I'm not sure if Asuma will be able to afford to send an ANBU team to track a scroll down any time soon. He only has 18 field jounin left and we are probably going to take some more losses during the war. Plus if we win we will have additional security requirements since we probably will take some territory from Rock
 
I'm not sure if Asuma will be able to afford to send an ANBU team to track a scroll down any time soon. He only has 18 field jounin left and we are probably going to take some more losses during the war. Plus if we win we will have additional security requirements since we probably will take some territory from Rock
ANBU was my blue sky interpretation. Realistically, he builds Hyuga-Inuzaka teams and dispatches them with the promise of commensurate reward - that is, scrolls.
 
I expect that any further Scroll missions will be deferred until after the war. Even the current mission is more motivated by 'Rock obviously cares about this place, so let's go smash it up' with the potential for a Scroll as icing on the cake.

Once it's done, well, Scrolls were already extremely valuable items that catapult ninja capability, and yet Leaf hasn't hunted down every potential Scroll lead (presumably the uncertainty of the payoff deters significant investment in protracted and/or high-risk international missions like this). Heck, we got the Pangolin Scroll lead for explicitly that reason.

If this summon army tactic works out well I do expect we'll see an increase in Asuma's estimation of Scroll value after the war, but I'd hesitate to say that the update would be so strong as to push him from 'if you want to spend your time on this, go ahead' to 'tell me your secrets and I won't execute you for treason'. In the upper bound of variance where Asuma has become very interested in gathering more scrolls I can see him asking us to share our intel, but even then I expect he'd be amenable to compromises like 'Since you're the one with the intel, you get right of first attempt to retrieve it, as long as you hop to it relatively soon'. That's at most.

Did people complain when Hazou won the Dog Scroll from the Contest? Did we hear an uproar about how the Goketsu already have Pangolin and Toad so we don't need Dog as well? I think that as long as we come by each scroll fairly there won't be much in the way of accusations of unfair imbalance. Ninja meritocracy and all.
 
Did people complain when Hazou won the Dog Scroll from the Contest? Did we hear an uproar about how the Goketsu already have Pangolin and Toad so we don't need Dog as well? I think that as long as we come by each scroll fairly there won't be much in the way of accusations of unfair imbalance. Ninja meritocracy and all.
I think there is a reasonable possibility this happens for the Arachnid Scroll depending on how things go, though.
 
I think there is a reasonable possibility this happens for the Arachnid Scroll depending on how things go, though.
Depends if it goes like 'Nara Kei took ownership of the scroll after Panashe found it, and gave it to her clansman Kagome (on the Goketsu side) as a gift' or like 'The Porcupine Summoner found the scroll and gave it to Asuma, who allocated it to Goketsu Kagome', yeah. There's room for this to be a pretty solid 'Goketsu finders keepers' scenario and there's room for it to be 'the Hokage making a ridiculously unfair choice'. All depends on how it shakes out.
 
I think there is a reasonable possibility this happens for the Arachnid Scroll depending on how things go, though.
We will def have the best claim on it. We're providing a majority of the resources for the raid, we provided the intel that the scroll was there, and we have a relationship with the spiders who need a seal master. The only person on the mission who would raise a fit if we got it is Neji and Minami will want to make sure the scroll doesn't go to the Hyūga
 
We will def have the best claim on it. We're providing a majority of the resources for the raid, we provided the intel that the scroll was there, and we have a relationship with the spiders who need a seal master. The only person on the mission who would raise a fit if we got it is Neji and Minami will want to make sure the scroll doesn't go to the Hyūga
I definitely think we have the best claim to it, I'm just saying I think there's more room for our enemies to bitch and moan and try to get concessions than usual
 
Arachnid is almost certainly ours. My uncertainty is that we're going to manage to get more after that. We went from one (ish; Keiko is half Nara) to three (inherited and won the contest) and now we're getting a fourth. Unless we can secure a fifth fast using only our own resources, I don't know that folks aren't going to start muttering that we're credibly bogarting a finite critical resource and pursuing them personally using intelligence we've credibly released into the wild, with a worst-case of Asuma making it a coordinated village project where we aren't in the running.
 
