We will be able to research anything we want to with S-rank sealing. So we are only limited by our imagination. If we want to start copying an essie's tricks we can just do that by grinding on it for a while.
S-rank means 'legendary', or what passes as legendary feats. It doesn't mean we can research literally anything we wanted nor should it means a literal "I win" button.
Chakdar, a relatively mundane seal all thing considered is a pretty hard seal, bordering on 'legendary'.
Additionally, a S-rank difficulty seal doesn't mean it is S-rank in effect.
Skywalker, if we had kept it exclusive, might arguably be an S-rank seal one time, but now it's no longer is. Unless you're a ninja who don't have access to Skywalker.
It would probably be easier to be less ambitious. A Bat's Roar might be 10 resolve, and incrementally increase that until it becomes a Dragon Roar seal, or just a really high resolve challenge seal.
Yeah but once we level our sealing we can knock it out in about a week. We can just crank out all the seals to pair with MARS plus spend more time grinding out really impressive legendary seals
Well, I'm not convinced that our imagination will be the limit (at least until we hit triple digits), but looking at that scale, here's some suggestions just off the top of my head:
Transmogrification Seal: Changes all solid objects in a wide-arc into another kind of matter. Weapon: Yes.
Flesh Repair Seal: Bioseal that enables rapid regeneration.
Rift Seal: Opens a rift to a pre-selected dimension (eg. Bladehorror Rift Seal).
Planthorror Seal: Phytoseal that converts a small pre-prepared plant into a dangerous chakra-monster.
Vampiric Dew Upgrade Seals: Bioseals that let Noburi do cool new things with his bloodline, like drain through the water vapour in the air, or not pay more for jutsu.
Thunderstorm Seal: Turns the weather into a horrifically dangerous storm that most ninja could never fight in. Winds that carry you into the air, rain so heavy you can't see in front of your nose, constant lightning bolts, etc.
It would probably be easier to be less ambitious. A Bat's Roar might be 10 resolve, and incrementally increase that until it becomes a Dragon Roar seal, or just a really high resolve challenge seal.
I'd be okay with doing the Bat Screech as a precursor to Dragon's Roar for the sake of veterancy... but yeah, the only immediate sealing projects I'm interested in are chakdar and working towards Dragon's Roar.
Well. Also a MEW seal. But there has been a large amount of disinterest amongst the rest of the playerbase, so I'm willing to leave that be for now.
MARS is definitely a good gimmick on its own because you don't even need any other world-class seals, you can just use 1000 mediocre ones at once (it belatedly occurs to me that hazou copying 1000 seals sounds vaguely familiar...)
But Minato's best trick was a single really-good seal, so if we wanted to pursue something in that department I think we'd need look at filling a certain role. Flying Raijin was an S rank mobility trick. We could cater to other roles like "s rank defensive seal" "S rank melee attack" "S rank AOE" etc to narrow down ideas more.
MARS is definitely a good gimmick on its own because you don't even need any other world-class seals, you can just use 1000 mediocre ones at once (it belatedly occurs to me that hazou copying 1000 seals sounds vaguely familiar...)
But Minato's best trick was a single really-good seal, so if we wanted to pursue something in that department I think we'd need look at filling a certain role. Flying Raijin was an S rank mobility trick. We could cater to other roles like "s rank defensive seal" "S rank melee attack" "S rank AOE" etc to narrow down ideas more.
Minato's Seal was based on a TH/Sealing combo, not something we would easily replicate.
Anyway, there seems to be a large obsession with super seals and gimmicks, when we should be considering\ our fighting systems as a whole.
Lot of smaller buffs stacked and just an overall better package deal would do just as well as having that one really cool gimmick that's harder to counter. Think of how we win wars IRL? It was always a combination of factors.
For example, if you are able to have an OODA loop that runs inside your opponent's OODA loop, you will win because it doesn't matter what gimmicks they have because you are able to react faster than they could. Even better when they start acting incorrectly as a result.
As action economy goes, we basically got it licked with MARS, but what about our ability to observe our enemies? What about our ability to think? Or think faster? I would look into ways that let us decide or react faster.
How can we disorient our enemies so that they are unable to think or act? We got excellent options for that.
What are some ways that our enemies are just unable to react to? If we make Kei a sniper with sufficiently long range, then it doesn't matter what our opponents do because they are just unable to reach her. We should get a telescope and invent a weapon that precisely propel a projectile at enemy targets.
Lot of smaller buffs stacked and just an overall better package deal would do just as well as having that one really cool gimmick that's harder to counter. Think of how we win wars IRL? It was always a combination of factors.
That is true....up to a point.
There is no amount of smaller factors (or any reasonable amount) that helps again a nuclear weapon. Some S-rank tricks are that(And S-rank tricks in general are by definition something that breaks the paradigm to the point you survive everything the villages can throw at you barring another S-ranker) Flying Thunder God for example.
"Sensei," Hazō said, "why don't you go check in with Kumokōgō? Ask if she's willing to host these fine people, then summon yourself back to the boat. We'll meet you there."
Kagome-sensei eyed him narrowly, looked at the condors, then looked back at Hazō. "But you'd be alone. With them."
