Yeah I fully expect every NPC who hears of this idea to go "that's fucking crazy and if you get killed doing it, it's not my problem."
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- 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 Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Honestly if we can't get Asuma to promise to kill Orochimaru if he makes a credible threat on our lives then we need to consider that leaf is no longer a place that we can stay. Options then become do we want to permanently evacuate to the 7th path, go missing and live in the woods again or defect back to Mist? I personally am a fan of defecting back to Mist since it would guarantee that we keep some amount of political power while at the same time protecting the entire clan since Kagome, Mari, Yuno and Akane would be endangered if we just went to the 7th path.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I'm not sure Mist would take us. It was one thing when Leaf - already a powerful country and with Skywalkers poised to have an overwhelming advantage over everyone else - decided to take in a handful of Mist-nin who probably didn't know anything too secret. It'd be a completely different matter for Mist - a comparatively weak country who lost many of their best at the Battle of the Gods - to take in a Clan Head who knows many state secrets and Shadow Clone.
I don't think Leaf would stand for it in the slightest. Mist had to shut up and nod along when Leaf said that they were taking three Mist bloodlines for themselves, but the power balance isn't in Mist's favour and the stakes are even higher. Granted, in the middle of the Rockwar is pretty much the best time to try this, because if we're lucky Rock might launch a major offensive at the same time as our departure and distract Leaf from pursuing us, but even then my expectation is that Leaf would immediately go to war with Mist and call Sand in because they cannot afford to let us get away.
Ren would know all that, and the geopolitical implications would eclipse any personal fondness she holds for us. If we're really lucky, Ren would figure that if Mist suddenly backstabs Leaf then Mist and Rock could gang up on Leaf before things escalate to full-on WWIV, and then Mist would be able to force Leaf to accept it, but I doubt that would happen fast enough to prevent Leaf from getting Sand involved and then it's WWIV well before Mist has recovered from Nagi Island, and that's practically begging Cloud to take advantage.
It's also worth noting that by leaving we shoot dead the precedent of accepting missing-nin that we established by joining Leaf: instead of our story being proof that missing-nin can come in from the cold, we'd be proof that missing-nin are inherently untrustworthy and will backstab you if you're foolish enough to trust them. Ren would have to cook up a story that goes more like 'they were deep undercover, they never actually betrayed Mist' that would convince absolutely nobody who matters, so it would be extremely costly reputationally on that front too.
With Mari at our side Ren couldn't just kill/capture us and present us to Leaf as a gift, but at best we'd get to be deniable assets until and unless Ren ever decides she can afford to bring us back. And in the meanwhile Leaf will have launched a full-scale manhunt against us, so Mist would only be an anchor around our neck keeping us from seeking safety in the depths of the Eastern Continent. Personally, if we wind up needing to go missing I'd prefer going directly to the wilderness because Mist sounds like it's most likely to just backfire in our faces.
Heck, if things get that bad I wouldn't mind just leaving the EN entirely. It can't be ocean forever, and we can mount expeditions of arbitrary length as long as we have the paper and ink to make enough seals for the trip. Leave the EN to its fate and see if we can set up a new bastion of humanity somewhere else where they'll never find us.
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You assume this has not already happened.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
All good points. I am not 100% sold on it being as unworkable as you fear. The best course of action I feel if we are forced to go missing would be try to spend some time in the wilderness and try to back channel some communication to Mist. See what kind of deal that we could get before commiting either way.
Another potential avenue could be trying to link up with Akatsuki. We def could work with Hidan to get some additional protection from hunter killer teams and possibly could find other members to help with our long term goals.
- Location
- Yes.
WE'RE ALL GONNA GET VIVISECTED AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
- Location
- Pacific standard
I love this and have been wanting to do something similar for a while, but I'm worried about Asuma being rather displeased about being used as a cudgel for a personal power up. We should for sure promise more anbu/hokage exclusive seals in exchange
Don't forget that Orochimaru shall not divulge any Clan Secrets that he learned in the course of his study.
- Location
- UK
Jiraiya: Fucking again!!
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Here's another option if things don't end up so swell in Leaf: a long-term, top-secret mission in O'Uzu. We'll need to set an Acting Clan Head for the duration, but if Orochimaru doesn't know where we are he can't get to us, and in the meantime we can work on necromancy and hopefully once we rez Jiraiya and Hashirama we won't need to worry about Orochimaru anymore.
idk how easy it would be to convince Asuma to agree to it, but if we can't stay in Leaf and don't want to go missing it seems like a healthy middle ground option.
idk how easy it would be to convince Asuma to agree to it, but if we can't stay in Leaf and don't want to go missing it seems like a healthy middle ground option.
