Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Hmm, fair enough.
Doesn't that require Naruto to be actively in on it, though? As in, we should propose this plan now?
Oh wait your plan does it, nvm.
[X] Action Plan: Schrodinger's Treason Dragon
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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
Doesn't that require Naruto to be actively in on it, though? As in, we should propose this plan now?
Oh wait your plan does it, nvm.
[X] Action Plan: Schrodinger's Treason Dragon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Possible! We can update strategy after this update if he says no
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I buy that.
I think its relatively important to me that we ensure everyone else in the clan or on the waiting list or in the compound does not get hung out to dry.
Do we have any more concrete ways to ensure that beyond "Hope Naruto and Shikamaru take care of it" though?
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Add asking Tsunade to actually try to heal us ASAP. I maintain that she surely has some S-rank tricks for that, that she's simply not willing to reveal when everything that's at stake is Hazou's recovery taking a few months longer.
I mean, my plan is to do more than "hope": to actually set up a deal in which it's strictly advantageous for them to do it.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think this is true and am concerned asking is only going to piss her off
It wasn't like she was getting severe'd jonin back on their feet in a week during WW4
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
We don't need to ask her, we need to pitch the idea to Naruto, who can decide how plausible it is and whether he can ask her this.
Do we, in fact, know that?
And while it may not speed it up to a week, halving the time would still be beneficial for us while it wouldn't have been beneficial during the war (doesn't matter if it takes two months vs. four if the war's over in two weeks). Also she might've not been doing it because she was more useful in the field.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hmm, what do my other voters think?
I am reasonably certain that this at least is not true, Oro was the only essie really getting deployed. Asuma preferred to keep two essies in Leaf.
I don't totally disagree as it would mean we could do some research a bit quicker, but we do need to stick around to teach Oro PS anyways, as well as learn TH (my preference, at least) and it's going to take longer than healing will. I don't think we'll be doing any rift research til we dip will we? In case Akatsuki comes back to check that Hazou gave it up
Knowing what we know now, what would you have done differently?
I don't actually think we have failed to prioritize our power. We've done reasonable things to do Uplift, but haven't really personally sacrificed much. Our focus has been mostly on Dragons/Necromancy for a while.
I don't see how this isn't going to get Hazou's head punched off tbh.
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I trust Hazopilot to have some idea of whether Tsunade was getting jonin on their feet faster during WWIV and am not interested in acting on the assumption she's been holding out.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
- Spend time researching seals suitable for making S-rankers back off.
- Make more effort to establish a working relationship with Oro rather than wait until he comes by to shake us down.
- Proactively work against the Akatsuki rather than wait until they come by to shake us down.
- Make effort to reshape Leaf political structures into configurations more suitable for us, especially in the two interregnums where we could've dissolved the Hokage position and maneuvered Mari into it, and at least when the KEI was taking shape and we could've maneuvered ourselves into being the messiah of all the clanless.
- Put more effort into modeling the Seventh Path politics and figuring out places to apply pressure or the beneficial trade opportunities, which we could've exchanged for more artefacts or jutsu or lore, which we could've traded to still other players (like the Nara or Oro) for even more artefacts or jutsu or lore.
- Alternatively, invest in Deceit over Sealing and Taijutsu, thereby supercharging the aforementioned political efforts.
- Alternatively, invest in direct combat abilities over Sealing, to ensure you end up amassing some physical power which you can leverage into a reputation which you can leverage into negotiating hard for artefacts/jutsu/lore.
- Basically, commit to anything in a way that'd cash out into us having concrete power of some type, rather than ending up as a combat- and manipulation-incapable researcher who also never does any research.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Guys, do you seriously think that Tsunade, who is supposed to be Orochimaru's peer in how far she pushed her discipline, who can regenerate her own severe injuries mid-battle and turn off chakra systems and bloodlines, who is an S-ranker who spent her career specializing in medicine – that she cannot possibly do anything better than just use standard MedNin mechanics if she's trying her hardest to heal someone?
And you think that whatever private S-rank MedNin techniques she has, she would've been using them left and right with no regard for OPSEC?
