Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

FaintlySorcerous · Jan 11, 2023

Sir Stompy said:
Maybe "chakra construct" is more like "any arrangement of ordered chakra". So that would mean jutsu effects and seal effects (and jutsu and seals?), but not chakra reserves, and .... waste chakra? Is that a thing?

Ordered is indeed what I meant. I assume waste chakra is a thing - efficiency in chakra manipulation was a thing in canon and one that actually made sense IMO.

If chakra is subject to some conservation law, then the chakra you emit when you walk on water probably gets wasted.

faflec · Jan 11, 2023

Paperclipped said:
However, this does have the obvious problem that if Leaf sets its tax rate at 85%...

Leaf sees less money that goes to the clans and ninja, but...

The daimyo of Province A only sees that the contract is discounted to 850,000 ryō instead of 950,000. Without any further details, this changes their 40,000 surplus into a 140,000 surplus, while the civilians stay the same.

Ideally, the daimyo goes from, (e.g.) 40,000 to 60,000 ryō, while the civilians go from keeping 100 ryō to 900 ryō apiece.

faflec said:
Thought: What if we kept the current system, and put 10% back in to pro-village acts like chakra monster clearance?

Yeah, I'm just going to say to keep the current system, and take that 10% and invest it back in to the civilians. Either by subsidizing killing of chakra monsters (probably will support those areas most likely to succeed, lol), or by bringing supplies to those villages, or by giving them ryo and being done with it.

The obvious hard part is going to be keeping literally whoever we task with the job from just pocketing the money and being done with it (see: Bakuchioka), which is why the idea of subsidizing chakra monster killing appeals to me the most. Only ANBU and over-loyal ninja are going to be not pocketing the money or arranging for that to happen, and those are in short supply/Asuma won't make them do menial labor missions.

Ooh, maybe we could talk to the local daimyo and ask them what could be done to make the land more productive (extermination missions, water mills...) and then have Tower-sponsored missions to send those goods over. Harder to steal goods like that, IMO.

Paperclipped · Jan 11, 2023

Sir Stompy said:
Sorry, I don't understand this. I don't know if it's a black box, or I'm missing something so I'll ask a couple questions.

When you say "certain type of chakra construct", what does that mean?

I thought chakra constructs were physical objects eg. granite from MEW or water from WDB when they're cast without an Elemental Source. Are these a different kind of construct? What would a construct of pure chakra be like in terms of physical properties?

And by "type" do you mean all three seals make a different construct, but they're similar? How are they different?

If the seal does the same thing every time, what does it mean to have a "perfect design"? Is the seal that creates the construct changing?

Sorry for all the questions, I feel like there's a big inferential gap here and I trying to close it.

FaintlySorcerous said:
Let me take a stab at this.

I think that the term 'chakra construct' refers to any arrangement of chakra. The 'crystal' created by Minami when they're using their not-Byakugan is a chakra construct. The electricity created by Lighting element users is a chakra construct. The blade of a Force Wall seal is a chakra construct. The rasengan is a chakra construct.

The first three seals create some weird arrangement of chakra that lasts a very short period of time and seems to do nothing, simply dissipating. If seals are software, most of them are programs that actually do something (e.g., explode) but you can imagine a program that flips some arbitrary bits in unallocated memory, seemingly to no effect.

If that program didn't work perfectly - e.g., flipped arbitrary bits in allocated memory - you'd have a disaster. You can also imagine a program which only seems to flip random bits which actually does something astoundingly useful (note the comments in the code if you haven't seen that page before). It wouldn't resemble normal programming or programs in any way, shape, or form, but if you got good enough at it, you'd be able to pull off all sorts of fuckery.

The goal of going through Minato's seals is getting to a point where you can do seemingly-random bullshit, but you understand the actual mechanisms underlying the machine well enough that your bullshit not only accomplishes something useful, it does it without side effects, which is important when the side effects normally include your terrible death.

