- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I am down for this. Every Sunday is Puppy Pile Day (for the Goketsu), also known as Human Anthropology Day (for the puppies).
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
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If you embody Uplift ideas then Hazo shows up on your birthday and there's a dozen puppies all of a sudden.
Or maybe we have Mari TH some therapy jutsu and combine it with the healing power of PUPPIES.
- Location
- Yes.
Anti-uplift groups start courting the Inuzuka Clan in an effort to counteract this strange phenomenon.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Plot twist: it was all an Ami plot to raise the military power of Leaf (teaches the Inuzuka dogs and the Dogs restraint (i.e. don't accidentally disembowel the fragile non-chakra boosting children) while also raising the overall morale of Leaf.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It varies by type.
A pride of lions.
A glaring of [house]cats.
An ambush of tigers.
A coalition of cheetahs.
A prowl of jaguars.
...
- Pronouns
- He/Him
broken link
- Location
- Yes.
And the Bears are stuck in the middle, too...it's a CatBearDog war.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Works for me. It's a sparkly-eyed "huzzah!"
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
I'm just waiting for a 20 story tall cat boss or a palm sized cat elder to come fuck us up. Travelling through without permission and protecting ourselves when necessary is one thing, but setting a large chunk of their territory on fire with banshees mixed in is another thing entirely. If we're going plus ultra now, they might also ramp up in response.
And while our strategy is good, it's foolish to ever assume in this world that makes us invincible.
And while our strategy is good, it's foolish to ever assume in this world that makes us invincible.
Getting an error and a lot of asian script on my end, could be some sort of regional thing.
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- Location
- USA
This is a really interesting description. For such a simple and easily learned technique, it has a surprisingly complex effect.
Also interesting to see how Earth Clones can be "programmed". If this level of language-understanding is easy to do with chakra, perhaps sealtech computers are not as far as we thought. Separately, I'm surprised Hazou went for this part of the plan. In retrospect, it was surprisingly viable -- since the Lions presumably only wanted the lynxes to eat carcasses in their territory, a peace offering might actually have gone over decently if they just got done laughing at the lynxes.
Do the dogs know cheap, non-elemental jutsu for anything we would do with our hands? Or is it one "general telekinesis" type jutsu? If the latter, we should definitely try to grab it or something like it.
As they will soon find out, our sonic attack will too. I assume they're not talking about liquid-lungs and more of a physical shockwave. Given how sound spreads, this means that the Lions do better than most casters by having some sort of warding against Energy: Sonic (or even physical damage? It would make sense why they're considered fearsome warriors if they have a powerful armor technique).
Ah, yes. I remember an old "how to play RPGs" advice thread which (I think, but it's been a long time. Correct me if I'm wrong) talked about a Star Wars RPG where the players were sneaking onto an Imperial starship. One of them wanted to confront their nemesis, a Sith-in-training, another wanted to track down the bounty hunter responsible for the death of their friend. The last wanted to explode the ship's engines and kill all their enemies aboard in one fell swoop. None of the players could articulate why it wouldn't work, or why it wouldn't achieve their goals too. The GM agreed that it would work. I imagine the players said something like "Hm... That is actually a major bummer, but you're the engineer and you make valid points." It worked, the Imperial starship blew up, and everyone achieved their goals and was sad nonetheless, because the RPG is not just about achieving your goals, but how you do it.
Anyway, that's more of a concern for more narrative games. Here, Hazou is firmly in the right to be a killjoy.
It's unclear to me if Canabisu commands respect through some personal reputation, or if the Dogs very easily follow pack hierarchy. For being a diplomat, he doesn't seem all that charismatic to me.
How heavy is Canabisu? Could he be carried?
Either Hazou had +5 from the tags/invokes and rolled +0, or +4 from the invokes and rolled +3. It's good to see that we can outpace the young adult lions, whose Alertness/Athletics/Taijutsu stat is probably in the 40-50 band. Still, Athletics and Alertness show why they're core stats in everyone's build. Overall, the roll was a little too close for comfort, but Hazou had no spare FP to spend.
We ought to grab some stealth technique from the Dogs. Or maybe buddy up with Cannai more and try to learn his quasi-teleportation ability.
Well, that's ominious. Given that each young lion probably outdid Hazou in terms of stats (and he only won because he cheated), I would guess that their adults are terrifying.
Ah yes, the subtle hint that we could have used another approach.
More non-sapients, I assume, since this isn't capitalized. I wonder how the wild beasts on the 7P shape up compared to chakra beasts.
Mmm, subtlety. To be fair, we didn't have a lot of evidence to go off of, and what we had suggested that they would be awful. On the other hand, we really shouldn't have expected stealth to work given our team size. I suppose I was expecting the Cat tribes to be pretty spread out, so we would likely not run into anyone at all.
The action economy on this just barely works out -- two Supplemental seal uses, one Standard jutsu. We really need to get seal-activating seals so we can link as many seals as we want to a single Supplemental.
