Hidden in the Fine Print?

[ragoogar]

[X] Ask the girl if she has anything she's good at.
- [X] If she answers no, then ask what she would like to do.
[X] If she doesn't have an answer. Deliver her to her father free of charge. An escort. No ransom, no nothing. Rather then going for a cash reward, see if we can use this opportunity to generate good publicity. Wiping out some bandit thugs, rescuing one of the relatives of a member of the nobility. That can potentially pay dividends

Yeah let's go with that. We really need to get some cash flow in this country though.

 

[Hymn of Ragnarok]

Considering her circumstances, Christmas Cake is probably being tactful. Spoiled goods comes to mind.

Cruel, but seeing as we're already bringing up males inherit, females are married off, pretty relevant. So yeah. Not only not getting paid, the people might not even be happy getting her back, depending on how cutthroat the family is. Maybe there's goodwill, but maybe not. Certainly there's a good chance this woman's life as she knew it is over no matter what's done.

Yeesh. Very unpleasant thought.

Well.....milk her brains for info and someone essentially has a high borne cover story if people want to try infiltration. I wouldn't bet on it working myself, fallout if it fails, and doesn't seem that big a prize.

Well, she's probably at least literate so she may be good for clerical work. Don't really trust her on principle but she's educated so maybe she can be a secretary or something.

Or just send her off to a nunnery/priests and make her someone else's problem. That option is good too. No gain (probably) but no real loss either.

 

[Roarky]

Yeesh, Shrine Country is starting to tick me off more and more. No true, centralized government, extremely limited resources and little wealth, and we would need to cross boarders to raid caravans, most likely. After all, caravans would avoid traveling through Shrine Country when possible for the same reason as armies do. Travel difficulty might actually have more of an effect on the likelihood of caravans going somewhere other than the temples entering the land. Sooooo, we are a group of people trying to build a village in a land that can't sustain one. Yeah, this is going to be rough. I'll need to think about how to approach this.

About the girl, let me make sure I understand this. She is the Daimyo's younger son's niece. That means her father is the brother-in-law of the spare for the daimyo of Grass. Otherwise she would have claimed status as the Daimyo's grand-daughter or daughter of the Daimyo's ___ son. That means if the elder son were to "disappear" her uncle would be the heir, and she would become of more value. However, we would not want to make it obvious it was us, so we would need someone to frame, and to make sure we were not suspected. So an assassination, and returning her to her uncle out of charity might net us some capital, whether political or otherwise, and if two countries are on the brink of war, and want to spy on each other without an obvious trail... Who do you turn to, but the honorable, and unaffiliated, shinobi who have some standing with your court?

**Edited to remove an embarrassing typo. "She's the Daimyo's younger son," indeed. That would have been a classic lead-in for a joke, but not for a valid point.

 

[Lon]

Considering her circumstances, Christmas Cake is probably being tactful. Spoiled goods comes to mind.

Cruel, but seeing as we're already bringing up males inherit, females are married off, pretty relevant. So yeah. Not only not getting paid, the people might not even be happy getting her back, depending on how cutthroat the family is. Maybe there's goodwill, but maybe not. Certainly there's a good chance this woman's life as she knew it is over no matter what's done.

Yeesh. Very unpleasant thought.

Well.....milk her brains for info and someone essentially has a high borne cover story if people want to try infiltration. I wouldn't bet on it working myself, fallout if it fails, and doesn't seem that big a prize.

Well, she's probably at least literate so she may be good for clerical work. Don't really trust her on principle but she's educated so maybe she can be a secretary or something.

Or just send her off to a nunnery/priests and make her someone else's problem. That option is good too. No gain (probably) but no real loss either.

Click to shrink...

Yea, that was what I was thinking of too. Which was why I wanted to send her off to the shrine if she didn't have any skills. Rather than send her to a Daiymo that might not even want her. But since people want to try the Daimyo option. I wanted to scout out grass beforehand to see if we can gather any information on the girl and the daiymo's opinion on her.

Actually, yea. I'll stick to my original vote.

[X] Ask the girl if she has anything she's good at.
- [X] If she answers no, find a place to put her while you have a ninja scout out grass to see if they can find any information about her and her families opinion of her.
[X] Meanwhile, you need supplies. See if you can have your Ninja raid a caravan for supplies outside the country. Preferably one not guarded by ninja.

