Remove ads

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Reader mode
eaglejarl said:
I'm not at the timeline right now, but my recollection is that Nagi Island happened on December 31 and it's now February something. IIRC, Jiraiya only gave each member of the force one set of skywalkers, and two to the Kage. That means there were no actual infused copies, nor even blanks, to send back to their villages. So, what's the sequence?

December 31: Skywalkers are handed out and explained. A non-sealmaster makes a copy of the design and is sent home to have the sealmasters replicate it. This takes anywhere up to a week.

January 3-7: The drawing arrives. The local sealmasters start working based on nothing but a sloppy drawing and the description "it makes platforms in the air and that last about X. Simultaneously, the War Department (or whatever) starts thinking about tactical doctrine...except they have no parameters. How high will it let you go? How much will it support? Is it a visible effect that glows brightly?

It took Kagome...one? two? months to research the thing. I forget the exact number. That means that the other villages have had the actual seal for a matter of weeks. And They don't necessarily have access to MEW.

Separately, in the words of Pitch Meeting, I'm gonna need you to get all the way off my back about that one, sir. :p

(Not using your powers for evil is tight!)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The way you describe it, it seems fairly likely that there might have been significant amounts of sealing failures, since the Sealmasters might well have been rushed to try and complete this swanky new seal/design pronto. It is a pretty significant game-changer, and they don't exactly have a lot to go on. They might not even know the component seals of the Skywalkers and might have had to work it out.
 
eaglejarl said:
I'm not at the timeline right now, but my recollection is that Nagi Island happened on December 31 and it's now February something. IIRC, Jiraiya only gave each member of the force one set of skywalkers, and two to the Kage. That means there were no actual infused copies, nor even blanks, to send back to their villages. So, what's the sequence?

December 31: Skywalkers are handed out and explained. A non-sealmaster makes a copy of the design and is sent home to have the sealmasters replicate it. This takes anywhere up to a week.

January 3-7: The drawing arrives. The local sealmasters start working based on nothing but a sloppy drawing and the description "it makes platforms in the air and that last about X. Simultaneously, the War Department (or whatever) starts thinking about tactical doctrine...except they have no parameters. How high will it let you go? How much will it support? Is it a visible effect that glows brightly?

It took Kagome...one? two? months to research the thing. I forget the exact number. That means that the other villages have had the actual seal for a matter of weeks. And They don't necessarily have access to MEW.

Separately, in the words of Pitch Meeting, I'm gonna need you to get all the way off my back about that one, sir. :p

(Not using your powers for evil is tight!)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Point of order: there is an in-story quote somewhere from Keiko saying that the big 5 villages at minimum would have procured infused-but-maybe-spent Skywalkers from the feet of their Kages, since nobody would dare deny the little guys who stayed out of the fight from recovering their Kage's body, nor fritter through their corpse for top-secret seals. Combine that with the odds that sealmasters better than Kagome would likely have been put to the task and I would definitely not be surprised if they cracked Skywalkers in a matter of weeks.
 
Shard said:
Have we or do we know about stacked explosion seals (SES) and their results?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Did you mean implosion seals?
Shard said:
I think it would be pretty realistic to not simulate everything exactly, and occasionally have villages just outright fuckup or luck into positive result. Things happen. Just look at modern reality to see how impossible it is to simulate anything at all whatsoever.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You said, literally in the middle of a discussion about how unrealistic the recent simulation is because everyone else should have thought this was blindingly obvious. :p
 
eaglejarl said:
Fuck it. Fine, Shikamaru and everyone else in the world is an idiot and Team Uplift are the only smart people. Or I'm stupid and trying to show that Shikamaru has limits and give y'all some credit was unrealistic. Whatever.

There. Now everyone should be happy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Er, sorry, I actually agree with you that it makes sense for orbital bombardment to not be intuitive. Just because one Keiko in a creatively deadly team can see the implications doesn't mean that Tunnel-Vision Tama will, and neither are the other bigwigs in Rock guaranteed to plumb all the depths of the technology in short order. I just wanted to help clear up the matter of how the other villages got their hands on skywalkers.
 
Actually, were there even any bodies or seals to recover? Combat between high level ninjas is extremely destructive.

There may have been literally nothing to recover, any seals shredded into utter uselessness.
 
eaglejarl said:
"For now, it's intended as a scouting mission, sir. We would locate the Summoner and identify opportunities; would it be possible to steal the Scroll? Could we perhaps buy it from them? Are they looking to pass it on—perhaps they are on bad terms with their Summon Clan and want to get out from under."

