Alright, let's stop with this shit, and continue discussing how we are going to unfuck the situation. Namely:
  • How are we going to stop the cultural genocide of the Condors?
  • How are we going to stop the enslavement of the Condors?
  • How are we going to stop the Pangolins from doing the above to other subjugated Clans?

I think we should handle this in reverse order. Halt their advances first, then figure out what, if anything, can be done for Condors.

Aggregating/condensing some earlier posts:

The condors aren't done for yet, their boss summon is still at large and heading a resistance movement, presumably with the help of their summoner. Perhaps, what we need to do is contact said summoner and attempt to broker a peace agreement - where the condors would become a Pangolin protectorate, but keep a measure of independence and cultural identity. As opposed to killing said summoner for their scroll.

Apparently the Hyena clan has always been a target. This was, however, around the time the Panglins were negotiating an armistice with them. Perhaps we can approach this as:
  • The Hyenas were in conspiracy with the Condors before the armistice (this is known, and provides an out for those who *found* the implicating information)
  • The pangolins entered armistice with the Hyenas, at which point they stopped conspiring according to the terms
  • Launching an attack without additional aggression would break faith in the armistice, which may be construed as against the will of the Sage
  • It is therefore acceptable to build up the military (there's no way to reverse that tide now) but to hold off on actually launching an attack without provocation from the Hyenas.
  • Maybe channel the build-up and religious righteous supremacy into being a universal deterrent against warring clans. Commit to entering conflict against any clans that are shown to initiate aggression.
I'm not sure what the strategic goals are for Pangolin expansion. Perhaps a conversation with Pantsā in which we ask about the broad strokes of that strategy, so we don't do work in accidental opposition. Best outcome if we can get that to happen in conjunction with Jiraiya and the Toad Boss, so we can have support in social.

Taking out Hyenas, Leopards, and Condors makes a certain kind of sense considering long standing grievances. Taking out Condors was necessary? to regain access to the Library.

There might be chakra-magical concerns over the ownership of territory on the 7th path, as each summon is shown to grow strong via nature chakra - it is plausible that sources of natural chakra (generally more territory) is a direct social and military asset, beyond strict military/economic strategic routing/positioning/fortification concerns. Might have something to do with why the sky literally changes color depending on the owner of the territory underneath. Would like to know more about this, and how it plays into 7th path politics.

4. Keiko needs to realize that her actions with regards to the Pangolins have more weight than she thinks. They have raised her up as a national hero, as a celebrity, as a role model for young Pangolins to look up to. And when the Pangolin government paraded a group of helpless prisoners in front of her and offered her the chance to execute them, she declined. Publicly. When given a moral choice where doing the wrong thing would personally benefit her and her family, she instead decided to do the right thing. Numerous Pangolins will notice that.

If she doesn't like the direction which Pangolin society is going in, then she should use the influence she has to change that. And while the Pangolins might gripe about it, there's only so much they can do, because quite frankly they need us more than we need them. Sure, they've been exceedingly useful, but at the end of the day if we cancelled her contract and put their scroll in a basement to gather dust there's not jack shit they could do about it. That means no more Pankrator's Eyes for them, which means they'll lack the weapon they need to keep their advantage against their foes, which means the collapse of their empire and possible genocide of their people by angry enemies - the Pangolins, in their arrogance, have perhaps not realized just how dependent they are on us now. And if they tried to forcibly reverse summon her and kill her for that, then Jiraiya will influence the Toads to end their long standing alliance over it, costing them their only current ally.

  • Asking Jiraiya for advice and assistance, especially in a way that emphasises the importance to the team, or allows us to circumvent Jiraiya's personal lack of interest.
  • Telling the pangolins of the team's discomfort with the status quo in a non-binding manner, especially if it involves discussion of our intended long-term outlook.
  • Bringing terms and conditions to the pangolins, as long as they aren't ultra-conservative, as this thread normally proposes. Keep in mind that the price of a product is the amount you're willing to pay not to be without it.

Fixing the Pangolins has been on my todo list for a while, but that was when I thought they were going to be at peace for years instead of months. So I say we start moving now.