"I'm pretty sure they don't want to hurt me," Hazō said. He didn't bother keeping his voice down, since Kagome-sensei hadn't. "Even if they did, I have unsummoned myself faster than a Dragon could breathe on me, and I'm pretty sure I can escape these guys as well. Besides, they have no reason to attack me and even if they did they're too smart to do it. They need us to get off the island. If they attack me for any reason then we leave them here and they live on in terrible conditions until they eventually get unlucky and get eaten by an Archaeopteryx. They need us, sensei."
"Maybe, but we don't need them." He glanced over at the condors. "No offense."
Contorite raised a wing to cut the other condors off before they could speak. "Let's no one take offense just yet," the black-winged bird said. "We can talk a bit more first."
"We actually do need them, sensei," Hazō said. "We need them to go to the Conclave and tell the various Clan Bosses that the Dragons are real and what happened to the Archaeopteryx Clan. Maybe that will get them all moving."
Kagome pondered that for a moment.
"Hmph." The older man turned back to the condors. "Fine. I'm going to leave you here with my student. If you so much as part his hair the wrong way, you won't need to worry about the big birds, or anything else. I'll stick you to the walls, cut your feathers off so you can't fly, and leave you here to die of thirst and hunger. Got it?"
That escalated quickly.
Hazō hurried to attempt repairs on the conversational breach. "What he means is—"
"What he means is clear, Hazō of Clan Gōketsu. Clear, and reasonable." Contorite turned to Kagome. "We have no quarrel with you or yours, human. We have every reason to work together."
"You say that now, but I know Hazō," Kagome said. "The minute I leave—"
"Sensei! Please, just go. I promise I'll be fine. I won't even be here for more than a few more hours; I have a meeting with Gaku later that I can't miss. Please, just go ask the Empress if she's okay with hosting these guys for a couple of days while they get their strength back." The meeting was real but not actually that important. Still, Hazō was happy to take the win if it would reassure his teacher.
Narrow-eyed glare.
"What about that thing?" the older man demanded, hooking a thumb back towards the entrance to the cave, where the now mindless Shisoroseri was still shrieking and tearing at the mountain in an attempt to get inside and eat his former companions.
"Boom, squish."
"Hmph. Fine. I'll meet you at the boat, but you better not take long."
Kagome gave the condors one last distrustful look, then disappeared back to the Human Path, from whence he would re-reverse summon himself back to the Arachnid Empress on the Seventh Path, then home to the Human Path, then back to the boat on the Seventh Path.
There were times when being a summoner was really cool.
"I have food if you would like it," Hazō said, pulling out a wad of storage seals and kneeling down to open them. "I don't know what condors eat so it may not be something appropriate, but there's quite a few options."
Suddenly, there were a lot of warm feathered bodies crowded close.
As it happens, condors eat meat and they aren't too fussy where it comes from—fish, beef, bison, chicken, they happily scarfed down everything Hazō had that wasn't a vegetable. By the time they were done and for the first time he could remember, he only had a week's worth of rations on him.
"Thank you, human," Conzenji said, giving a gluttonously satiated sigh and rubbing her belly. "It's been a long time on short rations."
"No trouble," Hazō said. "So long as you stay with a spider or dog that Kagome-sensei or I are contracted to, we'll be able to resupply you indefinitely."
"What was that about a Conclave?" Contorite asked. "You wanted us to go there and tell them of the Dragons?"
Hazō chewed on his cheek for a moment.
"Yes," he said at last. "It's complicated, and a long story, and I'd like to get us on the way first. Our boat isn't large enough to hold all of you at once. How should we handle that?" There was an obvious answer but he didn't want to seem bossy.
The sapient birds squawked their laughter. "Condors can stay aloft for long periods," Condo explained. "We can take turns resting on the boat for an hour or two while the rest stay on the wing."
"Cool. In that case, let's get moving."
o-o-o-o
Under the circumstances, Hazō felt comfortable breaking out the skywalkers. Their status was complicated in Leaf; it was known that all of the other major villages had gotten hold of them after the Battle of the Gods but that didn't mean that Asuma wanted them flashed around casually. Orders were 'use them if you deem it necessary but try not to find it necessary too often.' This was definitely and clearly in the 'necessary' category.
Granted, he didn't need to use the skywalkers for the entire trip. He had his drop gloves with him, so he snuck out of the cave, found a nice vertical cliff face, and hot-dropped down to sea level, sticking one hand to the wall with just enough chakra adhesion to slow his fall to something that a chakra-reinforced human body could sustain the impact of. He shifted hands every time his gloves started to smoke and arrived at sea level with only mild scorching.
Of course, before that could happen, there was the small matter of the giant bird ravening at the cave entrance. For many people, plummeting a thousand feet at eye-watering speed would have been the terrifying part of the operation. For Hazō, it was far more terrifying to learn what was necessary to get the animal formerly known as Shisoroseri out of the way. Hazō started off by firing half a dozen macerator shots at the Archaeopteryx, everything from weaponized pepper dust to chunks of spiked steel. The bird either deflected the attacks with its beak or simply absorbed them without comment.
