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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Lysbeth Succubus said:
Honestly I see nothing that points to the crystal being sentient, not any more than any rock at all, and we certainly never tried to go see what was the centre of the Swamp of Death either, to converse with it or anything. The ES feedback was "put into words" but in the same way it was with the rest of the earth and stone Hazō tried the technique with - and that feedback was not even from the crystal, but from the ground, away from it. Our best guess from that IMO should be that just like with chakra adhesion, the presence of high levels of nature/natural(?) chakra here, concentrated in the crystal much like a chakra battery, automatically reject others types coming in.
Hell, it's not even just that - the only confirmed case of chakra creating life out of no life is chakra golems, which generate in the precise conditions seen there. Even them we don't know to be sentient, considering the difficulty of surviving the encounter. I am of course not against keeping an open mind and looking for signs of sentience, but it's very much not the zero hypothesis and it confuses me that we keep it as a starting point.
And the thing is, high concentrations of chakra makes dangerous wildlife no matter what, apparently. We can't stop that, and Uplift was supposed to try and solve this war of attrition humanity is losing. Not preserve every single theoretical life - which is infeasible. Best case scenario for the crystal if it's sentient and can be reasoned with would be to convince it to burrow itself so deep underground even a chakra golem generating near it couldn't come out. And then hope we didn't need that material it's made of to practise lithosealing because if the Dragons ruin the Seventh Path and gain the ability to travel to ours they'll kill it too.
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It's not the earthshaping "voice" that I'm thinking of when I say it might be sentient. When I originally arrived at this position I had honestly almost forgotten that part of the exchange.

No, what has me unwilling to immediately lump it into the "beast" bucket is that it appears to be an ex-nihilo intelligence with cognitive faculties at least sufficient enough to control or create the vine golems we saw, which fought in real time with considerable acumen. The ex-nihilo part, though, means that we don't have a reference frame for what the brain of an entity like this is supposed to look like. If it obtained intelligence all the way up to beast level, all on its own external to any and all biological evolution, can we be sure it stopped there? I mean, certainly it could, but the crux is that we have no way to be sure without further investigation.

And I must stress this: I do not think the cave is sentient, I think the cave might be sentient. I do not think we can reasonably rule out the idea that this ex-nihilo intelligence has personhood and an inner life, even if it's fundamentally alien to us. In the non-negligible chance that it is sentient, we have an obligation to treat it like a sentient being and try to save it even if we ultimately fail to find an outcome where it can be allowed to live. I don't like not knowing the answer here, because the actions we should take are very different depending on the outcome, so I very much want to figure out the answer when we next go back to it. I'm not committed to the outcome, I just want to know the outcome instead of guessing that this esoteric and unique being happens to follow the rules we're accustomed to.

With respect to chakra golems, I... don't think the causality is in that direction? The crystal cave seems to me to be a byproduct of heightened chakra levels in the area, much like a chakra golem would be, but not the source of it. Destroying the crystal would stop the crystal from living in the cave system and killing people, but I don't think it would do anything to bring the chakra levels in the area under control. I can understand being worried that the crystal cave is a proto-golem or something, but that's again something that we can't say yes or no about until we know more about it.

(as a side-note, you make a good point that the crystal itself might not even be important to the entity at all. It makes sense for the fancy chakra-dense crystal at the heart of the cave to be its brain or something, but that's an assumption on our part that might just be flat-out wrong. Which, again, makes me want to learn more about it so we can figure out how it ticks and what it thinks)
But I mean, it still feels weird to theorise about the need to save the crystal even if it's sentient given the danger and all when the cast is not even vegetarian. There's saveable sentience right there
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Addressing this point as a specific thing, sorry if I made any miscommunication by saying 'sentient' instead of 'sapient'. I'm aware that 'sentient' as it's formally defined includes all sorts of non-sapient animals, but I was pointing at the colloquial meaning that's equivalent to 'sapient', i.e. "the being is self-aware and has personhood" or something along those lines.

I do think that going vegetarian would decrease the number of sentient (defined formally) beings our cast kills, but I don't think it would decrease the number of sapient beings our cast kills. I am unsure whether or not the crystal cave entity is sapient specifically, and if it does have self-awareness and personhood I would consider us as having certain moral obligations that would not exist if it was merely sentient (defined formally). That it is sentient (defined formally) is virtually certain, given the vine golems it attacked us with.
 
