Remove ads

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Reader mode
We've been told repeatedly that the type of rock is not the limiter to us making 3D seals.
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
Right.

Actually, that might be a positive. At present, the site looks like a sealing failure. (It helps that it is, in fact, a sealing failure.) I can't imagine any sane person who'd want to spend more time than absolutely necessary hanging around a sealing failure.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Unfortunately, ninja are quite often insane.

Cariyaga said:
We've been told repeatedly that the type of rock is not the limiter to us making 3D seals.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
On the contrary, we've been told over and over that the rock we're trying to use is too impure. We think we can make regular rock pure enough with high enough Earthshaping, but if we find pure rock from a previous 3D seal, that could possibly work too.
 
We were fairly explicitly told something to the effect of "Hazou thinks this should work for 3D sealing but it doesn't take. Maybe he needs to be better at earthshaping."

You wanna do 3D sealing, the answer is to Get Gud.
 
Cariyaga said:
We were fairly explicitly told something to the effect of "Hazou thinks this should work for 3D sealing but it doesn't take. Maybe he needs to be better at earthshaping."

You wanna do 3D sealing, the answer is to Get Gud.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

eaglejarl said:
Of course he knew why it wasn't working. The stone was too diffuse, too impure. It needed to be denser and made of only one material. He had tried multiple different kinds of stone but none had been suitable. He had tried to fix it himself with Earthshaping and failed every time. No matter how much he pushed at the jutsu, no matter how carefully he attempted to comb through the stone in order to filter the intrusions, it wasn't enough. His metaphysical fingers were too fat, his metaphysical eyes too blurry. They had improved as he practiced with the jutsu—when he first learned it he had barely been able to tell anything about the internals of the material whereas now it was as though he was looking through a thick gauze blindfold.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's not what I got out of reading this.
 
Cariyaga said:
We were fairly explicitly told something to the effect of "Hazou thinks this should work for 3D sealing but it doesn't take. Maybe he needs to be better at earthshaping."

You wanna do 3D sealing, the answer is to Get Gud.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
A quick trip to Nagi to see if the rock there is any better will a) potentially serve as an indicator that a 3D seal was present and that a downloaded copy might exist and b) might get us rock that will allow us to 3D seal at our current skill level. Obviously it would be a finite supply and we need to level ES eventually, but it might be a good intermediate step.
 
If you want to, I can't stop you, but I don't think we're going to get anything out of it more than delaying FOOM.
 
Cariyaga said:
If you want to, I can't stop you, but I don't think we're going to get anything out of it more than delaying FOOM.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
FWIW this is unlikely to be a delay of anything more than an hour or two. Nagi is on the way back to Fire from O'Uzu. Unless we stumble across something really compelling, I can't imagine that we'd pause for more than an hour: we let Kagome tear up at a crater, we perhaps ask Yuno a bit more about the asura, we look around to see if there are any interesting rocks, and then we're back on the road.

If we do stumble on something compelling, then that was probably worth the detour.
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
FWIW this is unlikely to be a delay of anything more than an hour or two. Nagi is on the way back to Fire from O'Uzu. Unless we stumble across something really compelling, I can't imagine that we'd pause for more than an hour: we let Kagome tear up at a crater, we perhaps ask Yuno a bit more about the asura, we look around to see if there are any interesting rocks, and then we're back on the road.

If we do stumble on something compelling, then that was probably worth the detour.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Understood; that objection is rescinded, then.

But are you working under the impression we're leaving the rift next update? I can't quite grok what you're saying making sense otherwise.

We've got a LOT we can do at the rift, now that we have the secret to Minato's code.
 
We should really make sure that we got something setup to deliver dragon parts to oro. And if we don't, that we return to leaf in time
 
Cariyaga said:
But are you working under the impression we're leaving the rift next update? I can't quite grok what you're saying making sense otherwise.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes and no. We'll leave the rift at some point and I'm assessing how people feel about a pit stop when we do. However, I do think we'll be leaving in the next EJ update.
Cariyaga said:
We've got a LOT we can do at the rift, now that we have the secret to Minato's code.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We might have a lot we can do. Do we have any reason to believe that Minato's notes contain useful/relevant information for the situation we're in? Kagome reviewed them and had his insight, but the two might not be very related - I generate a lot of insights while thinking about totally unrelated things, at least.

The argument for relation is that teleportation seems plausibly related to interdimensionality. The argument against is that the insight we had is a bunch of instructions related to rotating and superimposing blanks - that seems likely to result in specific seals, not general theory. We'll get some theory out of it, but I don't think we can be confident it'll be related to our current, hyperspecific, problem.
 
Last edited:
I just broke my own heart. Remember when Ritsuo was being a Fuckface, and refusing to marry Yuno and Noburi? And Hazou asked Mari about the feasibility of just having a paperwork marriage, like she and Jiraiya had?

Mari stiffened up, like she'd been struck. And then went on to reassure Hazou that it was a good idea, and that it retroactively reinforced the validity of her own marriage to Jiraiya by solidifying the precedent and also actively undermined the Hag's monopoly on the institution of marriage?

