Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[Inferno Vulpix]

Well now we're weighing "potentially more crystal, and flora in case we can't farm more of the specimens we take" against "definitely villagers dying". The fauna is a thing, but it's mostly a thing that is killing the villagers.

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Again, just MEW up the entrance to the cave. Taking away the crystal isn't going to get rid of all the deadly chakra beasts infesting it, it just means the villagers who wander in there will get chewed to pieces by ordinary monsters rather than mind-controlled monsters.

MEW up the entrance, build some walls around the village just on general principles, and the crystal gets to live. We can come back later, bypass the MEW with ease, and get whatever value we can out of it.

(And I suspect the cave entrance won't just reopen itself, since we know that the adhesion-less stone starts showing up only deeper into the cave.)

Killing the crystal is not only insufficient to save the villagers, but also unnecessary. So why do it?

 

[acidshill]

1) It's routinely killing people, and it's really not very Uplift to keep the orphan grinder plugged in.

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If we seal off the entrance with MEW (it's possible the cave won't like this, but I'm not especially concerned and am fine with this action) does that leave the villagers in appreciably more danger than they would be in any other part of the world? After all, it's not as if Hazou has a moral obligation to spend all of his time hunting chakra beasts to make the world slightly safer.

2) This is a deathworld, politics-wise and literally. "Our clan is fine right now" won't save us from the next kaiju, but having resources to spare might. We can use them for Oro goodwill, for training, for land we can hide in, for helping people...

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This line of argument can be used to justify the worst murderhobo behavior and proves too much. Right now we have neither a pressing need for any specific resource nor do we have knowledge that any specific benefit we would gain from killing the cave crystal being would make a significant difference for our long-term plans. The 'resources to spare' are nonspecific, speculative, and in no way necessary.

3) We need to learn how sealing in stone works. This is the first time we encounter rock that actually holds chakra in it. We can't pass an opportunity to study that.

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We already took a small piece of crystal with us, no? We can study that. Why do we need more?

 

[acidshill]

This line of argument can be used to justify the worst murderhobo behavior and proves too much. Right now we have neither a pressing need for any specific resource nor do we have knowledge that any specific benefit we would gain from killing the cave crystal being would make a significant difference for our long-term plans. The 'resources to spare' are nonspecific, speculative, and in no way necessary.

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Elaborating: 'this is a deathworld so literally anything I do to gain power and resources for myself might make the difference in my survival and is therefore morally justified' is definitely a position one could take, but I don't think it's the position Hazou and Team Uplift have taken in the past, and acting on that basis now would be inconsistent with previously espoused ethical principles.

 

[Paperclipped]

Did we leave with the bit of crystal we broke off?

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Yes.

It would be good if we were able to retrieve samples of the chakra-rejecting rocks.
Some questions:

• do they retain the chakra-resistance when separated from their source?
• do they still resist earth-shaping?
• does earth-shaping detect remnant consciousness?
• can they be put into storage scrolls?
• can they be transported to 7P?
• do they smell weird to any Dog summons?
• do they feel like Nature chakra?
• do Dog summons have the same difficulty using chakra-adhesion on them?

That said, I think that if we do send anyone back down, it should be only Aklones and Hazougangers. No-one flesh and blood, anyway. That place is
scary and I am very surprised we all lived

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You have samples.

• Nope.
• Nope.
• Mu. Earthshaping does not detect consciousness or communicate, the fluff text is Hazou's way of interpreting the chakra feedback he gets through the technique.
• Yep.
• Yep.
• Nope.
• Mu. Hazou has no clue what nature chakra feels like.
• In the cave, Candoru had the same difficulty adhering to the stone. Now he does not.

As I said on discord, we specifically gathered small samples to send back to Noburi, with the intention of doing a larger harvest at the end.

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On day 1, you gathered bare-minimum samples of the medically useful herbs for Noburi to judge what was valuable. On day 2, you got Noburi's report and harvested large amounts of the medically useful herbs and transported them back to Leaf. On day 3, you found the parts of the cavern from Orochimaru's notes; you didn't know how to harvest most of the stuff there, but you took a lot of the stalagmites, and diverse samples of the rest, which is awaiting transport back to Leaf. The team does not think there is much more than can be done, harvesting-wise.

