Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Radvic · May 1, 2016

RedV said:
Akane is probably incapitated for now. Also, did anyone notice:

The Tapirs seem sentient and aware.

Yep, Tapirs definitely have intelligence. Also, there's definitely some sort of disagreement in the leadership. Pretty sure our next vote will be "get the info-dump!"

Like, I don't think we can actually make a great more than one conversation long plan based on what we know.

eaglejarl said:
"I'm tired," Hazou said. "Why don't you spar with Kimiko here?"

eaglejarl said:
"She should be fine in a few days," the genin said. "She wouldn't have if you hadn't gotten her out of there, sensei. He was out for blood." He looked back at his patient. "Ishihara, you need to drink this, okay?" He put a small vial to her lips and helped her get it down, although the effort of lifting her head made the world spin.

That awkward moment where Noburi blows your cover.

ChronOblivion · May 1, 2016

eaglejarl said:
When Hazou had offered the village elders a couple of storage scrolls, he'd thought he was being clever and ingratiating himself with them by showing off how useful his skills could be. Instead, the villagers had been offended that he would think they were so ignorant as to not be familiar with storage seals, and had angrily showed the team two dozen scrolls full of seals. They hadn't allowed the team to study them, of course; they weren't stupid. They'd simply flipped back the lid on the box where the scrolls were kept, gestured, then closed it again. Hazou had apologized profusely and he and the team had retreated to their mini-fort, where Hazou had immediately copied out the blanks for all the village's scrolls that he'd been able to see.

Well, that was us tripping and falling into a pit that happened to hold a treasure chest. The diplomatic hit we took is definitely worth this. Looks like generations of analysis did let them do an awful lot with only one seal to work off of. Now Hazou has a huge library of their Summons-derived seals, and Kagome's working on unlocking their secrets and possibly telling us something about the original seal.

eaglejarl said:
Kagome looked up, frowning. "It's weird," he said. "So far, I've noticed..."

"...three different styles," he said. "They're different, clearly done by three different schools of sealing, but there are similarities between them. Big similarities." He looked back at the blanks in his lap, frowning.

"Is that so strange, sensei?" Hazou asked, when it became clear that Kagome was lost in his thoughts and would require a prompt. The scent of the spiced soup in the bento box wafted into his nose, making him want to sneeze, but he mastered the impulse.

"Hm?" Kagome said. "Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Back home you could look through—well, not you you, but me. I could look through our sealcraft library and find a dozen different schools of seal theory, all of them with really different art styles and fundamentals. These are all...." He frowned. "They're all tiny variations on a single methodology. Very clear superficial differences, but the underlying elements...."

He shook his head in irritation and the frown got fiercer. "At first I thought that there was just one sealmaster in the village when it was founded and everything was derived from him. I don't think that's it, though. I think all of this is derived from one seal. It looks like the villagers reinvented all of sealing theory from studying one single example. They're using elements in ways that they aren't really intended to be used. Clever stuff, some of it's even brilliant, but there are more efficient strategies for a lot of it, and their theory of sealcraft has gone in a really strange direction." He waved at the stack of paper. "Like I said, weird."

This is interesting stuff.

Also,

~~~~~
Kagome, Sealing:
?d100 => 841
~~~~~

Well, now we know Kagome's Seal level is 19ish. And he's still able to have his incredible mastery of explosive and storage seals. That makes me hopeful for Hazou's future. Of course, Kagome is like this after literal years of not having anything better to do, but still.

eaglejarl said:
"You have made impressive strides," Hazou said, wiping the sweat off his face and walking to the edge of the training field where he'd left his canteen. He picked it up and took a long pull, then offered it to her with a thumbs-up.

With great effort she kept herself from puppy-wriggling at the compliment; instead she simply took the canteen with a polite nod and drank. His words meant the world to her, even more than the knowledge that they were true. When they'd met she'd been hardly more than a fresh Academy graduate. Now, a short three months later, she was trading him punch-for-punch and winning at least half their fights.