I wonder if, besides whatever external political factors were at play, if Hazou-pilot decided not to pursue that line of thought because of Mari. Because Mari loved Jiraiya, and wanted to marry him. She wasn't satisfied with a paperwork marriage, and wanted Jiraiya to stand with her at the alter. Mari didn't want to pretend to be satisfied, she didn't want to pretend to be content and mime out an act of perfect happiness with a paperwork ceremony.

Mari wanted to marry Jiraiya in Mist's ceremony. She wanted to wear that white dress, surrounded by her kids (and they are her kids, damn it) and peers. She wanted to swear those oaths and for Jiraiya to wear those oaths to her. Nontraditional oaths, to be sure, but what about them was traditional? They loved each other, and they would've been celebrating that shared love with those who loved them.

And Mari never got that. So Hazou-pilot, seeing how much it hurt Mari to have that thrown back at her (and for it to be something good, that strengthened the position of their clan), desisted upon that line of inquiry. Sure, there were external influences. But Hazou is a Goketsu, and could've pursued that line of action more aggressively... if not for that lapse on Mari's face. If not for Hazou, a [young man] whose bloodline allows him to adopt masks and acts as naturally as breathing, who saw through Mari.

Hazou-pilot is crazy empathetic and supportive (see: clan war for Kei, and every mention of "pretty damn far" written). I could see it being a factor. If that's too far, then perhaps we could assert that it was a subconscious influence?
 
Last edited:
maybe experimenting with the other rifts could help us with the acid ocean one.
too dangerous to do without thinking up of anything that would make it not as dangerous of course.
the lava rift seems the safest of all the others. it seals itself by cooling into stone. and its a non-intelligent danger.
the rift of screams is an interesting one. what if that is another afterlife?

also the acid ocean rift might turn out to be just as dangerous as the others. if we encounter hostile creatures within it when exploring. if we do, will we abandon rift exploration? if not, then we could try the other rifts first if we have already accepted that level of risk.
 
eaglejarl said:
Yes, it can. Earthshaping is another of the places where chakra is a troll; it cannot affect large and relatively pure blocks of metal, but it can affect stone or dirt that has a moderate amount of metal mixed in. Hazō has had no success at figuring out what the precise parameters are, but it appears to approximately match his intuition: if you look at it and your first thought is "that is dirt/rock" then it will probably work. He has already had the thought that his subconscious is affecting the jutsu and has tried tricking and/or hypnotizing himself into believing that he should be able to do it, and he has already had Mari attempt to genjutsu him into believing it. It has not worked and he has become convinced that it will not work.

Hazō has not been able to create a 3D seal blank from gemstones or anything else. He is not certain, but he has the sense that this may be due to inadequate skill at Earthshaping as opposed to it being simply impossible to make 3D seal blanks using Earthshaping. Again, he's not sure.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Anyway here's the quote I was remembering earlier.
 
PSA: Voting is open with certain limits​

I will be filling in for @Velorien on Thursday's update. I'm going to open voting now but here's some expectation management:

Thursday will be an omake interlude that was commissioned by @FaintlySorcerous, who I feel certain is talented, intelligent, and aesthetically pleasing. It's available to my EarlyBird patrons now, all my patrons tomorrow, and here on SV for Thursday as the regular update.

Sunday will be a regular chapter starting from where the previous one left off:
  1. It will not include the Yuno conversation (I'm leaving that for Vel if/when he wants to take it up)​
  2. It will include a scene in which Hazō notices the secret messages in Minato's poetry. This scene will not count against the scenes in the plan since I will be able to start writing it now.​
The vote tally will be run from the end of chapter 522 so votes that you make now will still be counted even after the Thursday threadmark appears. If I do the cheese brain thing and forget to do that, remind me.
 
Last edited:
I think I'm drawing a blank on more things we can do for necromancy in our current position. The research/abstract side of it is covered by the poetry codes, and we already had the convo about exploration/rescue plans. I'm also not sure what we'd have to talk about with our team if the Yuno conversation is already spoken for.

...I wonder how the civilian population here is doing. Maybe we can drop by and do some Uplift?
 
Seeing as we're trying to replicate a seal failure and also we're trying to make seals do seriously Grand Scheme things, I'm starting to think we should worry about the Watchers. At least have something at the ready to tell them.
 
Sinc efate points have saved our skin a few times. We should consider converting some XP to fp, And writing contingencies into The action plan for when hazou should use them. Before doing really dangerous things
 
faflec said:
...Do we need to have a training plan to convert XP to FP? @eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail ?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think what's being suggested is 'buy a pile of them and sit on them'.
roobee said:
Sinc efate points have saved our skin a few times. We should consider converting some XP to fp, And writing contingencies into The action plan for when hazou should use them. Before doing really dangerous things
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think this is a good idea. They get used automatically in sensible ways and if we buy and stockpile them, then the natural rate we get them at will go down significantly.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top