"Hm. You realize those are unlikely scenarios, yes?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Doesn't sound like he knows that the Mara Clan is dissatisfied with Grandmaster F (unless it's a lie, but Mari didn't know that she is their summoner, so she really doesn't seem to use them very often). We should probably inform him.

eaglejarl said:
"The Otters is probably the most secure lead. Five or six years ago, I sat in on a briefing in which Enma told Dad that the Turtles had raised the price of iron so much that the Otters were buying it from the Human Path by way of the Toads. That would imply they didn't have a Summoner of their own.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This gives me an idea:

The Mara clan is surrounded by The Monkeys/Pangolin/Toads:
eaglejarl said:
They're on the coast, stuck between Toad (S), Pangolin (W), and Monkey (N). Bad place to be, if you ask me.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Even if we can't actually get the scroll, maybe we can offer the Mara resources directly from us and/or our clans in exchange for them to not have summoner? Those summoning clans don't really need their summoner most of the time (Pangolin didn't have a problem for 300 years) and Leaf can also do things for them if they need something from the Human Path. We would just need to make sure that they don't double cross us.


eaglejarl said:
That means there were no actual infused copies, nor even blanks, to send back to their villages. So, what's the sequence?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

REN: *looks at it*
JIRAIYA: (Fuck you and your bloodline)
 
ContextBot said:
REN: *looks at it*
JIRAIYA: (Fuck you and your bloodline)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I lmao-d at this.

"How the hell did one of them get the complete design anyway?"

"Well, one of the people present has the Iron Nerve..."

"Did... did you just use 'Because Iron Nerve!' to give your frenemy nation superweapons?"

"faflec.response"
 
My personal opinion on other villages getting Skywalkers:

As per EJ:

eaglejarl said:
December 31: Skywalkers are handed out and explained. A non-sealmaster makes a copy of the design and is sent home to have the sealmasters replicate it. This takes anywhere up to a week.

January 3-7: The drawing arrives. The local sealmasters start working based on nothing but a sloppy drawing and the description "it makes platforms in the air that last about X time." Simultaneously, the War Department (or whatever) starts thinking about tactical doctrine...except they have no parameters. How high will it let you go? How much will it support? Is it a visible effect that glows brightly?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Noting that Skywalkers are two seals together, which may be a counterintuitive design, it would take longer due to the following factors:

1. Skywalkers are not an 'efficient' seal combination. As in, they use seals with vastly different durations.
1a. Really, it uses a barrier seal???
2. Other villages may not have the component seals that make up the Skywalker, or they may have variants which dont fit in properly.
3. It may be difficult to tell how many seals the Skywalker is made out of.
4. Translating sealing design based off drawings is problematic.
5. Incorrect interpretations are highly likely. Maybe it is a novel, Jonin level seal Leaf has been keeping in store for a long while.

And factors which speed this up:

1. Thinker Bloodlines.
2. Bloodlines such as the IN.
3. Sealing geniuses.
4. Villages highly motivated to figure out this superweapon.
5. They know it is possible.

So what I figure is, most villages focus heavily on figuring the fuck out of this new amazing seal which grants flight. They have a few false starts and possibly sealing failures. The Minor Villages, with few or no Sealmasters, might give up entirely - Sealmasters are too valuable and too rare. The Major Villages loose a few (pending rolls) Sealmasters before reaching a correct design (note: not the correct design - Unless there is literally only 1 correct configuration). In all likelyhood, they need to first figure out that Skywalkers are two different seals. If they succeed, they can then try to recreate theSkywalker, which is a task which they are likely to eventually succeed at.

If they don't see past the counterintuitive and inefficient design on the Skywalker, Sealmasters pop with Sealing failures, as they try to create a seal which literally does not exist or function. Sealing be dangerous business.
 
Last edited:
Even if the other villages got skywalkers as soon as the battle, it's very plausible that the tactical and strategic implications of them haven't sunk in yet. That very thing happened in real life, remember? At the start of WW1, everyone was doing massed charges (including cavalry) because they didn't realize that machine guns made massed charges and cavalry ineffective. At the start of WW2, France relied on trench warfare, because even though they had better tanks than the Germans it hadn't sunk in that massed tanks could be used like massed cavalry charges before the machine gun.

