I've just caught up with this quest and I feel like it went in a completely different route on how I would've enacted a great societal change. Looking at our own world's history, no meaningful change was ever enacted nor status quo broken without copious amounts of violence and bloodshed.
By trying to change a system from within and forgoing violence, you give up your most powerful options. Rather than the current milquetoast approach, it would be much better to force civilization down the throats of those in charge of the current hidebound power structures. Akatsuki had that power, unfortunately they lacked the vision to implement it due to lacking OOC information and the help of the hivemind.
My personal path would have been to avoid any kind of contact with the ninja villages and create a hidden compound/research lab in a remote and unremarkable area. And only show ourselves when we had Naruto equivalent of a WMD and ability to bring civilization through judicious application of violence due to being S-level ninjas. A somewhat benevolent Akatsuki if you will.
After making an example out of the most powerful villages by means of complete and unexpected annihilation, especially Leaf due to its high concentration of powerful combatants, we would start a brutal culling campaign of any jounin level and above ninja.
We could've rebuilt everything from the ashes after breaking up the clan system, wide scale propaganda and indoctrination, as well as mandatory education for ninja and civilians alike. In 4-5 generations, we would've been left with our slice of Elemental Nations that had at least a post industrial revolution equivalent, unified under our supreme ideology by a new generation that grew up under constant propaganda in every facet of their lives, backed by the threat of what are basically nukes.
Democracy, abolition of slavery, abolition of serfdom etc. none of these were achieved without millions of deaths in real history. Of course, it isn't very rational to expect a mostly subsistence farming feudal society to come up with modern ideas on their own, but with the help of the hivemind it would be possible to bypass these limitations. In the end, it is worth it to sacrifice some 10-20k ninja lives for the untold millions of the next generations.
Your preferred strategy was actually the subject of one of the greatest debates of the quest. It was long, it was extensive, it was evenly-balanced, mods had to step in when people started using game theoretic coersion to dissuade certain vectors of debate, and we amazingly stayed civil throughout. In the end we passed the decision off to Hazou, modeled by OliWhail to the best of his ability, and Hazou decided to take us to Leaf.
The alternative was what we called Hidden Heaven, a new village made in the sky using skywalker and skytower technology, unassailable by the rest of the villages as we stayed hidden or made our presence known as we saw fit. I don't recall any more details we talked about it, but I can say that it would have been just as valid a route as joining Leaf, it just was the path we didn't take.
There are a few weaknesses revealed in hindsight, though. The first is that despite the memes we don't actually have that much in the way of WMDs. EM is our best option, unactualized as it is, but it's still just one option and it doesn't match the heights some of our many failed ideas were supposed to reach. We may yet find more WMD ideas but with the failure of SINs we're down to our last card right now.
The second is Akatsuki. It may seem a given that they lose now in retrospect, but I can assure you that is not the case. Akatsuki's plan was nearly perfect, each village they stole Jinchuuriki from kept the matter under wraps so as to not advertise weakness, and as a result investigation into them was dispersed across the EN's various networks. By the time they made their move on Gaara, there still wasn't enough actionable information in one place to do anything about it, and even though all the Kages were gathered at the Chuunin Exams it wasn't a given that they would be able to sit down and share what they had. Or that what they had would be enough, without the lead to Team Bloodrage that we provided.
But even assuming that Akatsuki couldn't just complete their ritual undisturbed, without skywalkers it's unlikely the Five Kage Alliance could win. Much of Akatsuki had their own ways to defy gravity, and aerial supremacy is just too strong an advantage for a relatively equal fighting force to overcome. Even as it was, with Kages on skywalkers, the battle simulator the QMs used spat out an Akatsuki victory half the time. And we also had the advantage of Pein being stuck in the ritual, when we have WOG that in battle he'd be worth multiple Akatsuki members.
It's an odd point to focus on but I'm pretty confident that if we went for the Hidden Heaven route the odds of Akatsuki winning rises dramatically, and then all our plans go down the drain because the future of the world belongs to Pein. Still, we had no way of knowing at the time, so this is only something to invoke in the lens of hindsight.
And the benefits of joining Leaf should not be understated either. Not only do we have a direct voice in the oligarchic council ruling the strongest country in the world, but we got Shadow Clone, and with it the means to become S-Rank in a matter of years. For all our WMD designs, we never had anything that would truly overcome our critical weakness of being a bunch of weak kids beneath all the seals. With Shadow Clone, we have the ability to achieve XP rates previously reserved for memetic estimations of Itachi's growth rate. With Shadow Clone, we can become some of the strongest ninjas in the world
on top of our world-shaking inventions. With Shadow Clone, we can conquer Leaf in all but name and turn it to whatever goals we wish.
Right now Hazou seems to want to stop WWIV from happening. I certainly want to
delay it, because time is our ally, but when push comes to shove I've never truly ruled out the option of instigating a war for the fate of the world and crushing the opposition to create a new world order based on Uplift. It just hasn't come up yet, because no matter what road we walk our first steps are the same: become God, then figure out the rest.
Anyways, welcome! It's always nice to see someone bring new ideas and ambitions to the thread. While we didn't go for Hidden Heaven in the end the mindset that created it is still valuable and can help us win the Leaf route too, so I hope you're willing to stick around and help us fix this Jashinforsaken wasteland one apocalypse at a time.
