- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Not that I know of...
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rational 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
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
lol if you think Naruto is going to let Noburi do experimental surgery on him you're a lot more optimistic than I am. It's gonna be Tsunade or bust if we go that route
I think that if we can get Nobs a FGP participant to experiment on first it'll be okay. He'd need to successfully complete the surgery first tho.
- Location
- Pacific standard
All sources of xp are hit by the stagnancy multiplier pretty sure
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That is the official ruling but some QMs have conceded it may make more sense for notes/teachers to be affected separately since:
A: Manjiro is supposed to have overcome decades of stagnancy and reached jonin level in sealing using notes
B: Stagnancy represents losing your edge when it comes to pushing your training, but using someone else's work to improve sorta bypasses that. I've used the example of trying to invent calculus without practicing math vs having someone directly teach you calculus to illustrate the difference
But since that discussion there's been no additional ruling, so...
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Yesterday on discord I had a very in-depth conversation on the topic of Primordial Sealing and Orochimaru. Since it was not only in the discord but also in a thread that not everyone was part of, I'm writing this to try and cover all the main points of that discussion for everyone to see.
So, put simply, we have a choice coming up. In our previous conversation with Asuma he recommended we cooperate with Orochimaru on 3D Sealing for the sake of the Dragonwar. We could also not do that, to avoid empowering Orochimaru. Let's look at that in a little more detail:
The thing in our direct control is whether or not we tell Orochimaru about the recent progress we've made in 3D Sealing. This is not, to be clear, a direct question of whether Orochimaru gets 3D Sealing or not, but rather we should examine the possible futures for each decision based on what we know of Orochimaru.
In the world where we share our progress with him, Orochimaru immediately knows the necessary prerequisites for unlocking 3D Sealing. He fully powerlevels ES, knowing its importance, he acquires some source of viable substrate using our crystal samples as a reference (assuming we don't already have a source ourselves), and when he's ready Hazou teaches him until he can buy the stunt. All of this would take no longer than a couple months, most likely.
In the world where we withhold our progress, Orochimaru continues to work on 3D Sealing. Without help from us, he'll have to figure it out on his own. How likely is it that he does this? There are three roadblocks he has to clear: a viable substrate, sufficient Earthshaping, and sufficient understanding of 3D Seals to make up for the lack of a teacher. There were arguments made for and against each of these roadblocks, which I will now detail.
For the record, this is being presented from my perspective, as someone who thinks Orochimaru is on net likely to discover 3D Sealing on his own even if we do not help him. Nonetheless, I am attempting to summarize the conversation as faithfully as I can.
"Reasons why Orochimaru may not discover 3D Sealing on his own, or why it may take a prohibitively long time for him to succeed":
So if we put the two timelines side by side, not telling Orochimaru most likely gives us a couple years of exclusivity, and might keep him from the discipline indefinitely. Now, let's look at what effects this has on our major goals in the quest. The topic at hand mainly intersects with two of them, "Stop the Dragons from consuming everything" and "Stop Orochimaru from creating a nightmare future", so we will examine the consequences as it applies to both of those topics.
On the topic of Orochimaru, the concern is obvious: the stronger he is, the harder he'll be to stop. I think we all agree that his continued operation is a crime against humanity and that he must eventually be permanently killed if the Elemental Nations is to know peace. The first question, then, is how much Primordial Sealing makes it harder to kill him. This is hard to say, since we don't know what his current means of immortality are, and how much Primordial Sealing will add to it. I find it a reasonable guess that PS will shore up some of his weaknesses, but I don't think it will be a dramatic increase in immortality: he's already plucked all the low-hanging fruit, after all, and it's unlikely that all of the remaining attack vectors to ward against are uniquely easy in Primordial Sealing. The second question, then, is whether the spike in power he'll obtain from 3D Sealing will lead to a nightmare future for the EN, like we saw in Hazou's dreams back when we first met him. This is somewhat more of a concern, but my read on Orochimaru is that he does not particularly care to rule the world or reshape it in his image, so long as he can safely research in peace. Indeed, I would hazard a guess that in those prospective futures it's Hazou's position as Orochimaru's apprentice that leads to such an outward ambition: we never did dream small. But I digress: we know that Orochimaru is incredibly interested in 3D Sealing and has the specific aim of recreating the Great Seal so as to reseal the Dragons after they are all released by the original Great Seal failing. I do not think he will be sparing his attention towards taking over the world while he is working on that, and I honestly think it somewhat unlikely that he would aim such even after that topic is dealt with.