 

[Roarky]

Considering her circumstances, Christmas Cake is probably being tactful. Spoiled goods comes to mind.

Cruel, but seeing as we're already bringing up males inherit, females are married off, pretty relevant. So yeah. Not only not getting paid, the people might not even be happy getting her back, depending on how cutthroat the family is. Maybe there's goodwill, but maybe not. Certainly there's a good chance this woman's life as she knew it is over no matter what's done.

Yeesh. Very unpleasant thought.

Well.....milk her brains for info and someone essentially has a high borne cover story if people want to try infiltration. I wouldn't bet on it working myself, fallout if it fails, and doesn't seem that big a prize.

Well, she's probably at least literate so she may be good for clerical work. Don't really trust her on principle but she's educated so maybe she can be a secretary or something.

Or just send her off to a nunnery/priests and make her someone else's problem. That option is good too. No gain (probably) but no real loss either.

Click to shrink...

A certainly valid point, and one which can throw a wrench in even my ideas, but... Okay, this tastes vile in my mouth but here goes. We could kill her and make it look like a country that is on bad terms with Grass was backing the bandits who then killed her when they realized they would get no profit from keeping her, after they were bored of her, of course. Make sure the country we frame is one that is stronger in military matters or has a stronger shinobi force, and Grass will try negotiations and espionage first. Then we, again as an unaffiliated village, would be a valid choice for either side if they wanted there to be no trace they were involved in anything.

Again, I feel dirty suggesting it, but it is a valid, if vile option.

Edited because this just occured to me.** Thinking about it, there is almost certainly no profit to be made by returning her to her uncle as things stand now. After all, she was held by nothing but bandits. There were no ninja, so why wasn't a C-rank mission taken out by Grass county with the Village Hidden in the Grass? The village is in that country, right? So if the Daimyo wanted, he could have paid a small enough fee that a poor, starving bridge-builder (argueably with the backing of an equally poor, starving country) could cover and gotten her freed. That does not bode well for her standing in the country. Maybe we will get lucky, and she'll know things she's not supposed to, though.

 

[Lon]

A certainly valid point, and one which can throw a wrench in even my ideas, but... Okay, this tastes vile in my mouth but here goes. We could kill her and make it look like a country that is on bad terms with Grass was backing the bandits who then killed her when they realized they would get no profit from keeping her, after they were bored of her, of course. Make sure the country we frame is one that is stronger in military matters or has a stronger shinobi force, and Grass will try negotiations and espionage first. Then we, again as an unaffiliated village, would be a valid choice for either side.

Again, I feel dirty suggesting it, but it is a valid, if vile option.

Click to shrink...

If they weren't willing to hire ninja to reclaim her from mere bandits. Or willing to pay the ransom. What makes you think they might be willing to wage war for her death? That's much more expensive than hiring a ninja to clean up a mere bandit camp.

 

[shaderic]

Checking to see if she has any useful skills, then deciding whether or not to send her home pro bono seems good. The reputation point are nice, and there might be a little reward in it as well.

Subtly asking if there's any other service we can provide while there could be interesting as well. If a little risky. Grass has their own shinobi village, after all. They likely wouldn't take kindly to our poaching.

In the meantime, caravan raiding... Isn't exactly something I support, but we might need to resort to it, just to stay fed at this rate. Let's make sure we exhaust the more legal options first, before resorting to that.

For example, I'm sure we have some updated map data of the local area. Isn't it supposed to difficult and dangerous to traverse? And prone to rockslides? If there were an... unfortunate accident that damaged a road, the traders would likely be very grateful to know about alternate routes very quickly. Time is money, after all.

Apart from that, we need more economy data.

It can't possibly be all shrines out here. There has to be at least one normal town, the capital if nothing else. Finding out what makes it tick, what type of oil greases the gears, that's going to be important. If there's no economy to hire ninja, then we need to create an economy that can hire ninja.

If we have any social butterflies that can spread rumors about gold or something in the moutains, that could draw a lot of potential income. And hey, the benefit of a gold rush is, even without the gold, a lot of people coming through. Some of which might just decide to stay. More population, more more money, more value. Which in turn draws more people, which sets the whole situation going again.

Unfortunately, this'd likely be a massively complex endeavor, requiring an ability to influence people we just might not have.

