What we can do is make the 'price' of supporting Neji be the Hyuuga partnering with the Goketsu on some lucrative joint venture, or some similar endeavor, which not only provides the veneer of give and take but compounds generosity with generosity. If memory serves the Hyuuga are low on liquid money after the Collapse but still filthy rich in terms of investments, so the kind of joint venture Hinata would appreciate most is one that would generate immediate value rather than long-term payouts.

They have investments, right? Meaning they have restaurants, or at least they have pull with restaurants. And we're about to get a bunch of weird, foreign herbs and spices, right? Between Mist ingredients/recipes and citrus fruits, we should be able to sell to both the Akimichi Clan (through Ino/Shika) and the Hyuuga (through Neji).
 
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I feel I would mainly want to 'purchase' goodwill. Improve Hinata's opinion in specific and the Hyuuga's opinion in general about us so that even while they oppose us politically they're more likely to treat us as genuine Leaf-nin instead of, well, how Hiashi saw us. Better relations also opens the door more for discussions with Hinata that might sway the Hyuga to a stance somewhat more in line with Uplift.

I think that's a good idea in general but this is an incredibly valuable strategic resource. We can structure a deal to be fair to to them and buy things we want at the same time. We can also just immediately get their support on projects instead of buying good will to then sell something else in the future to buy there support
 
They have investments, right? Meaning they have restaurants, or at least they have pull with restaurants. And we're about to get a bunch of weird, foreign herbs and spices, right? Between Mist ingredients/recipes and citrus fruits, we should be able to sell to both the Akimichi Clan (through Ino/Shika) and the Hyuuga (through Neji).

We haven't sourced citrus fruits...yet.
 
We haven't sourced citrus fruits...yet.

Don't do that... don't give me hope.

We should probably get around to sending some merchants/missions to go make trade deals with them and start bringing in fruit. That's definitely something else that could be lucrative.

Yup, especially if we turn around and trade it to the Hyuuga or the Akimichi. Hell, we could probably do some light trading with Mist and get buckets of money --since sealing scrolls keep things in stasis, we wouldn't have to worry about spoilage.

Plane like that would almost certainly generate negative xp under the new system

I mean, we could probably offscreen it. Send Noburi, Haru, and Akane on a mission to do just that --with a list of parameters that we're allowing Noburi to negotiate in... and maybe some extra room for Noburi to act. Noburi got the date with that one girl, and Akane "proved her faith" to the locals, so that should open some doors. Clan Heads are allowed to send their clanned ninja on missions, right?
 
I mean, we could probably offscreen it. Send Noburi, Haru, and Akane on a mission to do just that --with a list of parameters that we're allowing Noburi to negotiate in... and maybe some extra room for Noburi to act. Noburi got the date with that one girl, and Akane "proved her faith" to the locals, so that should open some doors. Clan Heads are allowed to send their clanned ninja on missions, right?
I think it would be a good idea to send people who aren't direct Gōketsu members, on the off chance that Itachi is still hanging around there and is still angry.
 
A citrus fruit plan is best bundled with a 'acquire trade' for Leaf plan. It could involve quite a bit of interesting negotiations with the Merchant Council, for example. That way, it would be both more likely to be beneficial and encompass a greater deal of writing space.

It's probable that we have to guard the fruit scouts, so if all else fails..
 
Wouldn't we need at least one Goketsu member to negotiate on behalf of the whole?
I was thinking that we could send some of the 'branch family' members (the clanless nin living on the estate). They aren't officially Gōketsu, but could probably be given permission to negotiate on our behalf.

Speaking of which, we should eventually ask whether Leaf has an ambassador in Mist yet, and whether Shikamaru wants to nominate someone for the job. Ino-Shika-Cho can probably make the best use of an agent in Mist, but if for whatever reason they don't want it the Gōketsu could benefit tremendously from nominating a 'branch member' who has permission to negotiate trade deals on our behalf.

A Gōketsu branch ambassador could basically spend all their time rubbing elbows with Mist merchants, or even clans if their social skills are high enough. We got pretty poor results when we tried to establish a merchant network in Mist, but that was because we spent only a day or two trying. An ambassador could spend enough time to establish a huge spy network, as well as tons of trade deals that would economically tie Leaf and Mist together much more thoroughly than they are right now.

The question is who to send. I'm unaware of any social specs living on the estate (other than Mari), but it's possible that there's one or two. Also, Sakura seemed like she had fairly high socials and would probably blossom into quite a good social spec with a bit of training from Mari. I think it would be a good idea to see if she would be interested in becoming an ambassador in exchange for a certain amount of training and jutsu from Mari.
 