And you're so absolutely, utterly, overwhelmeningly confident in that, that the slightest chance of her somehow learning of us posing a question to Naruto and becoming mildly offended because of it, is enough to outweight the potential benefit of dramatically cutting down on our recovery time and getting a head start on the Akatsuki in a race where our victory or loss might decide the fate of the setting?
Why?
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- Location
- United States
The Toad Sages told us not to infuse runes on the Seventh Path, at least.
- Location
- Yes.
I'm not against asking Tsunade but think it should be worded waaaay less strongly; there may be costs to using her S-rank tricks beyond OPSEC considerations that may explain why she didn't heal Hazou faster than she could have. Maybe something like hinting to Naruto that we literally can't do anything until we're healed up, and that getting us healed up faster would let us race faster. You kinda do that already but it's not as...hinty (?).
Partial Timeline by Relevance to Necromancy
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I think I disagree specifically that feel-good humanitarian projects have been the problem here. On a broad level, I note that we mostly leave them in the background managed by Mari, Kei, etc. We barely ever hear about things like the NFF or the GED or till'n'fills even in passing, let alone wasting entire updates on them.
But on a more specific level, I'm going to go through the timeline documents starting from when we decoded Minato's poetry (i.e. the moment necromancy research became tractable and we had opportunities to do stuff) and point out what we were doing with special attention for any chapters spent perhaps unnecessarily. Here's my colour coding: red means critical, we could not afford to do anything else; yellow means valuable, we were pursuing some kind of meaningful advantage; green means unnecessary, we wanted to do it but not for the sake of goal optimization; purple means actually pushing our necromancy objective.
- Chapter 524-525: we spend a day securing rights to our rift research and also push for Naruto bijuu seal deets. We also progress Ami's social link.
- Chapter 526: we spend a day doing some estate stuff and going on a date with Ino.
- Chapter 527: we spend a day discussing Noburi's future goals and proposing the Squirrel Scroll hunt.
- Chapter 528: we spend a day getting intel from Mareo for the scroll hunt.
- Chapter 529: we spend a whole entire day telling Noburi he's not coming with.
- Chapter 530-541: the scroll hunt itself, lasting about a month.
- Chapter 542-547: the honey cave and the return home, lasting about a week. Also noteworthy in how it gets us the substrate, but that's serendipitous.
- Chapter 548: we spend a day doing paperwork and talking to Snowflake.
- Chapter 549: we spend a day getting up to date on Kagome's Minato Seal progress and also failing to download Naruto's bijuu seal.
- Chapter 550: we spend a day selling dragon parts to Orochimaru and getting a deep lore Q&A in the Basement.
- Chapter 551: we spend ten days doing administration stuff while doing Minato Seal research.
- Chapter 552: we spend a day talking with Ami about stuff. Maybe valuable stuff, I dunno, we never did follow up on that dance.
- Chapter 553: we spend about ten days researching upgraded chakdar while arranging the Archaeopteryx visit.
- Chapter 554-555: we do more chakdar research and visit Archaeopteryx, spending close to three weeks total.
- Chapter 556: we spend a day talking to Mari about her feud with Kei. Arguably good team dynamics are an important part of our overall goals but it's also kinda "feel-good" so borderline.
- Chapter 558-559: we spend eight days doing necromancy research while also doing administrative stuff and talking to Ruri about the condors.
- Chapter 560: we spend about 24 days continuing to research chakdar while also doing administrative stuff.
- Chapter 561: we spend two days and invent the EM nuke.
- Chapter 562: we spend a day managing the fallout and kickstarting the anti-proliferation conspiracy.
- Chapter 563: we spend a week replicating the EM nuke.
- Chapter 564: we spend three days working on the estate for some reason.
- Chapter 565: we spend about a week doing necromancy research while interacting with the outer clan members.
- Chapter 566: we spend three days talking necromancy with Kei and doing necromancy research.
- Chapter 567: we spend three days talking necromancy with Shard and doing necromancy research.
- Chapter 568: we spend a day planning with Kei to start planning necromancy with Ami. No research, but still on-topic.
- Chapter 569: we talk Wakahisa politics, show Kagome the Great Seal, and do necromancy research, taking four days in all.
- Chapter 570: we spend a day replicating the telescope we bought and striking a business deal to make more.