1) It's routinely killing people, and it's really not very Uplift to keep the orphan grinder plugged in.

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Well now we're weighing "potentially more crystal, and flora in case we can't farm more of the specimens we take" against "definitely villagers dying". The fauna is a thing, but it's mostly a thing that is killing the villagers.

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Point of order: The villagers apparently have the correct rituals to avoid death, and only foolish travelers are getting killed.

 

[faflec]

Point of order: The villagers apparently have the correct rituals to avoid death, and only foolish travelers are getting killed.

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[Evil] Lure the golems to the villagers and observe the correct rituals to avoid death

 

[Lysbeth Succubus]

just MEW up the entrance to the cave

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There are many entrances and something (most likely the crystal) can earthbend better than us.

Taking away the crystal isn't going to get rid of all the deadly chakra beasts infesting it, it just means the villagers who wander in there will get chewed to pieces by ordinary monsters rather than mind-controlled monsters.

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Or the mind-controlled monsters wander off. Or they end up dying. Or killing each other. There's probably a reason so many tough monsters are here and cohabitating, and it's quite a safe bet that the combined MacGuffin and Applied Phlebotinum in the midst of it is an operative element.

And I suspect the cave entrance won't just reopen itself, since we know that the adhesion-less stone starts showing up only deeper into the cave

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That was when it was passive. And that was when the "kill and eat people" system worked. If we somehow seal it all up and it stops getting its people food, it could start taking drastic measures to get its fix.

Killing the crystal is not only insufficient to save the villagers, but also unnecessary. So why do it?

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* Insufficient: we don't know that.
* Unnecessary: we absolutely don't know that.
* Why do it: it has a high likelihood of being necessary as it is most probably the brain behind the villagers' deaths, most probably the most dangerous thing around, and quite likely to be the source of the raised danger levels of the area. We also get a lot out of it, might advance on saving the multiverse, can perhaps protect the villagers but can definitely protect our loved ones from Oro or from a severe case of dropping other shoe later on if we have more resources. The only cost is what-ifs assuming that either it's going to stay inert if we decide to, essentially, make it experience what the skin farm victim experienced in Oro's basement, or there are resources we'll cruelly lack that can't be replaced or replicated in its vicinity. That, and the frankly unknowable moral cost of what may or may not be a mind. Again, if we consider it is one, which is a perfectly valid line of reasoning with associated moral and ethical value, it still has to be weighed against the many other lives it plans to take.

Edit because Paperclipped's point of order: not the villagers, but whatever unwary travellers. Still, enough for the villagers to build a pattern, which is really hard to do when people can die of many things and you need survivors and lots of trial and error to make up the rituals. And if we cut it off from what looks like feeding to it, we still can't predict it won't get more proactive in hunting food.

 

[MadScientist]

Updated:

[x] Action Plan: Grab Loot, Go Home

• Go back to Leaf.
• Reunite with Noburi and find out what he's been up to in our absence.
• Assign Yuno as clan General.

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[Cariyaga]

There are many entrances and something (most likely the crystal) can earthbend better than us.

Or the mind-controlled monsters wander off. Or they end up dying. Or killing each other. There's probably a reason so many tough monsters are here and cohabitating, and it's quite a safe bet that the combined MacGuffin and Applied Phlebotinum in the midst of it is an operative element.

That was when it was passive. And that was when the "kill and eat people" system worked. If we somehow seal it all up and it stops getting its people food, it could start taking drastic measures to get its fix.

* Insufficient: we don't know that.
* Unnecessary: we absolutely don't know that.
* Why do it: it has a high likelihood of being necessary as it is most probably the brain behind the villagers' deaths, most probably the most dangerous thing around, and quite likely to be the source of the raised danger levels of the area. We also get a lot out of it, might advance on saving the multiverse, can perhaps protect the villagers but can definitely protect our loved ones from Oro or from a severe case of dropping other shoe later on if we have more resources. The only cost is what-ifs assuming that either it's going to stay inert if we decide to, essentially, make it experience what the skin farm victim experienced in Oro's basement, or there are resources we'll cruelly lack that can't be replaced or replicated in its vicinity. That, and the frankly unknowable moral cost of what may or may not be a mind. Again, if we consider it is one, which is a perfectly valid line of reasoning with associated moral and ethical value, it still has to be weighed against the many other lives it plans to take.