I mean, we could probably offscreen it. Send Noburi, Haru, and Akane on a mission to do just that --with a list of parameters that we're allowing Noburi to negotiate in... and maybe some extra room for Noburi to act. Noburi got the date with that one girl, and Akane "proved her faith" to the locals, so that should open some doors. Clan Heads are allowed to send their clanned ninja on missions, right?
Can I inquire why you are so on board the citrus train? It seems to me that it could just be any random trade good that you want to sell at a profit. There's not a huge amount of ROI because it's strictly based on arbitrage. It in no way exploits anything we are good at. Like we can produce huge amounts of salt and ice thanks to Elemental Mastery. We can clear land and sell tons of chakra beast thanks to summons and seals. Heck we can have Hazo become a seal factory thanks to Shadow Clone. With citrus we would just be negotiating deal after deal with farmers. Which would be not the most fun for me. Is there something I'm missing that makes this exceptionally valuable?
 
Infodump: "Things in Jiraiya’s Notes" and Economics
More stuff that's been sitting in QM QUINOA for months, already signed off:

Things in Jiraiya's Notes

This is a partial list of what Kagome has discovered in Jiraiya's notes.

  • Seals
    • Instant Darkness Dome: Blanks out all light in a certain radius
    • Electrocution Seal: sends a surge of raiton energy (which works exactly like electricity except in cases where that would make the QMs lives difficult, at which point it works differently) into whatever they are attached to for some period of time. Touching the object is harmful but not lethal.
    • Substitution Seals: Two-element seal. Swap the positions and velocities of the objects the seal elements are attached to, so long as those objects are close enough, have LOS to one another, are below mass and volume limits, and are similar enough in mass.
  • Jutsu. These went to Naruto and are no longer available to you.
    • Earth Element: Swamp of the Underworld jutsu. Create a massive area of chakra-infused sticky mud / quicksand for enemies to fall into.
    • Needle Jizō jutsu. Use your hair for protection or to throw needles. Requires a lot of natural hair
  • Detailed instructions on how to learn each of the Elemental chakra natures
  • Recipes
  • Personal information on various people that he wants to be on the good side of -- their food preferences, birthdays, etc
  • Philosophy and musings about the Will of Fire, the future of the EN, etc
  • Self-flagellation
  • Notes for Icha Icha -- plot ideas, character sketches, etc
    • Details of Jiraiya's various less-classified adventures with the name changed to Jun, his protagonist
  • Political/espionage stuff
    • Blackmail on various Leaf people (ninja and non ninja)
    • Blackmail on various non-Leaf people (ninja and non ninja)
    • Lists of agents across the EN
  • His Lightning Lash jutsu from Chapter 223. Creates a weapon, much like Noburi's Water Whip, but more flexible:
    • Will cut through things or wrap around them as you choose (e.g. it cut Hana's sword but wrapped around her neck)
    • Will send non-lethal shocks to a person it's wrapped around.
  • Lots and lots of seals
    • Earth Pillar Seal: when activated, extrudes a 50cm thick pillar of chakra construct stone at a respectable speed.
    • City of Pillars. Causes 1d6 dozen stone pillars of various randomly-chosen heights (5m to 30m) and diameters (10cm to 500 cm) to erupt out of the ground in a large area. For some reason, they all have either the kanji for 'Dream' or 'Sunshine' on them.
    • Twin Repulsion Seals: When both are active, they repel each other when they get too close.
    • Naruto's bijū seal. Not complete information but it's a good start.

Everything in the "Political/espionage stuff" section went to Asuma and is no longer available to you. Basically, Mari said "Given our precarious position after you nearly got executed, we are not going to fuck around. Give him these things, don't keep copies, and don't try to recreate them. Do not give him any excuse to be angry with us until we've had time to win back some points."

"player QUINOA" said:
Other than the Pangolins, what are our other revenue streams, and how much do they make?
  1. Your monthly tax disbursement.
  2. Selling tags to the Tower/general population. See the "Partial Sealing License" Informational threadmark for details.
  3. The Gōketsu receive a theoretical 50% of all sales of skywalkers to the Tower. (see below) This is rolled into your tax disbursements, meaning that you get 10% in cash as the non-conditional payment and the remainder goes into your conditional-payments fund that you get in the form of mission bonuses, tax refunds, and equipment draw. Because of the strategic importance of the seals, the Tower is bearing the costs of these payments instead of the seller as would be normal. The intent is to maintain the incentive structure for people to sell them without bankrupting the Tower.
  4. You are gearing up for salt production but there is no actual revenue from that yet.