Hm, injury. Hopefully not as big a deal now that we've started a fire -- we need to limit our movement speed to however fast the flame wall spreads. This should make it doable for Canaut and Canabisu both.
CANNAI: "If this is how your entire clan thinks, I am beginning to understand what pushed the Pangolins to continent-wide warfare..."
After the lynxes died, I don't think diplomacy had much of a chance unless we stumbled upon their sworn enemies by chance. At this point, overwhelming firepower is the way to go.
I'm glad
Did Hazou earn FP via refresh, for good plans, or for winning the conflict?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Good point, he should have gotten one for winning the conflict. Added.I'm glad
Keep in mind that the section you're referencing is written from the lions' point of view, not from mine.
- Location
- Europe
There is also a difference between sneaking through someones territory, getting assulated without any further questioning and then starting to burn it down.
Many players didn't think diplomacy was an option, regardless of reasons, maybe you should just vote? You can start an apocalypse easier that way.
Diplomacy still might have been easier than burning their place down. We did just start to burn stuff down, we might just have pissed of the clan instead of a single Pride.
Also, the original part of the plan was: Burn down stuff, if that doesn't work drop meat and run away.
Does that sound more reasonable to you?
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- Location
- USA
Yeah, I was just being snarky.
Chapter 415, Part 2: Axing the Wrong Questions
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It should have been the day Noburi had been waiting for. Finally, finally he was in charge of something important (and even if he had to share that authority with Keiko, they all knew how that would work in practice). It wasn't that Hazō was a bad clan head, all things considered. Sure, half his decisions didn't make sense and the other half did only in that signature batshit crazy Hazō way, but with the world suddenly turned upside down and Jiraiya no longer there to save the day, Hazō's ambition and drive were what had saved them from being booted out of the big leagues. Noburi could have preserved the clan, but he probably couldn't have turned it into the topsy-turvy powerhouse it had become over the course of a single year.
But for all that, there was only so long a man could spend standing in his siblings' shadows. Hazō had rulership and fingers in a dozen pies. Keiko had subordinates, minions, allies, and worshippers. Akane had being Akane. Haru… there was nothing satisfying about being superior to Haru. And, of course, all of them were gods in the making while his unique selling point, his chakra reserves, was about to be made obsolete. So when the Hokage decided that there was one thing Noburi could do better than any of them, it was like a parched man being given pure spring water.
And yet, now that he was here in Isan, taking centre stage, all he was feeling was bitter. He was a leader, not a show-off, and a leader knew when to use his power to delegate. He'd delegated this moment of triumph to Yuno, who'd left a pariah and come back wearing a mantle of power and bearing foreign wisdom beyond anything the Isanese had ever known.
The Isanese didn't care.
They ignored the cursed child, who'd had the gall to return right when they finally thought they were rid of her. Worse, she'd come with foreigners at her back, and at a time when Isan was celebrating the things that made it unique and special. They had a much better target ready for their attention—the dubious and probably treacherous foreigner who was nevertheless a summoner, a medic-nin, and possessor of a natural charm that Yuno's often-disturbing earnestness couldn't hope to compete with.
Noburi had the attention of girls, with Yuno's limited permission, and he couldn't even enjoy it.
"They have a 'hospital'," Yuno tried, "a place as big as a clan estate, but every ninja in it is a master of medical ninjutsu. If you get hurt or sick, you can go there and they will heal you the same day. The woman in charge is a living legend, an asu—"
"Say," said the sexiest and most obnoxious of the girls, "do you think you could show us some medical ninjutsu, Master Toad Summoner? I scraped my knee during practice just this morning." She pointedly rolled up a trouser leg.
Noburi sensed a spike of killing intent from Yuno; not that he needed a reminder of the obvious trap. Of course a married man wouldn't lay hands on a woman's knee in front of his wife. That would be a vile insult to Yuno and/or proof that he was an ignorant foreigner with no respect for Isan's public mores. He'd already had half a dozen such tests (that he'd noticed), leaving him to wonder just how much of his audience was genuinely curious and how much was here on missions from powers unknown.
"It's against the medic-nin code to use chakra on minor injuries when it might be needed at any moment for something more serious," Noburi said smoothly. "After all, imagine if your next training accident involved an axe and it turned out I didn't have the chakra to save you before you bled out."
Next to him, Yuno gave a happy smile.
"Excuse me," the girl said. "I've just remembered I need to gather fruit for tonight's ceremony."
"Why don't we go together?" Yuno asked innocently. "You wouldn't want to be alone in the forest when a predator turned up."
"I'llbefinethankyoufortheoffergoodbye!"
"As I was saying," Yuno said, "the woman in charge of the hospital is one of the legendary Leaf Three, and she makes sure they heal everyone. It's said that when one of their healers refused to treat a man he hated, she took a speculum and…"
-o-
After a reasonably productive first day, you have received an invitation to a banquet at the High Priest's home at the Azai estate, to take place tomorrow evening. Or rather, the Pangolin Summoner has received an invitation. You do not know who else is coming, and Mari is positive that this will be a test or series of tests, with the High Priest judging Leaf's resourcefulness and perhaps looking for an excuse to kick you out without bloodshed (or, indeed, looking for an excuse for bloodshed).
