An awful, yet hopeful, idea occurs to Hazou: Containing ninja is difficult and dangerous because they try to escape or kill you, but what if they couldn't?
Sanity check with Kei and Mari (confirm that this is a plausible sell to Asuma before discussing with the genin), then make the following suggestion:
"It may be the case that your only options are death, T&I (followed by death), or living on my estate as a prisoner. However, in order to justify that third option to my kage, we would need to make some drastic concessions for the safety of his village.
"First, if my kage agrees to this plan, you would need to have your chakra periodically drained. This is simple and painless by a method readily available to me. Unfortunately, there are times when this draining would not be available, which leads me to consider the following:
"Secondly and thirdly, one or both of your hands would need to be amptated to prevent you from forming handseals, and your eyes would need to be removed to prevent you from targeting sealless jutsu.
"Like I said… pretty drastic. But I am trying very hard to save your lives right now, and that leads me to consider extreme options.
"Your hand(/s) and eyes would be kept in stasis in storage seals so that one day if my kage allows it, they might be surgically returned to you. You would be treated with respect and dignity, and allocated a civilian carer to help you live as close to a functional life as possible.
"Ultimately, the decision is yours. I cannot jeopardise my village, but I also care about your agency and consent. If you would prefer to die than live as a disabled person, that is your decision to make."
If the genin consent, ask Mari to figure out how to convince Asuma to "let us keep the captured ninja as crippled chakra batteries".
If rolls are required, purchase as many FP as possible for them.
I don't plan to edit this, so if you want edits then make a fork.
Proposing this plan to Asuma might unironically get him to call us a sick fuck lol. (Or at least another: Hazo, what the hell man!)
Also it's not actually necessary to maim them at all, they won't have the chakra necessary to cast jutsu or access ninja power or speed most of the time anyway (And considering their power level any jutsu they know would not be all that threatening) and we can just temporarily house them inside of a good old fashioned Killbox whenever Noburi's too busy to drain their chakra.
At most we'll have to take off their lower legs (Which we'll seal for potential later reattachment) in order to appease Asuma that they won't be able to run. (Not they even would run given the opportunity after Mari works her magic on them)
And so here's my revised plan:
[X] Action Plan: You Have Seen Too Much, Cog-nito edition
An awful, yet hopeful, idea occurs to Hazou: Containing ninja is difficult and dangerous because they try to escape or kill you, but what if they couldn't?
Sanity check with Kei and Mari (confirm that this is a plausible sell to Asuma before discussing with the genin), then make the following suggestion:
"It may be the case that your only options are death, T&I (followed by death), or living on my estate as a prisoner. However, in order to justify that third option to my kage, we would need to make some concessions for the safety of his village.
"First, if my kage agrees to this plan, you would need to have your chakra periodically drained. This is simple and painless by a method readily available to me. However there will be rare occasions where this method would not be available and as such you would need to be confined to a killbox during such times"
"In addition it is quite likely that our leader the Hokage might insist on removing your lower legs in order to ensure you are unable to run away, however It is my belief that he is not guarenteed to see this as necessary"
"In the event we are forced to remove them, your lower legs would be kept in stasis in storage seals so that one day if my kage allows it, they might be surgically returned to you. You would be treated with respect and dignity, and allocated a civilian career of your choosing to help you live as close to a functional life as possible.
"Ultimately, the decision is yours. I cannot jeopardise my village, but I also care about your agency and consent. If you would prefer to die than live as a disabled person, that is your decision to make."
If the genin consent, ask Mari to figure out how to convince Asuma to "let us keep the captured ninja as crippled chakra batteries".
If rolls are required, purchase as many FP as possible for them.
If the plan goes ahead, task Mari with going full social spec on them in order to ensure that they don't do anything stupid and behave.
Also don't forget to tell Asuma that we intend to have Mari social spec them into compliance
So here's my revised plan that would allow the genin to live at our estate without necessarily having to maim them too badly or at all if Asuma feels he can trust us to keep them contained.
The plan for keeping them from trying to pull some shit is basically just to have Mari to go full social spec on them and essentially brainwash them.
Seconded, but you can go into detail if you think doing so will be meaningful to Hazō or those around him (or the genin, for what it's worth), which it could well be. Killing is like that, at least unless you're thoroughly desensitised to it.
[X] Action Plan: Needs Must While the Devil Drives
Words: <300
Sanity check with Kei, Mari, and Snowflake
Final questions, continue previous SOP
Goals/questions:
Intel about the area, locals, Neck generally.
What does their village look like? Powerful figures, Summoners?
Any other questions that the party can think of.