Kylinger said:
The five-element-jonin narrative still doesn't match with my understanding of the mechanics- surely pumping that 4000 exp into a powerful fire jutsu would be better than spreading it out to "cover weaknesses."
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Some elements are simply better at certain things than others.

For example, look at Wind Element's Vacuum Step, and then look at Fire Element's Basan's Glide. Vacuum Step is far superior at movement.

Then look at Earth Element's PEA and then the neutral element Ghost Scales. Paperclipped has flat-out described PEA as an S-rank armor jutsu.

Having multiple Elements means than you can pick the best Element for the utility you're looking for.

I will concede that, if you don't have access to jutsu of that type in its preferred Element (for example, if Wind Element: Vacuum Step were locked under a clan secret vault), then you might have to simply make do with another element attempting the same thing, with a subpar result.

Jiraiya, however, had Hiruzen the S-rank Technique Hacker as a sensei. No doubt he had access to some Good Tier Shit.

And Asuma's Contest means that "access" is less of a concern than it might ordinarily be. After all, KEI as an organization donated nearly 40 unique jutsu.

Off the top of my head, I can think of the following...
  • Wind Element has Vac Step ("get the hell out of dodge") for Wind Element, along with Silent Sickle ("sneaky fuck you") from the Player Audit
  • Earth Element has PEA (S-Rank Armor) or Bleeding River Impalement (Big AOE + Difficult Terrain), or even Headhunter from the Player Audit (which synergizes very well with Hiding Like a Mole and Living Roots)
  • Fire Element has Red Runoff, Fists of the Asura, Explosive Burst, and other insane "fuck this whole area" jutsu (from the jutsu audit)... and, of course, Elemental Mastery that we turned into a nuke.
  • Water Element has Surging Seas, Raging Waves, and Grasping Tentacles (from the jutsu audit) that are all impressive with their sheer level of battlefield control.
 
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Left-Hand Mutant said:
And it means paying full price for five different Jutsu. And those Jutsu would need to be reasonably high level to justify the xp cost of buying the element.
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A two-element build makes sense, you have more variety, and your second element should can have advantage against whatever beats your primary element.

A three-element build is pushing it a bit more, but makes sense for a Ninjutsu spec, lots of jutsu means lots of half-cost pyramid support, and you can get away with not raising your physical skills(other than athletics and alertness) so you have more xp to spend. At this point you have enormous versatility, 3 good type match ups and 2 neutral ones, and an abundance of powerful jutsu.

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Buying a new element and raising a jutsu to 49 in that element costs 2500xp, if you support it entirely with half-cost skills. Doing that twice costs a little over 5000xp.

Leveling a full-costed skill from 0 to 79 costs 5500xp, if you support it with half-cost skills. It costs 4600 if the full -cost skill is a jutsu, and you know a different level 59 justu of that element.

A three-element ninjutsu-spec with Taijutsu 0(loses a fistfight to your civilian mum) could learn S-rank Taijutsu about as easily as they could get level 59 justu in two new elements to "round out their build".


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None of this is to say "the established worldbuilding is wrong", just "I'm confused, and what I think I know makes what I observe appear inconsistent or supriseing".
 
RandomOTP said:
Some elements are simply better at certain things than others.

For example, look at Wind Element's Vacuum Step, and then look at Fire Element's Basan's Glide. Vacuum Step is far superior at movement.

Then look at Earth Element's PEA and then the neutral element Ghost Scales. Paperclipped has flat-out described PEA as an S-rank armor jutsu.

Having multiple Elements means than you can pick the best Element for the utility you're looking for.

I will concede that, if you don't have access to jutsu of that type in its preferred Element (for example, if Wind Element: Vacuum Step were locked under a clan secret vault), then you might have to simply make do with another element attempting the same thing, with a subpar result.

Jiraiya, however, had Hiruzen the S-rank Technique Hacker as a sensei. No doubt he had access to some Good Tier Shit.

And Asuma's Contest means that "access" is less of a concern than it might ordinarily be. After all, KEI as an organization donated nearly 40 unique jutsu.

