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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
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Would you mind expanding a little on what you mean by that?
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
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- Simping for DSB
-From the SEP article on Legal Positivism
I'm not sure Kei has dismissed positivism yet. A moral system is necessary to distinguish between the tyranny of the Pangolins and the authority necessary for uplift. However, Kei will be developing any such system after the authority has already been claimed (if not grasped, yet). Just like the apologies she demanded from Hazo and Amari, the system will come after Kei has identified its absence. And just like the apologies, her mental illness will demand that she dismiss moral apologia for uplift as a self-serving ad-hoc justification.
Kei, after achieving omnipotence: "We maximized the utility functions of all actual and possible sentient agents, but what if the morally correct thing was to hate myself more??"
Proper dues for running this combat! Incredibly difficult to adjudicate everything fairly then weave chaos into a compelling narrative. Amazed every time.
Allies do not count? Feels reasonable for chakdar to help if it reacts to a friendly shooting lasers at ambushers. If not, good to know for next time. Is chakdar retroactive or does it apply the turn after?
Also good to know banshees trump telepathy.
Strong Hyena strike force. Quick decisions. Coordinated. Not precious with taking casualties. With comms would be a nightmare.
Drawn, armed weapons a good declare.
Reverse summoning before setting up skytower drops noncombatants. ... so does dying or being taken out. Was a big worry.
Horrific and costly way to learn this lesson before the Conclave.
Unlucky they did not waste actions trying to escape the goo.
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Positivism, in my shorthand usage, refers to an idea that is an implication/consequence of the original empiricist philosophical theory, that being that there is one fundamental 'right' answer, which propagates into 'one right method', 'one right path', 'one right culture' or 'one right race'. This? This is the thing that was the cornerstone for the 'justifications' used to cover the naked greed and ambition of the colonialist era with a veneer of 'civilising' the victims. Kei is still somewhat falling into it, what with dismissing peasants as totally ignorant fools, instead of actual damn experts in surviving a deathworld without superpowers, but baby steps.
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That's a new one on me. I am only very glancingly familiar with positivism but a quick refresher skim of Wikipedia and a few other sources confirms my recollection that positivism is the idea that all true knowledge can be justified, either by scientific experimentation or by logical and/or mathematical proof. In a moral context this says that intuition and emotion are not valid grounding for moral decision, that a moral system must be consistent and justifiable.
This of course runs into the issue of what counts as justification. Any moral system needs an assumed foundation as to what constitutes good-- that foundation might be "whatever God says" or "whatever most effectively promotes human flourishing" or "whatever conforms to this list of rules", but the choice is still subjective and axiomatic. Once it's been made we can make objective assessments of the morality of actions based on that foundation. Positivism is, so far as I understand it, simply claiming that those assessments need to be rigorous and derived from evidence or logical/mathematical proof.
Like I said, not my field so maybe I have misunderstood.
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Seconded - the amazement, reduplicated.
You just try to think while I'm yelling at you extremely loud. THAT'S NOT A HYPOTHETICAL, BY THE WAY.
YOU JUST TRY TO FOCUS WHILE I'M YELLING
Glad we learnt it before the Conclave though - Enma wants us to tank an attack and show we're strong without killing or something. Now we know this might take some finesse because our first go-to, making sure they don't move, just makes them stationary murderbeasts still able to destroy us, not sitting ducks.
Gödel: you WHAT D:<
*Takes notes for Jashinism sermons*
IRUKA SENSEI'S NINJA LESSONS FOR THE HARD HEADED AND HARD OF HEARING.
Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
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- You know
No darkness is "eats" Shadows
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Does this mean that Jin has 2 taijutsu styles?
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Don't try to understand the grappling rules /jk
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Huh. First time I'm thinking that Ami trouncing us at board games might not just be her being a genius or some Mori-like feat of optimisation, but indeed a result of her social/I&S training.
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Catching up on some backlog:
Your reaction posts are always great to read. +1 XP to 2 PCs of your choice.
MfD memes appreciated, +1 XP apiece.
I'm not sure what songwriting worm got into the two of you, but I'll put +2 XP on the sheets for these lovely contributions. I will threadmark, if you wish.