From there, Hazō escalated, throwing a handful of blast disks one after another. Then an implosion bomb, then two more. At that point, Shisoroseri had multiple missing feathers, a thin rivulet of blood slithering from his left eye, and a fist-sized chunk knocked out of his beak. It was enough to make him decide that there had to be easier prey elsewhere and that this was an opportune moment to seek out said prey.
Once the way was clear, Hazō and the Condors evac'd as fast as they could, racing back to the boat that waited two miles off shore.
"Dog Summoner, be welcome!" chittered Komokogite, the senior of the spiders who had paddled the boat here from Arachnid. "Our Summoner guests you have found says."
Hazō looked to Kagome-sensei, who seemed very irritable about the entire situation.
"She said it was fine," the senior sealmaster grumbled. "They can come wait in her place. She promised them safe passage so long as they don't harm her people or us."
The other condors were soaring a mile or two in the air, high enough that it was hard to pick them out. Contorite had been flying low, staying near enough to Hazō to hear the conversation with the spiders.
"You and your empress are most kind," he said, nodding his head respectfully to the spider. "We had thought ourselves doomed. You have saved us."
"Welcome you, I do," Kumokogite said, waving her pedipalps. "Rest on my vessel you may. Summoner Kagome says to their own Path the humans are going so to more space make. Three of you we can manage, I think. Meet us back at the Orbularium they will when to it we return."
Contorite cocked his head. "Meet...ah, you both have contractees there?"
"We do," Hazō said. "I'll see you in Arachnid territory in two days."
"Three better will be," Kumokogite said. "Against us the currents and the wind from here are."
"Three, then," Hazō said. His stomach clenched at the thought of waiting an extra day to unburden himself. He really wanted to get this over with.
"In three days, then," Contorite said. "Thank you, Summoner. My condo is in your debt, and I feel certain that the great Conjura will wish to repay it as well."
"No she won't," Kagome-sensei said. "After all—yow!" He glared at the pinchy fingers of his nephew.
"Thank you," Hazō said, not looking at his teacher. "I look forward to talking with you in three days. Travel safe. Sensei, let's return."
o-o-o-o
"Greetings again, Dog Summoner," Contorite said. "Is your friend coming?"
"He's not, I'm afraid," Hazō said. "He and a team are going to Nagi Island to carry out some research."
"I see," said Contorite, dipping his beak into a glass that a spider artisan had constructed specifically for him, in order to accommodate his beak.
The Orbularium had been redecorated, which was apparently okay if and only if the Empress personally ordered it. The basics were obviously still the same—enormous sphere made out of silk thin enough that sunlight could drip slowly through, taut webbing making a steel-hard floor across most of the equator, plenty of other webs scattered around, spiders rushing hither and thither on unknown business. Now, however, there were plants scattered about. They rested in semi-spherical planters, some of which dangled from web strands that came down the ceiling and some of which stood atop 'poles' that were actually tight spirals of silk coming up from the floor. Also, the silver-grey of the silk that created the Orbularium was now a riot of colors, but only in patches. Hazō wasn't sure if the color was being spread around piecemeal and this was merely the beginning stages, or if the tightly-constrained swatches were the spider equivalent of paintings—rectangles of color creating a world confined within a frame. If so, the Arachnids had clearly mastered Neo-Incomprehensibilism.
"Sad at the Summoner's absence I shall be," Kumokōgō said, sipping her tea with a noisy slurp. It was hard to sip tea quietly when your mouth was made from nightmares. "Not appear at all shall he?"
"He'll be checking in periodically, but he's traveling for the next few hours," Hazō said, grateful that the Empress was going along with the script they had worked out together. "In the meantime, there are some things I felt it was important to go over with you, Contorite."
"This was clear from your reticence on the island," the bird said. "Your friend kept attempting to tell us something and you kept hurting him until he went silent."
Hazō winced. It was an unkind way to describe a pinch or squeeze, but it was not an inaccurate one.
"Clearly, it's about home," Contorite said. "I assume you didn't want us to know because you felt that we needed to focus on the immediate future and knowing whatever this truth is would have distracted us, or caused us to break down emotionally. Hence why I did not ask, nor allow my condo to ask. And now the nature of this meeting tells me that the news is not merely distracting, it is catastrophic, and that you think it likely to send me into a rage. I have to admit, I am struggling to think what such news might be."
Hazō stared at the bird person in surprise. "How did you put all that together just from Kagome-sensei not being here?"
"Oh, your friend's absence was not the primary clue," Contorite said. "Although I suppose it makes sense. You clearly want to manage how this news is conveyed and he appears to be terrible at such things. No, it was the environment." He gestured to the conference table between them, along which were spread a variety of snacks and drinks. "This room did not have furniture in it on my first appearance, immediately after we arrived yesterday. Now it contains a table long enough that I cannot reach the items on the other end, instead of something that would make sense for a meeting of merely three people. There are only three tea mugs on the table so the extra size does not suggest more guests arriving later. You have positioned yourself at the opposite end from me, out of my reach, with the Empress, your ally, between us. Her guards are closer than they were when I paid my respects yesterday, but they are not close enough to restrain me before I could launch an attack on Her Majesty, were I so completely insane as to attempt to attack a Clan Lady in her own domain. No, the table and the Empress and the guards are here for your protection, not hers."
