another village if it doesn't pan out. I'm getting a bit bored after several updates doing relatively little compared to Hidden Swamp.
 
[X] Do all the things!
We need to do all the things! Because things are awesome! So let's do the first thing, then do the next thing, then proceed by induction until we've done all the things!


It's kinda a general plan, but why not...
 
[X] Bandit Infiltration
@Radvic, Things I'd like to add: what do we do when we fail a deception roll at any of these stages? We should have an advance directive for if we will default to joining up of bugging out. Like, bug out if they do raids, keep civilian slaves and are generally assholes. Join up if they want to rule kindly and raise Iron out of the third world or go to space.
 
Icehawk78 said:
Since I'm not advocating for it, I'll pass over the caravan parts, I was just curious what the objections to that are, so I'm fine with it.

Regarding BH:

Possibilities
  • Hunter-nin
  • Missing-nin
  • Iron-nin
  • Something else that we haven't thought of
Probabilities, predicated on observed behavior (villagers have infrequent but non-scary contact with him, open missing-nin were warned of his presence and told what he would require to escape him, he has killed a Chakra-beast and left its corpse for the village to use, tried to scare off our team rather than directly attack us until Inoue chased him)
  • Hunter-nin: 5%
    • He could be fostering relationships with the villagers in a symbiotic manner in order to have them feed missing-nin to him in exchange for protection
    • Doesn't explain why he didn't try to capture or attack us, despite operating relatively openly for a while
    • Requires a higher level of deception on the part of the village that we likely would have detected
  • Missing-nin: 65%
    • Could have gone missing-nin due to disagreement over ninja-superiority, or due to him or his team somehow being betrayed by his country. 80% likely based on observed behavior.
    • Other forms of desertion (most notably, greed or grandiosity) don't really match his actions, so only 20% likely.
    • Most common type of ninja in Iron, given the background of the country that we have.
  • Iron-nin: 15%
    • Could be the source of the "samurai" stories we heard earlier.
    • If any are left, protecting or haunting random towns in Iron country is where you'd expect to find them.
    • Would match observed behavior.
  • Something else: 15%
    • We don't actually know that these are the only possibilities
Of these possibilities, our trust in BH is misplaced if he's a Hunter-nin, one of the "bad" forms of Missing-nin, or possibly the "something else" (deathworld is scary, so I'll count that as 90% likely that it's not trustworthy). Given this, I'd give us around 69% chance of being able to "trust" BH without that trust being misplaced.

I'll admit that this isn't really ideal, but I'll also say that I was extremely pessimistic with the numbers I gave. Additionally, migrating to a new village to repeat the process of "help out the locals and gain some experience and training time" both sounds just as likely to have similar results, as well as being narratively less interesting (which I'll admit is certainly biasing me in favor of reaching out to BH)
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That's about what my expectations are, which is why I'm not for contacting BH.

faflec said:
@Radvic Might I suggest adding to Finish up at current village: "trade pots for clay in this village"? eaglejarl said that the town has pretty good-quality pots that could be useful for trading...so maybe offering to get clay for the potter in exchange for trading pots, and storing them in the storage seal, would be a great way to start relations off on a high note. Obviously we can't sell all of them at once without risking showing our ninja status but we could select some of the higher-quality goods and bring them with hand, or make a miniature caravan.
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Sure, added.

scooterboo said:
[X] Bandit Infiltration
@Radvic, Things I'd like to add: what do we do when we fail a deception roll at any of these stages? We should have an advance directive for if we will default to joining up of bugging out. Like, bug out if they do raids, keep civilian slaves and are generally assholes. Join up if they want to rule kindly and raise Iron out of the third world or go to space.
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I've added some contingencies about failing deception rolls. Updated plan is here:

Radvic said:
[X] Bandit Infiltration
The bandit village needs ninja, we should be able to get a lot from interacting with them (at the least a bunch of XP). This also likely leads to more interaction with the world at large. That said, we shouldn't jump into it without knowing anything. Let's do the ninja thing and gather information.
  • Finish up at current village
    • Decline to join caravan
    • Leave the village amicably
    • Don't leave a message for Black Hunter
    • Trade for some pots with the village before we leave
  • Gather intel on the bandit village (ask team for revisions and corrections to this part)
    • Go to the village nearest the bandit village (on our map) and ask about the bandit village while disguised as travelling hunters (basically exchange rumors)
      • If discovered as a ninja for some reason, revert to "be nice ninja" plan at this village.
    • Watch bandit village from afar (find out number and type of people, activity, habits of guards etc.)
      • If discovered while observing, evade and escape
    • If there are excursions out from the bandit village which result in one or two people alone for a period of time (e.g. hunters, gatherers, farmers, messengers) approach and ask about the village (disguised as hunters)
      • Ask about when the bandit leader came and how life changed
      • Ask about availability of work (as hunters)
      • Ask about weapon quality (e.g. Iron)
      • Ask about various rumors (ninja, gold, number of people etc.)
      • If Inoue is willing and able and if the cost is not too large, use memory erasing genjutsu to ask.
      • Compare with information gathered from observation and rumors from neighboring town
      • If we fail deception roll and they discover we are ninja, maintain interview, just now as potential ninja. Do not commit to anything without another vote.
    • If there are not excursions from the village, and if it seems safe (e.g. no evidence of hostility) go back to the nearest unaffiliated village and offer to defend a caravan to the bandit village (disguised as competent civilian warriors, potentially ninja school dropouts)
      • While leading unaffiliated villagers on a trade mission, observe how the bandit village interacts with them and observe how decked out the village is (numbers, presence of ninja, supplies)
        • If unaffiliated vilagers discover our ninja-ness, act as ninja guards instead of civilian guards
      • Ask people in town about village, as if considering moving there (once we finish our contract) and ask above questions
        • If discovered as ninja while escorting as civilians, roll with it and ask about employment, but emphasize a need to finish our contact with the civilians we're escorting (so we have an exit strategy)
      • Escort unaffiliated villagers back to their town and finish escort mission before leaving unaffiliated village
      • If the bandit village discovers us as ninja (or if we are acting as ninja guards for the other civilian village), and the bandit village is not obviously evil, offer services for a price (once we finish our contract with the other village)
  • Make decision on how best to interact with bandit village based on the intel gathered
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@Radvic: Can we exercise more caution when going to bandit village? I'm a bit worried we might get in the way of a squad of ninjas looking to cash in on civilian bounties/raze a settlement led by criminals. Maybe we could stop a bit farther away, there's no special reason for us to stop at the exact closest village to bandit village.
 
Alright, I am giving one and only one chance for this Black Hunter to become an ally, if only because he's fairly high-level and a probable sealmaster, but otherwise I seriously want to get the hell out of this village. Just too many updates spent here doing manual labor.

I am also extremely tired right now, but we don't really have any plan in the lead right now, or one that I'm fully satisfied with. I hope, if most plans are in the vein of "contact black hunter". that Velorien will at least do that using elements of the discussed plans.

Alright, the main differences between this and @Icehawk78 's plan is that we don't do any dangerous or elaborate things to get the message to him, or call him a guardian of the villagers or whatever. We also let him completely avoid coming anywhere near us or our clone if he doesn't want to, and allow him to set the terms of the meeting. We really don't have much time left, so take a look at what I came up with.

[X] Plan Contact Hunter (Revised)
- Turn down the caravan offer.
- Go back to sight of explosion and pin a note to a tree, in a way it'll stay there for a while.
- Follow the instructions of the note, without deception.

- Note contents:

"We mean no harm, to you or anyone in the village, and we would like to discuss the possibility of a mutually beneficial arrangement between us and you.

To acknowledge this, we will send a clone to this location at noon of #{two days from the day we write this, whatever that is}. If you do not wish to come into contact with us, remove or destroy this note and do not approach the clone, and we will leave you be and stay out of this forest. If you are willing to talk, leave instructions on the other side of this note of where, when, and how you would like to meet within the next couple of days and we will do so.

We will not bother or approach you again if you do not wish it, but allies can be a scarce and valuable commodity for people such as us."