 

[Lon]

Checking to see if she has any useful skills, then deciding whether or not to send her home pro bono seems good. The reputation point are nice, and there might be a little reward in it as well.

Subtly asking if there's any other service we can provide while there could be interesting as well. If a little risky. Grass has their own shinobi village, after all. They likely wouldn't take kindly to our poaching.

In the meantime, caravan raiding... Isn't exactly something I support, but we might need to resort to it, just to stay fed at this rate. Let's make sure we exhaust the more legal options first, before resorting to that.

For example, I'm sure we have some updated map data of the local area. Isn't it supposed to difficult and dangerous to traverse? And prone to rockslides? If there were an... unfortunate accident that damaged a road, the traders would likely be very grateful to know about alternate routes very quickly. Time is money, after all.

Apart from that, we need more economy data.

It can't possibly be all shrines out here. There has to be at least one normal town, the capital if nothing else. Finding out what makes it tick, what type of oil greases the gears, that's going to be important. If there's no economy to hire ninja, then we need to create an economy that can hire ninja.

If we have any social butterflies that can spread rumors about gold or something in the moutains, that could draw a lot of potential income. And hey, the benefit of a gold rush is, even without the gold, a lot of people coming through. Some of which might just decide to stay. More population, more more money, more value. Which in turn draws more people, which sets the whole situation going again.

Unfortunately, this'd likely be a massively complex endeavor, requiring an ability to influence people we just might not have.

Click to shrink...

Apparently. The country of shrines is All shrines with the country run by a kind of Head Shrine. And it sounds like they're all poor since they probably work on a donation basis. They probably survive here using weird monk techniques.

Which makes sense if you think about it. Since there are lots of legends of monks going to secluded mountains and stuff to purify themselves and become zen.

 

[Roarky]

If they weren't willing to hire ninja to reclaim her from mere bandits. Or willing to pay the ransom. What makes you think they might be willing to wage war for her death? That's much more expensive than hiring a ninja to clean up a mere bandit camp.

Click to shrink...

Oh, good. A decent point that makes me feel I can discard the idea without ignoring a usable option. Much as I might hate tactics like that, I feel our character would be much too much of a pragmatist to ignore them, so any excuse for me to do so is appreciated.

 

[ragoogar]

There's gotta be something in this heap. Also why so many shrines? I'm starting to suspect something is sealed in this land, like the Demon Moryo Movie in Shippuden, and even they only had two main Shrines to seal him.

I'm having a hard time imagining this country existing at all with Shrines alone from an economic standpoint. Unless this place is Ninja Vatican, there must be something recon overlooked.

 

[Roarky]

There's gotta be something in this heap. Also why so many shrines? I'm starting to suspect something is sealed in this land, like the Demon Moryo Movie in Shippuden, and even they only had two main Shrines to seal him.

I'm having a hard time imagining this country existing at all with Shrines alone from an economic standpoint. Unless this place is Ninja Vatican, there must be something recon overlooked.

Click to shrink...

Oh there's definitely something up with this country, after all:

And it's kind of an eerie country too, particularly at night. There's some kind of chill to the air unrelated to temperature, though the ninja brush it off without noticing or commenting.

Click to shrink...

 

[Lon]

There's gotta be something in this heap. Also why so many shrines? I'm starting to suspect something is sealed in this land, like the Demon Moryo Movie in Shippuden, and even they only had two main Shrines to seal him.

I'm having a hard time imagining this country existing at all with Shrines alone from an economic standpoint. Unless this place is Ninja Vatican, there must be something recon overlooked.

Click to shrink...

Well, judging by the Nara. This place apparently makes it easier to learn fuinjutsu and spirit techniques.

Which means we might be able to develop into the next Uzu if we work it right.

 

[ragoogar]

Assuming any of the ninja we have are even willing to learn it. Axe for example is someone I don't think is gonna be patient enough for the art. Plus The Fuuinjutsu is an opportunity in the long run. We're gonna need something more substantial just for the short term while we're setting up.

 

[Lon]

True, but that was pretty much what we were told in the first place. Then again, Fuinjutsu might be our villages claim to fame. So we should start on that once we get our resources squared away.

 

[Carrnage]

Say, does she know about any of her family's vaults or other places they keep valuables?