Minato had to proceed so cautiously because flipping random bits is incredibly dangerous and you'd want to go very slowly and very carefully to make sure you don't accidentally corrupt all of reality.

Sir Stompy said:
This usage doesn't really gel with my understanding of how "chakra construct" is used. Which is perhaps why I found the description of Minoto's seals so confusing.

Although this definition means that not only all jutsu and seals are chakra constructs but internal chakra systems and tailed beasts etc. are chakra constructs. That seems so broad a definition as to be completely meaningless.

Maybe "chakra construct" is more like "any arrangement of ordered chakra". So that would mean jutsu effects and seal effects (and jutsu and seals?), but not chakra reserves, and .... waste chakra? Is that a thing?

Epistemic status: We haven't actually pinned this stuff down explicitly internally, this is just my best guessing.

You have it essentially right -- a chakra construct is a structure whose primary substrate is chakra. Many jutsu are chakra constructs, and seals can create chakra constructs (e.g. the tripwire made by LBF). Some chakra constructs, like MEW when not cast on solid ground, have physical effects (e.g. MEW has the physical effect of "acts like real granite for the duration", Water Whip even when cast from barrel water still has the effect "animates existing water"). Other chakra constructs have non-physical effects, like LBF's tripwire sending a chakra pulse to activate a nearby seal.

So, the three seals make a very similar type of chakra construct. An analogy: that chakra construct is like a machine. It's a very finicky machine that breaks (sealing failure) if any of the pieces aren't machined to perfect precision, and that makes it seem doomed to fail no matter what as the pieces will always degrade with time, eventually causing a breakage. However, if the pieces are assembled just right, the machine ends up being self-correcting within some narrow bounds.

All three seals make similar types of machines, but they have been progressively been getting bigger and more complex. Now, parts of the machine are being swapped out for functional components. It's progressive but repetitive, since any change to one part of the machine requires that almost everything else be adjusted in order to keep it within its fragile stable basin.

(remember, this is an analogy, not the truth)

I wouldn't say that the seals are doing random bullshit -- there's a clear logic to them, even if it's a stupid one. For some reason, the Fourth chose to make a bunch of trivial seals that do nothing in a very complicated way -- fancy art objects for some Hyuuga that could see chakra, let's say.

As to waste chakra, there are a number of schools of thought. Some say that chakra is created in a ninja's hara and destroyed when spent, others say that all chakra belongs to the Sage and is granted through spiritual connection and returned to its master once expended, and others say that chakra is conserved, slowly absorbed from the environment when regenerated and dissipating naturally once used. As with all other things in this domain, the truth is that HDK.

Sir Stompy · Jan 11, 2023

FaintlySorcerous said:
If chakra is subject to some conservation law, then the chakra you emit when you walk on water probably gets wasted.

I assume it is, because anything else would be stupid and our QMs are not.

Paperclipped said:
Epistemic status: We haven't actually pinned this stuff down explicitly internally, this is just my best guessing.

You have it essentially right -- a chakra construct is a structure whose primary substrate is chakra. Many jutsu are chakra constructs, and seals can create chakra constructs (e.g. the tripwire made by LBF). Some chakra constructs, like MEW when not cast on solid ground, have physical effects (e.g. MEW has the physical effect of "acts like real granite for the duration", Water Whip even when cast from barrel water still has the effect "animates existing water"). Other chakra constructs have non-physical effects, like LBF's tripwire sending a chakra pulse to activate a nearby seal.

Thanks for taking the time to write this down I deeply appreciate it.

Paperclipped said:
So, the three seals make a very similar type of chakra construct. An analogy: that chakra construct is like a machine. It's a very finicky machine that breaks (sealing failure) if any of the pieces aren't machined to perfect precision, and that makes it seem doomed to fail no matter what as the pieces will always degrade with time, eventually causing a breakage. However, if the pieces are assembled just right, the machine ends up being self-correcting within some narrow bounds.

