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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Vecht said:
Mostly basing this off of previous events when Leaf decided to abruptly move on Mist with the skywalkers. I don't see Jiraiya sitting around on useful information.
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True, but also we, so far as I'm aware, don't know what type of lead Jiraiya got. Like, it could just be "I brought those cultist kids back" and they might not know much. Or it might be "I got such political blackmail that we'll own the world within a week." We also don't know if Jiraiya will go himself (though I agree it seems likely). It may or may not be worth noting that Kakashi is "making cookies" for a week.
 
eaglejarl said:
I didn't say that. Just because he didn't happen to be around when Kagome was there doesn't mean he's not part of the family. Kagome is always and only there for tutoring, so he doesn't interact with Aoi and her husband outside of that context very much, meaning that if Haru is Honoka's brother then his name may simply not have had cause to come up yet.
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HAZO: Hey Haru, I just met your family and your sister is adorable.

HARU: I don't have a sister. What is wrong with you?

HAZO: Huh, that's odd, I am pretty sure she has the same last name as you. And too many things to list right now.

HARU: Do we even look remotely the same?

HAZO, SMART PERSON AND UPLIFTER EXTRAORDINAIRE: How would I know? You clanless look all the same to me.

AKANE: :facepalm:
 
Radvic said:
Hmm... so is the thought that the thing Jiraiya tracked will lead to him personally confronting Akatsuki or being confronted by Akatsuki? Seems reasonable I suppose, though I don't think we know how Jiraiya stacks up against them in terms of power levels, aside from "Jiraiya tends to be extremely confident and also is not dead yet," "Akatsuki has powerful people," and "Akatsuki killed Jiraiya in canon." Hmm... makes it sound pretty plausible. That said, I still wouldn't say "next 2 or 3 updates." I will be fairly surprised if 2 or 3 updates covers a full week, and I'd imagine it takes a while to act on whatever Jiraiya found out.
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For the record:

In canon, Jiraiya soloed Pain [1], losing only because he didn't know that one of Pain's bodies could resurrect the others.

Also, Itachi and Kisame fled from him, although granted part of that could have been the "oh, by the way, Itachi is a double agent and always has been because that was totally part of the initial plan and not tacked on afterwards, really."

In MfD, the clan heads backed down when he told them to fall in line or he'd murder them on the spot. (Granted, Shikaku helped a lot.)

So, yeah. He's pretty badass.


[1] With the help of toads, obviously, but summoning toads is one of his abilities so I discount it.

1234qwerty said:
I thought it was impossible for storage space items to disappear?
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Oh, for heaven's sake. Grumble, grumble.

@faflec , looks like we need to continue this line of conversation after all. References, please: What happens when you attempt to activate a storage seal but there isn't enough space for the object to be released? Also, what did Kagome say about putting seals on Keiko's jacket. (Not that the seals were on the cloth in this case, but it's a related reference.)

Recall that the seals (which were, to be clear, normal ink-on-paper seals) were under his jacket, which is usually a safe place to carry them; in a normal ninja fight, anything that pierces your vest is going to kill you.

Most chakra beasts aren't remotely a threat to Hazō anymore; Fifi got him only because he was taken offguard in what should have been a safe environment. He'll be more cautious in future, now that his brain has absorbed the idea that there are no safe environments.
 
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Kiba said:
@1234qwerty That's not really an action plan?
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Hold my BBCode, I got this.
Don't take it too seriously.

1234qwerty said:
[x] Action Plan: Corner Stone

Obligatory:
  • Maintain opsec.
  • Survive
  • Eat healthy
  • Get adequate sleep
  • Do not stop breathing