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The villagers' deaths that aren't happening?

Point of order: The villagers apparently have the correct rituals to avoid death, and only foolish travelers are getting killed.

Click to shrink...

 

[acidshill]

The team does not think there is much more than can be done, harvesting-wise.

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Point of order: The villagers apparently have the correct rituals to avoid death, and only foolish travelers are getting killed.

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In that case, I don't think we have anything else we should do here. If it's just travelers (to this rather isolated village) getting killed than the mortality rate can't be that much higher than baseline, and I don't think it's worth risking the small chance that sealing the cave entrance is harmful to the cavernous crystalline intelligence (at some point I want to return, attempt to communicate and make apologies, and that is easiest if we avoid further provocations).

 

[Immortal Lurker]

It would be good if we were able to retrieve samples of the chakra-rejecting rocks.
Some questions:

• do they retain the chakra-resistance when separated from their source?
• do they still resist earth-shaping?
• does earth-shaping detect remnant consciousness?
• can they be put into storage scrolls?
• can they be transported to 7P?
• do they smell weird to any Dog summons?
• do they feel like Nature chakra?
• do Dog summons have the same difficulty using chakra-adhesion on them?

That said, I think that if we do send anyone back down, it should be only Aklones and Hazougangers. No-one flesh and blood, anyway. That place is scary and I am very surprised we all lived

Click to shrink...

Chakra resistant rocks go right into major clan secrets if the properties are persistent, with a supply sold to the tower for the foundations of extremely important buildings.

 

[acidshill]

[x] Action Plan: Grab Loot, Go Home

• Go back to Leaf.
• Reunite with Noburi and find out what he's been up to in our absence.
• Assign Yuno as clan General.

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I request that Hazou consult with Mari before appointing Yuno to that position, on the off chance that she thinks it's a bad idea, or should be approached in a specific way, or that Yuno needs certain things in place to do her best job. [EDIT: Mari would also be a good person to talk to about filling the other open positions.] Maybe also make it more of a job offer than order? In case she really doesn't want to do it for some reason.

And someone who remembers better than me should figure out if this plan needs any other points to handle the ship captain we made a bargain with, because I don't remember what happened with that.

 

[Lysbeth Succubus]

Elaborating: 'this is a deathworld so literally anything I do to gain power and resources for myself might make the difference in my survival and is therefore morally justified' is definitely a position one could take, but I don't think it's the position Hazou and Team Uplift have taken in the past, and acting on that basis now would be inconsistent with previously espoused ethical principles.

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It's not "literally anything", we're pretending this is a slippery slope whereas it's really not. Bad things at disastrous scales keep happening, if breaking one (1) crystal that may or may not have a mind - speculation based on one (1) chakra feedback experience and chakra golems that may or may not have been neutral but definitely tried to kill people - has the potential to help defend lots of people when (not if) something bad happens again, and may help us save the multiverse, and may even solve a dangerous local situation in the short term, that's doable. This is not Hazōrochimaru territory.

 

[Lysbeth Succubus]

We already took a small piece of crystal with us, no? We can study that. Why do we need more?

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Analyse larger structure, gather more data, allow for destructive testing and observation, potentially practise rock-based sealmastery on it, actually use it for the uses we find if we find any, provide extra samples we can give Orochimaru and/or other people or use ourselves if one test is time-consuming and we'd like to try other things first, or if something gets lost, broken, or otherwise unusable.

 

[acidshill]

It's not "literally anything", we're pretending this is a slippery slope whereas it's really not. Bad things at disastrous scales keep happening, if breaking one (1) crystal that may or may not have a mind - speculation based on one (1) chakra feedback experience and chakra golems that may or may not have been neutral but definitely tried to kill people - has the potential to help defend lots of people when (not if) something bad happens again, and may help us save the multiverse, and may even solve a dangerous local situation in the short term, that's doable. This is not Hazōrochimaru territory.