With respect to the Dragonwar, the question is whether Orochimaru knowing Primordial Sealing will improve our odds of survival. Or, in other terms, whether his contributions will substantially hasten our progress towards the day when we can solve this problem once and for all, whatever form that solution takes. I think this is likely, honestly. With Hazou and Orochimaru both working on exploring the discipline of Primordial Sealing and figuring out what it is and isn't suited towards, we can build up a foundation of knowledge from which we can plan our more ambitious projects that much faster. I also note that there will be substantial non-overlap between our research ideas and Orochimaru's research ideas. We the hivemind tend to favour simple effect with outsized impacts on the world due to clever application of said effects. This is largely a result of the veil between quest and world and how hard it is for us to guess the viability of a seal when it isn't as minimally different from known effects as we can manage. Nonetheless, we're good at it and that can be demonstrated in how Orochimaru never invented Skywalkers. But on the other side of things, Orochimaru's demonstration of a high-power snake-themed destructive seal in the Orbularium shows a fundamentally different approach towards Sealing. Orochimaru is able to create sealing projects that involve many and varied moving parts, because his in-story intuitions allow him to guess where the islands of stability exist and what tradeoffs need to be made to counteract the intrinsic ambition of the seals. Consider how much our sealing career has benefited from external seals like LBF, Casino seals, and most especially Air Domes that we adapted to our own purposes, and consider that there exist no such seals in the Primordial Sealing paradigm. Even a handful of hints from Orochimaru as he explores strange new frontiers of the discipline could prove invaluable for our own progress in understanding the field. Naturally Orochimaru won't be sharing with us any S-Rank tricks he invents, just as we would never share an S-Rank rune with him either, but it still strongly appears to me that cooperation like this on the theoretical level and perhaps the exchange of weaker seals more useful as proof of concept than as an actual combat buff can only be to our benefit.
I must stress that this is a capital-A Apocalypse on our hands, with no guarantee that success is even possible. We've done a good job rising to the challenge so far, with HOWS and the skysliced dragon and the Conclave that's just now starting to get into gear, but even assuming we slay all five remaining dragons we will still be left with the incredible challenge of taking a Primordial Seal the size of a mountaintop and either repairing it in real-time or replicating it to once again contain the unfathomably strong monsters the original was built to hold back. It would be the height of arrogance, I feel, to presume we are capable of accomplishing this all on our own, with no need for any external help or any pressure to seek out additional advantages or to stack the deck in our favour. If we fail this task, everyone dies, and we cannot honestly say that we know we are up to the task. Put simply, if we are actually taking this Apocalypse seriously, we truly need all the help we can get.
Next up is the ethics, because it isn't an Orochimaru conversation without that grim reminder that he's one of the worst people in the history of the planet and shows no signs of stopping. Except, well, he probably hasn't been doing much vivisecting recently, given his newfound monofocus on studying the Great Seal and attempts to unlock 3D Sealing. This is, on the face of it, a very good thing. Every day he isn't conducting horrible biosealing experiments is another set of innocent people who don't have to go through that torture. Of course, good times won't always last, and Orochimaru is certainly not going to abandon biosealing entirely. In fact, he's liable to try and mix the two, carving 3D Seals in the shape of bones and trying to create Primordial Biosealing, with similarly horrific and abominable experiments. But until that day happens, and unless his experiments prove successful, Orochimaru will be dedicating a large chunk of his time to much more benign studies. It is abundantly clear at this point that Orochimaru does not care about the harm he inflicts, but that cuts both ways: Orochimaru does not care if he does not have to inflict harm either, and if the most efficient route to what he wants happens to not be paved with the skulls of children, he'll walk it just as easily. Even if Primordial Biosealing does turn out to be real, I don't imagine it will be much more horrible than his current biosealing experiments already are: from where he currently is, it'd be truly remarkable if there was any room left to get worse. In short, it's likely that Primordial Sealing will make Orochimaru commit on net fewer crimes against humanity per month, and even in pessimistic scenarios we still get a window of respite before the atrocity rate returns to what it was before he discovered 3D Sealing. A sliver lining, perhaps, but certainly better than taking the whole stormcloud without it.
