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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Paperclipped said:
Hazō will reject this by default, as the Nara Future Foundation partially fills this niche.
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I think we should accept. Getting a conservative leaf clan on board with uplift has a massive upside, even if we dismiss the upside of more literacy teachers. Maybe we can swing it to make sure they don't focus on the worst parts of their creed? Mikijirō is supposedly being reasonable or is part of a less conservative wing of the Hagoromo.
 
DanZapman said:
Oh fuck what if Shikamaru actually has or knows someone with Mokuton. Imagine the biosealing you can do with that shit. phytosealing. dendrosealing. oh fuck we have to meet with Shika and Kei right now. All XP on all MfD characters needs to be dedicated to sealing posthaste now and forever. Sorry combat sorry socials it was never meant to be.
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Shikamaru knows Shadow Clone right. There's no way he doesn't it's his clan's element and he's way in on the opsec compartments. He has a Thinker bloodline. We have to marry his cognitively independent shadow clone to get the Nara lore especially the Nara jutsu mechanics so we can train Kei better. After we marry Snowflake.

Edit: What do you guys think the clone's name is

Kashimaru? Probably not. Are names too tiresome to think of one? Probably not. Self-expression and such. Tired? Annoyed? Uhhhhhh
 
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Paperclipped said:
"I don't know if that'll be enough," Hazō said. "They might not have chakra at all. They're made of something completely different to normal beings from the Human or Seventh Path, and the Sage managed to seal them away, which you can't do with things that contain chakra. As for Itachi… well, two of them literally can't be looked at, one can be looked at but not perceived, one more subverts your mind if you look at it, and the last has such a huge reach that if it's in your visual range, you're in its threat range."
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Damn it Hazo. You're not on their team. Let them die!
 
RandomOTP said:
So, given the above, we'll want to level Kei's RW buff to level 20, which leaves her 200xp for buying combo stunts.

Frozen Skein + Wind Element (-100xp) is one we'll definitely want to buy, since it will allow her to combine FS and Wind God tags on Athletics and Ranged Weapons rolls.

Then, we'll want to either work towards buying the triple Combo Stunt: Frozen Skein + Rocket Boots + Substitution (-200xp), since the groundwork is already there.

Or, since we plan on finishing Reusable Rocket Boots next, we can skip to laying the foundations towards buy a triple Combo Stunt with Frozen Skein, Rocket Boots, and Wind Element.

Frozen Skein + Rocket Boots (-100)
Rocket Boots + Wind Element (-100)
Frozen Skein + Rocket Boots + Wind Element (-200)


So Kei's next training plan is likely going to be one of the following:

Kei Training Plan: Arctic Cloak of the Wind Gods
CotWG 0 -> 20 (-105xp, 302 remaining)
Frozen Skein + Wind Element Combat Stunt (-100xp, 202 remaining)
Frozen Skein + Rocket Boots Combat Stunt (-100xp, 102 remaining)
102xp Remaining

Kei Training Plan: Explosive Cloak of the Wind Gods
CotWG 0 -> 20 (-105xp, 302 remaining)
Frozen Skein + Wind Element Combat Stunt (-100xp, 202 remaining)
Wind Element + Rocket Boots Combat Stunt (-100xp, 102 remain)
80xp Remaining

Kei Training Plan: Cloak of the Wind Gods
CotWG 0 -> 20 (-105xp, 302 remaining)
Frozen Skein + Wind Element Combat Stunt (-100xp, 202 remaining)
180xp Remaining
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Okay, let's decide on which direction to go in...

Kei Training Plan: Arctic Cloak of the Wind Gods
CotWG 0 -> 20 (-105xp, 302 remaining)
Frozen Skein + Wind Element Combat Stunt (-100xp, 202 remaining)
Frozen Skein + Rocket Boots Combat Stunt (-100xp, 102 remaining)
102xp Remaining

[x] Kei Training Plan: Explosive Cloak of the Wind Gods
CotWG 0 -> 20 (-105xp, 302 remaining)
Frozen Skein + Wind Element Combat Stunt (-100xp, 202 remaining)
Wind Element + Rocket Boots Combat Stunt (-100xp, 102 remaing)
102xp Remaining

Kei Training Plan: Cloak of the Wind Gods
CotWG 0 -> 20 (-105xp, 302 remaining)
Frozen Skein + Wind Element Combat Stunt (-100xp, 202 remaining)
202xp Remaining
 
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@Paperclipped @eaglejarl @Velorien
Is it to late to spend an FP to have Hazou not warn Itachi and Kisami off of attacking?