I think I understand. Let me see if I can repeat it back. The finished seals do create meta-stable constructs. However changing the construct at all degrades it and knocks out of the self-correcting island of stability. So the seal has to be adjusted each time to account for that. Minato's seals are interesting because the chakra constructs they create are somewhat self- correcting, not because they do anything useful. Although it looks like they're headed in that way.

FaintlySorcerous · Jan 11, 2023

Sir Stompy said:
I assume it is, because anything else would be stupid and our QMs are not.

I mean I think that chakra can coherently be created and destroyed; it just gets turned into energy. The question is whether waste chakra exists or if it just turns into 'waste' energy if it doesn't become a chakra construct.

It's probably some form of energy, but...maybe not?

Oneiros · Jan 11, 2023

I def think that instead of messing around with locale government and figuring out the ideal tax rate we should instead just punch the entire problem. Just go out with a summon army and tons of explosives and kill all the chakra beast in an area. Use Earth Shaping to throw up some walls and then connect all of the places with MARI roads.

roobee · Jan 12, 2023

Wait we have a fricken daimyo that's been working with Mari on this project from the start

eaglejarl said:
"My Lord, I am a hill daimyo from the border of River, as was my father and my father's father and his father before him. Every year, 95% of what we produce beyond basic subsistence is taken in tax. We have enough to eat, barely, but there is never enough extra to do anything with. For example, we make most of our money on nut flour, but we need to hull the nuts and grind them by hand and there aren't enough hands in the village to grind the entire crop of nuts before they go bad. With a proper waterwheel we could install an automatic mill which would allow us to enormously increase our output. That would mean more nut cake, nut candy, and nut flour for Leaf, but it would require us to have the money to buy what we need."

let's ask him what he thinks about it.

faflec said:
Thought: What if we kept the current system, and put 10% back in to pro-village acts like chakra monster clearance?

the tax collector system arose so ninja don't have to spend their time on logistics. Most pro-village acts would likely need large logistics. Although chakra monster clearance may be exception. There's also the MARI road project, but I question how much that will actually help villagers. Tsunade suggested walls, not roads.

Twinnstars said:
If we'd been bumping our social stats then maybe I can see it, but as is our social stats can barely support one important social role in a scene, and we'll need a loooooooot at the conclave.

We can ask Asuma to be our wingman. Maybe there's a dog good at socials too.

We can tell the rural daimyos to talk to the urban daimyos. And see how well the low taxation rates of the urban daimyos is working out for them.

Rihaku said:
Taxation for urbanites equals roughly 70% of their net income after a subsistence deduction of R4,240.

Assuming that taxation rate is the effective taxation rate on the urbanites. And not the price the daimyos pay to Leaf. In fact, that the rate is only 70% despite it being awarded via auctions

Paperclipped said:
In complicated situations such as cities, where the productivity of one civilian is hard to measure (as a merchant's income is not as reliable as a farmer's), Leaf has an easy solution -- have a court of multiple daimyo and auction the contract between them. Each daimyo bids according to their best information, meaning that Leaf doesn't need to investigate deeply in a city to understand how much money will be made. Instead, daimyo trying to acquire the contract will bid above any price that's too low.

suggests the urban daimyos are colluding to keep the bid price low. Supported by the low numbers of daimyos that exist in Fire.
Urban daimyos seem like a tight-knit group.

edit:

FaintlySorcerous said:
Using the paperwork that they get from the tax collectors (let's assume that Asuma is willing to sign 'you have to present a moderately-detailed breakdown of what money you collected from where' and that the MARI in conjunction with Mari's fledgling intelligence network is then able to look through those papers for obviously bad actors) audit some fraction of the daimyo and then involve the Tower?

yagura's regime had a lot of bureacracy and paperwork. we can learn from him.

faflec said:
The obvious hard part is going to be keeping literally whoever we task with the job from just pocketing the money and being done with it (see: Bakuchioka)

what happened in bakuchioka besides hidan killing the villagers?

edit2:
also haru gave his village a goketsu investment paper to protect against tax collectors. could check if it worked.

edit3:

faflec said:
Ooh, maybe we could talk to the local daimyo and ask them what could be done to make the land more productive (extermination missions, water mills...) and then have Tower-sponsored missions to send those goods over. Harder to steal goods like that, IMO.

that's already done, but it has inefficiencies compared to lowered tax rates.

eaglejarl said:
"So approach one of us for a partnership," Lady Inuzuka said. "That's the way it works. That's the way it's always worked, and Leaf is rich and successful for it."