+1 XP if someone figures out how many skywalkers are being made per month.


Economics
The following questions are from the wiki and player-suggested answers Economic Questions

Q: Salt production rates, sale price, and other major factors in the enterprise.

A: Depends on how many salterns you have in place. Relevant facts:
  1. Normal price for salt is 650 ryō per kilogram. It varies, but that's a reasonable average under current market conditions.
  2. Salt production rate is roughly 2kg/day per 10'x10' saltern as per @Inferno_Vulpix's post.
  3. There will be a 15% fee paid to the distributor per sale.
  4. There will be a 50% bribe processing fee paid to the Merchant Council per sale, in order to keep them from hassling you your sales permits in good order. This will obviously be on the gross, not the net of fees.
  5. Total income for the day is therefore: 2 kg/saltern/day * 650 R/kg = 1300 R/saltern/day - (1300R * 0.15) - (1300R * 0.5) = 455 R/saltern/day
  6. These numbers are based off natural evaporation and assume optimal conditions; actual income will depend on evaporation conditions (weather, animal attack on salterns, etc). If Akane gets involved then the cost of her time must be factored in.
 
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    • Substitution Seals: Two-element seal. Swap the positions and velocities of the objects the seal elements are attached to, so long as those objects are close enough, have LOS to one another, are below mass and volume limits, and are similar enough in mass.

How does activation work for this seal?

Like, do they have to be triggered in proximity to each other in advance, and then the second time that one of them is triggered they switch? Or are they linked and "primed" at the time of infusion? Or something else?
 
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I am surprised that we sold MEW to the Wakihisa. Hazo realizes the incredible economic power of MEW - Or is it another oblique point in favor of Uplift?
 
Can I inquire why you are so on board the citrus train? It seems to me that it could just be any random trade good that you want to sell at a profit. There's not a huge amount of ROI because it's strictly based on arbitrage. It in no way exploits anything we are good at. Like we can produce huge amounts of salt and ice thanks to Elemental Mastery. We can clear land and sell tons of chakra beast thanks to summons and seals. Heck we can have Hazo become a seal factory thanks to Shadow Clone. With citrus we would just be negotiating deal after deal with farmers. Which would be not the most fun for me. Is there something I'm missing that makes this exceptionally valuable?
For me, because it's something that Hazō doesn't have to do himself. He can just pay for a few C rank missions to go down there and negotiate, then authorize the resulting trade deals. It can be completely off screened, but at the same time can give us contacts in a place that isn't Leaf or Mist, can make the Akimichi more friendly to Gōketsu and more interested in trade with people outside Leaf, and can also bring in a bit of revenue.

Also, I just really like the idea of citrus fruits because fruit is tasty and healthy, and if I was a citizen of Leaf I'd be super interested in a new luxury food like that.
 
Instant Darkness Dome: Blanks out all light in a certain radius
Sell to Nara/Hyūga?

Electrocution Seal: sends a surge of raiton energy (which works exactly like electricity except in cases where that would make the QMs lives difficult, at which point it works differently) into whatever they are attached to for some period of time. Touching the object is harmful but not lethal.
Time to mess around like Ben Franklin. Running real electricity through someone's brain can erase the last ~1 week of memories. Probably not a bad idea to find out whether that's something that would/would not make the QMs' lives difficult.
Defibrillation is also something that real electricity can do, and would get us a step closer to necromancy if it works

Detailed instructions on how to learn each of the Elemental chakra natures
Probably a good thing to turn in for the contest, if we haven't already.

Sell to Akimichi? Use during special gatherings when we're trying to woo clan heads?
 
How does activation work for this seal? Like, do they have to be triggered in proximity to each other in advance, and then the second time that one of them is triggered they switch? Or are they linked and "primed" at the time of infusion? Or something else?
The seal comes in two parts that are intrinsically paired at infusion, the same way a Five Seal Barrier comes in five parts. You put each of the parts on a discrete object. If they are ever both active at the same time, the items swap. The individual components inactivate after a couple of minutes.
 
PSA: +1 XP bounty for thread spelunking help on timeline
PSA: +5 XP bounty for thread spelunking help on etc


@Kiba in Discord asked the very good question "how much more decoding does Kagome have?" I have no idea. If someone wanted to help figure this out, it would be appreciated. Two bounties on offer, they are:

+1: How long has Kagome been working on this?
+5: What's a reasonable estimate for his speed and how much longer remains?

I'm not sure all the details are available to figure out the second bounty, but I'm happy to pro-rate based on how close you can get. And also provide nigh-boundless gratitude and thanks.
 
+1: How long has Kagome been working on this?