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Oh, I'm not worried about a slippery slope, I just think the information we have now about possible benefits doesn't meet the threshold to justify killing it. We haven't actually properly studied the samples we have now yet. If we do so and discover, e.g. that the crystal is some incredible material that we can use to build superweapons or fix the great seal or FOOM harder, then I think it might be worth killing. Right now we don't actually have positive knowledge about what specifically we would gain from killing it, and no reason we can't wait to make that decision after we have more knowledge. (The 'resources' in question might not turn out to be all that valuable, or the relative benefits of banditry over trade might not be compelling.)

 

[acidshill]

Analyse larger structure, gather more data, allow for destructive testing and observation, potentially practise rock-based sealmastery on it, actually use it for the uses we find if we find any, provide extra samples we can give Orochimaru and/or other people or use ourselves if one test is time-consuming and we'd like to try other things first, or if something gets lost, broken, or otherwise unusable.

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All of this would probably be valuable data. We'll have a better idea of just how valuable after we study the samples we already have, and I still don't think there's any reason we can't wait. I'll also point out that your plan is to literally explode the main crystal body, which will remove the opportunity to gather many types of data. We'll also have a better idea of how valuable that data is after studying the samples we already have.

 

[Lysbeth Succubus]

Oh, I'm not worried about a slippery slope, I just think the information we have now about possible benefits doesn't meet the threshold to justify killing it. We haven't actually properly studied the samples we have now yet. If we do so and discover, e.g. that the crystal is some incredible material that we can use to build superweapons or fix the great seal or FOOM harder, then I think it might be worth killing. Right now we don't actually have positive knowledge about what specifically we would gain from killing it, and no reason we can't wait to make that decision after we have more knowledge. (The 'resources' in question might not turn out to be all that valuable, or the relative benefits of banditry over trade might not be compelling.)

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Hazō learnt some things about precious stones and his immediate thought was "either this is worthless or it's worth a country". That's just the financial aspect. If it is worth something, it's going to require a long trip Leaf and back, assuming we can get back to it at all. If it's worth nothing, then taking it now will have wasted, what, maybe an afternoon. Stone that can hold chakra is bound to be worth something to us, regardless.

 

[acidshill]

Some specific things I'm worried may go wrong if we pursue the plan to kill the crystal cave being:
- Akane and others may be upset that Hazou is acting out of character
- Killing crystal cave being destroys a possibly one-of-a-kind organism and our opportunity to gather data about how it works, how it behaves, other things that can only be observed while it's alive
- Caverous crystalline intelligence has a second health bar and kills us (this isn't a ninja or a chakra beast, it's weirder than anything we've faced before and we should have very wide confidence intervals on its capabilities, although I do consider this outcome unlikely)
- The benefits are negligible, the cave was sapient, and Team Uplift just murdered it to no real benefit

Things I think might go wrong if we don't kill crystal cave being right now:
- Someone else gets wind of Orochumaru's report and capitalizes on the cave before we can (it hasn't happened yet, and Leaf-nin rarely come this way, so how likely is it to happen?)
- We face a crisis very soon, which we would have been able to solve with a lot of mystery crystals (I don't think we're likely to have a crisis very soon, much less one that can be solved with this specific thing)

If Lysbeth or anyone else thinks the consequences of not killing the cave now are worse than I've described, I'd be interested to hear that.

 

[acidshill]

Hazō learnt some things about precious stones and his immediate thought was "either this is worthless or it's worth a country". That's just the financial aspect.

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I'm not sure exactly how wealthy the Gouketsu are, but I think we're pretty wealthy. I'm not convinced that more money, immediately instead of later, would make a significant difference in terms of deciding between success and failure at important goals. And it's not as if liquidating large amounts of valuable crystals doesn't come with problems of its own—people are likely to want to know where we got them, where they can get some, there will be additional political complications if we gain a lot of power in a short period of time, etc. I think that, unless we need the money now, we should wait to navigate that series of problems (if we do later decide to kill the cave) when we've had the chance to prepare for it.

If it's worth nothing, then taking it now will have wasted, what, maybe an afternoon.

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And we would have killed someone that probably has moral value without good reason, which cannot be considered irrelevant under Uplift ethics.