Oh, Akane, you are an absolute breath of fresh air. I will never regret the effort I put into recruiting you.

eaglejarl said:
"Kouta, what do you think you're doing?!" she snapped. "This was a spar!" She snapped her fingers at Inoue. "You! Let him up! I'll deal with him!"

Inoue considered the woman for a moment, then deliberately jerked back on Kouta's arms. There was a tearing, crunching noise and the boy screamed. Inoue released the submission hold and stood up, backing away quickly.

"I think young Kouta here might want to go rest for a while," Inoue said. "He seems to be a little overenthusiastic." She eyed the boy consideringly for a moment. "Also, he's not going to be able to move his arms for a while. Probably need some attention from our medic-nin if he wants to be able to fight ever again."

Oh yikes. Inoue, I really get why you did that, I really do. But that was a mistake. A lot of people just saw you seriously injure one of their own.

eaglejarl said:
"Yoshida Tsukiko," the woman said. She was clearly aware of the fact that she was surrounded by five very pissed-off ninja, but she refused to react to the implied threat.

Goddamn I like this woman.

eaglejarl said:
"And you people need to calm the hell down." She glared at Inoue. "You, girl! What were you thinking, breaking his shoulders after you already had him down? Do you have any idea how badly you just screwed this up and how much I'm going to need to scramble to keep the other elders calm after that?"

She is a Village Elder, and one of the ones that is against attacking us. It is obvious that we need her on our side.

eaglejarl said:
"Try it, you stinking stinker," Kagome said. "Boom. Meat paste. Stinking ninja stinkers. Knew we shouldn't have come here."

"Relax, Naito," Inoue said, laying her hand on his arm. "We're all friends here."

"I'm not," he said. "Don't like people who hurt my team."

Confirmation. Kagome is almost certainly a permanent fixture on our team.

Well, looks like we mainly need to decide a conversation plan for this. Whether it'll be only Hazou's actions of everyone's is going to matter a lot.

RedV · May 1, 2016

So right now, we need to prolong our stay in the Village without making them realize we need to stay till Kagome decodes their seals.
Options:

We need to heal Akane(valid for a couple of days)
We want revenge on that guy(considering what Mari did, perhaps in very bad taste)
Feed them some bullcrap about missing nin missing the feeling of living in a settlement and wanting to make Nakama/Home here.
Bluntly remind them that as a medic, we are a great asset. They should not question our motives, but perhaps flatter them by convincing them of their strength, that we need them to achieve the lofty goal of becoming a Great Five village or something.

Other options?
That said, I am not interested in actually staying here to become a ~~glorified paper pusher~~ the Glorious Leader of the Village Hidden in the Mountain!

[color= transparent]aka: Chief of a backward insular hamlet.[/color]

faflec · May 1, 2016

Tapirs haven't shown actual sentience like toads or snakes did in canon; all we've seen is that they responded to commands instantly, which I'd expect of a well-trained dog. From our world, not Naruto.

Also note to self: Feed Kouta to experimental seals.

Cariyaga · May 1, 2016

Goddamn I love the characterization both Velorien and Eaglejarl provide. You both do fantastically at it.

Jello_Raptor · May 1, 2016

I also feel like we've learned something really important about sealing but I'm having trouble putting my finger on it.

eaglejarl said:
"...three different styles," he said. "They're different, clearly done by three different schools of sealing, but there are similarities between them. Big similarities." He looked back at the blanks in his lap, frowning.

"Is that so strange, sensei?" Hazou asked, when it became clear that Kagome was lost in his thoughts and would require a prompt. The scent of the spiced soup in the bento box wafted into his nose, making him want to sneeze, but he mastered the impulse.

"Hm?" Kagome said. "Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Back home you could look through—well, not you you, but me. I could look through our sealcraft library and find a dozen different schools of seal theory, all of them with really different art styles and fundamentals. These are all...." He frowned. "They're all tiny variations on a single methodology. Very clear superficial differences, but the underlying elements...."