"I don't suppose you ever met Nara Shikaku, did you?" Hazō asked.
"Is that a human?"
"He was." A wave of sadness swept across Hazō. "Never mind. It's just that he had a habit of making sweeping deductions from small facts like that. Yes, I'm afraid the news is bad."
He took a breath and braced himself. "On the island, you said that you and your condo owed me a debt. You do not. In truth, I owe a debt to you and every other condor. I never intended to harm you or anyone else, but my actions accidentally contributed to the genocide of your people. That is a fact that I deeply, deeply regret and wish to make amends for."
"I...see." Contorite looked down, fiddling with his tall, thin mug. After several very long seconds, he looked up again. "And what were these actions?"
Huh. This was going better than expected. Hazō had honestly been expecting to be fighting for his life at this point.
"You saw the skywalker seals that I used to cross from the island to the boat," Hazō said.
"Yes. You said that they were faster than water-walking."
"The other man you met, Kagome-sensei? He is my uncle and my teacher." That was the simple version, anyway. He wasn't going to go into the actual nature of the convoluted Gōketsu clan relationships. "We invented those seals together. I had the idea for them, he implemented it. We also invented the skytower seals." That was another drastic oversimplification but keeping things simple and moving quickly through the story seemed like a good idea right now.
Contorite froze. "The Judging Eyes," he whispered. "That was what the scaled scum called them. The Pantokrator's Judging Eyes. It gave them the ability to bypass our ground-based defenses, place protective shields over their encampments, and reach our nests atop the highest peaks. Those things are why my people were enslaved, and you created them."
"Yes. I created them, and I sold them to the pangolins. At first, I didn't realize what they were doing with them. Once I figured it out, I stopped supplying them as soon as I had the power to do so."
"Why? Why would you do such a thing? What had the Condor Clan ever done to you that you should enable those monsters this way?"
Hazō winced. "It's...complicated," he said. "I didn't realize what the Pangolin Clan were when I first met them. Well, actually—" He broke off and shook his head. "Let me do this in order, and with the context."
Contorite snorted. "I shall wait with preenéd feathers to hear what context might excuse this."
"First, you need to understand what the Human Path is like," Hazō said, hoping the bird man would let him get through the explanation. "It's similar to the Seventh in some ways, different in others. Where you have many intelligent species—Condors, Arachnids, and so on—we have only one: humans. Where each of your clans appears to be relatively united, humans are fractious and make war among ourselves. Each of your species has one Clan with one leader. We have five major nations, each ruled by a Kage, plus dozens of smaller nations scattered around. Your lands are relatively safe; the animals are not serious threats to you and the plants never try to kill you."
"Spoken like someone who has never seen a friend eat deathcap mushrooms," Contorite said, gallows humor in his voice.
Hazō gestured impatiently. "Fine, you have some poisonous plants. I have plants that shoot spears through your neck in order to drain your blood, vines that will stick themselves in through your skull and use your corpse as a puppet in order to hunt, and our primary food crop needs to be harvested regularly or it will grow poison claws and walk across land in order to hunt our farmers. And that's just the plants."
Contorite stared at him.
"Yeah, I know, it's fucked up," Hazō said. "I never realized that until I came to the Seventh Path. To me it's always been just the way things are."
"I see," the bird man said slowly. "You said before that you sold the Eyes to the Pangolins. You needed resources to protect your village?"
"My team, not my village, but yes." He took a breath. He had spent three days talking with Kei, Mari, and finally even Ruri, the Condor Summoner. This was the part that was probably going to go badly, but everyone had eventually agreed that it needed to be said regardless. It was too big a trap to leave in one's wake.
"This next part is going to be a problem for you," Hazō said.
Contorite cocked his head. "More of a problem than meeting someone who enabled the murder of my father, my wife, my chicks, and all but one of my sisters?"
"Um. Okay, well, here it is: humans who can use chakra are called ninja, those who can't are called civilians. Ninja mostly live in groups called 'Hidden Villages', each ruled by a Kage as I said before. The Kage sends us on missions, much like your Clan Boss might send you. Occasionally, a ninja will feel that their Kage has broken faith with them and will sever their ties with their village. They leave and don't go back. It's called 'going missing' and someone who does it is a 'missing-nin'. Missing-nin are looked down on, to say the least." Four hours of conversation had gone into that one sentence. There was simply no way to quickly convey the cultural associations tangled into the short word 'missing-nin', but the Clans of the Seventh Path had feelings that aligned closely enough that the differences weren't critical.
"Let me guess," Contorite said. "You and your team went missing. You were struggling to survive in that hell dimension you call the Human Path. You invented skywalkers and the Judging Eyes as a way to sleep high up where your plants couldn't eat you. Somehow, you met the Pangolin Summoner and you arranged a deal: you would supply them with the Judging Eyes in return for safety and probably wealth. You knew that the Pangolins were butchering my kind but you didn't care enough to do anything about it until you had achieved enough safety and wealth. Eventually you felt yourself sufficiently well-off that you could get around to not enabling the murder of chicks too young to fly and the enslavement and maiming of those unfortunate enough to be captured."