Their deaths would cripple the Akatsuki's ability to project power to the 7th path, making operation missin-nin much safer(and making scroll hunts more important).
If we're safe in the 7th path, Hidan's Jashin-tracking is mostly neutralized.
With Itachi dead, holding a fortified location against an Akatsuki assault gets waaaaay easier. (between SC, Amaterasu, flying summons, and his huge jutsu library, he was a huge problem.)

If these guys go down, any pursuit team(if they can even spare the manpower) will be made up of Hidan and Deidara. they're the two we have the best matchups against. Give us a little prep&training, and we can actually take them.
Itachi and Kisami's deaths make missin-nin necromancy research so much safer.


Should we do this is an open question. fucking with people when they try to solve important issues is harmful and dishonorable. More firepower for the dragonwar might or might not be vital. AMITY gets destabilized. also, risk of social combat against Kisami.
 
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Paperclipped said:
Difficulty check on Improved Strobelight Seals: Disappointingly, also Jiraiya. Hazō thinks he's trying to cram too much stuff into the package. Importantly, limiting the seal output to a single color diminishes the brightness pretty substantially, and then jacking up the brightness several orders of magnitude seems like it's too much for the seal design to handle (see: Macerators not being infinitely improve-able). If he picked one of (+color, ++brightness), he thinks this would be much easier to handle.
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[JK] get Shūji Nakamura to work on it
 
Paperclipped said:
Hazō, you stay. I'll need your oath that you won't share this knowledge with anyone without me or Pa giving you the okay, got it?"

Hazō looked back at his team and nodded. "I promise," Hazō said, as his teammates backed away. "I'll keep it quiet."
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Gonna be awkward if Itachi rips that from Hazou's mind.

Paperclipped said:
the Great Seal you mentioned had Sasori pretty worked up – at least when he remembers that it exists.
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Sasori = scatterbrained? We might have a shot at winning the rift race after all.

We should start coming up with interesting sealing puzzles to distract Sasori ASAP. They don't have to be fulfill any practical purpose (and ideally they won't) as long as they pique his interest and eat all of his sealing-research time.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Time Affecting Runes

Time Drag Rune - Inspired by how runic drag makes runes nearly impossible to move in space, Hazou applies the concept to time instead. Anyone touching this rune while it's active experiences time at only a fraction of the rate they normally would

Reversion Rune - While active, causes time to loop in a small radius around the rune. Cycles are short in duration and limited in number. Memories are conserved between cycles

Fast Forward Rune - Speeds up time by a weak factor in a small radius

Time Stretch Rune - Slows down time by a weak factor in a small radius

Rewind Rune - Reverses time for a few seconds in a small radius

Pause Rune - Stops time for a few seconds (relative to an observer outside the AoE) in a small radius

Cut and Paste Rune - Skips an AoE forward in time. Outside observers see those in the AoE blink out of existence and back in a short time later.


Alright, let's get cooking
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Those are all cool ideas, but I don't think we have veterancy in time stuff. We do however, have veterancy* in looking at the summoning scroll to see if we can figure our how to set reverse summon anchors and get continent scale teleportation! We should do that.

I'm giving a standing offer for my vote to plans that do such research. (you'll have to ping me)

*while we can't get veterancy for non-sealing things like "looking at powerful scrolls", if we could we'd definitely have it for the summoning scroll
 
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Paperclipped said:
"What's the deal with that, anyway?" Hazō asked. "Where does the Seventh Path come from? Why is it weaker than the other Paths?"

The Toad Sages exchanged another glance.

"Should we tell him?" Shima asked.

"I think we should," Fukasaku said.

"What if he goes off and does some fool thing with the knowledge?" Shima asked.

