The issue in that reasoning in my opinion lies in that we don't know if there's anything for which chakra diffusion could not be a problem (e.g. fires can spread past the range of a fire ninjutsu, what do we know about signals, if someone has an enhanced sonar thing or whatever), be bypassed (e.g. something done long ago established a connection between them and there, and the link functions more as light from a laser, diffusing a lot less), or be irrelevant (another effect grants the same bonus, e.g. Byakugan lets one see better far away even if the user doesn't have any means of sending chakra up to where they can see, because they don't need to. A telescope does essentially the same job without sending anything anywhere). Shikaku himself assumed it was possible to overcome, bypass, or somehow render moot that issue for "point defences", that is, a fully operational counter at extreme long range for Skywalker-enabled suicide attackers instead of dismissing the idea entirely, back when the concept was first introduced.
I know I'm breaking an unofficial rule by saying this, but while the mechanics of the quest are built to fit the narrative and can be violated as needed, the mechanics are meant to fit the narrative, and we can make assumptions based on this. Like the fact that a ninjutsu capable of detecting ninja from (by my estimate) thousands of Zones (meters) away would be so prohibitively chakra-expensive to cast that the user would be dead. Or the Sot6P, or maybe a Jinchuriki (I'm not going to believe a Jinchuriki is here, that's just insane).
But on a more narrative standpoint, if we had a ninjutsu capable of detecting stuff from thousands of meters up (I will use your sonar as the example), I have difficulty seeing how that ninjutsu user could get any meaningful information from it. They would get "Something is here. Is it a bird? A magical flying ninja? An annoying wind spirit that messed with my ninjutsu? Who knows?", IMO.
The rest...Please do not take this as an insult, but I have the feeling you are making arguments that could possibly make your conclusion valid, and not analyzing how likely they are to actually be true. A connection between the ground and the random patch in the sky we are in is possible, but it raises questions like "Why would they do this?", for example. I certainly acknowledge these things you have suggested as being possible, but I don't think they are likely enough to warrant consideration.
Right, but are we continuing the mission or are we bailing? People talked about continuing, or bailing, depending on what was going on with the Squirrel-folk down below us, but I don't think there was ever a consensus.
Right, but are we continuing the mission or are we bailing? People talked about continuing, or bailing, depending on what was going on with the Squirrel-folk down below us, but I don't think there was ever a consensus.
I want to kill the genin and carry on with the mission (Akane has no debuffs, after all). But if the consensus becomes "return to Leaf," then I say we take the genin to T&I and politely ask for a copy of whatever Leaf learns about Neck for our next attempt.
I want to kill the genin and carry on with the mission (Akane has no debuffs, after all). But if the consensus becomes "return to Leaf," then I say we take the genin to T&I and politely ask for a copy of whatever Leaf learns about Neck for our next attempt.
*sigh* I honestly think killing the kids might end up being what happens, but I honestly do not want to simply kill them out of hand (ala your plan). I would rather them be given the choice of death (100%) or Leaf (>99.99%) or necromancy (???) or exile (<0.01%).
Maybe I'm being weird, but I want them to choose even though I'm probably being a coward trying to foist moral culpability for murder onto the kids in the guise of a choice.
*sigh* I honestly think killing the kids might end up being what happens, but I honestly do not want to simply kill them out of hand (ala your plan). I would rather them be given the choice of death (100%) or Leaf (>99.99%) or necromancy (???) or exile (<0.01%).
While I'd really rather not quit the mission after one encounter with an enemy patrol, I'm willing to join the "This Mission is Over, Return to Leaf" if that's what the general consensus is.
I already have Hazou asking Kei for ideas (further distribution of moral responsibility), but I suppose we could give the genin a choice between quick/painless death now, or Leaf's T&I, but I largely suspect the point would be moot.
Maybe I'm being weird, but I want them to choose even though I'm probably being a coward trying to foist moral culpability for murder onto the kids in the guise of a choice.
HAZOU: "It's not enough that I've killed your family members. It's not enough that I'm going to kill you. I want you to ask me to kill you. I want you to kneel before me and beg for death."