Goal:
  • Hazou has had a rough 2 years with nary a moment to catch his breath. He now finds himself in a position where his decisions have a disproportionate impact compared to any other time in his life. Until recently he's been in a vastly different environment, demanding a mind set incompatible with the tasks before him, thus demanding adjustment. Neither where these 2 years without errors(tactical, strategic, and/or in execution); finally a perfect time to reflect on them lest underlying dissonance taints undertakings that are critical or hard to reverse.
    • How: Take some time off, delaying obligations that can be delayed but not being rude or forcing others to pick up our slack. Hazou thinks about the mistakes and tough decisions he's had to make over the last year and considers how his personal beliefs have evolved, what questions he still doesn't have the answer to, and which of those decisions he stands by/recants. Take planned breaks to keep thoughts fresh, engaging in neglected hobbies, doting on loved ones, and indulging in good food, entertainment, etc. Seek out Neira if available, maybe even take Hana along if she arrives before you're done thinking things through. Seek advice on helping your family members, assuming they're going through their own similar but unique paradigm adjustments/post mortems. Take time to think on things pain would normally make you avoid(less observation -> less course correction).
    • Meta: It's become clear that considerations of the hivemind when writing plans don't ineffably make it to Hazou's considerations when deciding what to do. Before these differences build up into a problem like Hazou jumping to conclusions based on unwarranted confidence or false premises, sending discordant signals to social specs, or starting to become more adverse to executing typical thread orders, this plan intends to discover when in the past Hazou used false* premises to derive our plan and what those premises were, identify imprinted discrepancies from schizophrenic thread commands for uplift one day, Armageddon Initiative the next, and start settling on a consistent, coherent, and considered path to the future. Ideally, that would mean maximally aligned with the thread, but even irreconcilable differences are better than unknowns.
More pangolin options:
  • Hazou damages his hands in a sealing accident(goes to Noburi, Kabuto, or Tsunade), making him unable to fulfill the order but healed by the time of the tournament. Makes sense given bloodline shenanigans but can't mention those cause opsec. Give pangolins what skytowers we have now as an apology since Kagome will be busy making up for Hazou's slack.
  • If earnest fighting with the Hyena becomes inevitable, use stacked implosion bombs to singlehandedly intimidate them into surrender to get Keiko more influence over pangolin practices in the future. Pretty sure a convincing argument to surrender can be made, especially if Keiko goes without pangolins. Likely no watchers in the summon realm to interfere, potentially with Jiraiya for back up. Teleporting to safety works better from the animal path to the human path than the other way around.
  • Ask for war stories about strong pangolins to gather information for if we ever have to fight them. Important to identify out of context threats like space/time jutsu. Can't be obvious about it.
Possible things to discuss and work through:
  • failing in social to Shikamaru
  • our teammate in group A
  • the oyabun
  • not dealing well with opposition from Hinata/Akane's teammate/Noburi and Keiko on clan privilege
  • reacting aggressively to Noburi's plan contributions
  • pretty much all of the 4th event
  • pangolin relations


*: False, for these purposes, meaning not identical to the thread's. Sidenote, if I'm putting 3 lists in one sentence in a plan about Hazou's mental health it needs more work. Word count can probably be reduced by a lot since this plan doesn't amount to much materially. Maybe consider which way we would sway Hazou on certain issues, contingent on not messing up his internal compass even more.

Force wall frames are a revolutionary technology. We need to test them and make sure distributing them isn't a disaster waiting to happen. One assumption is that they can withstand infinite force, but the way they were talked about in the context of 5SB makes me dubious of that. Test strength by stacking weight on one to see if there is an upper limit, perhaps test if how fast force on the wall alternates does something as opposed to absolute force. Downside: more in the vein of pursuing personal power if not distributed.
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eaglejarl said:
@faflec , looks like we need to continue this line of conversation after all. References, please: What happens when you attempt to activate a storage seal but there isn't enough space for the object to be released? Also, what did Kagome say about putting seals on Keiko's jacket. (Not that the seals were on the cloth in this case, but it's a related reference.)
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@faflec, Hero amongst Questers, Keeper of Lore, and Answerer of all questions that can be truthfully but unhelpfully answered with "Yes", I can take part of this one. I can't remember what Kagome said, but the rules doc is crystal clear.

The Rules said:
In the event of obstruction, the object fails to appear. If the seal is destroyed when an obstruction is in place, the object appears in the nearest available low-density space (i.e. air), damaged as though you'd hit it with a sledgehammer a fair few times.
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So the good pans have been destroyed.
 
One wonder that with everything that ever happened to Jiraiya...that he's the TRUE PROTAGONIST of the story.