"That's...not wrong," Hazō said. "You put it together very quickly."
Contorite waved a wing dismissively. "You laid the pieces out quite carefully."
"Hopefully the last of the big shocks," Hazō said. "The Pangolin Summoner is my adopted sister. It's complicated—she was born to a rival clan, then she was my teammate, then we formed the Gōketsu clan, then she married into the Nara clan. Regardless, she's still their Summoner. She's the one who recognized what the Pangolins were doing, and she's the one who actually cut ties. I wanted to do it but couldn't at the time because I wasn't in charge. She did it, unilaterally, because she is brave and good, and I hope that when you eventually meet her you will remember that it was never her fault and that she has done everything she can to stop it and reverse it."
"Oh?"
"Yes. It's not what she wants, or what I would guess you want, and it can never be enough, but she's trying. She has argued with Pantsā to improve the treatment of the prisoners, she has moderated some of his actions. She isn't the ruler of the Pangolins and she has no power to enforce her will, only to convince people. She's done what she can to make things better, but it isn't enough and will never be enough."
"I see."
Silence lingered.
"What are your intentions now?" Contorite demanded at last. "What do you intend for me and my people?"
"First, I want to respect your agency," Hazō said. Mari had been impressed when he said that should be the focus. She had even ruffled his hair, something she hadn't done in far too long. It had been...nice. A reminder of happier, simpler times, before Hazō was responsible for quite so much murder and genocide and torture.
"My agency?" Contorite said, amused. "Pray tell, what agency do I have at the moment?"
"'Each moment grants us infinite choice, although nearly always nearly all of the choices are doomful'," Hazō said. "It's a quote from a human philosopher. Point is: yes, I have ideas that I could suggest. I don't want to force them on you."
"To listen his thoughts to likely wise is," Kumokōgō said. "Crafty his webs are spun. A good heart behind them."
Hazō startled. Kumokōgō had acknowledged in the pre-meeting discussion that she was here mostly here to act as a moderating influence and prevent actual violence, and to that end she would make herself unobtrusive. Hazō had politely questioned just how unobtrusive a spider the size of a small hut could be. She had chittered her amusement and said 'evert my presence shall I.'
Apparently, it was extremely difficult to pay attention to a Clan Boss who had turned her metaphysical aura inside out. Hazō had been aware of her presence in the room the whole time, technically, and he felt that he probably would have noticed had she moved, but until she spoke she had had zero importance to his awareness.
Hazō promised himself that he would never ever admit to anyone just how much satisfaction he took from the fact that, when the Empress spoke, Contorite jumped just as much as Hazō did.
"Badly done by, your Clan has been," Kumokōgō said. "Hazō some of the blame shares, yes, but the true blame lies with Pantsā. Pantsā is your enemy; when Hazō speaks, do not away turn an ally because of mud on their chitin."
She gestured to Hazō with one foreleg. "Hazō to expiate past wrongs wishes, and therefore seeks to work with Condors. The Arachnid Clan owns no stake in the conflict, yet wish we to ally with you and your condo. Seen you have the Dragons. More there are, more powerful than those who slew the Archaeopteryx. If eat the Arachnids, more powerful yet will they become. You saw the impossibility of facing the Dragons as they were, before fly they could. What then face them with you shall when they fly with the power of Archaeopteryx and also weave and sting and swim with the might of Arachnid?
"The other Clans unite with us must. For months, delay they have made. A prior condor came and confirmed that Dragons exist, yet still they delay. Now you come, having seen a proud and powerful Clan made chthsss. You must to the Conclave go and assure them of what has been seen. Hazō guide and guard can be. His sister your invitor can be.
"Honor in this is, Contorite. Save my people, save your people, save all the people. Plus, Conjura's fame to me has come. She flies, she bends space and time, she sees far and strikes hard? Ideal she would be to fight the Dragons with Arachnid weavers at her side to create skyslicers and float bombs in her support. If the downdraft of her wings can force a Dragon to the ground where I and the other Rulers may attack it, victory we might see. If she is the cause of victory saving all Clans, how much support would win she? Certain I am that other Clans are fearful of the Pangolins and their actions, yet wish not to attract the scaled ones' eyes. If, as it sounds, they do not act, it is because a focus they lack. Grant us victory led by the mighty Conjura, then let Conjura demand her reward as freedom for her enslaved people. Pantsā either grant her request must or refuse it before his peers. No other chance will there be in your lifetime to bring many Clan Rulers together with both Conjura and Pantsā in attendance and the other Rulers having immediately before allies in battle been. Such an event your best chance is to gain freedom for your people. Attendance to this event you shall not gain without speaking up by Hazō, the Dog Summoner, and his sister, the Pangolin Summoner. They eager are to this help grant if it you will accept. Help all of us, will you?"
Contorite seemed flummoxed. "I...I..."
Hazō held his breath, hoping against hope that this would work. Kumokōgō had listened carefully when he explained his thoughts and how he hoped she would join in them. Having her make the pitch would be much better than having Hazō do it, and if Contorite accepted then he would by implication be accepting that he needed to be on civil (and, importantly, nonviolent) terms with Hazō and Kei. Not only had Kumokōgō been willing, she had suggested some tweaks to the language. Granted, they came out in her odd spiderish syntax, but they still worked well.