The genin have seen MARs, Skywalkers, and Skytowers. Clan Secrets and Village Secrets have to stay that way.
Choices, sanity check all with Kei and Mari.
We kill them painlessly (explosive tag to torso? As per Kei's grandpa, it removes evidence of bloodlines, making it a more tolerable choice)
Take them to T&I, where they die afterwards
We handicap them (lose a hand, maybe both eyes to prevent sealless jutsu), their chakra is drained daily by Noburi, and they become (effectively) civilians of the Goketsu. Their harmlessness should mean we may be able to adopt them into the clan after T&I is done.
check viability with Mari
Party: any better ideas? Please?
We wish we had the power to prevent this. We aren't S-rank, and don't yet have the hard/soft power to enforce our will upon the world. We will rez these children after we get the Rift open.
Choice Time:
Request a private moment with the genin.
Present verified choices, and let them choose.
If they choose death...
Listen to their final words.
Explain what we know regarding the afterlife, ask them to find beaches with white sand, and to make smoke signals from grass. We will find them.
Our decision, our duty. Carry it out, ourselves.
Tell the party there's no shame in "guarding the parameter" while we do this.
IIRC, we've sent an Arachnid diplomat over to Squirrel. Did we ever hear back from that? Did the Squirrels kill the Arachnid, did they welcome the diplomat in, did they refuse to even meet with them?
IIRC, we've sent an Arachnid diplomat over to Squirrel. Did we ever hear back from that? Did the Squirrels kill the Arachnid, did they welcome the diplomat in, did they refuse to even meet with them?
TL;DR: Without uncaps, we don't need detailed routing for optimal WHOOSH. All that matters is always keeping Resolve as one of your three highest stat.
Because I'm awful, I did routing anyway. It's informative to have something to look at. As with all things Marked for Death, those WHOOSH routes are best described with a spreadsheet.
I've crunched a lot of numbers on what the optimal slot for Resolve is. If you only care about maximizing a single stat, you should have that stat in the top pyramid slot and keep Resolve secondary. If you care about exactly two stats, Resolve can be the third highest stat. If you would rather have three or more stats maximized, then Resolve should be the highest stat to maximize XP rate. An example of this is visible in Hazou's sheet: going Resolve 4th gets slower stat raises than simply going Resolve 1st.
I recommend Hazou go Resolve secondary, as he can hit critical Sealing thresholds months earlier than with Resolve primary. I recommend that Akane and Kei go Resolve tertiary, as it gets them up to a comfortable jounin statline (60/70/70 Combat/Ath/Alt) substantially faster, by around 16 months. Putting Resolve lower than tertiary slows growth too much to be worth considering.
For Akane and Kei, Resolve primary could make sense due to option-value preservation: Hazou knows that he needs to level Sealing and socials and a bunch of other things, but Akane and Kei may not have yet found the stats they want to level to the max (e.g. paper jutsu for Kei would be a strong option over RW). Higher Resolve would let them exploit these opportunities better if they find them
I'll go over the projections briefly now, but there's really no way to get this wrong. As long as Resolve stays in the top 3 stats (always in the top pyramid tier or just below it), WHOOSH will go well for us. Beyond that, even making this decision is more than a year out in-character. There's plenty of time for plans to go wrong. Will we want to hide our power and grow slowly or maximize Akane and Kei's strength? We'll know better in a year's time. In all cases, the specific stats raised are easily interchangeable.
I also generally assume that by Resolve 89, we're switching to exploiting and no longer leveling Resolve. If there's clearly a lot more quest to play at that point, that assumption may change. It's so far out in the future as to be irrelevant at this point now.
In the previous projections, Hazou was almost building up to an ordinary pyramid anyway, since he wanted to raise so many different stats. Between Sealing, Calligraphy, Earthshaping, Resolve, Chakra Reserves, Athletics, Alertness, Taijutsu, Deceit, Empathy, Rapport, Presence, and various other jutsu and secondary stats, there's no shortage of things worth leveling on his sheet. The question has always been what to level.
"Resolve Secondary" is my recommendation. We hit:
Sealing 50 (eff 72) in 9 months
Sealing 60 (eff 82) in 1 year
Sealing 68 (eff 90) in 1 year and 6 months, if we focus it.
Sealing 70 (eff 92) in 2 years and 6 months
Sealing 80 (eff 102) in 4 years and 9 months
Compared to previous projections, Hazou's growth "peters out" after Sealing 70 (as he can no longer monocolumn), and it takes him more than a year longer than previously to reach all higher Sealing thresholds. Luckily, with SSA, this is more than enough to have Kage level skills – indeed, Kage level Sealing is achievable in his upcoming detour.