In fact, it's even worse than that. All the countries in WW1 and WW2 had many more people thinking about this kind of thing than the EN has. The changes in effective tactics and strategy still weren't common knowledge for years after the innovations were introduced. The first tanks were fielded in 1916, while WW2 started in 1939. Furthermore, at least for tanks there was the historical precedent of heavy cavalry to look back on, while there is basically no precedent for aerial or orbital bombardment in the EN.

It is very plausible that no one has fully thought through the implications of skywalkers yet. Based on real life history, even if we show them some of the implications on the field of battle they still might not apply those tactics themselves for a while.
 
Last edited:
Next plan should make sure Kagome's team goes out with a pile of tunneler's friends, a telescope (if possible), and a plumb Bob.

Also I really do think that summoning scrolls are a huge red herring. We've already got two in clan, and Hazou doesn't need more combat power anymore.

We're in a stable situation, are unlikely to be sent into danger, and already need better socials and research/sealing skills. A summoning scroll would take up a pile of XP that could better be used elsewhere.

The only counterpoint I can think of is that we give the scroll to Akane, who can spend the XP without cutting into our other goals, and would look very cute with the otters or have a fighting style that complements the kangaroo. But even then there's a solid comparative advantage argument against it.

Edit: If the kangaroo culture is vaguely Australian they'd be such a good fit for Akane. Not to mention that sort of culture basically only needs a dangerous environment and a strong preference for individualism over collectivism. If cooperation is needed for survival and independence is deeply important, getting good at ad-hoc cooperation and decentralized organization is a good tactic.

Also, recent world events imply that the kangaroo are likely to be primarily fire nature so that works out too.
 
Last edited:
Jello_Raptor said:
Next plan should make sure Kagome's team goes out with a pile of tunneler's friends, a telescope (if possible), and a plumb Bob.

Also I really do think that summoning scrolls are a huge red herring. We've already got two in clan, and Hazou doesn't need more combat power anymore.

We're in a stable situation, are unlikely to be sent into danger, and already need better socials and research/sealing skills. A summoning scroll would take up a pile of XP that could better be used elsewhere.

The only counterpoint I can think of is that we give the scroll to Akane, who can spend the XP without cutting into our other goals, and would look very cute with the otters or have a fighting style that complements the kangaroo. But even then there's a solid comparative advantage argument against it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I thought the idea was to turn one in for fame and the Dog Scroll, which we give to Kagome because he likes dogs.
 
So, this would be a good time for the Plan Cache, but unfortunately I haven't kept up with it in the last week or two and need some time to dig into overhauling it again. So instead, I'll drop a protoplan containing my personal suggestions on what to do.

Protoplan: Flight and Family
  • Make sure to prioritize sorting through Jiraiya's notes in what free time you have.
  • Adoption matters
    • Spend our last slot on adopting Haru, since he chose first.
    • If Noda or Aya choose to join
    • Propose that if Yuno and Noburi do decide to get married, they can get married according to Isan tradition as soon as they want and delay getting married according to Leaf tradition until there are slots open.
  • Skysliders
    • Regularly check in on the craftsmen and get progress reports.
    • Contribute any ideas or inspiration you've had recently.
    • Test their prototypes (can we use skywalkers to make testing safer?)
    • Maybe give an inspiring speech to raise morale.
  • Quarantine
    • Discuss with the clan our quarantine. The Collapse interrupted any follow-up ideas after we agreed to it.
    • Are there any tests or whatnot you'd like to do? We don't want to say 'what do you want to see from us?' because that's what an Out-possessed Hazou would say, but if there's something you can think of that might indicate whether or not we're possessed apart from waiting and seeing, we'd like to try it.

Notes:
  • I know we kinda sorta don't want Aya anymore, but it wouldn't make sense for Hazou to exclude her from consideration right now. When Noda gives whatever her answer is and Aya politely refuses to have anything to do with us ever again we can put her out of our head but right now we'll have to treat her like she's a promising candidate.
  • If the Quarantine talk is after Kagome leaves on mission, that's inconvenient since he'd be the most likely to know what to do, but we can at least put the rest of the clan in a 'test Hazou' view which they might propagate to Kagome once he gets back.
 
Jello_Raptor said:
Also I really do think that summoning scrolls are a huge red herring. We've already got two in clan, and Hazou doesn't need more combat power anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm not really in it for the combat power -- though its arguably the cheapest way to get a massive power increase if you can swing it -- I'm in it for a couple other things.