As it pertains to our own safety, I think we won't have too much trouble staying alive during our collaboration with Orochimaru. Most of our collaboration can be handled over mail, sharing our findings with each other and providing feedback and advice to the other. Orochimaru has already initiated such cooperation on his own accord, and there does not appear to be much reason for him to change his mind. Indeed, even if he did see value in kidnapping us and turning us from a voluntary collaborator into a coerced collaborator, we are a very well-defended target that he was previously burned for trying to strike at. Moreover, we are the first-mover in this scenario and can cooperate with Asuma to ensure we can handle this scenario as safely as possible.
What do we get when we put this all together? My personal takeaway is that, in the face of the Dragonwar, we have an imperative to stack the deck in our favour as much as we can, which means that we need Orochimaru to learn Primordial Sealing. I think that our alternative is little more than a delaying action, and one that imposes significant risks on Hazou if our OPSEC is ever even slightly insufficient. I think this is something we can do safely and productively, and will result in us having more S-Rank tricks rather than less. And I think, when the dust settles and the world is saved, we will look on the monster we've empowered and still see something beatable.
So, put simply, we have a choice coming up. In our previous conversation with Asuma he recommended we cooperate with Orochimaru on 3D Sealing for the sake of the Dragonwar. We could also not do that, to avoid empowering Orochimaru. Let's look at that in a little more detail:
The thing in our direct control is whether or not we tell Orochimaru about the recent progress we've made in 3D Sealing. This is not, to be clear, a direct question of whether Orochimaru gets 3D Sealing or not, but rather we should examine the possible futures for each decision based on what we know of Orochimaru.
In the world where we share our progress with him, Orochimaru immediately knows the necessary prerequisites for unlocking 3D Sealing. He fully powerlevels ES, knowing its importance, he acquires some source of viable substrate using our crystal samples as a reference (assuming we don't already have a source ourselves), and when he's ready Hazou teaches him until he can buy the stunt. All of this would take no longer than a couple months, most likely.
In the world where we withhold our progress, Orochimaru continues to work on 3D Sealing. Without help from us, he'll have to figure it out on his own. How likely is it that he does this? There are three roadblocks he has to clear: a viable substrate, sufficient Earthshaping, and sufficient understanding of 3D Seals to make up for the lack of a teacher. There were arguments made for and against each of these roadblocks, which I will now detail.
For the record, this is being presented from my perspective, as someone who thinks Orochimaru is on net likely to discover 3D Sealing on his own even if we do not help him. Nonetheless, I am attempting to summarize the conversation as faithfully as I can.
"Reasons why Orochimaru may not discover 3D Sealing on his own, or why it may take a prohibitively long time for him to succeed":
- In order to secure a viable substrate, Orochimaru likely has to go out and find a location like our Honey cave with high chakra density, and delve it until he finds a viable substrate like ours. He is unlikely to do this, as his pride will demand he attempt to create the substrate on his own. These locations are also few and far between, meaning it will be hard for Orochimaru to find them even if he does go searching.
- Orochimaru is unlikely to level Earthshaping sufficiently high as it continues to appear to be a dead end with each new AB. We only pursued it because we kept being teased the potential of the jutsu and thus had reason to believe it was what we needed.
- Without the Great Seal in his head, Orochimaru will not be able to gain sufficient understanding of 3D Seals to waive the need for a teacher.
- There is, to my understanding, no evidence that suggests Orochimaru is unwilling to venture out in search of what he cannot synthesize at home. Indeed, we very recently saw him run out to hunt down Aunt Ren in search of something he could not get at home. Moreover, he is Orochimaru of the Sannin and we know the Sannin are old hat at finding and delving ancient dungeons and deathtraps in search of treasure. (We even got the location of the Honey Cave from him in the first place!) If anyone is liable to delve another dungeon and find a viable substrate, it's Orochimaru. Especially troublesome is the fact that our crystal doesn't appear to defy our expectations particularly much. In Orochimaru's shoes, something like that crystal is what one would expect the viable substrate to be like, meaning we are not going to see Orochimaru lead himself down a wild goose chase looking for the wrong kind of substrate.
- While it cannot be said that we weren't paying attention to EJ's enthusiasm about the jutsu, much of its "teasing its potential" was diegetic. At each step, Hazou strongly believed that there was more to this jutsu and, as we started to approach the necessary level, Hazou was increasingly of the belief that it was indeed what he needed. Moreover, Orochimaru knows that even if Earthshaping is not the answer for unlocking 3D Sealing, he will need some way to shape the stone regardless. I do not see him dropping this jutsu.