If we assume that Biosealing is MedKnow + Sealing and 3D Sealing is Earthshaping + Sealing, in the same way that normal Sealing is Calligraphy + Sealing, then we'll struggle to get all of the Sealing secondary stats high enough to reach ⅔ parity with the insane heights that our Sealing will reach.
While we understand very well what stats we want Hazou to level, it's still possible that we need to pick up other skills: either for narrative reasons like with Earthshaping, or because they are too good not to take. With skill jumps being possible, we can easily slot new things into Hazou's build at any level, just like we can with Akane and Kei. Specific adjustments to move things around should be done on the fly.
Akane has three stats to focus on: Taijutsu, Athletics, and Alertness. She already hits quite hard, but moves low in initiative and struggles with dodges, so leveling Athletics and Alertness are the priorities. These indirectly buff her Taijutsu! If she moves first, she buffs (or Summons or flees or…) before attacks start flying, and with MARS this hugely favors her. Of course, dodging enemy attacks and not taking Consequences is crucial to land big hits as well.
In previous projections, Akane was scheduled to reach 90+ Taijutsu in 2 years and change. Sadly, this is impossible with pyramids.
"Resolve Tertiary" is my recommendation. She hits:
54/60/60 TJ/Ath/Alt in 1 year, 6 months
60/70/70 in 2 years and 2 months
80/80/70 in 4 years and 3 months
While she will reach a jounin statline in comparable time as before, she will slow down as she tries to advance past jounin. She will need S-rank tricks to cross the barrier. Some suggestions: MARS, 8 Gates, Sage Mode, Rasengan… There are many things that combine well with Taijutsu.
Kei is in a similar position to Akane, but slowed down substantially by Snowflake's taxation.
In "Resolve Tertiary", she hits:
50/60/60 Ranged Weapons/Athletics/Alertness in 2 years
60/70/70 in 2 years, 9 months
70/80/80 in 5 years and 1 month
Sadly, I do not think Ranged Weapons is a particularly good stat to raise to the highest levels. Unlike Taijutsu, which we know scales that high, weapons seem to struggle at that tier. We know a few S-rank weapons users, but by and large they seem to be using magic weapons. While we could probably use MARS and related sealtech to approximate magic weapons for Kei, I think it would be far better if we could get her some S-rank Wind (or another element!) ninjutsu, or especially paper jutsu. The halfcost benefits of ninjutsu specialization would help alleviate the Snowflake taxation.
Another way of looking at these builds is slicing them across time. There's not too much to say here that isn't in the sheets, so I'll only show one slice:
In two years' time:
Hazou, at age 18, is possibly the greatest sealmaster in the world at eff. Sealing 90. He's grown into his Clan Head position with socials at 30 across the board, and he has a chuunin level combat statline with 40/50/50 TJ/Ath/Alt. He's also advanced a bit as a Summoner, with a nice 40 CR to complement his 40 Physique.
Akane, at age 19, is one of Leaf's rising jounin stars. With 60/70/70 combat stats and a whole boatload of sealtech, she runs through her first year of jounin-level missions with flying colors. Unbeknownst to most, she also has a powerful city-killer ninjutsu in Elemental Mastery.
Kei, at age 18, is approaching jounin, with a 50/60/60 combat statline. Her skill as a politician has matured and her traditional tactics have grown more sophisticated with Deceit and Intimidation 40, but she still depends on planning out interactions meticulously, made easier by her Frozen Skein 50.
Noburi, at age 18, is a master of his bloodline with Vampiric Dew 60. He can also hold his own in combat with 50/60/50 Water Whip/Athletics/Alertness, and with 40/40 MedKnow/MedNin, he's an impressive medic as well. His CR 40 (eff 67) allows him to summon some of the strongest Toads, if needs be.
Probably the more useful thing I could do here is to provide routes on how specifically to handle the kids' first detours. These are very flexible, and other stats can easily be swapped in or orders can be changed up.
Hazou
The first step is to maximize Resolve at current levels. That means buying CR to 30 and Resolve to 59. At this point, his pyramid is: 7/4/4/2/1
He needs two more 50s to raise one up to 60. Those two will most likely be Earthshaping and Sealing. Suppose we do Earthshaping first, as originally planned.
Excellent. Now, for Sealing, we need to raise up some 20s to support Sealing 30 and Calligraphy 30. Hazou's socials are always underserviced, so let's raise Empathy.
Empathy 10 -> 20
Sealing 29 -> 30
6/4/4/2/2
Cool, but now we need two more 20s to raise Calligraphy. We can raise Rapport and Presence, but then we'll have too many 20s and not enough 10s. Let's raise Substitution as well.