Contorite stopped and blew out a breath, shaking himself so that his feathers rustled and then fell back into place.
"Yes," he said, his voice firm. "I will work with you. Hazō, I acknowledge that you did not intend to cause the massacre of my people, but you did. I cannot give you forgiveness for that yet, but I am willing to give you a chance to earn it. More importantly, I am willing to work with you to face this greater problem and put up sorting out our business until the world is safe."
"Thank you, Contorite," Hazō said, a smile blooming across his face. "That is all I could ask for."
Author's Note: Apparently, a group of condors is called a 'condo'. Whoever comes up with collective nouns was feeling lazy that day.
Yeah but once we level our sealing we can knock it out in about a week. We can just crank out all the seals to pair with MARS plus spend more time grinding out really impressive legendary seals
I was actually talking about seal that where approximately as hard as chakdar 2.0. We got about a third of the way done with a role of 81. We know Hazō rerolled when he got a 69. So we can pretty much hit it with 72 sealing and one FP. I'm also assuming we will hit resolve 60 by then so we can take the -4 and still have a base of 68 and one invoke.
Legendary seals will def take longer than that because want to make sure we can do it safely so probably spend the full prep cycle to get +16 per cycle
However, because I'm not sure you'll read all of this, EJ, I want to confirm 0 for had-fun XP? That tracks (the intensity and stakes of the conversation are balanced out by the risk-mitigation factors) but I didn't see a reference one way or another, and feedback on the plan would be cool so I can improve for next time.
Contorite raised a wing to cut the other condors off before they could speak. "Let's no one take offense just yet," the black-winged bird said. "We can talk a bit more first."
My read of this dude as very sane seems to be panning out. He kept his people alive in desperate circumstances for...months? Either they're all very level-headed and smart, or he's an outstanding leader.
"What he means is clear, Hazō of Clan Gōketsu. Clear, and reasonable." Contorite turned to Kagome. "We have no quarrel with you or yours, human. We have every reason to work together."
More of the same, more of the same. He's recognized that this situation is volatile and he's helping us keep it calm. This is pretty baller, and it gets even more impressive when you consider that we met him five minutes ago.
"What about that thing?" the older man demanded, hooking a thumb back towards the entrance to the cave, where the now mindless Shisoroseri was still shrieking and tearing at the mountain in an attempt to get inside and eat his former companions.
"Boom, squish."
"Hmph. Fine. I'll meet you at the boat, but you better not take long."
Kagome gave the condors one last distrustful look, then disappeared back to the Human Path, from whence he would re-reverse summon himself back to the Arachnid Empress on the Seventh Path, then home to the Human Path, then back to the boat on the Seventh Path.
"I have food if you would like it," Hazō said, pulling out a wad of storage seals and kneeling down to open them. "I don't know what condors eat so it may not be something appropriate, but there's quite a few options."
Suddenly, there were a lot of warm feathered bodies crowded close.
As it happens, condors eat meat and they aren't too fussy where it comes from—fish, beef, bison, chicken, they happily scarfed down everything Hazō had that wasn't a vegetable. By the time they were done and for the first time he could remember, he only had a week's worth of rations on him.
"Thank you, human," Conzenji said, giving a gluttonously satiated sigh and rubbing her belly. "It's been a long time on short rations."
I was on the fence about including this in the plan because I was up against wordcount and it wasn't strictly necessary. I'm really, really glad I included it.
"What was that about a Conclave?" Contorite asked. "You wanted us to go there and tell them of the Dragons?"
Hazō chewed on his cheek for a moment.
"Yes," he said at last. "It's complicated, and a long story, and I'd like to get us on the way first. Our boat isn't large enough to hold all of you at once. How should we handle that?" There was an obvious answer but he didn't want to seem bossy.
From there, Hazō escalated, throwing a handful of blast disks one after another. Then an implosion bomb, then two more. At that point, Shisoroseri had multiple missing feathers, a thin rivulet of blood slithering from his left eye, and a fist-sized chunk knocked out of his beak. It was enough to make him decide that there had to be easier prey elsewhere and that this was an opportune moment to seek out said prey.
This is maybe a cool demonstration of our capabilities, but mostly, it's sad. He had a name. Shisoroseri, you are remembered and if you have crossed to another path we will bring you back.
"Three, then," Hazō said. His stomach clenched at the thought of waiting an extra day to unburden himself. He really wanted to get this over with.
"In three days, then," Contorite said. "Thank you, Summoner. My condo is in your debt, and I feel certain that the great Conjura will wish to repay it as well."
Part of my reason for needing to have this conversation was knowing what it would do to Hazo if we didn't. I really, really don't think he would have just gotten over it. It would have eaten at him and come out eventually.
(How do I know it would have come out? In addition to characterization, I wouldn't have stopped agitating for it.)
Condo is a fun word for this and I continue to stan Contorite.
"Clearly, it's about home," Contorite said. "I assume you didn't want us to know because you felt that we needed to focus on the immediate future and knowing whatever this truth is would have distracted us, or caused us to break down emotionally. Hence why I did not ask, nor allow my condo to ask. And now the nature of this meeting tells me that the news is not merely distracting, it is catastrophic, and that you think it likely to send me into a rage. I have to admit, I am struggling to think what such news might be."