"It does indeed work," Mari said, nodding. "But there are some inefficiencies in the system. It's limited by the number of meetings that the Clan Heads can take, by the amount of our assets that are liquid at any given time, and the ability of the local lord to travel to Leaf in order to make the pitch. Suppose that Aito had simply had the money in his pocket ten years ago? He would be rich and we would be richer. Leaf would have massive amounts of very tasty nut flour to use in our own bakeries with plenty left over to sell to other nations as a way of getting our ninja inside their walls to surveil the place."

of course the goketsu clan head being willing to spend time and money will help compared to status quo. but we will still suffer the same inefficiencies.

edit4:

Oneiros said:
Just go out with a summon army and tons of explosives and kill all the chakra beast in an area.

adding on to this. i think it was lailoken that said the chakra beast corpses could be drained to fuel further summons. and the chakra beast meat and combat experience could be used to pay the summons.

Shrooms · Jan 12, 2023

Shrooms said:
Okay, so we have a little over a month to get to the Conclave. I think we should have Noburi send his envoy to Dog now, so that Hazou, Kei, and Noburi can arrive to the Conclave as a trio.
- Enma suggested leaning heavily on Jiraiya's reputation, and as his three heirs traveling as a trio of Summoners, this helps more than Hazou arriving as an individual.
- Invokes the Sannin mythos and evokes imagery of Hazou's group being potential Sannin (literally 'Three Ninja') of their own someday
- Helps prevent any of them as individuals getting their teeth kicked in by apparently hostile summons
- Is just a badass way to get the original gang together for a while

I have an additional sugggestion, one that definitely should be run by Cannai first and after getting some more lore about the process. We can bring a gthsss Archaeopteryx to the Conclave. We know that only the smallest Archaeopteryx remain:

If we find one small enough (like, Panda-sized) then I think we could cage it and transport it to the Conclave for dramatic effect. This will be a pain, but I think pretty much any buff we can grant to Hazou's socials is worth the investment since he won't be cutting it in raw numbers when it comes to speechifying. Unveiling the fate that awaits the clans if they don't act is a serious wake-up call for anyone sitting around and twiddling their thumbs still, and Enma seemed to want Hazou to light a fire under their asses. I think this is a pretty good option for doing so (again, if Cannai thinks it would be effective.)

With Noburi, transporting a gthsss may be trivial, if Ma and Pa think he can safely drain it. However, I don't think there's time for Noburi to come all the way to Arachnid and meet up with us, so at minimum Hazou will need to transport it to Dog to meet up with Noburi. Some suggestions:
- Ask Kei/Panda to help test. Can Panda break out of a steel cage? If necessary, purchase a cage from the Inuzuka designed to hold chakra beasts/ask them for tips on transporting them.
- Goo bomb, then nonlethally Taijutsu attack the Archaeopteryx to knock it out and place it in the cage. From there, Hazou can use Noburi-provided drugs to sedate it. Alternatively, @RandomOTP pointed out that hawks and some other avians will cease all resistance when blindfolded, so we can try that too. If it's primarily driven by hunger, simply feeding it may be sufficient to keep it docile.
- From there, we can take the route back to Dog that Hazou took to Arachnid, and bring any interested Arachnids/Enma, who will be arriving in Arachnid soon. Traveling through Cat again isn't ideal if we're going to have to fight any hunters again, so we may want to arrange some tributes/fuckoff warnings in advance. Alternatively, we can travel the coast by boat, as the Arachnids did when they first washed up on the shores of Dog.
- After meeting up with Kei and Noburi in Dog, we can travel to Pangolin and speak at the Conclave, with our gthsss in tow and do our thing.