We need to render them unwilling to try conquering other clans. Making them unable is insufficient, as merely trying will cause a great deal of death and destruction. So we need to understand why they are willing to do so now. This will require research into their society. We can do that by:
  • Reading history
    • Compare great library histories with their own, just to get a feel for how they lie.
  • Asking around the Pangolin lands.
    • Economic conditions
    • Social hierarchies
      • Competing powerful factions?
    • The zeitgeist.
  • Asking around the toads
    • They probably have some knowledge of what their allies are doing
  • Asking high ranking pangolins
    • Get the official part line with official justifications
    • Mmaaayyybbeee a bit of actual truth.
I do have a few guesses as to why they are doing this.
  • Hunger for power over the world
    • Who though?
      • The Pangolin President?
        • Are there emergency powers in effect?
      • The treacherous vizier?
      • Ambitious general(s)?
        • Are there power centers besides the military, either past or present?
  • Hunger for wealth
    • again, who?
      • The bosses (see above)
      • The masses
        • Unlikely. Pandaa never talks about getting rich through conquest.
      • The 1%
        • Need to learn what the class system looks like.
  • Hunger for control
    • The masses. Pangolin society is ridiculously structured and restricted. Maybe that was the purpose of the war.
      • Aesthetic/moralistic preference?
    • Society. As long as the war keeps going, society won't change.
  • Enemy action
    • Someone who is not a Pangolin wants the Pangolins to be warlike.
    • Even if this isn't true, we might be able to make it seem true...
  • Idiocy
    • They got into a new war out of sheer inertia.
    • Ends/Means confusion. We are going to war so that we can get enough resources to fund the next war so that we can get enough resources to fund the next war...
  • Xenophobia
    • All the above assumes that the xenophobia is being created by some agent. Maybe Pangolin society is just that xenophobic, and the Pangolins go to war because everyone demands it.
      • This one is hard to fix.
There are a couple of levers within our reach. They aren't all in our grasp just yet, but with a bit of effort or luck we can get them. They are mostly things we should try to get, or learn how effective they would be.

  • "Here lies a toppled God. His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, a narrow and a tall one."
    • A great deal of their power comes from the skytowers.
      • We don't know how much, and we should find out.
    • Keiko been granted religious significance. If we can't find a way to abuse this, I will eat Jiraiya's hat.
    • There is a stockpile of 5sb somewhere in the Pangolin clan's territory.
      • Find it and break it.
      • Slip a seal designed to be tracked, or to break the other seals in the stockpile?
  • The toads are their closest allies.
    • What are their opinions on war mongering?
    • How important are they to the Pangolins?
  • Could we forge alliances for the Hyenas?
  • We have a lot of summon scrolls in Leaf.
    • Peace on the 7th path is to their advantage, maybe we can coordinate?
  • The Pangolin leadership has lied to its people. Maybe even about the condors.
    • Paint it as if the Condors have subverted the most militaristic Pangolins, in an attempt to make the Pangolins exhaust their strength.
  • Jiraiya might be able to run stealth missions in Pangolin territory.
Odds and ends.
  • We need to research the Hyenas as closely as possible.
    • The exact nature of their conflict with the pangolins, past and present.
    • The general structure of their society
  • We need to know geography
    • Possibly make a path between them totally impassable?
  • We need to know populations.
    • Someone else said it, and its absolutely true.
  • The Condor resistance is never going to talk with us, but we might have to take them into account.
Pangolins, I was going to restructure your society even if you hadn't made Keiko hurt like that. The fact that you did just means I'm going to enjoy it.

We should reach out to allies. We should learn what they think. But we are not asking for approval. We might get slowed down if they try to prevent us. We might get distracted if Fire catches fire. But we aren't going to stop just because an authority figure says so.

Rough summary:
  • Pangolins are dependent on us for Skytower seals, can be used as leverage to get concessions
  • Keiko is a hero to the Pangolins and can herself act as a rallying point for change
  • Toads can apply some negotiation pressure
  • Jiraiya himself is likely to not care (?), but may have some insights, and may be willing to grant us additional resources if we can make it beneficial for him/leaf
  • Gathering more information on Condors, Hyenas, Leopards, et al might give us more insight into the conflict
  • Learning more about the 7th path (from Pangolins themselves, Toads, Library, etc) might also give insight as to the Pangolin's motivations (c.f. - sky changing colors -- fighting over nature chakra?)
  • Working with Pangolins to get them what they want without having to war and enslave other clans (economic, political?)
    • Important to get the actual reasons from the Pangolin boss, not the lines fed to the rank and file
  • Pangolin fanaticism could be a problem; need to figure out ways to effectively curb this (although personally I think they can handle that one just fine)
  • Outright threats and escalattion (destroying or hiding away their scroll, propping up other clans, nuking them, etc) if they refuse to cooperate
  • Specifically with Condors, propping up the condor Boss and their resistance
 
Last edited:
Is it sad that there's a non-zero part of myself that's saying that we should give the Pangolins Skywalkers so that they can subjugate all the enemy clans and then work from within over long periods of time to make them less evil?
 