 

[Pipeman]

I can agree with checking whether she has useful skills or knowledge, but if we're going to give her away for free (which it looks like might be necessary given her worthlessness) I'd be leaning towards sending her to a shrine instead.
There really isn't much goodwill to be made with giving them back a spoiled christmas cake that a nation with their own ninja village didn't bother getting back from run-of-the-mill bandits of all things. Hell, there is even be a chance that they'd prefer never having to see her again.

On the other hand, making the first step towards establishing ourselves as not quite that bad to our neighbours seems rather sensible.
Even if the shrines aren't going to help us with our supply issues or anything, they might still be signifcantly less obtrusive when we set something up ourselves, if they think we're not as bad as we could be.
Not to mention that them not considering us worse than other ninja also means they're likely to be unhelpful to anyone wanting to cause us trouble, which would be one of the few benefits of this region.
And finally there's a good chance that later on the majority of our young blood might come from runaway monks-in-training or something like that in which case doing stuff that the rumor mill might eventually turn into "saving princesses" is probably a good idea.

 

[inverted_helix]

I really don't know how we can survive as a ninja village here. Since it's all shrines with no real government that means no jobs. Monks are apparently skilled Taijutsu and Fuinjutsu users so likely have little use for ninja even if they liked us, plus no money to pay with anyways.

The whole area lacks wealth and so doesn't draw many bandits. There's little food.

I don't really see a solution to our problems here. Really wish we'd gone to any of the other places, at least there would be the potential for work in the other places.

 

[ragoogar]

Lol, my point exactly. Which is why I said a while ago that there must be something in this heap that we're missing, something interesting that allows the country to remain a country at all.

 

[Lon]

The draws to this place are that it's hidden. No one would think a ninja village was here so we have some anonymity to our actions.
It's well defended. Not only is the terrain treacherous, but it also has the monks and stuff living here to help defend it.
And it improves fuinjutsu. Whether it's learning or using it.

So yea. Pretty much exactly like the Village of Wind. Course, there could be more. But that's all we have so far.

 

[inverted_helix]

The draws to this place are that it's hidden. No one would think a ninja village was here so we have some anonymity to our actions.
It's well defended. Not only is the terrain treacherous, but it also has the monks and stuff living here to help defend it.
And it improves fuinjutsu. Whether it's learning or using it.

So yea. Pretty much exactly like the Village of Wind. Course, there could be more. But that's all we have so far.

Click to shrink...

The Hidden Sand village required funding from the Daimyo to survive. Shrine doesn't have a Daimyo, let alone one willing to fund a village.

 

[Lon]

Shrug, they did point out we'd need a lot of foreign high pay jobs.

So I guess we should think of it like a combination of Wind and Akatsuki.

 

[Roarky]

Shrug, they did point out we'd need a lot of foreign high pay jobs.

So I guess we should think of it like a combination of Wind and Akatsuki.

Click to shrink...

Then in thinking like Akatsuki, once we're strong enough, it might be a good idea to see about seizing the country. If there is no unified government, once it's feasible, let's make one. Obviously, that will need to be a long term goal, though, made even longer by how hard it will be to gain any strength.

 

[DuskAtDawn]

Huh. Opportunity.

So, even if she's not actually valuable as a person, if we can get her some basic training and acquire her loyalty, we may have a halfway-decent spy on our hands; high-enough placed that she may be able to eavesdrop on important conversations without people paying too much attention, and potentially useful once she's married off as well.

We've got some passive intelligence going around, maybe we should try our hand at offensive?

 

[Hymn of Ragnarok]

A certainly valid point, and one which can throw a wrench in even my ideas, but... Okay, this tastes vile in my mouth but here goes. We could kill her and make it look like a country that is on bad terms with Grass was backing the bandits who then killed her when they realized they would get no profit from keeping her, after they were bored of her, of course. Make sure the country we frame is one that is stronger in military matters or has a stronger shinobi force, and Grass will try negotiations and espionage first. Then we, again as an unaffiliated village, would be a valid choice for either side if they wanted there to be no trace they were involved in anything.

Again, I feel dirty suggesting it, but it is a valid, if vile option.

Click to shrink...

This option actually occurred to me too. Although I was thinking more provoke a war by planting her body. And that's less waging war on her behalf and more, "Ooh, now we have an excuse to go kill those guys because man fuck those guys!"