He shook his head in irritation and the frown got fiercer. "At first I thought that there was just one sealmaster in the village when it was founded and everything was derived from him. I don't think that's it, though. I think all of this is derived from one seal. It looks like the villagers reinvented all of sealing theory from studying one single example. They're using elements in ways that they aren't really intended to be used. Clever stuff, some of it's even brilliant, but there are more efficient strategies for a lot of it, and their theory of sealcraft has gone in a really strange direction." He waved at the stack of paper. "Like I said, weird."

He shuffled through the papers again, comparing the one he was holding to one from several sheets down. Hazou waited to see if he'd say anything else, then set the food down beside his teacher and ducked outside to where the others were sitting on the grass. He knew the signs; Kagome was absorbed in a puzzle, and he wouldn't be interested in talking until he'd cracked it.

See, there's two major dynamics for the development of sealing.

- The normal method: Everyone has to write their own programming language for sealing. You see a huge amount of diversity in syntax and style, but the high-level structures and techniques can be shared from teacher to student. This is like everyone using a separate programming language but implementing the same algorithms.

- The hidden mountain method: People start by reverse engineering previous methods (probably originating from the summoning contract) and move from there. Their programming languages all have similar syntax, albeit with each user adding their own tweaks. They still share the high-level algorithms between them, but you get a lot more special purpose algorithms that depend heavily on the shared properties of the core "language".

The thing that I'm having a lot of trouble with is: Why is anyone using the first model?

The second one seems a lot more efficient, you can pass information from teacher to student more easily. Likewise for anyone who has a similar "sealing language". That sharing means there's less research effort in total and you can get to more complex systems. You also get more modularity as a byproduct of that sharing.

That whole dynamic makes my liver itch, there's something we're missing and I can't shake the feeling that it's pretty important if we want to use sealing as the ludicrous force multiplier we are hoping for.

faflec · May 1, 2016

eaglejarl said:
"Any permanent damage?"

Inoue looked at Noburi.

"She should be fine in a few days," the genin said. "She wouldn't have if you hadn't gotten her out of there, sensei. He was out for blood." He looked back at his patient. "Ishihara, you need to drink this, okay?" He put a small vial to her lips and helped her get it down, although the effort of lifting her head made the world spin.

Oh thank god I was worried her concussion was actually bad, like I know people who've had to repeat grades from a concussion.

@Jello_Raptor I'd imagine reverse-engineering sealing would allow you to copy what other people have done...but the problem is that you're copying someone else's language, using what amounts to a page out of the whole dictionary. If I gave you a paper translated between Japanese and English and told you to write an essay on something else you'd probably fail.

Cariyaga · May 1, 2016

faflec said:
Oh thank god I was worried her concussion was actually bad, like I know people who've had to repeat grades from a concussion.

@Jello_Raptor I'd imagine reverse-engineering sealing would allow you to copy what other people have done...but the problem is that your copying someone else's language, using what amounts to a page out of the whole dictionary. If I gave you a paper translated between Japanese and English and told you to write an essay on something else you'd probably fail.

And failing, in this case, means catastrophic existence failure.

Jello_Raptor · May 1, 2016

faflec said:
@Jello_Raptor I'd imagine reverse-engineering sealing would allow you to copy what other people have done...but the problem is that your copying someone else's language, using what amounts to a page out of the whole dictionary. If I gave you a paper translated between Japanese and English and told you to write an essay on something else you'd probably fail.

Here's the thing though. The metaphor we were told to use is programming languages. I regularly read a program in a language I don't know, with maybe a few comments or a paragraph of explanation, and make changes or write new code in that language.

This is pretty true for any language that's not an eso-lang. There's a common set of metaphors that translate back and forth really well. Admittedly, this doesn't seem true for sealing which is a large part of why I find the assertion that "sealing ~= programming" so annoying.

Also, we can't be the only ones with paranoiac safety procedures for sealing. Given the huge cost of failure, there have to be others with standard safety procedures.

Not to mention, Kagome implies they've made a lot of progress for their resources which backs up the hunch that the mountain method is more efficient.