Off the top of my head, I can think of the following...
  • Wind Element has Vac Step ("get the hell out of dodge") for Wind Element, along with Silent Sickle ("sneaky fuck you") from the Player Audit
  • Earth Element has PEA (S-Rank Armor) or Bleeding River Impalement (Big AOE + Difficult Terrain), or even Headhunter from the Player Audit (which synergizes very well with Hiding Like a Mole and Living Roots)
  • Fire Element has Red Runoff, Fists of the Asura, Explosive Burst, and other insane "fuck this whole area" jutsu (from the jutsu audit)... and, of course, Elemental Mastery that we turned into a nuke.
  • Water Element has Surging Seas, Raging Waves, and Grasping Tentacles (from the jutsu audit) that are all impressive with Nuke sheer level of battlefield control.
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Speaking of all of this, do we know what element Sasha (our soon-to-be Academy Student) is?

Statistically speaking, since she's a Fire Country Native, she should be Fire Element, but a solid chunk of our Leaf-born Goketsu Ninja are Lightning Element (Haru, Reo*, Mio, Kazushi, Shinji). So maybe not?

*Reo has learned several elements, and I'm unsure of what his native Element originally was.
 
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Inferno Vulpix said:
No, what has me unwilling to immediately lump it into the "beast" bucket is that it appears to be an ex-nihilo intelligence with cognitive faculties at least sufficient enough to control or create the vine golems we saw, which fought in real time with considerable acumen.
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I mean we have nothing that indicates it controlled or created them - they were not generated when we cut a bit, but when we earthshaped the ground (not the crystal), and they may well be their own thing or controlled by literally anything else
Inferno Vulpix said:
The crystal cave seems to me to be a byproduct of heightened chakra levels in the area, much like a chakra golem would be, but not the source of it. Destroying the crystal would stop the crystal from living in the cave system and killing people, but I don't think it would do anything to bring the chakra levels in the area under control.
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My understanding is that there is an odd structure at the heart of most of those areas, if not all. In the Swamp of Death and at... O'uzu, was it? It was a meteorite. If I'm not mixing things up, these are also where both chakra metal and chakra golems come from. Nothing more than a slightly-educated guess, but if the issue is "lots of chakra kept there" and we observe that "this thing is saturated with lots of chakra and works with it in unheard-of ways"... welp.
Inferno Vulpix said:
can understand being worried that the crystal cave is a proto-golem or something, but that's again something that we can't say yes or no about until we know more about it.
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No one knows much about chakra golems if the entire list of known people who survived an encounter is shorter than the list of fingers on one hand - all we know is they pop up from the ground in areas of very high chakra concentration
Inferno Vulpix said:
(as a side-note, you make a good point that the crystal itself might not even be important to the entity at all. It makes sense for the fancy chakra-dense crystal at the heart of the cave to be its brain or something, but that's an assumption on our part that might just be flat-out wrong. Which, again, makes me want to learn more about it so we can figure out how it ticks and what it thinks)
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I am contesting that we should assume the existence of an entity at all, tbh.
Inferno Vulpix said:
Addressing this point as a specific thing, sorry if I made any miscommunication by saying 'sentient' instead of 'sapient'. I'm aware that 'sentient' as it's formally defined includes all sorts of non-sapient animals, but I was pointing at the colloquial meaning that's equivalent to 'sapient', i.e. "the being is self-aware and has personhood" or something along those lines.
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Alright, that's fair.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
No, what has me unwilling to immediately lump it into the "beast" bucket is that it appears to be an ex-nihilo intelligence with cognitive faculties at least sufficient enough to control or create the vine golems we saw, which fought in real time with considerable acumen. The ex-nihilo part, though, means that we don't have a reference frame for what the brain of an entity like this is supposed to look like. If it obtained intelligence all the way up to beast level, all on its own external to any and all biological evolution, can we be sure it stopped there? I mean, certainly it could, but the crux is that we have no way to be sure without further investigation.
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In fairness, immune systems do this too without conscious action needed. Golems are more complex than your typical mammalian immune system (probably... the human immune system is fucking crazy) but we already know Chakra can do thinking for you, like how it knows this fireball is supposed to be shaped like a tiger and hop around after targets or how to pilot earth clones without continual input from the user. It's pretty feasible golem summoning was a more or less instinctual action (not that you were saying it is definitely sapient for this reason.)