- While Orochimaru does not have a full download of the Great Seal, he has access to a portion of the real thing and has a full replica in his basement. He has also been throwing himself at this problem with a dogged determination that put Hazou's work speed to shame when we first saw his request for feedback. It seems plausible to me that he could make up for incomplete access to the real Great Seal with sheer time and effort spent on understanding what he can see as much as possible. Moreover, if he succeeded in capturing Aunt Ren and extracting the secrets of the Seedling from her, the combination of both 3D Seals may prove more than sufficient.
So if we put the two timelines side by side, not telling Orochimaru most likely gives us a couple years of exclusivity, and might keep him from the discipline indefinitely. Now, let's look at what effects this has on our major goals in the quest. The topic at hand mainly intersects with two of them, "Stop the Dragons from consuming everything" and "Stop Orochimaru from creating a nightmare future", so we will examine the consequences as it applies to both of those topics.
On the topic of Orochimaru, the concern is obvious: the stronger he is, the harder he'll be to stop. I think we all agree that his continued operation is a crime against humanity and that he must eventually be permanently killed if the Elemental Nations is to know peace. The first question, then, is how much Primordial Sealing makes it harder to kill him. This is hard to say, since we don't know what his current means of immortality are, and how much Primordial Sealing will add to it. I find it a reasonable guess that PS will shore up some of his weaknesses, but I don't think it will be a dramatic increase in immortality: he's already plucked all the low-hanging fruit, after all, and it's unlikely that all of the remaining attack vectors to ward against are uniquely easy in Primordial Sealing. The second question, then, is whether the spike in power he'll obtain from 3D Sealing will lead to a nightmare future for the EN, like we saw in Hazou's dreams back when we first met him. This is somewhat more of a concern, but my read on Orochimaru is that he does not particularly care to rule the world or reshape it in his image, so long as he can safely research in peace. Indeed, I would hazard a guess that in those prospective futures it's Hazou's position as Orochimaru's apprentice that leads to such an outward ambition: we never did dream small. But I digress: we know that Orochimaru is incredibly interested in 3D Sealing and has the specific aim of recreating the Great Seal so as to reseal the Dragons after they are all released by the original Great Seal failing. I do not think he will be sparing his attention towards taking over the world while he is working on that, and I honestly think it somewhat unlikely that he would aim such even after that topic is dealt with.
With respect to the Dragonwar, the question is whether Orochimaru knowing Primordial Sealing will improve our odds of survival. Or, in other terms, whether his contributions will substantially hasten our progress towards the day when we can solve this problem once and for all, whatever form that solution takes. I think this is likely, honestly. With Hazou and Orochimaru both working on exploring the discipline of Primordial Sealing and figuring out what it is and isn't suited towards, we can build up a foundation of knowledge from which we can plan our more ambitious projects that much faster. I also note that there will be substantial non-overlap between our research ideas and Orochimaru's research ideas. We the hivemind tend to favour simple effect with outsized impacts on the world due to clever application of said effects. This is largely a result of the veil between quest and world and how hard it is for us to guess the viability of a seal when it isn't as minimally different from known effects as we can manage. Nonetheless, we're good at it and that can be demonstrated in how Orochimaru never invented Skywalkers. But on the other side of things, Orochimaru's demonstration of a high-power snake-themed destructive seal in the Orbularium shows a fundamentally different approach towards Sealing. Orochimaru is able to create sealing projects that involve many and varied moving parts, because his in-story intuitions allow him to guess where the islands of stability exist and what tradeoffs need to be made to counteract the intrinsic ambition of the seals. Consider how much our sealing career has benefited from external seals like LBF, Casino seals, and most especially Air Domes that we adapted to our own purposes, and consider that there exist no such seals in the Primordial Sealing paradigm. Even a handful of hints from Orochimaru as he explores strange new frontiers of the discipline could prove invaluable for our own progress in understanding the field. Naturally Orochimaru won't be sharing with us any S-Rank tricks he invents, just as we would never share an S-Rank rune with him either, but it still strongly appears to me that cooperation like this on the theoretical level and perhaps the exchange of weaker seals more useful as proof of concept than as an actual combat buff can only be to our benefit.