- Location
- how about no
If you believe you can convince all of these people with a sound enough argument for not just working with Oro but volunteering to be vivisected (which Hazou as a character already freaked out over) feel free to try. I am tentatively willing to vote for a plan where we discuss all of the pros and cons of doing so with our clanmates in addition to other ways of addressing our Orochimaru issue(s).
I want to be as clear as possible about this though: that would only be step 1 of a process to convince me. I'd still want to go over the actual procedure and Leaf legalities involved to verify we, as voters and participants, have an accurate understanding of all of the implications of such a procedure, such as but not limited to:
- Does Oro even want to perform exploratory surgery on us or does he want us to use our abilities to perfectly copy some weird bio seals or worse?
- We've just assumed he wants to cut us open.
- Could we have a test run done on some willing volunteer to see what Oro has in mind?
- Are we really willing to risk death or permanent injury due to unforeseen complications arising due to Hazou's body's unique physiology?
- Do we really want to risk unnecessary surgery in a medieval tech-level setting?
- Has any test subject or volunteer come out of Oro's basement and considered their experience a net positive in their personal life?
If we do anything less we get a Bad End.
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Unrelated, I have a... concern about the following two quotes:
Do I believe Orochimaru could get Hazou to give up this secret? Yes, absolutely. Do I believe Orochimaru could get Hazou to give up this secret, without using any chakra? Probably. Do I believe Orochimaru could get Hazou to give up this secret, without using any chakra or anything more than a stern request? Frankly, no.
To my understanding, the mechanics of Marked for Death are meant to help approximate the world, not to supplant its rules. Orochimaru having a very high Intimidaiton stat means that he's good at intimidating people, but that has to actually cash out as tangible things in the world, be it psychic attacks, displays of power, playing off the psychology of the victim to inspire fear, etc.
This is written like a psychic attack, because Orochimaru doesn't actually do anything here. If it was a psychic attack like when Zabuza put Hazou through a similar wringer with his killing intent, I could understand. If Orochimaru played on Hazou's natural fear of him and gave precisely-framed comments and veiled threats until Hazou was so terrified that his mind betrayed him, I could understand. But neither of those are the case.
(As a side-note, to my understanding 'the effective mental resilience of a fresh Academy graduate' should still be nothing to scoff at. I recall mention of mandatory Academy anti-interrogation classes to prevent this very sort of situation (even if the cirriculum was never meant to resist someone of Orochimaru's caliber the classes were still there), and from the Sunset Racer we saw that civilian Taijutsu stats seemed to span the single digits at best. I worry that 'Academy graduate' is being likened to 'a literal child' for the purposes of facilitating the plausibility of this, but if so I think that only breaks the internal logic of the world in a different place)
The mechanics of Marked for Death are meant to help approximate the world, not to supplant its rules. Impossible feats in Marked for Death are universally stated to be made possible through chakra, everything from Hazou kicking through a wall to Noburi summoning a water dragon to Zabuza making Hazou fall to the floor and pass out by flexing his concentrated force of will. If Orochimaru's action didn't use chakra, it should be possible in the real world. But I don't buy that the effects we've seen, the before and after of Hazou's mind, the total 180 on a very important resolution and almost complete loss of mental coherence, the fact that he got a Mild and a Medium and would've gotten a Severe if it were at all possible, could be done by a simple mundane sternly-worded command. Even knowing how terrifying Orochimaru is by default, even accounting for Hazou having effective Resolve 14, the only way I can see that happening is by supernatural means.
And this is a bit of a petty thing, overall, but it's things like these, I think, that make the difference when trying to sell the world as actually realistic. As-written, Orochimaru and Hazou in that scene are more like video game characters than real people, even within the context of the story. Orochimaru's Intimidation stat was, I feel, treated as an inherent number assigned to his being that he can flex at people in a way disconnected from the actual actions taken, rather than a depiction of how skilled he is at the art of actions which break people's wills, and I don't think either of us want the story to be like that.
To recap the moment in the scene: Hazou reminds himself that he cannot under any circumstances tell Orochimaru that his ability is the product of his bloodline limit. Orochimaru issues a command in a stern voice, and as per the second quote does nothing chakra-related or supernatural or anything. Just a stern voice and a simple command. Hazou's mind is immediately reduced to mush to the point where he completely forgets any semblance of OPSEC and blurts out everything Orochimaru wants to know.
Do I believe Orochimaru could get Hazou to give up this secret? Yes, absolutely. Do I believe Orochimaru could get Hazou to give up this secret, without using any chakra? Probably. Do I believe Orochimaru could get Hazou to give up this secret, without using any chakra or anything more than a stern request? Frankly, no.