"Look at the three dimensional seal he made!" Fukasaku said, pointing a bulbous finger at the center of the darkened crater. "He'll go off and do some fool thing no matter what. Do you want him doing his fool things with the confidence of an ignoramus? If he wanted the Seventh Path destroyed, all he'd have needed to do is not pull the damn Conclave together. He's the one human we can trust not to do that, isn't he?"
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Holy hell, actually sensible people.
"Very well. The 'Sage' didn't have the power to make whole new Paths on his own, but he was able to twist and warp space and time pretty well. The Animal Path was pretty wrecked by the Tenfold Abomination, so he pulled off a little chunk of it, made it livable, then put a veil around it to make it into its own Path. That's what we call the Seventh Path today."

The bearded toad put his hands together. Hazō thought he was making hand seals, but instead he clasped one fist inside the opposite hand. "He took the slice of the Animal Path and wrapped it around the Human Path like this. Except they're both really crumply, so the distance between any part of the Human Path and any part of the Seventh Path is actually really small."
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Fascinating. Why did he do it, though?

Also, Kumokogo had implied that the Paths were separated into the Paths to begin with by the Sage putting up veils. So the "Animal Path" is presumably also artificial. Perhaps the Sage was just able to do a better job separating them at first, and the Seventh Path was a last-minute hack-job?

"Anyway," Shima said. "That all adds up to say this: don't infuse on the Seventh Path. Its existence isn't natural, as I'm sure you gathered. If you or anyone muffs it up bad enough, either the veil breaks down and we all get dumped into the primordial chaos, or we snap back to the Animal Path with untold death and destruction, and then get to deal with whatever popped out of that nasty wasteland after the Tenfold Abomination got done with it."
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Interesting that she phrases it as "whatever popped out of that nasty wasteland after the Tenfold Abomination got done with it", rather than "the Shard imprisoned there is going to immediately eat us" or something. Either they don't know about the Five (very possible! their previous talk on a related subject was pretty confused!), or want to keep that information from Hazou, or it doesn't work quite how I thought it did.

The 'Sage'
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Interesting how they keep calling him that. The scare quotes.

Onto the Hagoromo part:
The Sage… the Sage had a complicated life, from what we know of it. Where his divine mother sought to keep humanity locked in their state of endless war and strife, the Sage, perhaps due to his human father, wanted peace. Their conflict is the stuff of many reams of epic and scholarship, but what is agreed upon is that after slaying his mother, the Sage took her blood and fashioned it into chakra.
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Interesting. Skeptical of taking the "divine mother" stuff literally, but it's confirmation of the general guess that the Sage was empowered by some cosmic horror and then turned on it; as well as the idea that the dominant cosmic horrors of the pre-Sage time were interested in keeping humanity locked in conflict.

Ah, you've heard the versions where he travels the Paths, picking up a demon from the Naraka, a gaki from Preta, and so on?
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Confirmation of the idea that each of his companions was linked to one of the Paths!

"As before, the stories are varied and conflicting, and we do not know the exact nature of the divine monster. We know from whence it came. In the era prior to the Sage of the Six Paths, the world was ruled by various kami – gods large and small. Some of these kami were simple nature spirits that inhabited slices of the world. Others were ancestor spirits, who gave wisdom and guidance to families and clans. Others still were true gods that lived in ten divine palaces on high and acted in the mortal realm with near-unlimited power.

"Regardless of their habitat, the kami were evil. They were fickle at best, and used their powers to wreak havoc upon the world and lay waste to the lives of men. The nature spirits caused floods and called lightning on those who trespassed. Even the ancestor spirits, whose purpose was to support their families, would not hesitate to kill those who questioned them, and their violent actions against other families slaughtered hundreds in a flash. The ten grand kami were even worse by all measures. Powerful and no less brutal than their compatriots, they raised hosts of men to fight and die for little more than their own amusement.

"The Sage saw this and declared that it would happen no more – that man should be free to live his own destiny, not to have it dictated to him by powers beyond his ken. He fought the kami one by one and slew them, leaving them no longer able to influence the mortal world.

"Though dead, they were not destroyed. Their corpses still held their power and a remnant of their will. Those corpses agglomerated into a being of pure power and hatred, the Tenfold Abomination. Defeating it was the Sage's greatest challenge – and even then, it could not be destroyed, for the hateful power of the ancient kami would merely return again a generation later. Instead, it was sealed away, far from the ability of mortals to influence it, so that the world would never suffer under the kami's tyranny again."
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Hm, hm. The Toad Sages had claimed before that the Tenfold Abomination was split into a "body" and a "mind" part, and then each of these parts was split again into the nine bijuu and (presumably) the Five Shards, respectively. Cross-correlating that with the Hagoromo's statements here, I think the consistent story is that there was some initial entity (or group of them), the Sage carved out its (or their) minds, and then the mindless bodies (with some residual beast-like cognitive subroutines?) agglomerated into the Tenfold Abomination?