- Inoue obviously gets full editorial control on this plan and can veto it, especially if she knows a surer way to get a note to him through the villagers than hope he goes back to that site. If the BH is a hunter-nin, he could easily lead us into a trap that might TPK us.

- If Inoue vetoes, the note is left untouched, or the note is removed/destroyed, we move on to the next village, with someone else playing the sensei.
 
I don't think Black Hunter is a seal master. All we've seen from him to suggest that he is is the use of explosive seals (that, let's face it, everyone uses). I think the main reason we think he is one is that we want him to be one. Ask yourself: what do we know about him being a seal master, and how do we know it?

Also, he just wants to be left alone. He pulled 881 stealth (~17 dice!) on us and then, to get away, pulled out a dozen (expensive!) explosive seals and exploded them in our sensei's face. No one in the village has properly seen him, or what he looks like, and he doesn't let anyone at all near his base.

I say we shouldn't poke the ninja who obviously just wants to hermit in one location the rest of his life.

[meta][ooc](the dark arts) Eaglejarl was confused with the other GM's on whether Black Hunter was a ninja or not. This probably means that Black Hunter is very insignificant, and we're putting way more importance on it than it deserves. On the other had, Eaglejarl has repeatedly stated that he loved the hidden swamp arc, and that he wished he could do it again in another country. Eaglejarl also is the GM I trust the most to not TPK us for giggles (i'm looking at you, @Velorien). It's probably our best bet to go there and check it out. It smells to be where the plot is.
 
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scooterboo said:
I don't think Black Hunter is a seal master. All we've seen from him to suggest that he is is the use of explosive seals (that, let's face it, everyone uses). I think the main reason we think he is one is that we want him to be one. Ask yourself: what do we know about him being a seal master, and how do we know it?

Also, he just wants to be left alone. He pulled 881 stealth (~17 dice!) on us and then, to get away, pulled out a dozen (expensive!) explosive seals and exploded them in our sensei's face. No one in the village has properly seen him, or what he looks like, and he doesn't let anyone at all near his base.

I say we shouldn't poke the ninja who obviously just wants to hermit in one location the rest of his life.

[meta][ooc](the dark arts) Eaglejarl was confused with the other GM's on whether Black Hunter was a ninja or not. This probably means that Black Hunter is very insignificant, and we're putting way more importance on it than it deserves. On the other had, Eaglejarl has repeatedly stated that he loved the hidden swamp arc, and that he wished he could do it again in another country. Eaglejarl also is the GM I trust the most to not TPK us for giggles (i'm looking at you, @Velorien). It's probably our best bet to go there and check it out. It smells to be where the plot is.
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The reason I think he has at least some skill in seals is that he's probably a missing nin, but used a ton of explosive notes running away from us. It has to be hellish to replenish explosive notes as a missing nin, so I find the chances to be very good. Inoue herself says approaching him might be possible, and the authors have dedicated a lot of word count to him, so he might end up being useful.

Also, the entire point of the note is to be one last semi-safe effort to contact him. If he says no or we can't find him, we leave, simple as that.
 
scooterboo said:
[meta][ooc](the dark arts) Eaglejarl was confused with the other GM's on whether Black Hunter was a ninja or not. This probably means that Black Hunter is very insignificant,
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Point of information: there was confusion about a name reference, not about whether the ninja was significant.

scooterboo said:
Eaglejarl also is the GM I trust the most to not TPK us for giggles (i'm looking at you,
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Damn, I seriously need to step up my game.
 
[X] Plan Contact Hunter (Revised)

I wish I could keep up with this quest more, and by that I mean post more. Work keeps getting in the way. Stupid bills.
 
[X] Bandit Infiltration

I'll vote for this plan. Mostly because contacting the hunter smells like a meta-game, genre-savvy move. I'd generally like us to pick reasonable choices from Hazou's perspective and not the options that seem most like a plot hook.

Although I don't really understand why we are buying clay pots and what we are hoping to do with them.
 
[X] Bandit Infiltration

We don't have any useful ability to deal with a hostile and avoidant Jonin+ level ninja without the high risk of someone becoming collateral damage.
 
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