- Chapter 571: over the course of five days we research the chakrascope, get roped into more anti-proliferation efforts, and Cannai authorizes the Horizon Chasers to travel to Pangolin.
- Chapter 574-576: we spend a day talking necromancy plans with Kei and Ami and then also with Kagome later.
- Chapter 573: we spend two days getting ready for the Horizon Chasers mission.
- Chapter 577-579: we spend about two weeks on the Horizon Chasers mission.
- Chapter 580: we spend two weeks researching miscellaneous seals and also rocket boots, while also doing Conclave politics in the human path. Marked yellow because we could have done necromancy research here instead.
- Chapter 581: we spend two days showing Orochimaru and Enma the Great Seal.
- Chapter 582-584: we spend nine days doing directional explosives research and then watching Enma dispense lore in Archaeopteryx.
- Chapter 585: Hazou spends a day with Akane and Ino.
- Chapter 586: we spend like 17 days preparing for the Conclave entrance, talking dragon stuff with Asuma, and marking Orochimaru's 3D Sealing homework.
- Chapter 587: we spend 10 days doing Conclave stuff.
- Chapter 588-590: we hear of Akane's presumed death and spend four days trying to follow up on that ASAP.
- Chapter 591: we open the Akane seal bank, which while humanitarian was also intended to advance our goal of keeping her memory alive. A necromancy-related goal, but not necromancy itself.
- Chapter 592: we spend a day proposing having Hidan track Akane.
- Chapter 593: we experiment with Earthshaping for a day in hopes of achieving lithosealing.
- Chapter 594: we spend two days selling the idea of ES gems to Asuma so we can get rich.
- Chapter 595: we spend a day and get Asuma to agree to ask Hidan to track Akane, and Asuma also approves Hazou's spec-jounin exam.
- Chapter 596: we spend a day with Ino, mostly fluff but also talking economics/politics.
- Chapter 597: we spend a day making economic deals with Shino and Hinata.
- Chapter 598: we spend a day theorizing about the Akane situation.
- Chapter 599: we spend a day getting promoted to special jounin.
- Chapter 600: we party and Isan dies. Takes about four days.
- Chapter 601: we spend five days talking to Kagome about necromancy (genuinely unsure what else we did in that time) and then get interrupted by Hidan. Notably this is when Kagome mentions/accuses that Hazou hasn't had as much time to focus on necromancy research.
- Chapter 602-603: I want to get off Mr. Hidan's Wild Ride. (takes one day)
- Chapter 604-608: we spend four days managing the fallout from Hidan, while also discovering lithosealing.
- Chapter 609: we spend a day talking about the "kill Akatsuki" angle of necromancy.
- Chapter 610: we spend ten days doing lithosealing science and research on stuff like rocket boots. On the very last day we do necromancy research.
- Chapter 611: we try to spend time with outer Goketsu members for three days.
- Chapter 612: we spend nine days telling the Toad Sages about lithosealing, doing necromancy research (finally Rift Seal Zero) and causing the FSoP failure.
- Chapter 613-615: over the course of six days we deal with the big dangerous sealing failure.
- Chapter 616-617: we spend three days chilling in the hospital because we're 80% dead.
- Chapter 618-619: we spend a day managing the fallout from Asuma's death, including the Akatsuki showing up and throwing their weight around.
- Chapter 620: we spend five days making and detonating our first/second rune.
- Chapter 621-622: we spend a day addressing the Mio situation and talking lithosealing with Tsunade.
- Chapter 623-627: we spend three days going full Hazou all over the election.
- Chapter 628-629: we spend three days helping the Conclave finally get moving.
- Chapter 630: we spend a day getting updates on Yuma and then trying to convince the Kangaroo summoner to support the Dragonwar.
- Chapter 631: we spend two days trying to see if there's anything we can do to get Mareo help and/or get him in Leaf and/or get Kumafuwafuwa into the Dragonwar.
- Chapter 632: we spend a day talking necromancy and lithosealing with Naruto, who tells us he wants us to go missing.