Is it sad that there's a non-zero part of myself that's saying that we should give the Pangolins Skywalkers so that they can subjugate all the enemy clans and then work from within over long periods of time to make them less evil?
Not really, this is the Grand Strategy solution afterall.
 
1) How much of this do you think is Commisar Panteon being a dick?

I'm actually very curious just how much of this is actually ordered by Pantsa. From what we've seen, he's more like the God-Emperor rather than President, and not involved in the day-to-day operations of the Pangolin Empire.

Of course, the problem is that the only way to find out is to have Keiko question him, and that way be dragons.

Jiraiya himself is likely to not care (?), but may have some insights, and may be willing to grant us additional resources if we can make it beneficial for him

Jiraiya probably doesn't care much for the plight of the Condors, but he should absolutely care if the Pangolins make enough of a mess on the Seventh Path to create problems for Keiko (and by extension, the clan) on the Human Path. I think this is the most convincing pragmatic argument for getting involved here.
 
What are we doing to do about the income for the clan if we terminate/significantly reduce the trade with Pangolins btw? I thought most of the clan's income came from giving them Skytowers so Jiraiya may object strongly once he realizes what we are planning.
 
I would suggest instead cutting back on how many we supply rather than removing them altogether.

Inasmuch as we want them to stop with the expansionism and slavery, we also don't want them to be immediately overwhelmed; if we instead supplied them with enough to secure their territory (but no more) for the next several months, it would work out alright, I think. With this we could convince them to turtle up and focus their attentions inwards.

This is pretty much what I was thinking. We could cut back to "as many as you need to defend current territory."
 
What are we doing to do about the income for the clan if we terminate/significantly reduce the trade with Pangolins btw? I thought most of the clan's income came from giving them Skytowers so Jiraiya may object strongly once he realizes what we are planning.

We're also in a much better position financially than we were when we made the deal, and Jiraiya's position is closer to being secured. We should be able to figure something else out.
 
What are we doing to do about the income for the clan if we terminate/significantly reduce the trade with Pangolins btw? I thought most of the clan's income came from giving them Skytowers so Jiraiya may object strongly once he realizes what we are planning.
IIRC JIraiya has alternative income that needs more time, and this was a short-term plan.

The greedy part of me says that we should work with the Pangolins even more and use the blood money to set up utopia in the Elemental Nations.
 
What are we doing to do about the income for the clan if we terminate/significantly reduce the trade with Pangolins btw? I thought most of the clan's income came from giving them Skytowers so Jiraiya may object strongly once he realizes what we are planning.

Not really.

We should be coming up on "Approval to sell seals."

If we need to use a bit of our current Holy Pangolin Empire warchest gold to grease the wheels on that front, so be it.

One month from now at the tournament, we can bet a sizeable portion of our income on the tournament (NOW WE SHOULD DEFINITELY RIG THIS) to make a shitload of money.

After that, we willlikely be able to support ourselves with missions and seal sales, assuming J hasnt got his finances in order
 
IIRC JIraiya has alternative income that needs more time, and this was a short-term plan.

The greedy part of me says that we should work with the Pangolins even more and use the blood money to set up utopia in the Elemental Nations.

Honestly, the greedy part of me has been saying that the Condor situation sucks, but at least we'll have enough money to support our initiatives in Konoha. Unfortunately(or, perhaps, fortunately), Keiko's obvious distress at the current status quo has taken that off the table.
 
Is it sad that there's a non-zero part of myself that's saying that we should give the Pangolins Skywalkers so that they can subjugate all the enemy clans and then work from within over long periods of time to make them less evil?

The greedy part of me says that we should work with the Pangolins even more and use the blood money to set up utopia in the Elemental Nations.

