- Location
- Yes.
Yeah, that too. Hopefully we won't be penalized for not buying the stunt as soon as we have the XP for doing so (i.e., let it wait until we have the scroll).
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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
- Location
- Yes.
We could, yes; I...I'm a bit worried that there may be other yet-unexplored ways to making inroads with him that doesn't involve us owing him one.
- Location
- USA
Asuma doesn't seem like the worst person to owe one to, if it comes down to it.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Just give him a storage seal or two of perfectly chilled beer.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Isn't the Summoning training supposed to represent the 250 XP expenditure of the stunt? I don't think Noburi could accumulate retroactive timey wimey effort points while explicitly spending weeks learning Summoning and then not allocate the XP to it. Or Hazou, for that matter, if Noburi gets cleared for it and Hazou doesn't end up with a scroll.
As a greater point about XP expenditures in general, I'm okay with stuff like summoning where by taking the IC time to work on a thing we-the-hivemind precommit to spending appropriate XP on said thing in the near future. I trust the QMs to not abuse this and say stuff like 'Hazou spent the last three weeks exclusively training basketweaving, so you're obligated to allocate all your XP to that', but in cases where the hivemind's expected expenditures are already clear I'm okay with resolving retroactive training units early so that we can observe the IC process definitively.
(For instance, I feel like the Ebisu training was a visible conundrum for the QMs because we never actually got to see the training or get specifics about what it was about, just that it was crazy and effective and other second-order effects, and I felt like if the hivemind precommitted to the QMs to invest at least a decent amount in Alertness (as we were planning to, and did indeed end up doing) the QMs could have had a much smoother time of it and written cool Ebisu alertness training scenes)
But anyways, Summoning sounds like one of these sort of situations, where we need to spend IC time learning it and it would be dissonant to do that and then not allocate XP, so pursuing the training IC is a sort of precommitment to the QMs to spend the XP and purchase the stunt, which means I feel like we should wait until we know we're set for signing a scroll before we begin IC training.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Did I post this? I don't recall. Sorry if it's a double.
We have a very hazy plan of it that isn't closely tied to canon.
- Hokage Tower is central
- There's a wall around the city, it has at least two gates
- There's a lot of exceptionally fertile farmland inside the wall that is able to support a noticeable fraction of the city's population. It's probably 5 koku per farmer production, maybe more, probably because unique chakra bullshit in the soil the presence of which was a big part of why Hashirama chose this spot to found the village.
- There are various industrial operations (sawmill, paper production, etc) either inside the wall or just outside it.
- There are stupidly wealthy clan compounds (read "gated community"). They are mostly towards the edges of the city inside the wall, both because they don't want to mix with the hoi polloi and because this puts the ninja in between attackers coming over the wall and the general civilian population.
- "The Lord Senju Academy for Ninja Borne Up by the Will of Fire" (generally referred to as "the Academy") is near Hokage Tower.
- There are diplomatic quarters attached to, but not sharing a connecting door with, Hokage Tower.
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That seems like a very good idea, although it's got some wide-reaching effects that make me a little leery. Let me run it past the others.
The following is my offhand recollection and not binding if the other QMs correct me for once again being forgetful:
Note that (check me, @faflec) it took Keiko weeks of full-time training to buy the Summoning stunt, and there is an element of her bloodline (the 'Monomaniacal' bit) that makes her learn one important thing faster. If you commit to studying Summoning, Hazō is likely going to be locked down for a while.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Also it means that Hazou has all the more reason to call the Kurosawa idiots.
- Location
- Yes.
*checks timeline*
Nov 16 to ...(sometime between Dec 25 and Jan 3), so between 39 and 48 days. 5-7 weeks. Bleh.
Is the vote still live? It occured to me that I should probably throw in on the pile.
[X] Action Plan: "More Like a Cobweb, Really"
I reflexively want to say 'don't write down your weaknesses in case of enemy lookamancer', but Kagome has been all about those anti Hyuuga measures right? (and if he hasn't they can probably read lips anyway so the only defense is engaging in the legendary art of 'Russian Mumblespeak' or some equally taxing communication art that likely wouldn't work in our current situation)
We'll be fine, probably.