While I expect that there are places one could quibble over here, whether such and such chapter deserves to be red or just yellow, I think the bigger picture is clear: we don't actually "waste time" on feel-good humanitarian acts. Rather, we divide our attention between not only the frequent crises that demand our attention but also the many and varied power-grabs within our reach. Sometimes we go spend a month hunting down a summon scroll, sometimes we research rocket boots instead of necromancy seals, sometimes we're off doing lithosealing instead, or trying to get rich, or doing some kind of politics, etc.
If you stripped out all the fluff moments, you'd be able to squeeze in maybe one or two research cycles in the last in-universe year (roughly the timespan of all these events). I also have to caution that sometimes Hazou's progress on the Minato seals jumped beyond what I had last seen it at, so it's likely some of the documentation of his research rolls isn't quite so easy to find and we may have been actually more efficient than this list currently indicates.
This isn't to say that we can't do better. But it's to say that "do better" means "trade off other avenues of power, other things worthy of our attention" instead of "we spend too much time on fluff and not enough time power-seeking". Power-seeking is virtually everything we do, it's just that we're stretched thin about it. We can't do politics and economics and lithosealing and necromancy and all our other seal research and still keep pace with the counterfactual Hazou who went into a cave and didn't come out until he had a way to open the rift. Just look at the list, and see how much time gets sucked away bit by bit by every random thing that comes our way.
We won't stop being liable to the Goketsu finances, to Leaf politics, if things stay the way they are. I can just see the future line item, marked yellow, where we spend two weeks running around Fire digging metal out of mines so the Goketsu won't be poor anymore. This isn't just a matter of "today I feel like being more optimal with my choices", it's a matter of "I need to construct an environment where the optimal choice is more optimal", because as long as these forces pull us in ten different directions we'll still be stuck dividing our attention ten ways.
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No, but compared to the risk of getting heads punched I'm not confident enough that we could get her to break out the actual secret stuff, and more importantly I'm not in too much of a rush to recover. The longer we have plausible deniability for delaying going missing, the longer we can prepare for the decision.
We should not base our plans on what kinds of shinies the essies will be willing to give us after we beg them enough for them to give us the table scraps. We should instead base them on what our current capabilities allow us to do, with flex space for whatever the Essies might give us. I don't want us to make plans for certain shinies and then have them fall through and leave us stranded.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
This entire post was incredibly well put, IV. Thanks for writing all that up! I'm sure it took a nontrivial amount of time.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Amazing work. Thanks! Having this sort of data in a neatly-compiled form is invaluable.
That's not actually the objection I'd raise. My issue is more with things like this:
Which isn't to say I want to micromanage Hazou every hour, such that MfD days take up upwards of 16 updates each. But, like... Where does the rest of that time go? What does the Hazoupilot spend it on? What have we programmed the Hazoupilot to spend it on?
You're right that I might've attacked the humanitarian projects prematurely; he probably doesn't spend it all on till'n'fills or whatever. But I can tell you what I'm pretty sure doesn't spend it on: networking, Machiavellian scheming, research, or archive-diving in search of lore tidbits.
Which is all downstream of us having a kind of leisurely mindset towards this. We're not obsessed with power-seeking, the way Ami or Oro are. That reflects in how not-obsessed, laid-back Hazou is. He doesn't have "how can I maneuver to greater power today?" as the top idea on his mind, so he doesn't automatically default to this when he doesn't have anything else occuping his attention. (And please note that being obsessed with power-seeking doesn't equal being monstrously sociopathic about it. You can still be ethically restrained and even actively kind, while still incessantly and unerringly maneuvering to greater power. Again, here's the example of Ami: she's actually fairly pro-social about it all!)
Also, my complaints weren't about the necromancy race specifically. They extend basically all the way to the quest's start, or at least definitely to the moment of our forming the Gouketsu with Jiraiya. By then, it was already clear that the Akatsuki are around trying to bring about an apocalypse of some sort, and that there are cosmic horrors running amok threatening to eat everything unless we eat them first; and we've already been in the position where we can start to steadily power-maximize.
Instead, in the words of Ryuugamine, we've allowed Hazou to be merely human.
Ha, I see what you did there.
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- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@Shrooms this is a shorter fork of your plan with some other stuff I like added in. Please feel free to yoink the reductions in wordcount. Let me know if you adopt any of the extra bits - I might pull this down if you do.