Such as?
Things are actually just about ready.
Updated seal loadouts coming eventually...
The fact that the human summoner goes physically to the Seventh Path (and thus that their gear, including seals, is real and not chakra construct) has been very profitable for you so far. The condors may be unlucky that humans physically travel to the Seventh Path, but you're better off that it's this way, I think.Are we ever so lucky?
Ah, another nice reaction post. +1 XP to a PC of your choice.
Just be good at everything, please. Thanks.(Tone: joking) Hey, you're already making us buy Calligraphy! Stop trying to delay ES50!
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- USA
I could have imagined a better set of Declares (trivial example: don't do the SC-seal loadout declare), but the combat plan was basically solid, conditioned on Hazou's low Alertness. If Hazou had moved sooner, I could imagine many things he could have done differently that would have made the fight go better, but with how late he was to act, I think there's very little he could have done.
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- Fifth Dimension
Mostly why there aren't more gamebreaking seals and sealmasters. Hazou's done a lot in a little time and part of that could be the voters, another could be main character syndrome, but as far as simulationist, there'd have to be someone to do amazing and weird things with sealing. And by someone statistically, it'd be like 1 in 100 sealmasters which would end up being a decent amount. But if "don't scare the normies" is a thing, then it makes sense. Don't try and rock the boat or you die and sealing is set back 100 years or w/e and it's taught to everyone that way.
Good points about the Declares, that SC one was one I was initially opposed to and I should have stuck to guns about it. The clones were never going to matter I said as much multiple times.
Tbh it was very difficult to know in advance which Declares would be accepted and it's hard to plan robustly enough that the action plan will still work if a key Declare is rejected
Interlude: Operation Murdersnout, Aftermath Part 2
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Interlude: Operation Murdersnout, Aftermath Part 2
Ultimately, Kei arrived at no useful conclusion during her sleepless night. Her only consolation was that in the immediate, she could at least harm the Condors no further. Even with her social skills that humbled the most eloquent jellyfish, she doubted she would accidentally persuade Pantsā to move from cultural genocide to the very literal kind.
(A little voice inside her questioned if death might not be better than being stripped not only of one's agency, but eventually even of the concept. While Kei agreed in principle, she was also aware that she was far too flawed a creature to make such decisions for others while other options remained, and more importantly, as a Mori, she knew never to trust an inner voice that presented death as the ideal solution to anything. Her own voice was troublesome enough.)
She wished she had had more time to prepare, to wait for Ami to return from her mission or to consult the world expert in provoking demigods into homicidal wrath and surviving the consequences; even in the unlikely event that Hazō had nothing to offer, he would surely appreciate a stimulating diversion from the mind-numbing tedium of long-distance travel. Unfortunately, she was racing against Panteon, whose report doubtless incriminated her in every possible way, and therefore must not reach Pantsā first. As a summoner who could be reverse-summoned into the heartlands at any time, she held an overwhelming advantage, but she could not afford to squander it. Panteon would certainly swallow his false supremacist beliefs enough to dispatch a messenger condor if it meant revenge for his public humiliation, to say nothing of imagined past slights.
"It gives me pleasure to see you alive and well, Summoner," Pantsā rumbled, his gargantuan form mercifully half-concealed within the shadows of his subterranean audience chamber. In the background, torch flames flickered in a mysterious breeze, ever on the verge of being extinguished, much like herself. "Your celerity in coming to report is... commendable."
"Thank you, Polemarch." Kei interlaced her rather lacking claws in the proper gesture of respect. "The secondary objective met with predictable success. I learned much about Pangolin governance of the occupied Condor territory, and Commissar Panteon will surely provide a detailed description of his more informed observations.
"Unfortunately"—Kei launched into the part that might have been a disaster were it not for Snowflake, and might be a disaster still considering divergence did not liberate the latter from their appalling social skills—"the Intelligence Corps failed completely in their assigned task. Either its agents failed to convey the necessary information to the target altogether, or they did so unconvincingly, for Contorarian and his insurgents failed to make an appearance at any point during the inspection.