I must stress that this is a capital-A Apocalypse on our hands, with no guarantee that success is even possible. We've done a good job rising to the challenge so far, with HOWS and the skysliced dragon and the Conclave that's just now starting to get into gear, but even assuming we slay all five remaining dragons we will still be left with the incredible challenge of taking a Primordial Seal the size of a mountaintop and either repairing it in real-time or replicating it to once again contain the unfathomably strong monsters the original was built to hold back. It would be the height of arrogance, I feel, to presume we are capable of accomplishing this all on our own, with no need for any external help or any pressure to seek out additional advantages or to stack the deck in our favour. If we fail this task, everyone dies, and we cannot honestly say that we know we are up to the task. Put simply, if we are actually taking this Apocalypse seriously, we truly need all the help we can get.
Next up is the ethics, because it isn't an Orochimaru conversation without that grim reminder that he's one of the worst people in the history of the planet and shows no signs of stopping. Except, well, he probably hasn't been doing much vivisecting recently, given his newfound monofocus on studying the Great Seal and attempts to unlock 3D Sealing. This is, on the face of it, a very good thing. Every day he isn't conducting horrible biosealing experiments is another set of innocent people who don't have to go through that torture. Of course, good times won't always last, and Orochimaru is certainly not going to abandon biosealing entirely. In fact, he's liable to try and mix the two, carving 3D Seals in the shape of bones and trying to create Primordial Biosealing, with similarly horrific and abominable experiments. But until that day happens, and unless his experiments prove successful, Orochimaru will be dedicating a large chunk of his time to much more benign studies. It is abundantly clear at this point that Orochimaru does not care about the harm he inflicts, but that cuts both ways: Orochimaru does not care if he does not have to inflict harm either, and if the most efficient route to what he wants happens to not be paved with the skulls of children, he'll walk it just as easily. Even if Primordial Biosealing does turn out to be real, I don't imagine it will be much more horrible than his current biosealing experiments already are: from where he currently is, it'd be truly remarkable if there was any room left to get worse. In short, it's likely that Primordial Sealing will make Orochimaru commit on net fewer crimes against humanity per month, and even in pessimistic scenarios we still get a window of respite before the atrocity rate returns to what it was before he discovered 3D Sealing. A sliver lining, perhaps, but certainly better than taking the whole stormcloud without it.
As it pertains to our own safety, I think we won't have too much trouble staying alive during our collaboration with Orochimaru. Most of our collaboration can be handled over mail, sharing our findings with each other and providing feedback and advice to the other. Orochimaru has already initiated such cooperation on his own accord, and there does not appear to be much reason for him to change his mind. Indeed, even if he did see value in kidnapping us and turning us from a voluntary collaborator into a coerced collaborator, we are a very well-defended target that he was previously burned for trying to strike at. Moreover, we are the first-mover in this scenario and can cooperate with Asuma to ensure we can handle this scenario as safely as possible.
What do we get when we put this all together? My personal takeaway is that, in the face of the Dragonwar, we have an imperative to stack the deck in our favour as much as we can, which means that we need Orochimaru to learn Primordial Sealing. I think that our alternative is little more than a delaying action, and one that imposes significant risks on Hazou if our OPSEC is ever even slightly insufficient. I think this is something we can do safely and productively, and will result in us having more S-Rank tricks rather than less. And I think, when the dust settles and the world is saved, we will look on the monster we've empowered and still see something beatable.
- Location
- Texas
Would you be willing to wait until we've done preliminary tests on what Primordial Sealing is capable of? We don't know the kind of power we would be handing over to Oro. This would at least let us at least know what we are handling before sharing it with our Snuncle.
- Location
- Yes.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Yes, that sounds very reasonable. I'm always in favour of updating based on new information, and there's no cost to obtaining this information before we make our decision.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Tech Tree Idea...
Cooling Seal: cools the temperature of a room down by [a notable amount of] degrees
Winter's Embrace Seal: cools down the temperature of a Zone to moderately uncomfortable levels. Resolve check to remain?
Winter's Kiss Seal: Zone drains heat away from fire ninjutsu. (-Sealmaster AB) to Fire Ninjutsu rolls made in the same Zone the seal was activated in.
Snowstorm Seal: cools down the temp of a Zone to very uncomfortable levels. Higher Resolve check to remain in the Zone? Maybe a higher Physique check to remain?
Frozen Spirits Seal: EM Nuke, seal version
Cooling Seal: cools the temperature of a room down by [a notable amount of] degrees
Winter's Embrace Seal: cools down the temperature of a Zone to moderately uncomfortable levels. Resolve check to remain?