The primary issue with this approach is that that travel time makes it tougher to complete any last-minute Sealing projects to buff up Hazou. Chakrascope is likely doable, Goo Bombs plausibly, Chakdar 2.0 I'm not sure...

I'd prob add more questions about gthsss or discuss the diplomatic approach at the Conclave more but here's a start. Can always talk to Cannai multiple times too...

[ ] protoplan
Word Count:

Cannai
- Sanity check Cannai conversation (and the course of action it contains) with Uplift
- Relay Enma's info and request for Hazou to attend the Conclave.
- Hazou is considering capturing a small Archaeopteryx gthsss to present to the Conclave, to spook them into action.
  - Are there any cultural taboos surrounding this Hazou should know? (Might that actually be useful in this case?)
  - What does Cannai know about gthsss? Are they different from kvthss? Is there any way to fix it?
  - The Condors said they became that way after the Archaeopteryx Boss was eaten. Does that happen when a Boss dies or only when a Dragon eats them?
- In order to transport an Archaeopteryx to Pangolin, Hazou will need to personally carry it from Arachnid. They may be able to sail straight to Dog from Arachnid, as the original Arachnid messenger did.
  - From Dog, Hazou plans to march to the Conclave alongside Kei and Noburi (should they also agree) to evoke Sannin/legacy of Jiraiya imagery, as Enma recommended. Gamabunta and Cannai approved of Noburi escorting a Toad diplomat traveling to Dog, and Kei already has one present in Dog.
  - If Cannai is now willing to send any Dogs along with them, Hazou will escort them as he did the Arachnid group.
Toad Sages
- Assuming Uplift & Cannai think it's fine, have Noburi ask the Sages if he could safely drain on the 7th Path.
- If they're willing, would they oversee him testing draining creatures in the 7th Path? Bribe heavily if necessary.
Sealing
- Research Goo Bombs, then Chakdar 2.0 if completed.

acidshill · Jan 12, 2023

roobee said:
We can ask Asuma to be our wingman.

"So, this Hazō guy, he works for you?"
"Yes."
"So you have a decent idea of what he's like?"
"Sure."
"Can he be trusted?"
"Well..."

Kiba · Jan 12, 2023

Oneiros said:
I def think that instead of messing around with locale government and figuring out the ideal tax rate we should instead just punch the entire problem. Just go out with a summon army and tons of explosives and kill all the chakra beast in an area. Use Earth Shaping to throw up some walls and then connect all of the places with MARI roads.

This is very good for development, but the problem is if the benefit flowed only to daimyo as opposed to the peasants we're hoping to benefit.

We also want development to be self-sustaining. If the Daimyo isn't taxing every ryo, it means that the peasants can pull themselves up while we focus on bigger things.

Cariyaga · Jan 12, 2023

Shrooms said:
I'd prob add more questions about gthsss or discuss the diplomatic approach at the Conclave more but here's a start. Can always talk to Cannai multiple times too...

[ ] protoplan
Word Count:

Cannai

Sanity check Cannai conversation (and the course of action it contains) with Uplift

Relay Enma's info and request for Hazou to attend the Conclave.

Hazou is considering capturing a small Archaeopteryx gthsssto present to the Conclave, to spook them into action.

Are there any cultural taboos surrounding this Hazou should know? (Might that actually be useful in this case?)

What does Cannai know about gthsss? Are they different from kvthss? Is there any way to fix it?

The Condors said they became that way after the Archaeopteryx Boss was eaten. Does that happen when a Boss dies or only when a Dragon eats them?

In order to transport an Archaeopteryx to Pangolin, Hazou will need to personally carry it from Arachnid. They may be able to sail straight to Dog from Arachnid, as the original Arachnid messenger did.

From Dog, Hazou plans to march to the Conclave alongside Kei and Noburi (should they also agree) to evoke Sannin/legacy of Jiraiya imagery, as Enma recommended. Gamabunta and Cannai approved of Noburi escorting a Toad diplomat traveling to Dog, and Kei already has one present in Dog.