To my understanding, the mechanics of Marked for Death are meant to help approximate the world, not to supplant its rules. Orochimaru having a very high Intimidaiton stat means that he's good at intimidating people, but that has to actually cash out as tangible things in the world, be it psychic attacks, displays of power, playing off the psychology of the victim to inspire fear, etc.
This is written like a psychic attack, because Orochimaru doesn't actually do anything here. If it was a psychic attack like when Zabuza put Hazou through a similar wringer with his killing intent, I could understand. If Orochimaru played on Hazou's natural fear of him and gave precisely-framed comments and veiled threats until Hazou was so terrified that his mind betrayed him, I could understand. But neither of those are the case.
(As a side-note, to my understanding 'the effective mental resilience of a fresh Academy graduate' should still be nothing to scoff at. I recall mention of mandatory Academy anti-interrogation classes to prevent this very sort of situation (even if the cirriculum was never meant to resist someone of Orochimaru's caliber the classes were still there), and from the Sunset Racer we saw that civilian Taijutsu stats seemed to span the single digits at best. I worry that 'Academy graduate' is being likened to 'a literal child' for the purposes of facilitating the plausibility of this, but if so I think that only breaks the internal logic of the world in a different place)
The mechanics of Marked for Death are meant to help approximate the world, not to supplant its rules. Impossible feats in Marked for Death are universally stated to be made possible through chakra, everything from Hazou kicking through a wall to Noburi summoning a water dragon to Zabuza making Hazou fall to the floor and pass out by flexing his concentrated force of will. If Orochimaru's action didn't use chakra, it should be possible in the real world. But I don't buy that the effects we've seen, the before and after of Hazou's mind, the total 180 on a very important resolution and almost complete loss of mental coherence, the fact that he got a Mild and a Medium and would've gotten a Severe if it were at all possible, could be done by a simple mundane sternly-worded command. Even knowing how terrifying Orochimaru is by default, even accounting for Hazou having effective Resolve 14, the only way I can see that happening is by supernatural means.
And this is a bit of a petty thing, overall, but it's things like these, I think, that make the difference when trying to sell the world as actually realistic. As-written, Orochimaru and Hazou in that scene are more like video game characters than real people, even within the context of the story. Orochimaru's Intimidation stat was, I feel, treated as an inherent number assigned to his being that he can flex at people in a way disconnected from the actual actions taken, rather than a depiction of how skilled he is at the art of actions which break people's wills, and I don't think either of us want the story to be like that.
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i just interpreted oro as using chakra or some bio stuff. only jonin aura was ruled out.
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well, whether oro only used words. or also used chakra/bio. could affect analysis of how much of a hostile action it was
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This is a really good point. I was feeling a similar way after the update. Hazou knows better than to blurt out Clan Secrets. I don't feel like just blurting out your deathly held secrets is a possible outcome to simple mundane intimidation. Especially since Hazou knows that saying such things to Orochimaru is hideously dangerous. I would think Hazou could rely on the IN to clamp his jaw shut and not answer.
Honestly I thought Oro used his aura until Vel said he didn't. It's written in a very similar way to the Zabuza scene. It's mechanically very similar, an Intimidation vs. Resolve roll (no TYS points for Oro here and Zabuza got them, but Oro def has some, so that's interesting).
- Location
- how about no
Counterpoint: Oro has had decades to search out ways to better acquire what he wants and has gotten it down to a science (pun intended). There very well could be some mechanics that Hazou cannot perceive that influenced his later coerced actions beyond what we would consider a normal outcome.
Oro might very well have unknown, undetectable supernatural means to intimidate people. The results would look the same after all and the QMs can't confirm or deny because it would mean revealing those means exist when we have not done so in character. Being "Taken Out legendarily" has to count for something.
i don't know if naruto is even mad at hazou anymore. he seemed friendly during the debrief meeting before hazou downloaded the great seal.
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also before the tell me intimidation. oro also gave wall impressions to hazou. since that's different from the out impresssion hazou got from his aura originally. that suggests oro is using some magic to give wall impressions
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also before the tell me intimidation. oro also gave wall impressions to hazou. since that's different from the out impresssion hazou got from his aura originally. that suggests oro is using some magic to give wall impressions
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
If the intent is that there was a psychic attack or some other general supernatural influence making the effect more impactful on Hazou than the mundane actions would suggest, that would indeed solve the problem even if it's not specifically his Jounin Aura. But looking at Velorien's quote about Orochimaru being 'quite simply that scary when he wants to be' my belief is that Velorien was suggesting no supernatural powers were used in this scene.