He started on January 3rd
Speaking of writing things..." Hazō leaned down and pulled a sheaf of storage seals out of the carryall the handle of which was looped over his chair. "Kagome-sensei, these are Jiraiya's sealing notes, plus all the blanks that he left us. I'd like you to look through them and pick out half a dozen seals that you think are the most urgent research targets. Try for a balance of combat power, defensive use, and potential economic value." Hazō had carefully gone through and removed the blanks and notes on Kagome-sensei's seals that he had thoughtlessly given to their former Clan Head. There should now be no trace of his blunder.
 
PSA: +1 XP bounty for thread spelunking help on timeline
PSA: +5 XP bounty for thread spelunking help on etc


@Kiba in Discord asked the very good question "how much more decoding does Kagome have?" I have no idea. If someone wanted to help figure this out, it would be appreciated. Two bounties on offer, they are:

+1: How long has Kagome been working on this?
+5: What's a reasonable estimate for his speed and how much longer remains?

I'm not sure all the details are available to figure out the second bounty, but I'm happy to pro-rate based on how close you can get. And also provide nigh-boundless gratitude and thanks.

You could model it like we do seal research, using Kagomes's Cracking vs a TN based on Jiraiyas Cracking skill.

Such as:
  • dozens of "easy" ciphers at around a TN of half Jiraiya's Cracking skill
    • Story notes, recipes, dossiers on contacts
  • a half dozen or so "medium" ciphers at TN 3/4 Jiraiya's Cracking skill
    • most sealing notes, dossiers/psych files on allies, enemies,
  • One "state secret" cipher at TN Jiraiya's Cracking skill
    • extra important sealing and jutsu notes (skywalkers, edo tensei, SC details)
  • And a number of unique "state secret" ciphers at Jiraiya's Cracking + 2AB for specific, ultra secret things.
    • (The sages true identity, that Danzo ordered the massacre and Sarutobi executed him for it, ect.)
This lets us disregard pesky questions about exactly how cryptography works in fantasy feudal japan, and simply focus on who is better at fantasy feudal cryptography.
 
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PSA: +1 XP bounty for thread spelunking help on timeline
PSA: +5 XP bounty for thread spelunking help on etc


@Kiba in Discord asked the very good question "how much more decoding does Kagome have?" I have no idea. If someone wanted to help figure this out, it would be appreciated. Two bounties on offer, they are:

+1: How long has Kagome been working on this?
+5: What's a reasonable estimate for his speed and how much longer remains?

I'm not sure all the details are available to figure out the second bounty, but I'm happy to pro-rate based on how close you can get. And also provide nigh-boundless gratitude and thanks.
Kagome started working on decoding in chapter 265:
"They're coded," Hazō said diffidently. "The code keys are probably in one of them, but I don't know which. I guess Jiraiya wasn't willing to take a chance on writing it down in his letter to me."

Kagome-sensei did not respond; he had already pulled out paper and brush and was busily working on decoding the first page of notes, completely oblivious to the world around him.
Which happened January 2-3 (as per timeline doc). However, it wasn't until after the Collapse that Kagome shifted to full-time decoding.

My understanding of the flow of events is that we quickly realized the value of decoding spy network notes, but didn't get the 'give all the spy network notes to us ASAP' order until later. I see discussion of decoding the spy network starting to show up around Chapter 308, which took place February 21-23, and the point where decoding switched fully into high gear would most likely be around Chapter 318:
"The Tower and the Academy both got stomped in the Collapse, right? So all the intelligence reports that were stored there are gone. That probably includes a lot of the details of who their spies were, how to control them, that kind of stuff. That means that what we have might be the only copy in existence. If I were Asuma, I'd be pretty grumpy with anyone who hadn't turned in a major strategic advantage like that.
Which took place on February 28. It was April 9-11 as of Chapter 343, 5 chapters ago, so in total we have the following progression:
  • January 2-3, Kagome starts decoding at hobby-speed.
  • February 21-23, 50 days later, Kagome may or may not speed up some.
  • February 28, 7 days later, Kagome starts decoding at full speed.
  • April 9-11, 40 days later plus change, is where we are now.
 
I think we should view the legal theory (with a few secretaries and law civilians/ninja) of whether Jiraiya granted us the political espionage stuff. And ask Mari whether we could convince people Jiraiya granted us that stuff. Then we could either keep copies, or push for those to count as contest submissions in addition to the spy network notes we've granted.

edit: We should also check what ninja ethics is regarding making copies of things we don't own. If ninja don't mind it we could make copies of Naruto's jutsu and the political stuff even if we don't own them.
 
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