Clever, calm, collected. I'm almost jealous we aren't the Condor Summoner. We'd have cool stuff to do and access to Summons with space-time ninjutsu. Conjura also seems like a real badass.
"I don't suppose you ever met Nara Shikaku, did you?" Hazō asked.
"Is that a human?"
"He was." A wave of sadness swept across Hazō. "Never mind. It's just that he had a habit of making sweeping deductions from small facts like that. Yes, I'm afraid the news is bad."
This is a poignant reminder of what we've lost, and (IMO) a push to get more Summons to the Human Path and talking to people. We can't just have trade with them and swap combat abilities: we need cultural exchange.
Can we teach this guy shogi and have him play some of the Nara? That would be fun.
Being broader, we should have Dogs show up and spar with Academy kids, Toads preach Toadism in the streets, and let Turtles talk philosophy with our philosophers.
Cannai talked about how little he'd seen of the Human Path. Our interests are intertwined, especially as we start figuring out portals. We need to break down some of those barriers. I'd like to formally propose a cultural exchange program to Asuma at some point.
"I...see." Contorite looked down, fiddling with his tall, thin mug. After several very long seconds, he looked up again. "And what were these actions?"
"Let me guess," Contorite said. "You and your team went missing. You were struggling to survive in that hell dimension you call the Human Path. You invented skywalkers and the Judging Eyes as a way to sleep high up where your plants couldn't eat you. Somehow, you met the Pangolin Summoner and you arranged a deal: you would supply them with the Judging Eyes in return for safety and probably wealth. You knew that the Pangolins were butchering my kind but you didn't care enough to do anything about it until you had achieved enough safety and wealth. Eventually you felt yourself sufficiently well-off that you could get around to not enabling the murder of chicks too young to fly and the enslavement and maiming of those unfortunate enough to be captured."
"First, I want to respect your agency," Hazō said. Mari had been impressed when he said that should be the focus. She had even ruffled his hair, something she hadn't done in far too long. It had been...nice. A reminder of happier, simpler times, before Hazō was responsible for quite so much murder and genocide and torture.
"Badly done by, your Clan has been," Kumokōgō said. "Hazō some of the blame shares, yes, but the true blame lies with Pantsā. Pantsā is your enemy; when Hazō speaks, do not away turn an ally because of mud on their chitin."
She gestured to Hazō with one foreleg. "Hazō to expiate past wrongs wishes, and therefore seeks to work with Condors. The Arachnid Clan owns no stake in the conflict, yet wish we to ally with you and your condo. Seen you have the Dragons. More there are, more powerful than those who slew the Archaeopteryx. If eat the Arachnids, more powerful yet will they become. You saw the impossibility of facing the Dragons as they were, before fly they could. What then face them with you shall when they fly with the power of Archaeopteryx and also weave and sting and swim with the might of Arachnid?
"The other Clans unite with us must. For months, delay they have made. A prior condor came and confirmed that Dragons exist, yet still they delay. Now you come, having seen a proud and powerful Clan made chthsss. You must to the Conclave go and assure them of what has been seen. Hazō guide and guard can be. His sister your invitor can be.
"Honor in this is, Contorite. Save my people, save your people, save all the people. Plus, Conjura's fame to me has come. She flies, she bends space and time, she sees far and strikes hard? Ideal she would be to fight the Dragons with Arachnid weavers at her side to create skyslicers and float bombs in her support. If the downdraft of her wings can force a Dragon to the ground where I and the other Rulers may attack it, victory we might see. If she is the cause of victory saving all Clans, how much support would win she? Certain I am that other Clans are fearful of the Pangolins and their actions, yet wish not to attract the scaled ones' eyes. If, as it sounds, they do not act, it is because a focus they lack. Grant us victory led by the mighty Conjura, then let Conjura demand her reward as freedom for her enslaved people. Pantsā either grant her request must or refuse it before his peers. No other chance will there be in your lifetime to bring many Clan Rulers together with both Conjura and Pantsā in attendance and the other Rulers having immediately before allies in battle been. Such an event your best chance is to gain freedom for your people. Attendance to this event you shall not gain without speaking up by Hazō, the Dog Summoner, and his sister, the Pangolin Summoner. They eager are to this help grant if it you will accept. Help all of us, will you?"
Contorite seemed flummoxed. "I...I..."
Hazō held his breath, hoping against hope that this would work. Kumokōgō had listened carefully when he explained his thoughts and how he hoped she would join in them. Having her make the pitch would be much better than having Hazō do it, and if Contorite accepted then he would by implication be accepting that he needed to be on civil (and, importantly, nonviolent) terms with Hazō and Kei. Not only had Kumokōgō been willing, she had suggested some tweaks to the language. Granted, they came out in her odd spiderish syntax, but they still worked well.
Contorite stopped and blew out a breath, shaking himself so that his feathers rustled and then fell back into place.
This is...this is way beyond what I thought we'd try for. This is a path back for the Condors without an all-out Condor-Pangolin war. This is a path to Bosses teaming up against the Dragons.
