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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Um... it's worth noting that it's... y'know, a contract, assumedly. We don't have to TAKE it. Just have Keiko sign it. Ideally we'd take it off their hands, of course, but even if Keiko's the only one that gets access to summons, it's still a boon for us.
 
Dark as Silver said:
Try not to forget acts calm and comes brings the whole village to kill us in the night.
Or mentions it to the other Elders because she can't authorise it alone and they rally the village to kill us.
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The first one is naturally included in the "freaking out" part. I guess I could've worded that differently but I wanted to be succinct. I also have a feeling that in this setting Mari can get a pretty good read on Yoshida and what she really thinks about our proposal. It kinda depends on how QMs want to model human interaction so we'll see.

Of course she can't just make a conclusive deal with us now or alone. I'm banking more on the hope that she wants something from us and that we can provide that something in exchange for help to access the scroll. If going to other leaders automatically leads to a lynching party, I'm pretty confident she won't go to them. Unless she is pro-lynching in the first place, which means that the risk is included in the "freaking out" part.

We are going to need allies inside the village no matter what we want to do next. Bringing Yoshida in on our goals seems like the most realistic way to get that ally for now. Our other alternative is to play for time and hope that something better comes up, but I don't think the villagers will be happy to ignore us forever.

Cariyaga said:
Um... it's worth noting that it's... y'know, a contract, assumedly. We don't have to TAKE it. Just have Keiko sign it. Ideally we'd take it off their hands, of course, but even if Keiko's the only one that gets access to summons, it's still a boon for us.
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Yeah, the scroll might not even be a scroll but rather some sort of a gateway to the summon realm. Or reaching the scroll might be the actual requirement for a contract and the physical scroll is purely symbolic. Can't really tell before we get to have a proper look-see.

Honestly, if it's just a scroll that we only need to sign, it might be safer here with these guys guarding it than with us lugging it all around the Elemental Nations.
 
faflec said:
No Kabuto managed to stick his middle finger in the whole "can't seal people" thing and carries around a squad's worth of dead people in storage for resurrection purposes.
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People have always been able to seal corpses, the issue is living people.

I think the issue was that people can't account for chakra networks* and/or souls when sealing people, so...live guy goes in, dead guy comes out?
 
Ridiculously Average Guy said:
People have always been able to seal corpses, the issue is living people.

I think the issue was that people can't account for chakra networks* and/or souls when sealing people, so...live guy goes in, dead guy comes out?
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It really is a shame that Minato died so young. Imagine the kind of sealing breakthroughs he could have made with more time; he might have adapted his signature seal to transport others to a closed room as a pseudo-storage scroll.
 
So what is our goal with this village? Do we want to try and reform them wholesale, aid them in just minor ways but enough so they can give us a chance to sign the contract, or just get what we want and be done with them? If we can figure out what our end goal is for our interactions with the village we could more easily plan out how to achieve that result. Do we want to leave a lasting impression on them so that we could call on them later to help us, do we just want them to not report us at all? The first rung on the ladder to global economic power?

We have more information to work with and a small sample of the population and how they view us, is what we see something we want to spend time and effort trying to change? What is to much work for us to say we are done with this, lets just steal the scroll and get out? Out right killing one of our group seems to be that line for some to want to exact revenge against the village as a whole instead of just the one guy, who was already injured by Mari in revenge of Akane. This is just the one guy though, and it is implied that he is going to be punished by his Elders for taking the actions that he did. Do we want to try and follow up on that and find out what they plan on doing to him, and if they are lenient or harsh? Should we work on figuring out more of the whole village's social and political leanings and if they are something we agree or disagree with?
 
I've been thinking about how to broach the subject of the scroll without triggering an immediate "Kill the blasphemers!" response, and here's what I've got. It's not my plan A, though, since I still want to hear what Yoshida has to say to us, first, but if we decide to "lay our cards on the table:"
  • We heard rumors of a lost treasure in this area, and we were following up on it.
  • Since we were in the village anyway, we figured we'd spend some more time here and see if we could pick up any more detailed rumors.
  • From what we've learned, it looks like it's not so much a lost treasure as a treasure that this village owns.
  • We've been talking amongst ourselves about how we could barter/trade for it, but since no one is willing to talk about it directly, it doesn't seem like it's that kind of item.
It lets us express our interest in the scroll, but if it's not for sale/use, it leaves us open to being educated about their sacred relic rather than being run out of town. Also, we can follow up with concern about how we were even in a different country when we first heard the rumors, and how worried we are about those different, bad ninja, who might hear and just come rampaging through rather than all respecting the villagers' ownership rights like we do.
 
Traiden said:
So what is our goal with this village? Do we want to try and reform them wholesale, aid them in just minor ways but enough so they can give us a chance to sign the contract, or just get what we want and be done with them? If we can figure out what our end goal is for our interactions with the village we could more easily plan out how to achieve that result. Do we want to leave a lasting impression on them so that we could call on them later to help us, do we just want them to not report us at all? The first rung on the ladder to global economic power?