Minami had light focusing just for long range sight. Also other villages might know the power of telescope. Telescope hard to gauge since leaf doesn't have it but I'm also surprised every village isn't using it
If we leave them alone for long periods we will need to restrain them quite well and setup a water feeding system.Otherwise they could try to operate the sky tower to descend And if we die then they die a slow death.
To people wanting to continue the mission. Can you explain your reasoning? I don't understand how the cost benefit could be worth it. The cost being risk of death and benefit being chance of scroll. With amity power doesn't matter as much, although it prob still matter. And we already have enough power to carry out building roads and walls and clean water sources . Only power I can think of needing is to deal with dragon and squirrel don't help with that
Speaking of dragon. Has kafome looked at seal yet? Does he have updates on that?
Edit: prisoners got lotsa consequences. Spending another week on socials could probably get them to spill buncha info
Minami had light focusing just for long range sight. Also other villages might know the power of telescope. Telescope hard to gauge since leaf doesn't have it but I'm also surprised every village isn't using it
This was supposed to be easy, Hazō griped to himself. Their team leader had a bloodline that allowed her to see long distances—it was practically the first thing she had said to them! It sounded perfect—create the prism on the Sunset Racer and then walk along above the clouds, watching the enemy's every move through the magic bloodline jutsu.
Nope.
"Um...I can only create the prism where I am. I can see through it when I move away from it."
I also have serious doubts Minami's "long-ranged jutsu" was long-ranged enough to reach the tens of thousands of feet we are in, when our ambush had us doing a thousand.
No comment on the telescope, though it is a rarity and I have trouble believing it would be here of all places.
Above cloud height is very vague. Quick google says some low clouds types can range from near the surface as lower bound to 6,500 ft as upper bound
Edit: while some upper type clouds can be very high indeed
Edit2: we've told shika about necro. Have we specifically told him about the rift? Stabilizing a rift sounds like it could go wrong and cause it to expand and cause bad stuff. Especially if it expands into where the other rifts were. Would feel safer if shika had been told and didn't freak out and tell us to stop
TL;DR: Explaining how pyramids work. This lays out a procedure to optimally upgrade pyramids, and we can repeatedly apply it to reach Kage-level stats and beyond.
As in the previous column paradigm, we will almost always want to build the narrowest possible build we can, so as to spend the most XP possible on getting high stats. For a given pyramid, we want to move every stat up by 1 Aspect Bonus. The best way to show how to do this is with a demonstration of how to progress the pyramid by one tier.
Let's start with a simple, new-ish chuunin pyramid:
This chuunin has 1 level 50 stat, 2 level 40 stats, 3 level 30 stats, and so on. At bare minimum, assuming all single-cost skills, this costs around 5400 XP to make, under some assumptions:
There are no unnecessary levels purchased: everything is at 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50.
There are no stunts purchased.
There are no double-cost or half-cost skills.
The stats are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, …, roughly in order of how important they are. You can imagine these are Taijutsu, Athletics, Alertness, Stealth, Chakra Reserves, etc. They won't be important for now, but we'll come back to these numbers by the end of the post.
First, we take the second column and raise it, giving us a 2-wide capstone.
We've raised up many stats, and added a new stat (in orange) to the bottom. This build has around 6700 XP invested in the pyramid, under the previous assumptions.
Equivalently, we could instead have just raised a new stat to the top! If we instead added a new orange block in the 50s slot, that would also be a valid move. With skill jumps, it's easy to add new skills at the top, or jump skills in the middle around.
For the second move, we'll raise up the third column, adding a new stat again.
This move didn't widen our peak. It was easier than the first move, as we didn't need to raise any stats up to the capstone-tier. This position is achievable at 7500 XP minimum.
Now, let's broaden the top of our pyramid to 3-wide by raising the third column again.
This move is identical to the first one! We do the exact same operation on the previously raised column, adding in another stat. This requires 8800 XP.