[X] Action Plan: A Shorter Treason Dragon
Word count: <300
[X] Action Plan: A Shorter Treason Dragon
Word count: <300
- We don't know what we'll do. We'll think about it. We appreciate it.
- If we definitively decide to stay, does Naruto want to know?
- If we leave, we're not coming back without Jiraiya, and we're going back for the rest of Leaf's fallen Kage. The world needs the Will of Fire.
- Implication: Minato.
- Implication: Hiashi. We're not the guy he knew.
- We wanted an open-minded Hokage. We got it. Thank you.
- It's perhaps worth noting that Jiraiya always intended Naruto to be Lord Goketsu.
- The Uzumaki legacy is important for a lot of reasons.
- But it could help protect the Goketsu from Akatsuki reprisal, provide Hazou/Kagome additional reason to go missing, and give Naruto legitimate access to Pangolin armour techniques.
- If we didn't leave, would that be okay?
- If we stay...honestly, we can't see a path to victory. We'll do our best to come up with something, but try and think of more options but it looks pretty grim. Not that leaving is attractive.
- 3D sealing is untapped and unknown. We need to heal and might use that time to develop defensive capabilities for Leaf.
- Explain how we cracked Minatosealing. His father was a better poet than he let on.
- Does Naruto have any ideas about the rest of the seal sequence?
- What can Naruto share with Hazou at this stage?
- We're not expecting anything, but we'd be remiss not to ask. Jutsu? Any relevant lore? Mind-strengthening tricks for research with parallel SCs? Access to the Tower's seals? The seals going to the Akatsuki?
- Can Kagome have SC? The Akatsuki didn't tell him to stop researching the Rift, and he's done the bulk of the work. He's an often-overlooked jonin-level sealmaster.
- How long is Tsunade staying in Leaf? She and Shizune are in the runic OPSEC compartment.
We've had essie+ Sealing for a couple months. Most of that time was spent either running around on the Seventh Path escorting Dogs, or researching the MS chain. With one small exception when we researched our Dramatic Entrance seals (which I am still salty about)
Oro doesn't talk to people. He dissects them. 99% of the time, making an effort to be his friend means we give him all our stuff. He takes it and says "thanks, now get out"
We've actually been his rival in Sealing (ie. someone he might respect) for only a short time
And do this how exactly? I am genuinely curious.
This is lol lmao levels of never happening. Their whole social contract is based on having a Hokage.
We have spent basically 0 XP on Sealing and Taijutsu since the Chunin Exams. It's all gone into ES and Resolve.
I don't even know what this would mean. What treasures of the Seventh Path do you think are just floating around?
Since we have spent basically 0 of our own XP into Sealing during the past 2 years, this doesn't really make sense.
If we spend that XP on combat we don't FOOM. If we don't level ES, we don't unlock P Sealing.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This seems simplified to the point of losing the meaning of the original so I'm not sure I want to use most of these rewordings. What is the extra stuff you want added exactly?
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
[X] Action Plan: A Shorter Treason Dragon
The conditional here (about how much Naruto wants to know) is important enough that I'm breaking out of lurking to vote here.
I also want to add +1 to Noumero's comment about spending a whole day on a single convo.
The conditional here (about how much Naruto wants to know) is important enough that I'm breaking out of lurking to vote here.
I also want to add +1 to Noumero's comment about spending a whole day on a single convo.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
IMO this defeats the entire point. Not knowing or having any responsibility so he maintains deniability is the entire point of his proposal in the first place
Suggested additional bullet point
- Even if Naruto isn't willing to take over now (if) Hazou leaves the clan might be literally leaderless. Would he be willing to take over then? We'd make a point to leave the armor jutsu behind, and so on.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
A seal having essie-tier impact does not require essie-tier infusion TN. Kagome didn't need essie+ Sealing to make Skywalkers, and they had global causal impact on the setting.
Ami and Kabuto somehow manage.
Trap-the-notes idea, at least.
Cloud somehow managed.
Well, that's the point, I don't know. But they're clearly extremely laid-back about various eldritch stuff, compared to the Human Path's Thinkers. The lore alone, that we could've extracted from the eager talkers on the Seventh Path and re-sold to lore-interested individuals on the Human Path.