If Cannai is now willing to send any Dogs along with them, Hazou will escort them as he did the Arachnid group.

Toad Sages

Assuming Uplift & Cannai think it's fine, have Noburi ask the Sages if he could safely drain on the 7th Path.

If they're willing, would they oversee him testing draining creatures in the 7th Path? Bribe heavily if necessary.

Sealing

Research Goo Bombs, then Chakdar 2.0 if completed.

Make sure that Cannai okays the toad arriving, don't wanna run into any of the issues we did before...

eaglejarl · Jan 12, 2023

FaintlySorcerous said:
Clarification: I mean to say that we can begin and end our suggestions with 'all of the people of Fire are part of the Will of Fire, the Hokage is the embodiment of the Will of Fire, stealing from the Hokage is treason, therefore anyone found to be cleaning civilians out when taking taxes is committing treason and should be punished as such'.

We don't need to invent a new punishment when we can just use a scary existing one.

Let me take a stab at this.

I think that the term 'chakra construct' refers to any arrangement of chakra. The 'crystal' created by Minami when they're using their not-Byakugan is a chakra construct. The electricity created by Lighting element users is a chakra construct. The blade of a Force Wall seal is a chakra construct. The rasengan is a chakra construct.

The first three seals create some weird arrangement of chakra that lasts a very short period of time and seems to do nothing, simply dissipating. If seals are software, most of them are programs that actually do something (e.g., explode) but you can imagine a program that flips some arbitrary bits in unallocated memory, seemingly to no effect.

If that program didn't work perfectly - e.g., flipped arbitrary bits in allocated memory - you'd have a disaster. You can also imagine a program which only seems to flip random bits which actually does something astoundingly useful (note the comments in the code if you haven't seen that page before). It wouldn't resemble normal programming or programs in any way, shape, or form, but if you got good enough at it, you'd be able to pull off all sorts of fuckery.

The goal of going through Minato's seals is getting to a point where you can do seemingly-random bullshit, but you understand the actual mechanisms underlying the machine well enough that your bullshit not only accomplishes something useful, it does it without side effects, which is important when the side effects normally include your terrible death.

Minato had to proceed so cautiously because flipping random bits is incredibly dangerous and you'd want to go very slowly and very carefully to make sure you don't accidentally corrupt all of reality.

Sir Stompy said:
Maybe "chakra construct" is more like "any arrangement of ordered chakra".

Adding weight to what @Paperclipped said above, both of the above items completely match my understanding.

roobee said:
the chakra beast corpses could be drained to fuel further summons

Corpses cannot be drained. Only living beings.

Paperclipped · Jan 12, 2023

faflec said:
The obvious hard part is going to be keeping literally whoever we task with the job from just pocketing the money and being done with it (see: Bakuchioka), which is why the idea of subsidizing chakra monster killing appeals to me the most. Only ANBU and over-loyal ninja are going to be not pocketing the money or arranging for that to happen, and those are in short supply/Asuma won't make them do menial labor missions.

I would note that "complete the mission" is a huge, huge part of ninja culture.

Sir Stompy said:
I think I understand. Let me see if I can repeat it back. The finished seals do create meta-stable constructs. However changing the construct at all degrades it and knocks out of the self-correcting island of stability. So the seal has to be adjusted each time to account for that. Minato's seals are interesting because the chakra constructs they create are somewhat self- correcting, not because they do anything useful. Although it looks like they're headed in that way.

Almost. Almost every chakra construct is stable by default, degrading gracefully as it runs out of chakra rather than destabilizing and exploding. Minato's seals are distinguished not by their stability, which is less than average, but by the amount of chakra they manipulate.

faflec · Jan 12, 2023

roobee said:
what happened in bakuchioka besides hidan killing the villagers?