And then up to 50, with Calligraphy following close behind:
Sealing 40 -> 50
Calligraphy 30 -> 40
5/5/3/3/3
Physique auto-levels to 30 at this point.
Physique 29 -> 30
5/4/4/3/3
At this point, we would like to raise up a new 60, but we need to widen his pyramid a bit to comply with the pyramid rule. We need one more 20 stat and one more 10 stat. Let's raise up Substitution to 20, and raise Hiding Like a Mole and Pangolin Earth Armor up to 10.
Substitution 10 -> 20
Hiding Like a Mole 1 -> 10
Pangolin Earth Armor 1 -> 10
6/5/4/3/3
Now, we can raise his Sealing up to 60.
Sealing 50 -> 60
6/5/4/3/2/1
And that's a clean pyramid! Of course, the order of any of these is freely interchangeable.
Akane
Akane has just about capped out her Resolve. Her current pyramid is: 5/4/3/3/1/1. She's not pyramid-valid, but that's fine for now, we just need to make her valid before she can raise up a 70 stat. Let's try to get her Athletics and Alertness up to the 60s, starting with Athletics up to 50:
Athletics 48 -> 50
5/4/3/2/2/1
She can't directly raise anything much up, and she's lacking in foundational skills quite a bit. While we could make some jumps (for example, jumping EM up to 45 for nukes), let's just raise up some stats at the bottom of her pyramid and see what happens:
Excellent. Akane's now got a solid, chunky-lookin' pyramid. She needs 3 more 10s, 2 more 20s, 1 more 30, and 1 more 40 before she can raise up a 70 stat, but she's in a good spot. She'll probably be well suited to picking up another Element, if only to have more techniques to level and slot into her pyramid. The halfcosting could save her a lot of XP.
Kei
Like Akane, Kei's pyramid is in the right spot, she just needs a bit more time to maximize Resolve. The shape is: 8/4/3/2/2/1
Let's just do the obvious thing of getting her combat stats better.
This column is even narrower than Akane's, but is looking pretty solid. She'll need 1 more 40, 2 more 30s, 3 more 20s, and 2 more 10s before she can get a 70, but this is not a bad place to be.
Noburi
His pyramid looks great. We bitched and moaned about how terrible it was for the longest time, but after all that work, it's been fixed! His layout is: 6/6/5/3/1
Let's raise VD up to 50:
Vampiric Dew 40 -> 50
6/6/5/2/2
Now raise up Chakra Reserves to 40 to make room for his other medical stat in the 30s:
Chakra Reserves 30 -> 40
6/6/4/3/2
Medical Ninjutsu 29 -> 30
6/5/5/3/2
And why wait? The medical stats are important, let's treat 'em like it.
Medical Knowledge 30 -> 40
6/5/4/4/2
Raise up Athletics, as is required for ninja:
Athletics 45 -> 50
6/5/4/3/3
And now he has room to raise up a 60! The wonders of having a nice pyramid. Let's do VD:
Vampiric Dew 50 -> 60
6/5/4/3/2/1
At this point, we do some quiet leveling of a bunch of stats to X9, then...
Now Noburi's rocking a solid 60/60/60 VD/Athletics/Alertness, above 50/50 Medical stats. He needs to flesh out his pyramid a bit more with 1 more 40, 30, 20, and 10 before he can raise up a 70, but he's in good shape.
You'll note that these aren't the stats that are chosen in the spreadsheets above. This is because I choose the stats for this micro-routing write-up just by eyeballing the character sheets. The exact stats chosen don't matter too much, as long as Resolve stays in the top 3.
Very soon, we'll be done with the long Resolve push for Hazou, Kei, and Akane. After that's done, we'll be spending a year or more grinding our core stats up, but at a highly improved XP rate compared to what was previously possible. I look forward to the discussions on how we'll be training our characters up to jounin and beyond.
IIRC, we've sent an Arachnid diplomat over to Squirrel. Did we ever hear back from that? Did the Squirrels kill the Arachnid, did they welcome the diplomat in, did they refuse to even meet with them?
Kagome convinced Kumokōgō to send a delegation through Kangaroo and on to Squirrel in order to ask both nations if they currently have a Summoner and to explore the possibility of passing a message if they do.
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.
We don't actually know for sure if they have the scroll or not, all we know is that the summoner who fought Jiraiya is dead and that by way of their phrasing they probably don't yet have someone to replace him.
Local civillians would probably know, and also it shouldn't be too hard to get the genin tell us whether or not they have a new summoner by just getting them to slip up during conversation.