We have more information to work with and a small sample of the population and how they view us, is what we see something we want to spend time and effort trying to change? What is to much work for us to say we are done with this, lets just steal the scroll and get out? Out right killing one of our group seems to be that line for some to want to exact revenge against the village as a whole instead of just the one guy, who was already injured by Mari in revenge of Akane. This is just the one guy though, and it is implied that he is going to be punished by his Elders for taking the actions that he did. Do we want to try and follow up on that and find out what they plan on doing to him, and if they are lenient or harsh? Should we work on figuring out more of the whole village's social and political leanings and if they are something we agree or disagree with?
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My goals, in priority order (and list form):
  1. Get the summoning contract for Keiko (whether that involves physical possesion of the scroll or not).
  2. Have the village like us enough to be a base of operations and to trade for things we can provide, both in terms of training we can give them and anything of the outside world we can give them access to.
  3. Have a significant voice in the strategic direction of the village, while leaving the day-to-day running to someone else.
I am entirely willing to drop any of the lower priorities if continuing to pursue them seems like they'll interfere with any of the higher ones, though I don't think we're there yet.

Also, on that last priority, we've talked about the fact that no one is particularly interested in turning this into Senior Ninja quest, but I wonder if we're getting close to strong enough to navigate the world with Mari needing to hold our hands. At that point, if Mari was at all interested in the position and it was available, she might take it, while the rest of us (or at least the 4 of us genin if Kagome stays as well to back her up) do the missioning out in the world.
 
So, we have a higher up of their village. Alone. Out of sight of the rest of them. We think they don't know genjutsu, our leader is a genjutsu specialist with an "erase your memory" jutsu. If we're willing to take the risk of Yoshida being aware of genjutsu, we could always just interrogate her (in a genjutsu), erase her memory, interrogate her again, erase her memory, then actually bargain with her once we know everything she knows, so she doesn't have any cards to play against us.

The main downfall is whatever the cost of the memory altering jutsu is, and the risk that the village knows about genjutsu.
 
I doubt highly that she is truly alone and un-watched. Any radical change in opinion from the perspective of the rest of the village will be noted and they will have knowledge of genjutsu in much the same way they thought of medical ninjutsu. We already did one impossible thing already, what is one more?
 
Twofold said:
The first one is naturally included in the "freaking out" part. I guess I could've worded that differently but I wanted to be succinct. I also have a feeling that in this setting Mari can get a pretty good read on Yoshida and what she really thinks about our proposal. It kinda depends on how QMs want to model human interaction so we'll see.
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Freaking out was a terrible way to describe it because it doesn't get across the magnitude and also makes her sound irrational.
 
Traiden said:
I doubt highly that she is truly alone and un-watched. Any radical change in opinion from the perspective of the rest of the village will be noted and they will have knowledge of genjutsu in much the same way they thought of medical ninjutsu. We already did one impossible thing already, what is one more?
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We wouldn't make her have a radical change of opinion, we'd just use her to find out about the village, then erase her memory, then do diplomacy. Basically it reduces the risk that Yoshida withholds information (by talking to her multiple times) and increases the risk she turns against us (since we're evil mind-violating missing-nin).
 
Radvic said:
The main downfall is whatever the cost of the memory altering jutsu is, and the risk that the village knows about genjutsu.
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I really don't like using the memory jutsu here. We still don't know what the actual penalty for it is and I'm not really sure I trust Inoue to be non-self destructive enough to evaluate the cost/reward properly.

Also, if Yoshida finds out later that we did it we can say goodbye to any positive interaction with the village.

Sleeps Furiously said:
I've been thinking about how to broach the subject of the scroll without triggering an immediate "Kill the blasphemers!" response, and here's what I've got. It's not my plan A, though, since I still want to hear what Yoshida has to say to us, first, but if we decide to "lay our cards on the table:"
  • We heard rumors of a lost treasure in this area, and we were following up on it.
  • Since we were in the village anyway, we figured we'd spend some more time here and see if we could pick up any more detailed rumors.
  • From what we've learned, it looks like it's not so much a lost treasure as a treasure that this village owns.
  • We've been talking amongst ourselves about how we could barter/trade for it, but since no one is willing to talk about it directly, it doesn't seem like it's that kind of item.
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I could begrudgingly get behind this plan, assuming that we really plan on telling her about our goals later when we have more information about the village.

Still, I think it dulls the effect we could have by coming out clean and getting her actually on our side. Expecting them to show trust when we don't show any seems kinda silly.
 
For the record: she's not going inside with you. The conversation will happen outside your fort where the village could still see it. There's not a giant guard of ninja sitting ten feet away, but there are people around.
 
So what you are saying is there is a giant guard of ninja doing their job of sitting around their effective combat range of our group, watching us talk.
 
eaglejarl said:
For the record: she's not going inside with you. The conversation will happen outside your fort where the village could still see it. There's not a giant guard of ninja sitting ten feet away, but there are people around.
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Ok, that's a different tone then. Also it sounds like we have an audience aside from just her, which is very important to keep in mind. We should assume everything we say to her is known to every important person in the village.
 
Radvic said:
Ok, that's a different tone then. Also it sounds like we have an audience aside from just her, which is very important to keep in mind. We should assume everything we say to her is known to every important person in the village.
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No, there's no one in immediate earshot. They can see you and they would easily hear a shout, but a normal conversation is private.
 
But that's just what the GMs want us to believe! There's no reason to assume they haven't developed lip-reading after centuries of being cooped up in an isolated area with all the political shitstorms that come from it.
 
Consider: what actions do you expect a smart person to take if they learn that there are people in their village who are interested in their scroll if:

1: The scroll is utterly sacred and losing it would be anathema to them.

2: The scroll is a valued piece of heritage and history, but they don't care too much about it while still recognising its value to you.

3: The scroll is sacred or important to other villagers, but not to this person in front of you.

4: The scroll is worthless to them or its existence actively hinders their agenda.

And how would you determine which one (if any) is in fact the case without giving the game away?
 
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