"I suppose," she added as if the thought had just occurred to her, "it is also possible that the strike team failed to conceal itself sufficiently, or even that communications were somehow compromised, in which case it may be precipitous to allot all the blame to the Intelligence Corps.
"I did at least manage to salvage what resources I could, specifically the condor prisoners whose performative execution was intended as a final touch to provoke the insurgents into action according to our preferred timing. As the mission was apparently compromised before it began, their deaths would not have achieved any meaningful objective.
"Although in the strict sense, the mission was ultimately a waste of my time, I am disinclined to demand additional compensation insofar as I found the experience unexpectedly educational in logistical and administrative terms."
She waited as Pantsā contemplated her thoroughly-biased, carefully-weighted version of events. Why had Kei, Uplift's least socially-adept and persuasive member, ever been granted the Pangolin Scroll instead of someone like Mari?
No, Mari as she was then would not have halted the skytower trade. From that perspective, perhaps it had been for the best that Kei received the scroll. Though shamefully late in coming and humiliatingly inept in execution, her decision was one nobody else in the family had been willing to propose, not even Akane.
"Summoner," Pantsā said, "allow me to express my regret concerning the failure of the mission. Doubtless, you were burning with enthusiasm at the thought of slaying those who would deprive the Holy Pangolin Empire of its spoils of war. Rest assured that once we identify those responsible, they will not escape the consequences of their actions."
His tone was mild, too mild for a general hearing of the survival of enemies that had presumably taken the lives of his subordinates before, and would now surely proceed to do so again.
"Yet one point troubles me, Summoner. You were assigned to this mission as a combatant. On what authority did you think to overturn the lawful judgement of the Holy Pangolin Empire and spare prisoners that the court had not ordered spared?"
Here it came. Kei, a realist, had never truly believed that they could bury this essential point. Instead, she would be forced to gamble outrageously, perhaps with her life.
"Why, yours, Polemarch."
Kei could hear Pantsā's tail shift alarmingly.
"I do not recall granting you any such. Summoner, falsely claiming privileges of rank is a grave crime according to Pangolin law, doubly so for a human who has not even earned a place within the armed forces."
"What other authority could I possibly have?" Kei asked. "I am not, as you observe, within the chain of command. Nor have I sworn loyalty to the Holy Pangolin Empire, to be bound by its laws as a citizen. I answer to you and you alone, and any action of mine that you affirm is no more or less legitimate than if you had performed it yourself."
Pantsā gazed at her, his expression as unreadable as that of any giant scaled alien mammal.
"And why would I ever affirm the contravention of Pangolin justice you performed?"
Still alive. The gamble had to proceed. Would that there were some kami to appeal to that might tilt chance her way, but even if such an improbable being existed, she doubted its reach extended here.
"Because.... my loyalty is worth more to you than the lives or deaths of some random handful of condors whose names you do not know and will never care to learn, in some random village that would never have promoted itself to your attention save that an enemy of the empire happened to be in its vicinity—if, indeed, he did at all."
The torches flickered.
"Summoners have ever been audacious. Are you aware, Nara Kei, that it is treason to attempt to blackmail the Polemarch of the Holy Pangolin Empire, be the price ever so low?"
Kei shivered. Was there still time to flee, or was she already within tongue range?
No, that was foolish. Pantsā doubtless possessed the ninjutsu to kill her ten times over before she could unsummon.
Time to change tack, urgently. Were it her in Pantsā's place, the argument would have been eminently persuasive and a foundation for more. Why were irrational beings so difficult to model?
"That was not my intent, Polemarch!" Kei exclaimed, ruining her air of calm control. "That is to say, I believe you may be missing certain possibilities on offer here."
It was a ridiculous idea, something Kei and Snowflake would never have imagined but for all this time observing Ami and her preposterous plans at work. Still, if Kei could draw upon even the tiniest fragment of Ami's brilliance, any battle was as good as won.
"As stated, the Pangolin Summoner answers not to Pangolin law or hierarchy, but only to you, the other party in the summon contract. Let us suppose, as only one of countless possibilities, that there is a traitor within the Pangolin ranks, yet insufficient evidence to move against them, and perhaps to do so would destabilise the command structure and impact morale. How tragic that this traitor happens to offer mortal insult to the Pangolin Summoner in a place without witnesses, and is summarily slain.