I am really, really glad that I pushed for this. Planmaking is hard and with this one I actually wound up reaching out to a few people at the last minute to see if I could get votes (special thanks to @Insert and @cog-nito, and to @Twinnstars for entertaining my pitch even if they didn't ultimately vote) which was honestly a little tiring.
"Yes," he said, his voice firm. "I will work with you. Hazō, I acknowledge that you did not intend to cause the massacre of my people, but you did. I cannot give you forgiveness for that yet, but I am willing to give you a chance to earn it. More importantly, I am willing to work with you to face this greater problem and put up sorting out our business until the world is safe."
I can feel this in my bones. Just the words 'voice firm'. I'm hoping every Condor is like this - smart, principled, focused - and that we get to see more of them, and that they're fun to write.
Nah, that's hilarious especially because if we tried to explain what a 'condo' is on the Human Path they'd look at us like we're nuts.
Fascinating that the root word of their names is the team. I'm not sure if that's intentional worldbuilding but it implies a deep cultural importance of the concept if everyone's name has the word for 'team' or 'squad' or whatever in it.
AFAIK it's improved chakdar but I'll let someone with more expertise than me confirm.
...I'm also going to briefly do a little dance and be very happy that my feeling that it was legitimately important to have this conversation was correct. This is a big win. If we'd just dumped them in Arachnid and gotten on with it, Hazo would have felt terrible, we wouldn't have gotten talk to the Condors, and we wouldn't have this blossoming alliance. This was a good idea and skipping it would have left us worse off.
So I got bit by another spreadsheet bug last week and, after a few days of work, I've finally solved Fudge Dice!
Basically, it's easy enough to calculate the odds of a given FD roll when it's just 4dF, but once you start rerolling things become complicated. Before now I've always just thrown my hands up and either assumed Expected Value 0 or that we reroll anything below a threshold without much details, but I got the idea to run through all the numbers and pre-compute the probability distribution for every strategy we might possibly want to use.
For instance, here's the results if Hazou has 1 FP and decides to reroll -3 or worse.
-12
-9
-6
-3
0
3
6
9
12
0.47%
1.89%
4.72%
7.56%
32.43%
27.31%
17.07%
6.83%
1.71%
And also, I consulted @Paperclipped while I was doing the math, and he figured out the optimum reroll strategy (maximizing the expected value of your FD) if you're willing to spend every FP you have on the roll, and I included a page detailing the odds of that strategy as well. Much thanks to Paperclipped for the help!
The benefits this provides us are twofold:
When we're in combat, we can create better estimates of our FP usage and thus more efficiently ration them out to ensure better results for our team.
When we're doing sealing research, we can choose our reroll strategy based on tangible, concrete odds and the corresponding expected FP cost for that strategy. For instance, if we decide to never accept a roll of -6 or worse, we can expect to pay 0.279 FP/roll on average, or about 1 FP every four rolls. This will help us figure out what research rates are sustainable and optimize our productivity without compromising our safety.
Here's hoping this helps us make even better plans for Hazou and the Goketsu!
I have two main goals right now: Get Noburi permission to leave Leaf, and help Mari start making new Genjutsu so she can be a proper essie. Making a plan to knock at least one of those out and also give Ino some screentime so eventual marriage will feel more natural. (If she becomes a Goketsu and can legally keep our secrets it gets a lot easier to include her in plots and plans.)
[X] Girls Get it Done
Word Count: 298
Check out prototype Spider Silk clothes with Mari (with privacy). Pick out clothes for Ino.
Genjutsu
Hazou has some ideas for test partners:
Jonin volunteers wanting to train resistance (could also pay them)
Same thing but Summon Jonin.
Create a genjutsu SC casts on prime that blunts her attacks but still allows testing attacks
Create a genjutsu that strengthens target's Resolve, use it on target before testing attacks
WHOOSH
Propose OPSEC ideas. Point is more to inspire Mari's scheming than provide immediately viable ideas.
Easiest preventative measure: having Noburi out of village, on medical or other missions. He could only refill via the 7th Path, Mari and Akane will need Scrolls.
Alternatively, spread misinformation about SC and refills?
Use Hazou's Sealing headaches, imply they're from experimenting with SC and refills, regular use is dangerous?
Spike water so regular use makes buyers sick? Or Goketsu fake illness, convince people it's unsafe. Political enemies might capitalize on it and spread rumor further. Reputational hit is worth OPSEC.
Get jonin back in the field so they don't have time to think about optimizing training.
Start international jonin olympics, have different village host?
Ami once deduced approximate existence of WHOOSH, Hazou said he'd loop her in modulo some conditions, before her recent freakout. She won't spill and weaken Kei's relative power, but she could be inconvenient if not let in. She hasn't pushed yet, perhaps out of guilt.
What conditions would Mari suggest? Could one of them be, "Must convince Mari it's a good idea"?
Ino
Sanity check with Mari
Bring silk clothes/garb/hairties, etc.
Does this give her ideas? Perhaps an Arachnid/Goketsu/Yamanaka collab is in order.
Mari's looking to source partners for developing genjutsu. Does Ino have any advice without giving away Yamanaka secrets?