Twofold · May 1, 2016

Man, the powerlevels of this village just keep jumping up and down. I was pretty convinced that they really were isolationist due to their poor performance but I'm starting to doubt that. I mean, they must be fighting something if even the village bully can get to 12 dice.

I was pretty convinced that 10 dice was already pretty high for a combat skill and that most ninjas never make it that far. With this and the new mass combat rules I feel like we need to adjust our base Taijutsu goal upwards. We will probably want to get MEW higher than 10 too if we want to use it in combat.

I wonder how the spar would've gone if Hazou had done it himself. Would he have paid more attention to the guys emotional levels and pre-empted the escalation? That would seem in-character for him.

eaglejarl said:
Boom! he mouthed, before ducking inside.

I think it's confirmed by now. Kagome is best girl.

Traiden · May 1, 2016

So anyone else think that talking to animals is a good idea now?

ChronOblivion · May 1, 2016

Traiden said:
So anyone else think that talking to animals is a good idea now?

Maybe not. They are clearly on the villagers' side, and it'll reveal that we know much more than we pretend.

Radvic · May 1, 2016

I'd also like to comment on how great I thought this chapter was. Like, everyone of our characters had shining moments of great characterization. We have Hazou and Akane training, Akane feeling super accomplished and happy about joining, loving her new missing-nin life, and then getting kinda cocky and overly idealistic (three rounds? Really? You're going to lose eventually), but still having her overarching goal be for everyone to get along. I think she's basically Naruto without any trump cards. I suppose if we keep getting XP at the rate we're getting it we could probably defeat and seal a tailed-beast at some point. I hear that gets you a power-boost.

And then Noburi getting his little healing-impressive-medic-nin on, and his acceptance and general competence at his job (even if he kinda sorta said Akane's name). Then Kagome.... yes. Kagome is excellent. I regret all my attempts to convince people not to pursue him and am glad others won those votes. I'm also glad we took a month or two ingame where he was able to get used to us, so now he's a solid part of the team.

Also, that moment where Hazou's basically like "I've killed, and I'll kill again. Don't mess." Felt very real, especially considering he's killed for less. I felt like I could see those Thousand Yard Stare points in action. I also have this vision of him rolling 20 dice (12 + 5 + 3) against Kouta, and just totally blowing him out of the water (and maybe brains?) in combat. And it is a glorious vision.

Then Inoue's her traditional self, wanting to just be as lazy and nonchalant as possible, but then super aggressive, reactionary, and emotional when shit hits the fan (which, come to think of it, is why she ran in the first place).

On what we're actually going to vote for, I see three reasonably different ways we can turn this conversation with Yoshida:
1. We'd like to join or help out your village
2. We'd like to get our hands on the summoning scroll
3. We'd like to leave once Akane has healed
4. We're trying to build amicable relations so we could have a mutually beneficial interaction -- we provide information and resources from outside, they help us with the Summon scroll.

Considering what Yoshida has done and said, she's likely one of our best allies with the higher-ups. We probably want to play it fairly straight with her.... once we decide what we're playing.

ChronOblivion said:
Maybe not. They are clearly on the villagers' side, and it'll reveal that we know much more than we pretend.

We talked with the Tapirs at the very beginning. If the Tapirs can communicate with the villagers, the villagers know we're looking for the summon scroll.

faflec · May 1, 2016

@eaglejarl Did Noburi really blow Akane's cover by using her real name?

Jello_Raptor · May 1, 2016

Radvic said:
4. We're trying to build amicable relations so we could have a mutually beneficial interaction -- we provide information and resources from outside, they help us with the Summon scroll.

Hmm, I'd be curious what people expect if we try this and:

Don't let on that we suspect they have the summoning scroll.
Make it obvious that we think they have the scroll.
Be subtle about believing that they have the scroll, enough that their leadership can pick up on it but never being explicit about it.

This isn't the sort of analysis I'm all that great at, and I'd like to see what you lot think would happen.

Citrus · May 1, 2016

Jello_Raptor said:
Hmm, I'd be curious what people expect if we try this and:

Don't let on that we suspect they have the summoning scroll.