Arachnid is almost certainly ours. My uncertainty is that we're going to manage to get more after that. We went from one (ish; Keiko is half Nara) to three (inherited and won the contest) and now we're getting a fourth. Unless we can secure a fifth fast using only our own resources, I don't know that folks aren't going to start muttering that we're credibly bogarting a finite critical resource and pursuing them personally using intelligence we've credibly released into the wild, with a worst-case of Asuma making it a coordinated village project where we aren't in the running.
let's just bag several and keep one for Akane, gift the others to like Sasuke and Shino or something
 
It's an option, but if we find them I think we can kinda do whatever we want with them for the most part, assuming we don't like give it to Honoka or something lmao

Buying clout with the Hokage vs. buying clout with other clans is something to weigh if/when it happens
I worry that if we throw too many around we a) make significant enemies of factions we neglect b) Asuma gets mad at us for playing politics at the big-boy level c) we actually disrupt the balance of power in the village.

Sanity checks safeguard against that but they're fallible.
 
I worry that if we throw too many around we a) make significant enemies of factions we neglect b) Asuma gets mad at us for playing politics at the big-boy level c) we actually disrupt the balance of power in the village.

Sanity checks safeguard against that but they're fallible.
Making Asuma's allies stronger should help him, imo. Ofc we can strategize this more when its relevant but I actually think this could be a good thing. I think leaving the shitty people in the dust while making Leaf stronger is a good thing in most or all capacities, for us and for the people aligned with us, and for Leaf as a whole
 
Making Asuma's allies stronger should help him, imo. Ofc we can strategize this more when its relevant but I actually think this could be a good thing. I think leaving the shitty people in the dust while making Leaf stronger is a good thing in most or all capacities, for us and for the people aligned with us, and for Leaf as a whole
Ultimately 'we have to be careful while playing kingmaker' is a great problem to have and one I'm not convinced we'll actually have to manage, but I think it'll ultimately wind up being a complicated decision if we end up with three scrolls we've decided to hand out.
 
Ultimately 'we have to be careful while playing kingmaker' is a great problem to have and one I'm not convinced we'll actually have to manage, but I think it'll ultimately wind up being a complicated decision if we end up with three scrolls we've decided to hand out.
We could ask Asuma to hold another contest and make everyone compete for helping civilians out the most to earn the scroll :rofl:
 
Did people complain when Hazou won the Dog Scroll from the Contest? Did we hear an uproar about how the Goketsu already have Pangolin and Toad so we don't need Dog as well? I think that as long as we come by each scroll fairly there won't be much in the way of accusations of unfair imbalance. Ninja meritocracy and all.
To be fair, we also donated the Porcupine Scroll to the Contest, along with Jiraiya's seal notes. So it was obvious to anyone with two brain cells (i.e. most but not all Leaf-nin) that we gave up more than we got out of it. So I would expect to hear far more complaining if we get the next two scrolls, however evenhanded the allocation
 
I expect that any further Scroll missions will be deferred until after the war. Even the current mission is more motivated by 'Rock obviously cares about this place, so let's go smash it up' with the potential for a Scroll as icing on the cake.
I broadly agree with the points you're making here, but there are a few disagreements I think might be noteworthy.
Once it's done, well, Scrolls were already extremely valuable items that catapult ninja capability, and yet Leaf hasn't hunted down every potential Scroll lead (presumably the uncertainty of the payoff deters significant investment in protracted and/or high-risk international missions like this). Heck, we got the Pangolin Scroll lead for explicitly that reason.
Jiriya was pretty upfront that he thought that the Pangolin scroll was a wild pangolin goose chase, and that his expectation was that Keiko would come back older and wiser and he'd give her a few jutsu. I agree that this is because of uncertainty, but the reason we got the Pangolin scroll was that we got lucky.
If this summon army tactic works out well I do expect we'll see an increase in Asuma's estimation of Scroll value after the war, but I'd hesitate to say that the update would be so strong as to push him from 'if you want to spend your time on this, go ahead' to 'tell me your secrets and I won't execute you for treason'. In the upper bound of variance where Asuma has become very interested in gathering more scrolls I can see him asking us to share our intel, but even then I expect he'd be amenable to compromises like 'Since you're the one with the intel, you get right of first attempt to retrieve it, as long as you hop to it relatively soon'. That's at most.
My potential concern isn't that Asuma will see that our tactics are efficacious and update, but that he'll assess the odds that other villages will update and step up their efforts, resulting in an arms race Leaf can't afford to lose. AFAIK every other village has someone who can teach Summoning.

I don't think that he's going to execute us for treason, but he might well say, 'you can only feasibly hunt down one of these, and we need to look for them all. Pick one, we'll support you in searching for it, and compensate you for the intel you've provided, but the leader of the team that goes hunting will be making the contract'. I don't think we currently have a most-probable candidate, so if (say) our leads on Otter don't pan out, we're left without proprietary intel or a scroll.
Did people complain when Hazou won the Dog Scroll from the Contest? Did we hear an uproar about how the Goketsu already have Pangolin and Toad so we don't need Dog as well? I think that as long as we come by each scroll fairly there won't be much in the way of accusations of unfair imbalance. Ninja meritocracy and all.
The comments about how we traded a scroll for a scroll (porcupine) address this point.