Paperclipped said:
I would note that "complete the mission" is a huge, huge part of ninja culture.

eaglejarl said:
"I'm sure they were," he said, smiling a perfect smile that he could create only because the Iron Nerve remembered everything, including smiles from times when he didn't want to rip the lungs out of lazy ninja who blew off a mission assigned by their Hokage because they were too arrogant to believe in the value of civilian life. "Nevertheless, I will ask my brother Noburi to come and check you all over. He's worked with civilians before, he's good at it, and he enjoys it."

Velorien said:
• Asuma will deal with the medic-nin who saw fit to reinterpret a direct order from their Kage in the harshest way possible, namely by conveying the information to Tsunade and then washing his hands of the whole affair.

Sir Stompy · Jan 12, 2023

faflec said:
The obvious hard part is going to be keeping literally whoever we task with the job from just pocketing the money and being done with it (see: Bakuchioka), which is why the idea of subsidizing chakra monster killing appeals to me the most. Only ANBU and over-loyal ninja are going to be not pocketing the money or arranging for that to happen, and those are in short supply/Asuma won't make them do menial labor missions.

I don't think this is that hard. Have a random sampling of tax collectors audited by mindscan (20% is 200ish, should take 2 Yamanaka genin a month to do at 4 per day) each year, execute the cheaters with optional torture and confiscate their property.

The rest of them will stop cheating the peasants quick enough.

Twinnstars · Jan 12, 2023

Sir Stompy said:
I don't think this is that hard. Have a random sampling of tax collectors audited by mindscan (20% is 200ish, should take 2 Yamanaka genin a month to do at 4 per day) each year, execute the cheaters with optional torture and confiscate their property.

The rest of them will stop cheating the peasants quick enough.

Gotta pipe in here, we shouldn't kill these guys (or at least only kill the most egregious of them). They're civil infrastructure and we don't have replacements.

Once we have a fledgling culture of not-fucking-people then we can execute people for violating it ,

Velorien · Jan 12, 2023

Twinnstars said:
Once we have a fledgling culture of not-fucking-people

I really think MARI, or at least Mari, is not whom you want to entrust with this.

Sir Stompy · Jan 12, 2023

Twinnstars said:
Gotta pipe in here, we shouldn't kill these guys (or at least only kill the most egregious of them). They're civil infrastructure and we don't have replacements

Okay, fine. This is entirely correct. We will need to kill a couple of them, and I think we should make it gratuitously bad since we can't do it often. We have to make them want to comply to get compliance. Fear is an excellent motivator for that.

Ordering them to pay restitution should be fine for the rest.

RandomOTP · Jan 12, 2023

Sir Stompy said:
Okay, fine. This is entirely correct. We will need to kill a couple of them, and I think we should make it gratuitously bad since we can't do it often. We have to make them want to comply to get compliance. Fear is an excellent motivator for that.

Ordering them to pay restitution should be fine for the rest.

Or mimic what Hashirama and the Merchant Council, with regard to praise/punishment.

Praise honest tax collectors, give their hamlets priority on Till'n'Fills, maybe sponsor Leaf-based educators (blacksmiths, woodworkers, and other useful trades for out in Fire) to go and tutor locals for a month or two. The sort of things that rewards and encourages honesty.

And then very publicly execute the dishonest ones for being traitors to the law.

The rewards will encourage the honest tax collectors to stay honest, and the dishonest ones will be incentivized to become honest (by hook or by crook). The dishonest ones who don't become honest will become corpses, and serve as encouragement for their replacement to be an honest tax collector.

roobee · Jan 12, 2023

Velorien said:
Hazō's playing the game while pretending he isn't, and it's maddening

MrRobot said:
Hazō: Man Ami is tiering and scary but at least i manage to be nice enough to her.

I think Ami was referring to when Hazou was tying her hair in an Isan knot. And then denied any symbolic meaning when she confronted him about it. In which case her interpretation seems a reasonable one. Although I'd find more likely interpretation that Hazou wanted to do some symbolism, for personal enjoyment, but never wanted anyone else to realize he'd done it.