Make it obvious that we think they have the scroll.

Be subtle about believing that they have the scroll, enough that their leadership can pick up on it but never being explicit about it.

This isn't the sort of analysis I'm all that great at, and I'd like to see what you lot think would happen.

1 >> 2 > 3 imo

There's also a difference whether we reveal any of this to this elder, who seems to be 'on our side' in a sense, vs. the other elders that are very unhappy with us. At the least, they're going to know we have some expertise with Sealing due to the inane number of explosive Seals all over our base that they will now know about.

Dark as Silver · May 1, 2016

People should stop stressing about Akanes cover. They could probably guess and likely don't care in the first place.
Worst case is that they assume we have a reason to hide our names other than paranoia which implies we're more famous in the outside world than we are.

Twofold · May 1, 2016

I think I mentioned this earlier but Get Village works also well to setup a decent bargaining position. It didn't work out quite like I thought it would BUT I'm pretty sure that this incident is more of an opportunity than a threat. If we can safely get to the other side of this debacle I think we are looking at pretty congenial relationship between us and the village.

Alternatively this turns into a bloodbath with us and half the village dead. I don't think they really want that.

I say we play it reasonably straight in the negotiations. I think Boring Bargaining is a good starting point on how I would like to play the next part. We just need details on how to tackle the almost-dismembered-bully thing.

Twofold said:
Action Plan: Boring Bargaining

Figure out who holds power in the village and from where do they derive it from. Democracy? Bloodline? The guy who has the biggest...fist?

Make contact with the leadership and tell them our story: A wise Sage sent us on a quest to acquire the mysterious scroll of power in order to save the world from a coming war.

We are prepared to prove our character and help the village in exchange for an access to the scroll they are protecting.

Things we can do for the village:

Basic healing

Improvements on village infrastructure

Training both in combat and ninja arts

Information about the outside world

Discreet contact with the outside world, we know people

Limited trading for hard to get resources

We are open to suggestions if they have problems that need to be taken care of.

Also, I'm pretty sure their sealmasters would be super excited to swap notes with Kagome...Once we get over the ninja paranoia on both sides. That probably comes after we have solved this incident and are starting to look at interacting with the scroll.

ClawClawBite · May 1, 2016

My mental model is, if seals are programing languages, then what the village is doing is cutting and pasting by line.

If the exact right thing is there, you can use it, but you can't tweak and control it the same way.

Radvic · May 1, 2016

Various Sealing Discussion:
For what it's worth, the way I read the section of Kagome reading their seals was that it was basically just fluff for "from examining seals, you know they don't have contact with the outside and their sealing masters have all studied from a summon scroll or some such thing." I don't think that stuff is the sort of thing we can munchkin our way to make be in our advantage. Though I'll be happily surprised if I'm wrong.

Twofold said:
I wonder how the spar would've gone if Hazou had done it himself. Would he have paid more attention to the guys emotional levels and pre-emted the escalation? That would seem in-character for him.

The way I read their characters, Akane was enjoying the fight, and so wanted to extend it. This was likely really humiliating for Kouta, which enraged him further, eventually leading to him escalating. Given Hazou's more cynical nature, combined with his better ability to read people (diplomacy and deception) I suspect that he'd have tried to end the Taijutsu contest in one go (as pretty much all his fights in The Liberator's village were handled). Also, there's the slight fact that if push comes to shove, he can roll a bunch more combat dice if he needs to (though, Roki's not really the sort of thing he ought to be displaying in front of potential enemies). Though there's also the slight possibility he accidentally murders someone if he fights them as an effect of Iron Nerve. After-all, we kinda didn't consciously choose to kill Miria, it just kinda happened.

Twofold said:
Man, the powerlevels of this village just keep jumping up and down. I was pretty convinced that they really were isolationist due to their poor performance but I'm starting to doubt that. I mean, they must be fighting something if even the village bully can get to 12 dice.

Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure nobody would improve past ~ 10-12 combat dice if all they were fighting was chakra beasts. Clearly they have people beyond that capability. It's possible that since they're (likely) all descendants of a great ninja, they have only slowly decayed in training from his time. So if he had ~25 Taijutsu dice, they'd lose, maybe, 1-2 dice each generation they didn't significant real combat challenge? Idk. I'm starting to think they just had an incredibly bad initial roll and we've been sorely underestimating them, though I was kinda under the impression from only having a single roll in the initial engagement that there wasn't a huge question of Inoue defeating them. But Idk. This village IS doing a great job of helping us refine our combat rules and expectations though. Hopefully we don't have any more fighting them and it doesn't ultimately matter. Also hopefully between Keiko and Noburi's diplomatic successes and Inoue's not actually killing their ninja, we can convince enough of the elders that we're in the good. Hopefully they don't try to assassinate us.

Dark as Silver said:
People should stop stressing about Akanes cover. They could probably guess and likely don't care in the first place.
Worst case is that they assume we have a reason to hide our names other than paranoia which implies we're more famous in the outside world than we are.

Well, it's not like I expect them to try to kill us for using a fake name. Concerns are that if someone tries to track our movements, this village will definitely remember us. We don't know who's going to be retroactively looking for us, and if the village can give them our names, that's bad. Also, while they suspect us of using false names, having confirmation of it will hurt our diplomatic standing -- it gives them another reason to distrust us.

Twofold said:
I think I mentioned this earlier but Get Village works also well to setup a decent bargaining position. It didn't work out quite like I thought it would BUT I'm pretty sure that this incident is more of an opportunity than a threat. If we can safely get to the other side of this debacle I think we are looking at pretty congenial relationship between us and the village.

Alternatively this turns into a bloodbath with us and half the village dead. I don't think they really want that.

I say we play it reasonably straight in the negotiations. I think Boring Bargaining is a good starting point on how I would like to play the next part. We just need details on how to tackle the almost-dismembered-bully thing.

Also, I'm pretty sure their sealmasters would be super excited to swap notes with Kagome...Once we get over the ninja paranoia on both sides. That probably comes after we have solved this incident and are starting to look at interacting with the scroll.

Honestly, the main problem we probably have to deal with is that there's this buildup of tension both us and the village have around each other. It's like the cold war here. Any escalation can and likely will lead to everybody dying in a bout of explosion, and I'm quite thankful Kouta's outburst didn't lead to everyone attacking us and us exploding everything. I do agree that playing it straight in this conversation is likely a good idea if our overarching goal is to get the summon seal. As I'm committed to writing plans with the overarching goal of taking-over this village, I'll be trying to optimize a strategy for taking over the village, and using that as guidance for what we say in this conversation. I'm not sure if that goal is best served by trying to get the summon scroll or not.

drake_azathoth · May 1, 2016

I am aware that people have great plans for the village and all, but the way that Yoshida Tsukiko is talking about the village council as if we should desperately want to keep on their good side is really ringing some warning bells. I'm reading 'entitled snots are typical' from that.

Perfectly willing to hear Tsukiko out, but I suspect she's going to try to sell us an utterly crap 'bargain' and expect us to be grateful, and we'll end up deciding to just steal the damn scroll and light half the village on fire as a distraction to get out.

Citrus · May 1, 2016

Just wait til we find out Kouta's parents are on the Elder council or something :\

drake_azathoth · May 1, 2016

Citrus said:
Just wait til we find out Kouta's parents are on the Elder council or something :\

That's a sucker bet. His parents or grandparents, guaranteed.

NeverDies · May 1, 2016

Could we drug the violent guy and use him as a distraction to survey the scroll?

Cariyaga · May 1, 2016

Citrus said:
Just wait til we find out Kouta's parents are on the Elder council or something :\

Please do not give the QMs ideas.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Refuelling

Handsome Gentleperson

(Confirmed Jelly)

Handsome Gentleperson

(Confirmed Jelly)

(Confirmed Jelly)

Mad Engineering!

Classy Coleoptera ಠ_ರೃ

Handsome Gentleperson