Winter's Kiss Seal: Zone drains heat away from fire ninjutsu. (-Sealmaster AB) to Fire Ninjutsu rolls made in the same Zone the seal was activated in.
Snowstorm Seal: cools down the temp of a Zone to very uncomfortable levels. Higher Resolve check to remain in the Zone? Maybe a higher Physique check to remain?
Frozen Spirits Seal: EM Nuke, seal version
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Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Great analysis. I strongly disagree.
- Primordial Sealing, if it is to be useful, is either strictly more powerful than "mundane" sealing, or (more likely) presents a different set of tools, such that some tasks are dramatically easier with 3D seals than with 2D ones, and vice versa. In other words: there's a set of effects that are ruinously difficult to implement via 2D seals but which are entirely tractable via 3D ones. Any sensible sealmaster would focus on those. In still other words: 3D sealing would give Oro a new set of low-hanging fruits, including perhaps immortality or S-rank-trick tools. As such, I do expect Primordial Sealing to greatly amplify Oro's power, once he's had the time to play with it.
- Oro may not care to rule the world, but taking over the world is a convergent instrumental goals for ~all value systems, such that you obviously do that once it's trivial to do so. Perhaps Oro doesn't care to "rule" the world, but turning the entirety of it into his Basement? Or just freezing it (as in that vision) so it stops interfering with his research? Oh yes.
On the other hand, the Dragons appear... relatively docile. Importantly, they aren't self-improving, and appear weirdly disinterested in even reclaiming their lost powers. HOWS appear to be an okay stopgap measure, as well. The situation there seems stable enough. (My assumption is that they're waiting for more Dragons to spill out, not knowing about HOWS.)
At the very least, I argue we should wait a while before telling Oro, until we've explored the potential of Primordial Sealing ourselves, seen its limits, maybe developed a couple trump cards using it.
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Very much this. Even of we do share this info, we shouldn't be tripping over ourselves to offer it up before we even know what we're dealing with.
I disagree with a lot or your thinking, but to busy to get into details. Will point out one point you haven't looked at:
Sasori.
I want Sasori and Oro to be taking point on "cracking 3d sealing" together, while we quietly investigate Primordial Sealing on our own. I don't think we can tell Orochimaru AND busy Sasori with 3D sealing WITHOUT letting Sasori learn 3D sealing.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I only see bad things of just giving away PS to Oro. Even if we tell him right now frankly he's not going to be helpful in fixing the great seal. We will always be ahead of him due to stagnancy and our better gains from FOOM. Since he won't provide any real help we're always better off waiting for him to develop it on his own.
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Also there is a plausible chance that Oro believes in Uplift which would make empowering him very beneficial. Or if not uplift than loyalty to Leaf which would put bounds on how bad world domination gets. Since pain called him the best of akatsuki, jiraiya pardoned him, he called akatsuki ritual a violation of free will, etc.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
As mentioned above, I am in favour of taking the first steps into the field ourselves so as to see what it's capable of, in case it surprises us in its potential. If it turns out to be of such power that Orochimaru's power level with it would rise astronomically to the point where taking over the world would be trivial, obviously we reconsider.
I would not expect to want to go so far as to, as you put it, seeing its limits and making trump cards with it, because I think that will take a profoundly long time with our current XP demands and the intrinsic troubles of exploring a whole new discipline from scratch. Rather, by the time we would have accomplished that, I would expect Orochimaru to have probabilistically already achieved 3D Sealing on his own. Now it may not particularly concern you if I say that your position collapses into "don't share it and let him figure it out for himself", but I again point at the severe risks of making even the slightest mistake in our OPSEC during this gambit (to be clear, those risks still persist to some degree if we withhold only a short time, but the less time we wait the less risk of an OPSEC mistake and the easier it would be to survive his reaction) and the capital-A Apocalypse going on that we may very well need his help to stop.
As docile as the Dragons currently are, if they were not a ticking timer to destruction we would not be having this conversation to begin with. The Archaeopteryx are dead, and the Dragons certainly weren't passive there. And we know the Great Seal is still degrading despite our best efforts with HOWS, and that these Dragons are only the weakest of the species. The longer we wait, the more deadly foes we need to face, until eventually there may not be any force on the path that can stop them. I would still say, under that framing, that we are under a ticking timer, and that ticking timer demands we do the impossible before it reaches zero.