I think we're in uncharted territory re: concentration of scrolls. We can't say that ninja do or don't gripe about this because I don't think that anyone has ever had this much power concentrated in their clan - or when they have, they've made enemies (i.e. the Uchiha).
 
This just means we need to acquire scrolls at a 2:1 ratio and give away one for every other we keep, clearly :p

We want a scroll for Akane, Kagome, and Mari at a minimum right? Still got kraken, bear, otter, kangaroo, squirrel, and arachnid left AT LEAST, not even counting the clans we haven't encountered yet or the clans we haven't heard about their scrolls (IE Cat/Hornet). And our leads are amazing because only a Summoner could even hear about them, as it requires talking to the summon clans. So only Cloud is really a concern for tracking the same leads and F barely even visits the 7th path. Everyone else will have to find word of mouth/history leads. Much more likely imo is other villages start targeting Summoners way more or they follow us to a new scroll, should they hear we're pursuing one. Something to keep in mind when we go for our next one

Tangent: Hazou needs a raft in a storage seal to explore the 7th path with a band of dog friends so we can complete our map, meet more clans, find more scrolls, and achieve more swag
 
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I'm not quite sure that Asuma would begrudge the Goketsu any Scrolls they find. We already gave the Porcupine Scroll up to Leaf (as a bribe, but the point remains). Scrolls and Summoning Contracts are deemed to be the realm of the individual --that's why Asuma said we would "owe" the Hag Clan for going on that initial Eater Quest/Journey [rather than instructing Harumitsu, as we agreed to].

If anyone grumbles about the Goketsu "hoovering up a powerful, finite resource" then I expect the responses will be a mixture of "well, if you're so upset, then you go find legendary magical artifacts that have been missing for untold centuries" and "they're going to be used by and for Leaf, regardless, so stop being immature."
 
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Idea for Kei and Tenten's wedding gift:

An Earthshaped, to-scale statue of Tenten and Kei, clad in their best battle gear, full sealing/weapons loadout, fighting back-to-back against unseen enemies.
 
I think we're in uncharted territory re: concentration of scrolls. We can't say that ninja do or don't gripe about this because I don't think that anyone has ever had this much power concentrated in their clan - or when they have, they've made enemies (i.e. the Uchiha).

Oh ninja don't like when other ninja get powerful, but Leaf is born from a bunch of Clan joining together under the banner of "Let's not kill each other". Starting to eat into the "Obtain more power" part of the Clans, be by stealing Jutsu, Scroll or anything else, is a big no even for the Hokage. Because if he decides to steal the Scroll from the Goketsu, maybe then he will take the ninken of the Inuzuka and so on.
 
Tangent: Hazou needs a raft in a storage seal to explore the 7th path with a band of dog friends so we can complete our map, meet more clans, find more scrolls, and achieve more swag

Hornet? They are involved with the Arachnid in protecting the Great Steal. Also the clan they Dragons almost exterminated, if the Boss Summon is still alive.
 
Hornet? They are involved with the Arachnid in protecting the Great Steal. Also the clan they Dragons almost exterminated, if the Boss Summon is still alive.
Perhaps, yeah. No known Summoner, plus another flying clan would be good for Leaf to push its aerial superiority with skywalkers. Only the Condors can really work with a Skywalking Summoner in a convenient manner. Could ask Kumokogo about it, but from a meta standpoint it seems like we should probably pursue some leads we've already been given instead of continuously asking for more leads to be generated :p
 
Idea for Kei and Tenten's wedding gift:

An Earthshaped, to-scale statue of Tenten and Kei, clad in their best battle gear, full sealing/weapons loadout, fighting back-to-back against unseen enemies.
IDK man, if someone gave me a full size statue of me and my SO looking like we were about to kill some bitches as a wedding gift, I would (internally b/c you never know who's packing) be like, "thanks, but did you see the Le Creuset on the registry? That would be so much less expensive and easier to store."
 
Perhaps, yeah. No known Summoner, plus another flying clan would be good for Leaf to push its aerial superiority with skywalkers. Only the Condors can really work with a Skywalking Summoner in a convenient manner. Could ask Kumokogo about it, but from a meta standpoint it seems like we should probably pursue some leads we've already been given instead of continuously asking for more leads to be generated :p

Parachuting spiders.
 
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