Local civillians would probably know, and also it shouldn't be too hard to get the genin tell us whether or not they have a new summoner by just getting them to slip up during conversation
We could do that and I think we should before we go home. But if the clan recovered the scroll there's not going to be a blood scent since they'd have cleaned it up.
There's blood on the scroll which is what we were tracking in the first place. The other blood would be gone after 3-4 years regardless of if it was cleaned up
We wish we had the power to prevent this. We aren't S-rank, and don't yet have the hard/soft power to enforce our will upon the world. We will rez these children after we get the Rift open.
What is this in reference of? Their deaths specifically? I thought we were letting them choose some shitty choice which may not necessarily end with them dead?
Maybe instead say "We wish we had the power to make more optimal outcomes. We aren't S-rank, and don't yet have the hard/soft power to enforce our will upon the world. If they die, we will rez these children after we get the Rift open."
Suggestion: Ask what they want to do with their bodies (and their colleagues')? We can (as a show of faith) do those things with their colleagues' bodies before we kill them? Or even before the question is posed? It's a small thing, but a good one (Noburi should have the bodies unless he did a dumb and gave them to T&I/Orochimaru).
Also, we should have a note that if they don't choose death we do the option they chose. IE if they want to risk it as cripples we do that and go to Leaf (in whatever order is correct).
Beyond that, minor stuff that it's easier to just show than tell. See below.
What does their village look like? Powerful figures, Summoners?
Any other questions that the party can think of.
Ask if there are funerary rites they wish performed on their colleagues' bodies. Perform them, within reason.
The genin have seen MARS, Skywalkers, and Skytowers. Clan Secrets and Village Secrets have to stay that way.
Choices:
We kill them painlessly (explosive tag to torso? As per Kei's grandpa, it removes evidence of bloodlines, making it a more tolerable choice)
Take them to T&I, where they die afterwards
We handicap them (lose a hand, maybe both eyes to prevent sealless jutsu), their chakra is drained daily by Noburi, and they become (effectively) civilians of the Goketsu. Their harmlessness should mean we may be able to adopt them into the clan after T&I is done.
Double-check viability with Mari.
Party: Any better ideas? Please?
We wish we had the power to make more optimal outcomes. We aren't S-rank, and don't yet have the hard/soft power to enforce our will upon the world. If they die, we will rez these children after we get the Rift open.
Choice Time:
Request a private moment with the genin.
Present verified choices, and let them choose.
If they choose death...
Explain what we know regarding the afterlife, ask them to find beaches with white sand, and to make smoke signals from grass. We will find them.
Ask what funerary rites they wish performed on them.
Listen to their final words.
Our decision, our duty. Carry it out, ourselves.
Tell the party there's no shame in "guarding the parameter" while we do this.
Unrelated: Man, Akane is gonna be so freaked out at us advocating for mutilating them.
Yeah... hopefully, she understands the "we're trying to find a way to keep them alive, and this is an option that keeps them alive. If we let them go, Asuma will kill us."
What does their village look like? Powerful figures, Summoners?
Any other questions that the party can think of.
Ask if there are funerary rites they wish performed on their colleagues' bodies. Perform them, within reason.
The genin have seen MARS, Skywalkers, and Skytowers. Clan Secrets and Village Secrets have to stay that way.
Choices:
We kill them painlessly (explosive tag to torso? As per Kei's grandpa, it removes evidence of bloodlines, making it a more tolerable choice)
Take them to T&I, where they die afterwards
We handicap them (lose a hand, maybe both eyes to prevent sealless jutsu), their chakra is drained daily by Noburi, and they become (effectively) civilians of the Goketsu. Their harmlessness should mean we may be able to adopt them into the clan after T&I is done.
Double-check viability with Mari.
Party: Any better ideas? Please?
We wish we had the power to make more optimal outcomes. We aren't S-rank, and don't yet have the hard/soft power to enforce our will upon the world. If they die, we will rez these children after we get the Rift open.
Choice Time:
Request a private moment with the genin.
Present verified choices, and let them choose.
If they choose death...
Explain what we know regarding the afterlife, ask them to find beaches with white sand, and to make smoke signals from grass. We will find them.
Ask what funerary rites they wish performed on them.
Listen to their final words.
Our decision, our duty. Carry it out, ourselves.
Tell the party there's no shame in "guarding the parameter" while we do this.
Yeah... hopefully, she understands the "we're trying to find a way to keep them alive, and this is an option that keeps them alive. If we let them go, Asuma will kill us."
SNOWFLAKE: And here, you can see the point where Hazou begins to slide from "I will do anything to keep them ALIVE" to "I will do ANYTHING to keep them alive".
