[questions about the war]
"It should be understood from the beginning," Shikamaru notes, "that far too much of Leaf's intelligence reports were lost during the Collapse and a tremendous amount of our institutional memory, in particular first-hand accounts, was lost in the battle where the Third lost his life and then in the Battle of Nagi Island. What we have is fragmentary and highly speculative. I would be more surprised if much of it were correct than if it were wrong."
What kind of force estimates do we expect Rock's defenses to contain?
1) Rock's force levels are highly speculative. Best estimates put them between 1,000 and 3,000 ninja overall, although Shikamaru thinks it's closer to the bottom of that range.
What bloodlines/notable jutsu/specialty seals do we know about?
2a) Rock has no known summoners, nor have they ever been known to have a summoner.
2b) Rock has only four known bloodlines: The Tama Clan, known for their advanced intelligence; the Majima Clan, known for the Dust Release which turns things to dust; the Katsumi Clan, which is reported to allow the user to cause anything they look at to explode; and the Fumi Clan, which has shown the ability to create massive suits of earth armor around themselves, amounting to an enormous golem figure fifty feet tall with the user embedded somewhere in its body.
2c) They have two jinchūriki, the Four-Tails and the Five-Tails. Reports about them say that the Four-Tails can take on the form of a massive ape and leaves incinerated corpses and charred battlefields behind. The Five-Tails is a master of taijitsu who can destroy anyone he touches with a single blow.
2d) They have several clans that occupy a military position similar to that of the Ino-Shika-Chō -- they lack bloodlines but their clan-secret or techniques are functionally indistinguishable from such. Specifically:
The Shirogane are weapon users of mythic skill.
The Shikaku have the ability to temporarily give themselves body parts of various animals, granting themselves greatly enhanced speed, strength, and so on. If they give themselves wings they can fly for short distances. The exact parameters of that flight are unknown.
The Atae can animate small objects for a short period, for purposes of espionage or combat.
The Yudan specialize in traps, some of them jutsu-based.
2e) Shikamaru suspects that some of the intelligence reports of these clans' abilities may be exaggerated. He gives no credence whatsoever to the reports of special and powerful jutsu owned by individual ninja, since those inevitably have low report numbers and are given under circumstances that are likely to be exaggerated.
What are the terrain features in and around Rock?
3) All of Earth Country is desert. Not the "all sand and nothing" desert of western Wind Country, the kind of desert you would see in the Australian outback. It's mostly flat with localized hills in certain areas, so sight lines tend to be long but there will be patches of brambles and bushes that provide hiding places. The area immediately around Rock (the capital) has broken ground with modest hills, lots of cracks in the ground, and little vegetation. The single (known) entrance is through a cave mouth about five yards across and four yards high, secured by a heavily-fortified gate. You have no idea why they chose to build there; presumably there is an underground water supply and other life-supporting elements.
What weather conditions can we expect?
4) Hot, dry, and the occasional dust storm so dense that it blocks vision over more than a few yards. Shikamaru is unsure if there is a chakra-related component to these storms or if they are a purely natural phenomenon. [Note from the QMs: This translates to "We don't care if these things make sense given real-world atmospherics for that terrain so don't bother looking it up."]
What forces do we have available for the assault?
5) A dozen jōnin with various specialties, eighty chūnin, and a couple hundred genin if you need them. Essentially all of them are mostly fire jutsu that amount to 'set a thing on fire by touching it/breathing on it'.
Asuma wants the majority of Leaf's forces at home for defense, or at least nearby, including Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Naruto.