And the "initial entity (or group of them)" presumably included the Sage's divine patron (his "mother"), as I'd previously speculated.

I like it. I like it a lot more than the Toad Sages' basic story of "the Shards are pieces of the Tenfold Abomination". Rather, it sounds like the Tenfold Abomination and the Shards are themselves pieces of some preceding larger entity! It's a subtle shift in framing, but I think it aligns better with the other stories we've heard and the general vibes. (E. g., the part where, as I'd previously noted, it feels like the Five are cosmic-scale entities, in terms of power, whereas the Tenfold Abomination is roughly Dragon-scale/bijuu-scale.)

Except the numerology still doesn't work out! How are there five Shards from ten beings? Or, if the "ten gods" stuff is misguided and it was actually a single entity with ten aspects/identities/whatever – why was its mind split into five and its body into ten? I mean, two times five is ten, so it almost sounds like each Shard is a fusion of the minds of two gods/aspects... But why?

Hm, maybe it's because the Sage had only enough power to split the initial world into six Paths? His attempt at the seventh Path was a hack-job. And presumably the veils between Paths were his method of keeping the Shards separated, and he also wanted to keep the "body" (the bijuu) part away from all the "mind" fragments. Thus: he could only build six prisons, he had to allocate one of the prisons to the bijuu (which is also why the jinchuuriki aren't allowed to be Summoners! the Shard of the Animal Path would then be able to get to the body!), so he had to split the ten remaining mind-fragments across just five Paths? ... Eeeeehhh, that explanation feels really adhockish.

"Anyway!" he said, looking up and reaching a hand up to the sword on his back, "I'm done with waiting around. I'm going to send these damned Dragons back to Naraka where they belong."

"You don't mean right now," Hazō said. "The Crusade will be here in a week or two, and you can't fight them alone."

"If they have chakra, Samehada will eat them alive," Kisame said with his predator grin. "And I wasn't planning on doing it alone. Itachi will be here soon enough, and if there's anything Samehada and I can't handle, he'll kill it with a look."

"I don't know if that'll be enough," Hazō said. "They might not have chakra at all. They're made of something completely different to normal beings from the Human or Seventh Path, and the Sage managed to seal them away, which you can't do with things that contain chakra. As for Itachi… well, two of them literally can't be looked at, one can be looked at but not perceived, one more subverts your mind if you look at it, and the last has such a huge reach that if it's in your visual range, you're in its threat range."
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Hazou, what the hell have you done! This was our chance!

Ah, well. I suppose Itachi would've reined Kisame in if Hazou didn't do it. That presumably scored us some points instead.
 
Noumero said:
Hazou, what the hell have you done! This was our chance!

Ah, well. I suppose Itachi would've reined Kisame in if Hazou didn't do it. That presumably scored us some points instead.
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I refuse to believe that Kisame, who chatted regularly with Ami in a political setting, is dumb enough to just take some advice and then run in swords-a-swinging. This was some sort of Treason Dragon shit check.
 
DanZapman said:
Oh fuck what if Shikamaru actually has or knows someone with Mokuton
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"Actually has"? You literally watched him call out a Wood Element technique and produce a tree from thin air during the Exams.

Oneiros said:
Just to point out Hazō that is in fact already a jonin and that his stats are comparable
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Special jōnin and in what world is his stat line in the jōnin class? He's barely into chūnin in the primary combat stats.


CitizenTen said:
Damn it Hazo. You're not on their team. Let them die!
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Now I feel bad. @Paperclipped posted the chapter draft for comment, and had a big marker on that whole scene saying "maybe delete this and let the players interrupt?" I told him to leave it in because it was very cool and I didn't think y'all would sacrifice a major resource for the Dragon War. Apparently I was wrong and should have shut up.
 
eaglejarl said:
Now I feel bad. @Paperclipped posted the chapter draft for comment, and had a big marker on that whole scene saying "maybe delete this and let the players interrupt?" I told him to leave it in because it was very cool and I didn't think y'all would sacrifice a major resource for the Dragon War. Apparently I was wrong and should have shut up.
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Nah, kid made the right call.
 