His worst enemies are the students he taught. He lost his student and his student's son. He decided to adopt Hazō et al, who are by that point some of the most significant characters in the story. And so forth.
 
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I awake from 1000 years* of slumber.

Boy, I fucking wish...

Vecht said:
...Okay, so don't make substantial edits without getting the buy-in of the people who voted for the plan.
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This is pretty much the limiting reagent. I find that if a dozen or so people vote for the plan, and for some reason you need a big edit (or possibly a big edit) it may take longer than 3-4 hours for everyone to weigh in on that. "6 hours" was just a ballpark from me and you're correct that this isn't necessary as long as we use our brains.

But... the Wednesday deadlines usually occur right in the middle of the period where us Western hemisphere folk are groggily waking up and getting ready for our daily meatspace commitments. So this adds an extra element of haste for some in certain situations.

eaglejarl said:
The following is nothing about you, but you nudged my memory:

For the record, right now there's no rules about when you can and can't vote or modify plans. My understanding of player norms is that it's déclassé to make significant changes to a plan shortly before the vote closes, but I'm aware of no specific definition for how long a period 'shortly' covers. (Also, human nature being what it is, most likely no one will object to last-minute changes so long as nothing goes wrong in the chapter.)

There's been repeated discussion about instituting a norm that plans don't get suggested or modified in the last (12 / 6 / 3 / 1 / 0.5 / ...) hours before a vote closes; that's a norm that you can make if you want, but consider carefully, since you'll be locking out players who are in the "wrong" timezones.
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OTOH: They would have had monday/friday and most of tuesday/saturday to weigh in on things,
My general feeling on this is that plans or at least skeletons of plans should be put forth on monday/friday.

Your remarks with respect to plan length and inefficient verbosity are noted. Will try to fix.

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Hey Hivemind, what do we feel about shelving the Finances/Training stuff to off-screen or getting rid of it entirely?

Please lemme know your thoughts/stance on this. I will be back in an hour or so when my brain wakes up and I am firmly situated in my office.
 
I am fine with offscreening training and shorten it to Gai running us ragged. We don't need to learn a particular justu or train something specific right now.

WRT Pangolin, it seems to be the only significant thing we can tackle right now. OTOH, the QM might not be up to write such a scene. I suggest two other options for scenes if possible.
 
MMKII said:
Hey Hivemind, what do we feel about shelving the Finances/Training stuff to off-screen or getting rid of it entirely?
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I'd be very in favour of keeping this plan focused on the :pangolin problem. None of this other stuff is time-sensitive, or really that important in the short-term, and the :pangolin talk with Jiraiya is likely to touch the finances in any case.

I'm somewhat hesistant about the Shadow Clone training. On one hand, it'd be really nice to know sooner rather than later if it's an option. On the other, I imagine it'll consume a non-trivial amount of QM spoons to figure out what Jiraiya's response will be. @eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail have you given some thought to this? If we put it in a plan, will we be forcing @Velorien to do it alone for this update?
 
Vecht said:
I'd like to pose an alternate hypothesis, which is that this particular edit being made in proximity to a deadline was not in fact the cause of the error, so much as a failure in judgement and lack of critical review.
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I still maintain that the line people get huffy about was not the problem. The whole conversation was this weird misguided idea based on people bleeding canon knowledge into the story that shouldn't have been there because it didn't make any sense. Akane was obviously safe.
 
@Roomba

From @eaglejarl 's comments he (and id wager the other QMs) is at least aware that there are some spoon intensive stuff that we really need or want access to in the coming weeks or so.

Id be cool with shafting most of the Training/Finances convo to "Off screen/QM Info dump as spoons necessitate" or something to that effect.

Ive been given the impression that many of us will be dragging our feat on training/XP expenditure until we know the details on the shiny things we can buy. So we need to eventually get around to doing this.
Veedrac said:
I still maintain that the line people get huffy about was not the problem. The whole conversation was this weird misguided idea based on people bleeding canon knowledge into the story that shouldn't have been there because it didn't make any sense. Akane was obviously safe.
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Nah, its pretty clear that Kabuto is literally Orochimaru! Who knew?
 