What do you do?
- Location
- Yes.
Kagome.response
Bring along the entire honor guard bearing gifts of the finest in pangolin cuisine. The High Priest wouldn't want to insult anybody by refusing to finish every last bite, would they?
Ideas brewing in my head:
Take a hopeful stance. Highlight that the world almost ended without Isan's participation, and that the heroes of the world united to fight together as once against this great threat. You noticed that Isan is weary about meeting outsiders for the first time. That is a wrong attitude to take. They should be curious about the world, looking to understand and be understood. Caution is a virtue, but too much fear means that Isan will have their fate decided for them.
Take a hopeful stance. Highlight that the world almost ended without Isan's participation, and that the heroes of the world united to fight together as once against this great threat. You noticed that Isan is weary about meeting outsiders for the first time. That is a wrong attitude to take. They should be curious about the world, looking to understand and be understood. Caution is a virtue, but too much fear means that Isan will have their fate decided for them.
- Location
- Liverpool
It's Tuesday afternoon (~author standard Time), we should probably start making plans. I say this as someone who most definitely does not have time to make a plan, I'm aware.
For Isan, I'd say attend the meeting with Keiko and Mari if we can't get more, and everyone of we can. I feel like we'll need jonin socials there.
For 7th path "fastest method out of cat that still leaves us combat ready". I can't remember who pointed it out (sorry), but if we encounter an elder or boss cat it might be a TPK. Too bad we can't* just use skywalkers and gtfo. Also, thoughts on ways to make us harder to find?
For leaf...I think we have to trust Akane here. Hazou does not have the spoons right now, and I don't think the thread does either.
*: Like, we can, but there could be a Lot of ramifications there.
For Isan, I'd say attend the meeting with Keiko and Mari if we can't get more, and everyone of we can. I feel like we'll need jonin socials there.
For 7th path "fastest method out of cat that still leaves us combat ready". I can't remember who pointed it out (sorry), but if we encounter an elder or boss cat it might be a TPK. Too bad we can't* just use skywalkers and gtfo. Also, thoughts on ways to make us harder to find?
For leaf...I think we have to trust Akane here. Hazou does not have the spoons right now, and I don't think the thread does either.
*: Like, we can, but there could be a Lot of ramifications there.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[] Free Use Protoplan: (Isan) Headache-made
words: tbd
words: tbd
- Keiko and Mari attend the meeting
- Lean on authority of Pangolin Summoner, following Mari's lead.
- Keiko has been a major leader in the Nara clan and fought their elders on the merciless battlefield of war and oration. This is similar.
- Keep in mind Yuno's Instructions about Isan culture and traditions, try to reconcile them with the Will of Fire
- In the persona of the Pangolin Summoner, try to get the populace to think of Leaf as a "civilized" nation
- Mention arts and philosophies that align with Isan's
- As approved by Yuno, Mari, and Noburi
- Mention arts and philosophies that align with Isan's
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] (Isan) We Came, We Saw, We Keiko'd
Word Count: 279
Word Count: 279
- Before the meeting
- Have Mari and Yuno solidify an alliance with the Kannagi and Yoshida for intel, and get them to be pro-Leaf if she can manage it
- Have Mari build a profile of the High Priest in advance
- Tap Jiraiya's old contact for help
- High Priest
- Prep with Mari and Yuno for obvious traps, etc.
- Only the Pangolin Summoner was invited to meet him. If Mari can come, send her too as the Summoner's advisor.
- At the very least, Keiko should bring her more socially adept summons with her for support (perhaps the drill instructor?)
- Have them prep with Keiko and Mari in advance for what the conversation might look like, and how they can indirectly back up Keiko
- Do not try to intimidate the High Priest, but don't simply bend the knee either. You're there to establish a mutually beneficial alliance.
- Keiko, do not commit to any deals during this meeting. However, make it clear how much the High Priest has to gain from this alliance.
- New luxuries, massive political importance with Leaf, new jutsu that can boost agriculture and financial capability, medical treatment, more people to spread his religion to and more are all possible for the High Priest from this alliance, and Leaf is his best chance at these things. Keiko herself could lend even more credibility to his status, should the alliance go forward.
- Be vague enough not to reveal secrets but specific enough to be tantalizing
- New luxuries, massive political importance with Leaf, new jutsu that can boost agriculture and financial capability, medical treatment, more people to spread his religion to and more are all possible for the High Priest from this alliance, and Leaf is his best chance at these things. Keiko herself could lend even more credibility to his status, should the alliance go forward.
- Also detail the Battle of the Gods and how close the world came to ending without Isan noticing. More threats will come and Isan can't afford to look the other way, or it could endanger them too.
- At the very least, Keiko should bring her more socially adept summons with her for support (perhaps the drill instructor?)
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