First and foremost... I'm realllll fuckin' tired of having to play NPC telephone when it comes to saucing out worldbuilding info. Keiko doesn't tell us jack, and while Noburi would probably be better, he's still not Hazou- the primary viewpoint character whose preferences often align with ours. There's only so much "Double check this because I said so for these reasons" that you can give Noburi. I'd like to be able to talk to the Boss Summons (or multiple) on our terms without having a go-between. I'm sure we can learn a lot.

Second: I'm convinced now that we're going to want to eventually pick up the Summoning stunt regardless of if we get our hands on another scroll or not. Having access to a technique explicitly designed to reach in-between dimensions is probably going to be necessary for any necromancy related stuff. It also apparently includes a crash course on extraplanar lore and myths, so that might be fun to play with too.

Third: Its a useful avenue to contact and meet people we might want to meet clandestinely. I don't think Asuma would approve us meeting with Itachi or Kisame just to sit down and have some tea while conspiring to overthrow the shinobi world or something.

Bonus: Mysteries of the 7th Path MegaArc. In which we run around doing stuff to uncover interesting information that rekindles some of that'ol MfD feeling.
 
To be fair, all summoning clans might reject us because we stink of OUT and unlike Keiko it's not a natural part of our Bloodline.

That would be kind of funny. But there are five other paths to explore anyway.
 
eaglejarl said:
December 31: Skywalkers are handed out and explained. A non-sealmaster makes a copy of the design and is sent home to have the sealmasters replicate it. This takes anywhere up to a week.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ren is a Kurosawa and a social specialist, the latter meaning she probably has high Calligraphy to write really pretty letters and/or forge other people's handwriting. She wouldn't give her sealmasters "a sloppy drawing", it'd be a perfect replica, so Mist will finish reverse-engineering Skywalkers faster than everyone else. Unless I'm misunderstanding how the Iron Nerve works?
Inferno Vulpix said:
If the Quarantine talk is after Kagome leaves on mission, that's inconvenient since he'd be the most likely to know what to do, but we can at least put the rest of the clan in a 'test Hazou' view which they might propagate to Kagome once he gets back.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm not sure we should do the quarantine talk at all, if we're planning to buy PotO in ~5 days. It's a bad idea to provoke the team into coming up with a definition of how Hazou looks like in a non-possessed state when Hazou's state is about to undergo a massive change.

Say we have the quarantine talk now. The team comes up with some conditions for releasing us, such as "Hazou receives no further visions for N days", and some tests, which they run. Then we buy PotO, everyone sees that we're now clearly channeling Out 24/7, and that either fails the established conditions of letting us out of the quarantine, or leads to us failing one of the tests. Worst-case scenario is, the team releases us from the quarantine sometime during this week, satisfied that nothing weird has happened for a while, and then in short order we buy PotO, it looks like the eldritch entity possessing Hazou was just waiting for them to lower their guard, and Kagome splats us Keiko stabs us whichever of {Kagome, Keiko, Ami} sees us first kills us.

If we don't have a quarantine talk, on the other hand, the definition of "non-possessed Hazou" remains vague, and PotO!Hazou could well satisfy it in some as yet unforeseen way.
 
Last edited:
Noumero said:
the definition of "non-possessed Hazou" remains vague, and PotO!Hazou could well satisfy it in some as yet unforeseen way.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
NOBURI: Hazou why are you talking like that?

HAZOU: I made peace with this eldritch vision mumbo jumbo after staring at the painful futility of creation itself and deciding that was a load of bull. Its quite nice actually.

NOBURI: No, I mean with the multiple voices overlayed on top of each other. It's only sometimes, but still. It's really freaking out Kagome, he's reaching for the explosives right now.

KAGOME: Don't move, formerly-Hazou.

HAZOU: Oh. Uh... it's actually an Iron Nerve thing? I'm trying to rework some of my voice-muscles to see how flexible that aspect of the bloodline is when it comes to saying things in different tones. It's coming along well but y'know how as teenage dudes our voices sometimes get all squeaky and crappy for no reason for a split second? I think its something like that, which sort of sucks. I'm trying to see if it does it every time I try to use it.

KAGOME: So it's an Iron Nerve thing?

HAZOU: Absolutely.

NOBURI: Cool.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top