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MMKII said:
Hey Hivemind, what do we feel about shelving the Finances/Training stuff to off-screen or getting rid of it entirely?
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Some options:
  1. Remove the finances and training sections
  2. Finances and training off-screen
  3. Make this explicitly a 2-update plan, highlight parts for this plan
All seem better than the status-quo to me, but 1. might irritate other people.
 
How about this: We focus on non-training parts in the scenes for now but write "Training/Generic sealing research happened off-screen" for each update.

That way QMs get more time to think up or approve the various jutsu and seal proposals which we then are allowed to learn retroactively in an update later on (like two thirds or so into the month) with the appropriate scenes or that we learn offscreen just before the tournament.

Essentially all plans would commit a portion of IC time to be filled retroactively.

@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail thoughts?
 
Here's a plan based on "That Very Same Day, but different and more concise", but intended to be voted for. The intent is to make something easier to write for, and to be doable in a short amount of time (incentive for others: shorter updates mean more XP).


Words: 330

[X] Action Plan: In a hurry

Discussion with Keiko
Thank her for bringing the issue forward; she has raised an important issue, and we are in a better position than ever to do something about it. Her description was worse than we imagined, and we don't have to rely on blood money.
  • Hazō wants to get Jiraiya on board to help fix this
  • Concern: Jiraiya is concerned primarily about Leaf
  • Intended approach: Apply pressure; tell him that this matters to us
QM advice: Onscreen if new information is added, otherwise offscreen or merge into below.

Evening/Dinner: Pangolins
  • Try to get Jiraiya on board
    • Primary goal: avoid genocide and slavery
    • Secondary goal: slow them down
  • Bring these arguments
    • Their actions are anathema to our ideals, and why we joined Leaf
    • They are encouraging organized backlash
    • OPSEC issues around Skytowers
    • Potentially politically destabilizing
  • Analyse the situation
    • Is this likely one or two zealots in Pangolin High Command?
    • How much of this is Pantsaa?
    • Is this normal? Toads' opinion would help.
  • Solutions
    • Bargain with skytower supply?
    • Political influence from Toads?
    • Direct influence from Keiko as a prominent figure?
QM advice: Onscreen.

Evening/Dinner: Shadow Clones
  • We suspect the Shadow Clones transfer memories (Itachi vs Naruto)
  • Can we learn this, and use it for better training over the break?
  • Noburi's bloodline w/ recharging gives effectively massive chakra reserves.
QM advice: Oli said he wanted to see this. Onscreen if interesting, offscreen otherwise.

Offscreen
Training
We request a few things from Jiraiya.
  • We were promised "some tricks"... can haz?
  • Can Jiraiya spend time training people? Or design us a routine?
Finances
  • Get a summary of our financial situation
  • Check in on seal licenses: did the Merchant council approve Hazou and Kagome?
Seals
  • Hazou gives Jiraiya blanks for every seal he's ever seen, w/ any supporting background info
  • Hazou makes replacement storage seals and explosive tags
QM advice: Very little of this is time critical; it is added mostly to avoid 'HDK' and get the ball rolling. Offer whatever information you have available.
 
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1234qwerty said:
edit 2: CCnJ, I hope I haven't caused any frustration. Didn't mean to come off as complaining about Fifi? Genuine point of confusion.
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Nah, no worries. When I add "grumble, grumble" to something it indicates that I'm not actually annoyed. When I'm seriously annoyed is like to think I'm pretty clear about it. (e.g. "Cut it the fuck out")

Roomba said:
:pangolin
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Okay, this has been confusing me. What's up with the rest emoji?

Roomba said:
I'm somewhat hesistant about the Shadow Clone training. On one hand, it'd be really nice to know sooner rather than later if it's an option. On the other, I imagine it'll consume a non-trivial amount of QM spoons to figure out what Jiraiya's response will be. @eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail have you given some thought to this? If we put it in a plan, will we be forcing @Velorien to do it alone for this update?
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This should be fine. I'm pretty sure it's already nailed down and, if not, we'll bump it or OOC it.
 
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