While we would like to raise up our top stat into the 60s yet, we can't do that yet. While we would have 1/2/3 at the top, we would then have 3/4/5 in the next tiers. We need to introduce 3 new stats to do so, essentially building a column and adding it on.
Like with the other moves, this is equivalent to other ways of doing things. Instead of constructing a new column, we can raise existing stats into the shape of a column, and put new stats only into the bottom 10s tier. This position requires 9500 XP.
Now, we can finally raise the top stat and get a new capstone.
Now, our chuunin has grown up into a nice brand-new special jounin, with a capstone 60 stat at around 10k XP minimum. Since the pyramid shape is the same, we can simply do it again, and again, and again.
This divides the work of raising up the pyramid into 5 approximately equal steps, roughly:
Raise a second capstone
Start raising a third capstone
Finish raising a third capstone
Add on another column to expand the base
Raise up into the next pyramid tier
Let's examine how stats move around between the various steps. At each step, let's number the stats as in the start and final positions above, and see how they change from location to location:
Note how groups of stats don't always live in the same place. For example, 2 and 3 are adjacent in the starting and ending configuration, but 2 is in the highest tier while 3 is in the second highest for a fair amount of the cycle. If 2 were Athletics and 3 were Alertness, we'd have a serious choice to make about which stat we wanted to have higher, for potentially quite a large amount of time.
Overall, following this procedure gives us the highest number of maximally-leveled stats for the longest amount of time while we're leveling up. While we could go for a 4-wide peak, or even a 5-wide, that would be very suboptimal compared to going for 3 and moving on. However, there's little risk of getting stuck with a bad build in this paradigm. There's almost always room to jump stats around into good places, and the sheer amount of supports necessary means that XP is rarely wasted.
I hope this made the building procedure and the implications of the pyramid rules clearer for everyone! Feel free to ping me with questions.
Thanks to @Inferno Vulpix for the detailed feedback on this post.
@eaglejarl@Velorien@OliWhail Are the remains of the dragon we have stashed on the 7th path something that should remain only known to Leaf higher ups (Ami included)?
I genuinely do not think that folks on the ground can see, much less decipher, a 100 sqft Skytower (?) located a half dozen miles or more in the air. This is anecdotal based on my experiences but may be wrong.
Skywalkers will be discovered by the East continent in time. If the information is public, no problem with leaking it. What is Asuma expecting? To use skywalkers in an operation against the East continent before enemies know about them? What would be gained? Waiting too long risks other countries scooping the opportunity. Spreading existence of skywalkers can secure Eastern allies and trip a trap on first Western country to try to exploit them.
Your orders were "Skywalkers are still OPSEC-secure on the eastern continent; I'd prefer to keep it that way, but it's not worth your life. Do your best to be discreet but use them instead of dying."
We could ask Ami how much of a favor we would owe her for figuring out a solution. If she only charges a small favor (what are those worth? Like an expensive dinner?) it sounds could be worth
We could ask Ami how much of a favor we would owe her for figuring out a solution. If she only charges a small favor (what are those worth? Like an expensive dinner?) it sounds could be worth
If we really must, we could abort, bring the Genin back, and ask the Yamanaka to mindwipe the Genin after T&I. They wouldn't die but would be badly traumatized. Or we could give them a clean kill. Making them choose between living and following our orders religiously and/or dying feels like excessive torture at this point.
@eaglejarl@Velorien@OliWhail Are the remains of the dragon we have stashed on the 7th path something that should remain only known to Leaf higher ups (Ami included)?
Yes. I'm assuming that although the Goketsu have a lot of latitude when it comes to the Great Seal and Dragons, telling Ami- and through her Mist, was one thing. Informing other nations would be another thing?
Discussion complete. Hazō and Kagome have discussed it and come to a tentative conclusion. They have a design which should theoretically be able to open the rift if two of these seals are activated within a few seconds of each other, one on either side of the rift and physically close to it. Hazō is fairly confident that he can research the seal, but it's at the upper end of his "safe to research" envelope, so he's going to have to be very careful and take his time. It's likely to be months of work.