Aside from the practicality of Skywalkers (lasts 10-15 mins), the main issue with Pax Pangolins is that, unlike Leaf, we have no reason to believe they're going to do anything but continue genocide and enslavement of other clans. Sure, if we could meaningfully impose basic humanitarian conditions on how they treat conquered clans, and somehow keep the death toll to a minimum, it doesn't sound that bad. At least, not as bad as most other outcomes on the table. But, how do we meaningfully impose constraints on them in the first place?

E: Given that we'd have to give them a ton of Skywalker seals upfront for this to matter. They're in the Pangolins' claws -- do we just trust them on their word? I don't think so.
 
Last edited:
I don't think that reducing the deal to 'enough to defend ourselves' is something that's going to work out. The Pangolins will (maybe even rightly) say that they need the full quantity in order to defend against a possible coalition war against their expansion, and thus even if all they want is to defend themselves they still need the full load. If we get the Pangolins motivated to outnegotiate us, which trying to reduce their superweapon count indisputably will, they can and will play every card they have.

What I think would be more likely to succeed is give the Pangolins demands and threatening to cancel the deal if they don't acquiesce. We should leave enough room in our demands so they can't rules-lawyer us (It was a defensive war, honest!) and actively try to avoid building animosity as we go. We can even put up a veneer of political facade in the form of 'strongly suggesting' that they focus inwards on the subversive Condor Resistance instead of taking even more land, to help smooth over the official outlook on things. It kinda puts the final nail in the Condor coffin, but I don't see a reasonable situation where we can save the Condors unless we get Jiraiya to go full Itachi on them somehow.
 
Honestly the very first thing we do is ask Jiraiya.

The very second thing we do is try to figure out if this is (once again) a problem with a few zealots in Pangolin High Command.

This could literally be Commissar Panteon giving us a big tail-slap across the face without him knowing it.
 
Um, by implementing limitations to our Skytowers/Skywalkers which we would be giving to them, forcing them to accept our constraints or be unable to hold the territory they have?

Like, specifically Skywalkers lend themselves to being used to support an alpha strike. What I see happening is the Pangolins heartily agreeing to whatever we ask of them in exchange, and then doing whatever they want anyway, later justifying it as best they can. This isn't acceptable.
 
I don't think that reducing the deal to 'enough to defend ourselves' is something that's going to work out. The Pangolins will (maybe even rightly) say that they need the full quantity in order to defend against a possible coalition war against their expansion, and thus even if all they want is to defend themselves they still need the full load. If we get the Pangolins motivated to outnegotiate us, which trying to reduce their superweapon count indisputably will, they can and will play every card they have.

What I think would be more likely to succeed is give the Pangolins demands and threatening to cancel the deal if they don't acquiesce. We should leave enough room in our demands so they can't rules-lawyer us (It was a defensive war, honest!) and actively try to avoid building animosity as we go. We can even put up a veneer of political facade in the form of 'strongly suggesting' that they focus inwards on the subversive Condor Resistance instead of taking even more land, to help smooth over the official outlook on things. It kinda puts the final nail in the Condor coffin, but I don't see a reasonable situation where we can save the Condors unless we get Jiraiya to go full Itachi on them somehow.
We could ask that they acquiesce to our demands in exchange for some portion of the gold? That way it'd be less antagonistic towar dthem.
 
I would like to reiterate that between Keiko and the Toads, we probably have enough political pressure to keep the Pangolins from invading another clan. This is all pending a talk with Jiraya and further information gathering as to the 7th path. I don't think we need to be antagonistic in negotiations like I'm getting from "threaten to cut them off". I would very much like to get a hold of outside historical accounts in the 7th path to see just how legitimate the grievances the Pangolins have taken to the extreme are.
 
I believe we should first try to get an accurate picture of the situation. So far all we know IIRC has come from backhanded remarks by Pandaa and Keiko's recent comment. We should try to know what's actually going on. Is it slavery? Is it a protectorate? Is it genocide? Is it cultural genocide (I assume that'd be difficult, can't convince them to become pangolins after all)? Is it something else? This issue has been on the back-burner for a while, and while it must be addressed there's no need to fix it right this instant, or at least no more need than there was by chapter 207. Let's make this a priority, let's not upset everything else we have for the sake of the plot point the QM just happened to showcase.


Man, all of this is sensible but I really feel like a Red Cross official during WW2.
 
Back
Top