"As you alone are the summoner's contractor, it is for you to decide if the terms of the contract have been infringed on, and negotiate suitable compensation if so. Perhaps you might demand reparations, as is common when allies harm each other's interests, to be delivered via you personally. Perhaps you might send the summoner on a challenging mission, which as it happens you were considering sending them on anyway. Perhaps you might impose some punishment that must be classified to the outside world. Or perhaps you might judge that the summoner was the wronged party, and their Human Path right to vengeance is to be respected in this instance. The possibility space of mutually agreed-on consequences is limited only by the sum of both parties' imaginations.
"Tell me, Polemarch: when was the last time you had access to an extra-legal agent whose actions would not reflect on you whether they succeeded or failed, who was guaranteed a lack of conflicting loyalties within the clan, and who possessed the power, flexibility, and growth potential of a summoner?"
"And in return," Pantsā reasoned, "this agent would have to be granted considerable discretion in their activities, since the entire conceit would be useless if they only took independent actions that were specifically beneficial to me. Is that where you are leading with this?"
"What are a few condor lives when weighed against concrete and ongoing benefit to the security of the Holy Pangolin Empire, Polemarch?" Kei dared.
"You make an interesting case," Pantsā mused. "I shall contemplate, Summoner. For now, you may consider my judgement on the issue suspended."
A more romantic person might say her stepfather had protected her from beyond the grave, for it was he who had taught her how much a military leader craved deniable operatives, even if in this case "deniable" meant less "I've never heard of those missing-nin" and more "What has that lunatic done this time?" A less romantic one might recall who had inflicted the Pangolins on her in the first place. Kei, who had no romance in her soul, merely wondered how he would feel if he saw her now, committing the opposite of murder and using it as a stepping stone to power instead of suffering the proper consequences. Would he be proud of her? Impressed? Would he finally give her that look of bemused awe that had only ever been reserved for Hazō?
Not that Kei cared. For now, it would suffice to see Hazō's expression when she reported her expected reward for committing treason to her leader's face.
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Ah, thank you, no need to threadmark my song parody because all the real genius in it is Tolkien's, and if I counted well and get to distribute a total of 4 XP to PCs, hmmm... errr... hmmm....
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"Hazou please stop making heart eyes"
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Ooof. Kei just implied that her loyalty hinges upon the ability to spare Condors.
The lives of a handful of Condors don't really mean anything to Pantsaa, but Kei has revealed that they mean a great deal to her.
Kei has just given Pantsaa leverage over her, while also confirming what Pantsaa already knew: that she isn't totally loyal, and will need to be watched.
Becoming an attack dog/assassin for Pantsaa?
I'm not sure that's a good idea. Her concern regarding the Condors was that it was immoral (and inefficient, besides).
Whether Pantsaa directly ordered the public execution or not, the fact remains that the execution was lawfully ordered under the very same legal system that Pantsaa created and enforces.
Kei, in her newfound status as assassin, may very well have to kill innocents, philosophers, artists, and unconscious revolutionaries within the Pangolin Clan.
Kei may very well become the enforcer that prevents the Pangolin Clan from evolving beyond its current state (if it even could, with Pantsaa in charge).
Pantsaa is another self-styled Yagura, and Kei has just become his ANBU.
Well, I suppose the silver lining is that Kei will have a chance to meet Pangolins who diverge from the status quo. Maybe she can recruit someone to challenge and replace Pantsaa from her new position?
Seems a bit obvious, though.
I wonder if Pantsaa will plan for that, or if it'll be a blind spot, since they haven't had a Summoner in so long? Or perhaps his sheer age (similar to Ma and Pa) will mean that the mere centuries between Summoners won't be as much of an influence as I suspect?
Very twisty, very interesting.
Hazou: "You defied Pangolin-Yagura and managed to walk away?"
Kei: "Aren't you jealous?"
Hazou: "No, I'm concerned for your safety and will update your seal loadout accordingly."
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