And, of course, there's no actual way to test it. At the end of the research you will have a seal design that doesn't randomly blow up during infusion and has some sort of effect, but you won't know for certain if it's capable of opening the rift until you actually try it.
If you want a seal that can open the rift from only one side, that's going to be a lot harder.
I want to kill the genin and carry on with the mission (Akane has no debuffs, after all). But if the consensus becomes "return to Leaf," then I say we take the genin to T&I and politely ask for a copy of whatever Leaf learns about Neck for our next attempt.
You know, you've been a lot more bloodthirsty coldly pragmatic about this than I usually see you being where people are involved. What makes the difference?
You know, you've been a lot more bloodthirsty coldly pragmatic about this than I usually see you being where people are involved. What makes the difference?
if the rift copies functioning seals, we can revolutionalize seal production speed.
die with a full set of seals. get 2x the seals.
although seal degradation in rift may limit the # of duplications and the safety
edit:
getting a protoplan out for discussion
[] protoplan
ask kei to ask mari to ask ami what solutions and their costs she can think of. since kei, ami will do for free
ask mari how hard to check how bad leaf t&i is, and what it costs us if she caught. and if us crippling the genin make it easier for them to avoid t&i and us keep as chakra battery
ask yuno to tell us forbidden lore, with kei with a filter veto on subtopics. in case any will help us. don't share the highest opsec info since we haven't done all the normal opsec precautions to prevent eavesdropping (air domes, etc.)
scout island candidates for marooning. kei thought unlikely but worth trying at least. especially if we cripple the genin so they can't escape.
Spend another weak on social takeouts to get info
last resort if we have decided to kill the kids. ask asuma if any other way. accept his answer, don't expend political capita.
You know, you've been a lot more bloodthirsty coldly pragmatic about this than I usually see you being where people are involved. What makes the difference?
Real Answer: It's simply that I don't really see a way to allow the genin to live. Here and on Discord, I've listed our current options, and none of them seem especially viable, save for "give them a quick death," or "take them to T&I."
I don't want Hazou to kill the genin (cultural adults they may be, but the genin are still children who are younger than our own party of teenagers) but don't really see any other viable alternative. I still want to talk things out, just in case one us (the hivemind/players) has an idea (it's why I voted for a lore update, too). I just think the chances of that are low.
Bring them back and hope we can sway Asuma to let them live
Not possible (Mari, a FOOMing social spec jonin, laughed at the idea succeeding)
We'd be welcoming in a vengeful, personal enemy into our home
Research Rift Seals while we sit on them, then sway them into the Cult of Necromancy, kill them, and then get the Rift open
Not possible in this time frame,
Questionably possible if we can convert them to our cult,
Questionably possible if we can then convince them to willingly die for their new cult,
We're still assuming that seals work after being copied and pasted over into the afterlife
Which is a big assumption and doubtful, besides, given what we know about Shadow Clones and Summoning Scrolls
All of number 3 but with Hazou engraving the seal directly on their chakra coils (after having learned Minato's chakra-sealing)
which only further increases the amount of time we would have to spend. And it was already an unrealistic amount of time.
We kill the genin here, and continue the mission.
After a week of nothing happening, Neck may have started to cool down.
We kill the genin here (saving them from the tender mercies of T&I) and return home
Allows us cut our losses and return a second time
May have to lie to Asuma about why we didn't bring the genin back
Maybe "we felt it would be too dangerous to take enemy hostages across the ocean without Noburi"
We tell the genin about necromancy, tell them to look for a beach with white sands, kill them, and then continue the mission
After a week of nothing happening, Neck may have started to cool down.
Possible chance for resurrection, decreasing the weight on Hazou's shoulders.
We take the genin to the Rift Scar in the hope that they transmigrate over directly to the beach with white sands, tell them about necromancy, kill them, and return to Neck to carry out the mission
Increased chance for possible resurrection, decreasing the weight on Hazou's shoulders.
Spends more time away from Neck, allowing them to cool off yet more
Have to find a way to carry hostile enemy ninja over the ocean.