Lord Marshal said:
I feel that the point is "There is a relevant probability of the crystal being sentient and intelligent and willfully ignoring it because it's easier it's not a cool thing to do". Hazou as a character wouldn't go "Oh, it's possible that the crystal is alive, but who cares to check? let's murderize some crystal" he would go "There is a small but possible chance the crystal is a live....and i don't want to kill sentient people if i can help it".
As you pointed out, Uplift cannot preserve every single life, but neither kills them willy-nilly because it's easier than trying to save them, that's the realm of Hidan or Leaf, that treats lives as currency to be exchanged, regardless of how precious they consider them(Hidan consider them worthless, Leaf consider them important, but still, at the end of the day, currency).
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The difference is that this cave isn't just sitting around innocently, the people who live by it admit that passersby who go in pretty much certainly die (though idk maybe they're kept in a biological Matrix-esque brain-thinker-battery for the cave or something.) It seems this happens with some regularity.

Now I'm not going to sit here and act like it isn't totally self interested. If saving human lives was the primary objective Hazou would be better off spending his time walling up villages in fire or just doing research to save lives. It does so happen the crystals are valuable to us. But like, if the difference is "killing" a (dubiously sentient) murderer for stuff that will help us help the world, vs killing some (dubiously sentient) guy minding his business, I feel a lot less bad about killing the guy actively killing other people.
 
eaglejarl said:
Also, on the zeroth round the golem didn't actually want to fight so it won't counter-attack, only dodge. On the first round it's pissed and will be fighting full force and with lethal intent.
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This doesn't prove it's sapient, but it's definitely less hostile and more affable than most of the flora and fauna of this stupid deathworld. Everything else from rice plants to worms to enemy nin attack immediately.

I think there's a lot more upside to befriending it than to killing it. This is convenient, because I don't think we can kill it.

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EDIT

Also, killing a legendary and unique creature we don't understand in order to grab a one-time resource payout seems like something we might regret later. We know of ~6 chakra dense locations, yeah? What if these relate to the "seven rocks for seven locks"?

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EDIT EDIT

If we do go on a quest to negotiate with/kill a weird magic chakra-crystal, we should do the Dungeon on crimsion island. We can do double-duty with searching for the rat scroll, and the crystal-entity might not hate us yet!
 
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Left-Hand Mutant said:
This doesn't prove it's sapient, but it's definitely less hostile and more affable than most of the flora and fauna of this stupid deathworld. Everything else from rice plants to worms to enemy nin attack immediately.
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Actually, enemy nin don't always attack immediately, thereby proving the superiority of civilisation over nature. This is because they're spending the first round buffing.
 
I wonder how @eaglejarl feels about this whole discussion about making friends with his dungeon-monster, moments after the narrative all but told us that we're supposed to slaughter it so we can use its pieces as fuel for our new shiny. Watch us do it, too.

(I'd be delighted. The thing probably has Lore, or can be used to extract Lore.)
 
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Noumero said:
I wonder how @eaglejarl feels about this whole discussion about making friends with his dungeon-monster that we're obviously supposed to slaughter and use as fuel for our new shiny. Watch us do it, too.

(I'd be delighted. The thing probably has Lore, or can be used to extract Lore.)
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He also enjoys "socials with stakes."

And it sounds like the stakes are getting murderized by golems
 
A list of cool (mostly Uplifty) things that I want to do, but probably need to be offscreened because they're unlikely to be interesting for the QMs to write, or for the playerbase to read
  • Have Noburi check out some ES-densified obsidian scalpels and, pending his approval, give a small mountain of them to the Hospital
    • Better tools = good
    • Densified by ES50, it should prevent flaking
  • Donate Arachnid Silk Bandages to the Hospital, under the same conditions as the above
    • Better tools = good
  • Have Noburi test to see if sealing/unsealing something sterilizes an object.
    • If so: boom, sterilization method that (unfortunately) relies on seals from the Sealing Corps.
    • Considering that bacteria and the like are living things, and storage seals kill any living thing stored inside, it should work.
    • Easy test, imo.
  • Trade with Choza to help bring the Akimichi Clan and the Goketsu Clan closer together.
    • Also eases the tensions within the ISC bloc.
    • Hazou has been publicly making longterm deals with the Aburame Clan (a neutral clan) and the Hyuuga Clan (a conservative clan). T
      • This should help to ease Choza's concerns regarding what he sees as Hazou's uncompromising radicalism.
  • Have Atomu, in his capacity as an experienced ninja, set up care packages survival kits with the top 5 items every genin needs
    • Replace normal rope with rope made from Arachnid Silk Thread (stronger than normal rope, quieter).
    • Attach to the Akane Seal Bank, to be dispensed available upon request.
    • Better tools = better
  • Commission Masterwork Melee Weapons from Ōshirō for Yuuma and Shinji (goal: taggable Aspects).
    • Better tools = better
  • Provide corundom ore to Ōshirō and ask that he test this for viability with regard to ninja weapons.
    • If viable, can get some Awesome-Tier weapons for Yuuma and Shinji
  • Make Calligraphy art for Hazou's office, to tag on rapport rolls ("Radiance" or something that similarly honors Akane)
    • Gotta get a bump on socials somehow.
  • Make a Pedagogical chain for the Skywalker seal, a la Daybrights, and then sell them to the Tower.
  • Trade Harumitsu some seals (and maybe also a copy of Jiraiya's Instruction Chain that culminates in the Daybright seal?) in return for Harumitsu's Cooling Seal?
 