If those Hazo Research ESP seal votes are legit(in that the voters would be actually ok if the vote won and this isn't just blank voting on a lower stakes action(and it counts for participation xp)) i might throw down on that.
I still have a lot of catching up to do on the community, so my impressions are mostly based on reactions directly after updates and the updates themselves.
[X] Action Plan: "More Like a Cobweb, Really"
I reflexively want to say 'don't write down your weaknesses in case of enemy lookamancer', but Kagome has been all about those anti Hyuuga measures right? (and if he hasn't they can probably read lips anyway so the only defense is engaging in the legendary art of 'Russian Mumblespeak' or some equally taxing communication art that likely wouldn't work in our current situation)
We'll be fine, probably.
If those Hazo Research ESP seal votes are legit(in that the voters would be actually ok if the vote won and this isn't just blank voting on a lower stakes action(and it counts for participation xp)) i might throw down on that.
I still have a lot of catching up to do on the community, so my impressions are mostly based on reactions directly after updates and the updates themselves.
- Location
- USA
[X] Let Hazou retreat and study summoning. We trust Mari to do politics.
- Location
- Potato land
That's actually yet another reason for seal production lower than one would naively expect. The Ninja Must Punch cultural imperative is strong, and sealmasters may not want to spend all their time producing seals, even if that would be optimal for many different metrics.
Hell, Hazou himself, in spite of being something of a Sealing prodigy in-universe, is still a very proficient puncher and unabashedly looks down on non-combat ninja.
- Location
- London
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
We should check with Mari as to whether she has made friends with Kurenai at any point, and whether that gives her sway in securing the Sarutobi vote.
- Location
- Under a Rock
For sealing blanks, a thought occurs.
With very high quality paper and a very bright light, shouldn't it be possible to shine the light through the paper, casting a shadow on the second piece in the shape of the ink on the first? this could be used for verifying a blank against another, speeding up the verification time.
With very high quality paper and a very bright light, shouldn't it be possible to shine the light through the paper, casting a shadow on the second piece in the shape of the ink on the first? this could be used for verifying a blank against another, speeding up the verification time.
- Location
- USA
I wouldn't be surprised if, much like real-life calligraphy, the order of brushstrokes and the fine movements of the bristles mattered.
- Location
- Yes.
This, basically. There's a lot of random fiddly details that prevent trickery from letting us mass produce seals the easy way.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Only the comparatively "dumb" ones, I think.
(For all we know, that "skinwaste" could be dyslexic or something. Still, the Sloth DMV scene from Zootopia comes to mind....)
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Play a game of Ninja Diplomacy every night, start thinking about assessing moves using your intuition the same way you assess betting odds and moves in various gambling games.
Rihaku
The Internet
How do civilian / ninja joint ventures work? Rather than selling a Force Wall seal (thus requiring you to go through the Tower's right of first refusal), can you rent a device that includes a Force Wall seal to a carpenter or mason?
If not, could the carpenter's guild hire you for a mission and pay out a combination of cash now + a bonus calculated as a percentage of (revenue generated or costs reduced) by the ninja's efforts?
This would increase seal scarcity by a factor of 3-12x depending on the number of elements in a given seal, raising price per seal drastically. As you mentioned, Kagome would need a mechanical effect that allowed him to produce seals faster in order to justify the Goketsu keeping hundreds of explosive tags in bowls.
If Kagome is able to make a blank every 10 minutes, and Hazou every 5, while other sealmasters require 30, Hazou alone would comprise a full 20% of Leaf's seal production. But Kagome's previous feats of seal production and profligracy (he casually uses ~10+ seals every time the party sets up camp and dozens - hundreds when fighting seriously) imply that he can produce seals even faster than this.
Moreover, this would give Hidden Mist an enormous economic and armament advantage if the Kurosawa ever mobilized for seal production (bounded by the need for training and the % of Kurosawa with general aptitude sufficient to practice sealing). But if the Kurosawa bloodline granted such an enormous relative advantage for sealmaking, would they really not have dedicated themselves to the art? It's one thing to turn up one's nose at a practice that could increase clan revenues by 20%, quite another if it were 120%.
Shikamaru also used Seals extensively during the Chunin Exams.
Consider the demand for Seals:
Life-Saving Purifier: Every ninja without defense against poison gas would ideally want a few on hand.