Noumero said:
Also, Kumokogo had implied that the Paths were separated into the Paths to begin with by the Sage putting up veils. So the "Animal Path" is presumably also artificial. Perhaps the Sage was just able to do a better job separating them at first, and the Seventh Path was a last-minute hack-job?
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The toads said he didn't have the power to make whole new paths on his own. Who - or what - had been helping before, but was unavailable for the Seventh Path?
 
MMKII said:
Nah, kid made the right call.
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Yeah plus things like that might save our asses in the future and/or open the possibility for cooperation.

I dont think we are actually opposed to Pain coming back if it means getting back Jiraiya, Akane, Asuma etc too, when the alternative is fight a dozen Essies and probably die. Our stated goal for not helping them was coordinating the Dragonwar, anyway, so there should be no good will lost at this point, just gotta prove ourselves good enough to treat as an equal.
 
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Paperclipped said:
I intend to send a messenger to inform AMITY about our findings tomorrow morning and let the chips fall where they may.
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"In any case," said Kei. "I looked within our records to see if we knew anything of Akatsuki sightings near Isan. We have seen nothing. But the instant Itachi learns, he will conclude that the person responsible was Gōketsu Hazō."
Paperclipped said:
Have you never wondered how jōnin can project their emotions onto you? It is because of their abundance of chakra, which lets them share the inner workings of their souls with others.
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Well, there's WOG that if we want a Jonin aura, we need to level CR.

Unless Hagoromo is lying.

…Hey, how come Noburi doesn't have an aura?
Paperclipped said:
The last of the Sage's companions was his son, who was named Hagoromo. Naturally, we believe he founded our clan, and is the ultimate source of the divine favor we enjoy.
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Heh, nice callback.
 
MMKII said:
I refuse to believe that Kisame, who chatted regularly with Ami in a political setting, is dumb enough to just take some advice and then run in swords-a-swinging. This was some sort of Treason Dragon shit check.
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Mmm. Nah, I believe that his surface mental state at the moment he was speaking to Hazou was, genuinely, "alright, we're gonna get Itachi in a moment and then go kill these things off right away!". That said, I believe that if you offered him a bet with regards to how likely he thought that would actually happen – if you prompted him to actually evaluate the reasonability of this plan and Itachi's reaction to it, rather than speaking bravado – he would output some fairly realistically low numbers. Same if it suddenly turned out that Itachi is not coming: he would pull back on the bravado and do a more sane evaluation, he won't go off to fight them alone. Same if Itachi showed up and was uncharacteristically on-board with the plan: he would notice that Itachi is being out-of-character, which would prompt him to run a sanity-check on that plan himself.

I believe he was basically externalizing part of his cognition to Itachi here, namely with regards to risk-assessment. They've worked together for a long time, and this sort of "distributed cognition" naturally happens as the result. If it turned out that he can't rely on Itachi to play the role of a pessimistic realist here, however, he would likely automatically snap back into a more realistic mindset. (Not sure if I'm explaining myself legibly here.)

So I don't think this was actually a deliberate calculated test. I do think it wasn't as much of an exploitable opportunity as it might've looked like, though. While Kisame was genuinely pumped to go fight them, there were no realistic routes to actually manipulate him into doing so, because he would've snapped back to "sanity" if he noticed that he was about to fight him without getting sanity-checked by Itachi.

... Well, no, actually, I think Ami or a Deceit-60!Hazou might've been able to swing it. But it would've been tricky. And also then Itachi would've shown up, learned what happened, and squished Hazou; and I don't think we could've manipulated Itachi into a suicidal attack.

So yes, that was the right call.
strange_person said:
The toads said he didn't have the power to make whole new paths on his own. Who - or what - had been helping before, but was unavailable for the Seventh Path?
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"Making a Path" isn't the same as separating an extant Path into several smaller Paths. I'm suggesting that there was initially just one Path, and then the Sage split it into six, and then partitioned off another fragment into the Seventh Path.

I agree that it seems like he had more power when doing the 1 => 6 step, compared to the 6 => 7 step. Might be he just spent it, might be it's because some of his allies died in the meantime, might be he just had less time to do it.
 
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