Take the Apocalyspe seriously. It is not merely convenient to have Orochimaru exploring the field with us, it may very well be utterly necessary for the survival of humanity. Without a compelling argument against that logic, against the probabilistic estimates underlying the argument based on all the information we currently know, the only way this could not be worth it is if, as above, the power of Primordial Sealing is so great that Orochimaru would himself become an existential threat. But once we've unlocked the field, and seen a sample of what it has to offer, we'll have to make that decision sooner rather than later. Being thorough takes time, and this is fundamentally a problem of time. I support making our choice after a preliminary exploration of the domain because, in truth, not making a decision at that point is itself a choice.
Sasori I'm okay not telling anything to, for the following reasons:
- It's unlikely that we could time his distraction sufficiently well as to give us a reliable window of opportunity as we desire. If we gave him all the information necessary to unlock it, we would still not know how long it takes him to grind ES to 50 and secure his own source of viable substrate, which means he could become focused on 3D Sealing whenever.
- He's already poised to investigate the idea, based on what we just told Hidan. If he spends more time spinning his wheels not getting anywhere, that's fine by me.
- Asuma would likely be very upset at us sharing a very valuable shiny that's currently exclusive to Leaf with the Akatsuki.
- Sasori does not expect us to know much about 3D Sealing and as such we do not need to dance around his attention as we would Orochimaru's.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I don't want to tell Orochimaru a thing. I doubt that he has the spare xp or the valid pyramid room to spontaneously get a level 50 stat.
Further, I am against empowering him in any way whatsoever. We've already done so with the Dragon Parts he stole/"traded" from us, and the Iron Nerve Bloodline secrets he forced out of Hazou, and will soon rip from a Kurosawa's body.
Let Orochimaru struggle.
A middle ground I can accept would be "table this until we buy the P.S. stunt and have done some stuff with it, thus knowing what we'd be dealing with."
Further, I am against empowering him in any way whatsoever. We've already done so with the Dragon Parts he stole/"traded" from us, and the Iron Nerve Bloodline secrets he forced out of Hazou, and will soon rip from a Kurosawa's body.
Let Orochimaru struggle.
A middle ground I can accept would be "table this until we buy the P.S. stunt and have done some stuff with it, thus knowing what we'd be dealing with."
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X][Conclave] Dragon Bones and Witnesses
- As in Chill Out, but also:
- Get the largest piece of Dragon bones/claws you can and bring them with you. Bring Orochimaru's published notes to underscore how weird they are.
- Locate the Condor who saw the Dragons. Be clear that Enma expects her to be there and is going to be pissed if she isn't.
Updated my plan to include the dragon part. Didn't mention Orochimaru's research, because I don't want to piss him off or try to negotiate with him on how to share it with a bunch of people, and because I don't expect the clans to care much.
The vivisection apologetics are strong here.
Oro is a bad dude who does bad things. He's probably not redeemable and certainly isn't acceptable the way he is now.
He must be killed or stopped. I don't think that's particularly debatable from what we've seen.
We might be able to stop him by convincing him not to be such a monster, but I consider it unlikely.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X][Conclave] Birdwatching & Rat Facts
The research is in the Tower's hands. We can distribute the notes of aSannin costlessly.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Can we motivate these discussions? Right now we're just asking random questions about topics, one of which we actually don't know how are know about.
Framing this as, 'we are going to need lore to both combat and then seal the Dragons - predicated on their existence, these are topics we think would be useful. is there anything you're willing to share at the moment?' changes things: we're currently just acting strangely and given that they already feel weird about us, I doubt it's going to go well.
I'm kind of tired of all the secrecy around the Five. Pain certainly didn't respect it, Orochimaru didn't think much of that knowledge either - though he is Orochimaru- and the 7th Path might have interesting tidbits about them. Are we still respecting the censorship around the Five because Kei and Shika were adamant about it?
I'm not saying we SHOULD ask the 7th Path, because it seems to be an infohazard and we don't seem to need that piece of information right now. Still, either we want to know about it, and ask about it when we have the occasion... or we don't, and we forget about it until it becomes relevant.
The dragons stopped their advances when one of theirs died, so I assume they are strategizing or - as you mention- waiting for reinforcements.
How is that plausible? Believing in agency doesn't mean you are or could be ethical.
If what we need is competent help, would it be possible to assemble the necessary conditions so that Kagome could learn 3D sealing? I think so, and it doesn't have to take years either.
This is my main worry. Let's not give a joker to a future enemy. We might catch up to him in terms of ability before he learns PS, meaning we'd gain a sizable advantage over him.