- Location
- how about no
My read of it is that Hazou, as our eyes and ears, has no way of discerning so one way or another. We only know as much as he knows which could mean some of our information is unreliable since Hazou presently has brain damage.
EDIT: or Hazou simply isn't perceptive enough to notice S-rank subtleties even at the best of times.
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Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Agreed. Ultimately, it's about Kolmogorov complexity.
How intimidating someone is is a function of the victim's mind and the outputs of the interrogator's body. Think about them as... a multi-dimensional lock-and-key pair. The locks have similar general outlines — that is, human minds have much in common with each other — but the fine details of each individual lock/mind differ, and the most fine details are changing on a moment-to-moment basis. The problem of intimidation, then, is to output a sequence of bodily actions that would correspond to a multi-dimensional shape fitting the current shape of the victim's mind to the greatest possible extent. And the more intimidating you want to be, the more complex the lock is, and the lengthier the minimal sequence describing the key is.
Up to a certain level, you could be "inherently" intimidating: you could tap into what human psychology generically parses as intimidating features (intense stare, blank facial expression, microexpressions suggesting deep rage, "looming" demeanour, low firm voice, etc.), and that would constitute a key that would fit into most human minds to e. g. 90% degree. And that's fast, because it exploits subconscious instincts. But past that point, you're into the realm of conscious thought, individual psychologies and then momentary fluctuations, and the key's complexity grows exponentially. You'd need to output a ton of information to get to that point, and that can't really be done in a few seconds, by the simple dint of the complexity of the task. The channel by which the key is getting uploaded to your victim's mind just doesn't have that much bandwidth.
(Jounin auras, in this model, function by automatically generating keys suited to their victims' minds and jacking them into these minds in a way that bypasses ordinary senses: you basically outsource key-generation to the ChakrAI and then use a much wider bandwidth channel to upload it.)
(This model applies to Deception, Rapport, and so on, too.)
I could see the argument that Oro has some bioaugmentations bolstering his key-upload ability, though. Maybe he releases some sort of pheromones or infrasound, maybe he has additional muscles in his face that he can contract to look inhumanly uncanny, etc. But I'd really expect someone to notice and point that out, by this point.
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- Location
- UK
I vaguely remember this being a whole debate at the time these social mechanics were being put in place. At some point it doesn't really matter for decisions though; if the outcome is based on the dice roll, and the rest is just window-dressing, you might as well treat it as magic. Trying to act against social rolls just gets you Zabuza'd.
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Noumero
Omit Needless Words
We suggested such a seal and he jury-rigged a similar effect with... something:
I'm not sure what that was. His aura? Not how the auras are usually expressed...
Edit: Might be Early Installment Weirdness, though.
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Setting aside any horrifying special abilities Orochimaru may or may not have, it all depends on what you consider to be chakra-related. Hazō can roll his Taijutsu against a tree and potentially punch through it (trees have terrible Taijutsu). He can run a marathon at Olympic sprint speeds. He can react fast enough to dodge incoming missiles and even explosions. We do not label any of these as chakra abilities in mechanical terms, nor do we demand that you spend chakra on them (though we might rule that you need to be able to do so, for example if Orochimaru sticks you with a chakra-suppressing seal). Past a point, ninja are just inherently magical, and you can try to dig into the physics of how that works, or you can accept that it's somehow possible for a ninja to be ten times as good at everything as a normal human expert while still in their 20s and move on.
The other thing is that writing intimidation is difficult. The hivemind is afraid of Orochimaru in an abstract sense, as somebody who could kill their player character. Even setting aside the fact that I'm particularly bad at writing body language, there is nothing I can write that would make you feel the way Hazō would feel when faced with an inhuman killer who will murder him the instant he feels like it. Unless you've been in a life-or-death situation yourself, you probably can't even imagine it to a meaningful degree of accuracy (in the same way as unless you've ever had cause to seriously doubt your sanity, a lot of Lovecraft's writing will bounce off you). Trying to describe it in terms of Orochimaru's body language and tone of voice, the only things objectively available to the reader, would only take away from the effect ("Oh, so he narrowed his eyebrows, and that's supposed to be terrifying?"), which is why I stick to describing what's happening inside Hazō's mind.
And, honestly, don't underestimate the power of a stern request. If you, as an adult, said "Do what I say" to a young child in an intimidating fashion, that child would probably do what you said (or possibly burst into tears). In terms of ability to intimidate versus ability to resist intimidation, the mechanical gap between Orochimaru and Hazō right now is an order of magnitude bigger than between an ordinary adult and an ordinary child.
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- Location
- UK
I mean, sure, but this is also the Hazō who snarked at Zabuza while under a full-on mental attack. Just seems incongruous is all.