But honestly, I really don't see a way for us to come up on top in such a situation, our involvement being detected would be the kiss of death, so there's really not a great incentive to even try this.

It's POSSIBLE that the bandits just hadn't sent out their ransom demand or that the response hadn't come yet so she does have value, but it's not looking that way.

If there's no economy to hire ninja, then we need to create an economy that can hire ninja.

Click to shrink...

Now this is a sentiment I can get behind. Yes, if there's no place in the market for us now, we need to make a place for us.

Hmm....well, the monks here are big of fuinjutsu and stuff right? Maybe we can convince them to make us a bunch of big storage scrolls, and then go steal topsoil and stuff from other places and forcibly make our own farmland? With enough scrolls this might be possible and it's something the monks would want too, presumably. If they can't grow their own crops or not well.

The best part would be we bring in the soil and equipment, the monks do all the tedious work of nurturing the crops, and we still get a cut of the food. Although that may mean we need to reveal ourselves to the monks and we don't have career genin to foist the farm tasks on. The chunin and jounin probably wouldn't like being tapped for this either.

 

[iamnuff]

yeah.

It looks like we got stuck with the place that has long-term benifits (from invasion and fuinjutsu stuff down the line) but makes getting set up really hard.


We should have gone for Rivers.

Harder to defend, but we could have set ourself up as a minor village and if we did things diplomatically, we might not have needed to go to war at all.

Just get a village symbol and quietly pretend that none of you were missing-nin.

 

[Hymn of Ragnarok]

There is entirely too much bitching about the choice long after it happened. Which in itself wouldn't be too annoying, if the people who bitched did things besides whine about what would have worked.

The in-universe Nara thinks it can work, the solution was spelled out for us (import stuff) and now we need to find ways to make it happen. Buy it, steal it, make ends meet.



Okay, let's see....right. Land of shrines, bunch of gods being prayed too, setting is probably gonna be expanded on if not outright non-canon. So if there are demons or imps or whatnot, maybe we can escort the monks and whatnot for exorcisms. Freeing the right bidder of supernatural influences might be a market we can dig into.

I'm sure that if it's a serious problem the ninja already have their ways of handling things, but we might have advantages others don't have access to. If nothing else, we might be able to run some scams for start-up cash. Sic a demon on people, swoop in, save the day, get paid. Demons are probably generally acceptable targets, so as long as the demons can't sell us out, we could have a nice little racket going.

Or maybe we can make a contract with local kami or demons, get them on our side. There's probably errands they've got, if they're out there. Less waiting for a hero to slay great over, more waiting for a ne'er do well to go throw a rock at their neighbor's window, because fuck that guy. Or they want certain foods, wines, spices for offerings and need someone to go get them. Or something.

So maybe see if there's a market for jobs of a more supernatural bent that we could be suited for.

I'd say try to get more pilgrims coming, but even escorting the monks all around....if the country comes into more money, it may become worthwhile to come and sack. Plus, we're less anonymous. Assuming the current inhabitants even want us around.

Still, there's got to be some kind of an agreement we can come to. If anyone's got some Doton to throw around, and they can work around the terrain, maybe we can set up terrace farms? Find a way to haul in soil and water, keep the topsoil from being blown away, and we could get some crops nurtured. Surely some ninja out there has learned to throw up some manner of fortifications that can be repurposed for peacetime endeavors, even if we don't have such a person on our roster. And maybe we can find or carve some nice crevice on a mountain where the wind doesn't blow in much, but it can still get some decent sun.

The monks and priests might have taijutsu and fuinjutsu, but probably no ninjutsu. So elemental manipulation may be something we can market.

All I got for now.

 

[Guile]

[X] Can you at least cook?

 

[ragoogar]

She's blood related to the Daimyo, I'm pretty sure she's never touched a stove in her life.

 

[Roarky]

She's blood related to the Daimyo, I'm pretty sure she's never touched a stove in her life.

Click to shrink...

Not blood related, or she would have described herself by that, rather than as his younger son's niece. She's the daughter of the daimyo's son's brother-in-law.

 

[ragoogar]

Still counts as minor nobility. Chances of her ever having cooked for herself let alone anyone else is small. I mean it could be possible, but slim.