Sir Stompy said:
Okay, fine. This is entirely correct. We will need to kill a couple of them, and I think we should make it gratuitously bad since we can't do it often. We have to make them want to comply to get compliance. Fear is an excellent motivator for that.

This would probably make Haru think Hazou a hypocrite. For punishing Haru for killing yakuza. I don't think that should stop us at these stakes, but just something to plan ahead for. Although if Hazou doesn't personally do the killing, Haru shouldn't make any realizations of Hazou's involvement.

Kiba · Jan 12, 2023

Sir Stompy said:
Okay, fine. This is entirely correct. We will need to kill a couple of them, and I think we should make it gratuitously bad since we can't do it often. We have to make them want to comply to get compliance. Fear is an excellent motivator for that.

Ordering them to pay restitution should be fine for the rest.

I don't think it's necessary to resort to gratuitous punishment. Being turned into a peasant farmer and stripping them of everything they own would probably be good enough.

Twinnstars · Jan 12, 2023

We don't need to execute them to kill the daimyo, we just need to start a list of people who aren't allowed to buy Tower contracts. Bonus points if that includes ninja missions.

Kiba · Jan 12, 2023

roobee said:
This would probably make Haru think Hazou a hypocrite. For punishing Haru for killing yakuza. I don't think that should stop us at these stakes, but just something to plan ahead for. Although if Hazou doesn't personally do the killing, Haru shouldn't make any realizations of Hazou's involvement.

Official sanctioned punishment is very different than unauthorized murder.

roobee · Jan 12, 2023

Kiba said:
Official sanctioned punishment is very different than unauthorized murder.

In ninja (haru) eyes. I dunno if they care about the law. And what the law even is in this mismash of daimyo laws is confusing. And also maybe the ninja are the law. Also if the law sucks, then murder against the law isn't necessarily worse than execution following the law.

Sir Stompy said:
Okay, fine. This is entirely correct. We will need to kill a couple of them, and I think we should make it gratuitously bad since we can't do it often. We have to make them want to comply to get compliance. Fear is an excellent motivator for that.

Also even if the daimyo are honest. As we saw with Eiichi, they can't even stop their own tax collectors from pilfering taxes. Even when they use the stick of execution. And daimyo spend more time on that then I bet the ninja audits will.

I wonder if silk armor is useful. Stacking with pangolin ghost scales.
Could check if silk useful for skygliders

Lysbeth Succubus · Jan 12, 2023

Sir Stompy said:
This usage doesn't really gel with my understanding of how "chakra construct" is used. Which is perhaps why I found the description of Minoto's seals so confusing.

Although this definition means that not only all jutsu and seals are chakra constructs but internal chakra systems and tailed beasts etc. are chakra constructs. That seems so broad a definition as to be completely meaningless.

Maybe "chakra construct" is more like "any arrangement of ordered chakra". So that would mean jutsu effects and seal effects (and jutsu and seals?), but not chakra reserves, and .... waste chakra? Is that a thing?

Take it literally. Chakra construct are constructs made of chakra. Chakra systems are perhaps made solely of chakra or perhaps not, but they're not constructs, they're not made with agency (even taking into account the weird semi-autonomous things). Ghost Scales is described as a chakra construct. Effects of jutsu (including ninjutsu and fūinjutsu apparently) seem to tend to fall into two broad categories: chakra constructs and physical effects. In general, the most salient distinction is that chakra dissipates, either when the construct is broken (broken Ghost Scales for instance... I think Goo Bomb is also a construct?) or after a while (MEW's 30 second existential timer is terrific for exemplarification). Physical effects are more perennial - a broken solid wall of stone from a permanent MEW leaves you with rocks and stones from a broken granite wall. Break the "clone" construct on an Elemental Clone and you still have a physical pile of rock, a splash of water, a bundle of twigs or whatever.

roobee said:
As we saw with Eiichi, they can't even stop their own tax collectors from pilfering taxes.

Or Kakuzu. And isn't that going to be a fun talk.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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