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I thought voting was closed?

If voting is open, for further ES testing we need to see if cannai can imbue material with the quality we need for primordial sealing. I feel like we might be able to understand <bark> now. I'm pretty sure <bark> is the thing we need.

Should def do sealtesting procedures with him and kagome if possible (note to self, get Arachnids to Dog. I need to see Cannai and Kagome hanging out. Second note to self, raise CR. Third note to self, build a primordial seal that pulls in enough ambient chakra to lay for Cannais passive summon cost and use that to summon him 24/7 when needs must)


Among other procedures, we should assume that either at infusion or activation the seal could vastly increase in size to draw more power, the same way you can draw paper seals big for fidelity then shrink them down. It would be such a shame to squish Hazō the second we unlock The Shiny
 
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[X] Action Plan: Yuno, Ino, and Uplift
Wordcount: 392
  • Meet with Mari, Kei, Snowflake, Noburi
    • Relay our conversations with Yuno about Jashinism.
    • Yuno's hurting...
      • ...from her isolation within Isan, which catalyzed her love of violence
      • ...from Akane's death (arguably her first friend), which reinforced that violence was all she understood
    • Maybe Yuno was already predisposed towards Jashinism, but Hidan got to Yuno when she was hurting, and radicalized her. He saw a target in Yuno, and filled the cracks in her heart with bullshit.
    • She'll probably try to convert the entire clan, starting with y'all.
    • Mari:
      • Hidan may be a charismatic cult leader, but socials are your specialization. Could you un-brainwash Yuno?
      • Would help from another social spec be productive? Ami might leap at the chance to free someone from being slaved to the will of a god. Would you be comfortable working together/in tandem with her?
    • We'd appreciate your advice (regarding steering Yuno away from Jashin while still accepting her love of violence), and your help (with ensuring Yuno doesn't cause any incidents).
    • Also: any ideas on how to recoup our reputation?
  • Ino and the sale of Hazou's personal Goo Bomb seals
    • Internally:
      • Put on "Goketsu Clan Head" Hat.
      • The Yamanaka Clan Head wants a commission that eats into our best sealmaster's valuable time. Luckily, it's prosocial in intent, and our clans are allied. Allowances can be made where they might not otherwise be.
      • Trade in (and assume) good faith.
    • Initial Proposal (sanity checked by Mari)
      • Opsec Precautions:
        • The Yamanaka Clan promises not to sell them, reverse engineer them, etc.
      • Supply is for genin-use only
        • Each genin gets three seals, resupplied upon returning from missions
        • (be willing to negotiate up to an in-character reasonable amount, given Hazou's time constraints)
      • One Year Duration, revisiting the trade deal afterwards.
      • Goketsu Hazou will work to provide a backstock within the Goketsu Clan so that, should he be unavailable to resupply a Yamanaka genin, they're not inconvenienced.
      • We don't really need cash, so... what're the Yamanaka Clan offering?
    • Let Hazou-pilot and Ino take it from there.
  • Offscreen
    • Ask Noburi...
      • To test if sealing an object sterilizes it (spirits are questionably alive).
      • Whether Arachnid Silk bandages would be an improvement for the hospital?
        • If so, donate a lot. We have ES50 and can afford to take a temporary hit on Arachnid Silk Trade.
    • Publicly denounce Jashinism
      • Optimize with Mari/Kei
 
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