 

[acidshill]

Another consideration for @MadScientist's plan: If it's legally and politically acceptable to do this, we should declare the existence and discoveries of the cave expedition to be a clan secret. Don't let anyone catch wind that we did this or found something valuable.

 

[Lysbeth Succubus]

And we would have killed someone that probably has moral value without good reason, which cannot be considered irrelevant under Uplift ethics.

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It's POSSIBLY a thinking mind, which if it is, has high chances of being about on a par with spiderbears because the only thing it's got going is chakra. The communication angle is based on earthshaping technique feedback. If reasonably certain it won't lead to death, it's worth trying to explore that, but we're given a chance of advancing on that "preventing the multiverse's impending critical existence failure" task and the ultimate cost is "something that maybe has a mind and if it actually does and if it's in the crystal then it's likely to be best described as a chakra beast with less brain behind it rather than a someone". Considering it may be sentient is not automatically wrong based on lack of data, but considering it absolutely is sentient and that must inform all decisions, is.

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

It's POSSIBLY a thinking mind, which if it is, has high chances of being about on a par with spiderbears because the only thing it's got going is chakra. The communication angle is based on earthshaping technique feedback. If reasonably certain it won't lead to death, it's worth trying to explore that, but if we're given a chance of advancing on that "preventing the multiverse's impending critical existence failure" task and the ultimate cost is "something that maybe has a mind and if it actually does and if it's in the crystal then it's likely to be best described as a chakra beast with less brain behind it rather than a someone". Considering it may be sentient is not automatically wrong based on lack of data, but considering it absolutely is sentient and that must inform all decisions, is.

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I mean, we just got through an arc where we killed innocent people because doing otherwise would've compromised our long-term goals. I don't think anyone here would rather watch the world end than kill this crystal.

But, if all we have is 'we don't know for sure that your body parts won't be helpful in some unspecified way in the future', that's murderhobo, not Uplift.

 

[Lysbeth Succubus]

But, if all we have is 'we don't know for sure that your body parts won't be helpful in some unspecified way in the future', that's murderhobo, not Uplift.

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1) We know "understanding how stone holds chakra" is important to fixing the Great Seal. So that's not unspecified.
2) This is still exaggeratedly humanising a chakra crystal. We hunted thousands of steelbacks, went out killing big gators, exploded lots of chakra fish... were any of these murder? were any of these against Uplift?

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

1) We know "understanding how stone holds chakra" is important to fixing the Great Seal. So that's not unspecified.

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Killing the crystal has very marginal value on 'understanding how stone holds chakra' relative to leaving it alive. In fact, it's probably severely negative value on that metric, since killing the crystal might just deny us the chance to study the effect in action. The question is not whether the crystal holds value, but whether its dead and broken corpse is of critical value.

We have no strong leads to suggest we need specifically its corpse to advance Uplift, so killing it to loot its corpse is just murderhoboism.

 

[Lysbeth Succubus]

Killing the crystal has very marginal value on 'understanding how stone holds chakra' relative to leaving it alive. In fact, it's probably severely negative value on that metric, since killing the crystal might just deny us the chance to study the effect in action. The question is not whether the crystal holds value, but whether its dead and broken corpse is of critical value.

We have no strong leads to suggest we need specifically its corpse to advance Uplift, so killing it to loot its corpse is just murderhoboism.

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This is getting caricatural. Using more human vocabulary for a rock is the exact opposite of approaching it with the facts we have.
Yes we do need more than a small bit if we want to do anything with it,
No we have not confirmed life let alone sentience let alone sapience,
No chakra and life are not the same thing,
Yes we have observed that removing parts of the crystal rather than the veins through the cavern has them maintain their effect,
Yes there are several potential sources of value and even high value from it in different forms (research, sale, potential post-research use, observation that stone can hold chakra and how and what can we do with that fact, maybe chakra tools as with chakra metal...) very few of which are "it stays here" and none of which to our knowledge are more likely to result in people dying than "it stays here" given that its dangerousness when here and undisturbed is a known local fact and now it's been disturbed.
If we're still going towards "it's murder" with nothing like data or knowledge that actually supports it, consider me out of this discussion.

 

[Emstar]

[X] Acres of Broken Glass

Seems about right to me.