Air / Earth Dome, 5SB: Defense scaling with the skill of the Sealmaster, not the ultimate user. Can be used by Clans to equip their heirs with emergency defense against chunin / jounin level threats. Useful for virtually any ninja that wants defense without spending chakra.
Explosive Tag, Goo Bomb, Banshee: Offense scaling with the skill of the Sealmaster and the number of seals present, ranged / elemental / aoe offense without spending chakra.
Skywalker: Goes without saying
Storage Seal: Logistical range extender, versatility extender
Banshee Slayer: Necessary to defend against Banshee for all those without specialized or highly broad defensive techniques
Bioseals: Whatever the fuck Arikada could do
Say in an ideal world every Chunin and above (~270 ninja) would receive a reserve of 8 Skywalkers with that reserve being replenished every time they return to the village. If they take 100 missions per year and use a parsimonious average of 2 Skywalkers per mission, demand for Skywalkers alone (54,000 / year) would eclipse the entire jounin-level seal production of Hidden Leaf (36,000 / year). And that's assuming 3 full jounin Sealmasters (10% of 30 sealmasters), whereas in reality jounin only constitute between 2 and 4% (30-50 of 1500) of the ninja population.
If you hold ~20% of seals in strategic reserve for wars, every Chunin+ ninja of leaf would only be able to use an average of 1.1 jounin-grade seals per mission.
In reality, it's more likely that the jounins horde most of the jounin-grade seals, since you may need 5-10+ to make a difference on an A-rank mission. Making friends with your generation's sealmasters or having one in your clan can be a matter of life and death.
There are also clans like the Hyuuga where Sealing expertise is necessary for the perpetuance of their traditions (the Caged Bird Seal). They need to make sure they stay on the cutting edge of Bioseal Tech because if anyone ever 'hacks' the recognition code for Caged Bird, their entire clan can die to a single handsign. Convenient how every Kage with legendary levels of Sealing (Jiraiya 80+, Minato 90+) has died before their time...
Hm... historically 1 hectare of land (worked by 4-5 farmers) produces 10 koku of rice per annum (2.2 koku per farmer, a surplus of 1.2 koku per farmer as 1 koku feeds 1 man for a year). If it took 5 farmers to produce 1 koku per year, that would be significantly below subsistence level. Do you mean that Hidden Leaf produces 5 koku per farmer, a surplus of 4 koku per farmer per year?
That would free up 80% of the population of Hidden Leaf for non-agricultural tasks and/or raise the GDP per capita of Hidden Leaf by 227%, a localized GDP per capita of (572 in 1990 dollars*2.27*1.955 conversion to 2019 dollars) = $2,538 in 2019 dollars. Should be fine, it's only a 12% increase to Fire Country's output as a whole, though if a large percentage of Fire Country's cultivated fields are that way (right now only 115,000 of the country's 15,600,000 hectares are under cultivation, .7%, so people have freedom to defend the most fertile areas) then the GDP per capita of Fire will be about twice as high as in my Prices post.
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Point of order, we haven't seen any indication of the Caged Bird seal existing in marked for death. While it is not strictly unwise to assume canonical facts remain true unless reason to believe otherwise exists, in this case a fairly sound argument can be made that the Caged Bird seal never made it through worldbuilding.
- Its stated effects involve rather high-level sealing (particularly the automatic deactivation of the Byakugan) that the Hyuuga would have to maintain a persistent tradition of high-level Sealmasters to uphold.
- It's biosealing, which makes the above ten times worse.
- (Meta-level) While it serves as a very poignant representation of the disparity between main branch and side branches of a clan, there are other ways to show said disparity through more mundane means.
- If the Hyuuga were in fact skilled enough to directly interface with their bloodline through biosealing, we would undoubtedly expect the Hyuuga to also have a strong tradition of biosealing apart from the Caged Bird seal, up to and including other bioseals interfacing with their bloodline.
They would become the most powerful clan in the setting if they ever took up sealing regardless if the difference is 20% or 120%.
- Location
- London
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Also, Kekkai Genkai transplantation in MfD is believed to be much, much harder than in canon, so the justification of "protection from bloodline thieves" is much less reasonable.