Hidden in the Fine Print?

[Roarky]

[X] The land of Shrines. Austere, picturesque landscape and you'll infuriate possibly countless monks and pilgrims if you harvest the natural resources too freely, but who would seriously look for a pack of ninja-criminals here?

The most interesting choice.

Click to shrink...

If by interesting, you mean struggle throughout the early and possibly middle game periods to acquire the bare minimum resources for the village to flourish, than sure. River would be the best for resources, but also the worst for remaining undiscovered. The other three all have their issues, however, I'll admit. Rice has a daimyo that is behaving oddly, which would make any interaction with the country's political side... unpredictable. Not a desirable thing for a newly forming village, but there are ways that could be worked around.

Fruit Trees could make our own forces unreliable, so that is the true worst option in my opinion, but there might be happiness benefits that could mitigate that. That leads us to Bear, which has the same strength and weakness in a lot of ways. Giant bears. That could be awesome or terrible depending on how it effects things. It could mean a lower civilian population, but higher level ninja. It could lead to riding bears, or the awesome potential of the village being hidden in the awesome fossilized corpse of an awesome Giant Bear. Did I mention that that could be awesome?

Joking aside though, I do like the option of Bear most, since there is little enough chance of being discovered and ample resources. However, I'm sure any other option would have its own advantages and disadvantages that I have not even considered. If you think of any, let me know, because I am perfectly willing to let myself be swayed if the argument is valid.

 

[HypoSoc]

Does nobody remember Hoshi? The chakra star that may or may not be a piece of the moon juubi can make even Genin a force to be reckoned with (before cancering them).

 

[Galeiam]

We remember, it was even mentioned already.

 

[Guile]

Fruit Trees could make our own forces unreliable, so that is the true worst option in my opinion, but there might be happiness benefits that could mitigate that.

Click to shrink...

Or we could end up with a village of Rock Lee drunken masters.

 

[Galeiam]

Why would you want a village full of Suiken masters...

 

[Nekraa]

[X] The land of Shrines. Austere, picturesque landscape and you'll infuriate possibly countless monks and pilgrims if you harvest the natural resources too freely, but who would seriously look for a pack of ninja-criminals here?

Our ninjas will develop jutsu that allows them to hide in text to suit the title of the quest ^^

 

[Galeiam]

0o..I'm thinking the Title is more of a Pun on ...you work for ninjas. Do what we say or we kill you. Which incidentally your job is telling them what to do....

 

[Hextroyer413]

[X] The land of Bears. On the plus side, lots of trees and there are mineral deposits to make use of. On the other hand, bears breed like rabbits here and grow very large.

Must acquire ninja bear cavalry!

Or ninja bears.

 

[Redon]

[X] The land of Shrines. Austere, picturesque landscape and you'll infuriate possibly countless monks and pilgrims if you harvest the natural resources too freely, but who would seriously look for a pack of ninja-criminals here?

 

[Lykaia]

[X] The land of Bears. On the plus side, lots of trees and there are mineral deposits to make use of. On the other hand, bears breed like rabbits here and grow very large.

 

[iamnuff]

[X] The land of Rivers. High transport ability, and many trade routes go through there. If you can get noticed, then there'll be a lot of money going through.

This is obvious, right? this is the only option without a glaring downside.

why are you all voting for bears? Everything is worse with bears.

 

[Lon]

[X] The land of Rivers. High transport ability, and many trade routes go through there. If you can get noticed, then there'll be a lot of money going through.

This is obvious, right? this is the only option without a glaring downside.

why are you all voting for bears? Everything is worse with bears.

Click to shrink...

It's a place with lots of food *bears*, lots of training *again bears*, not to mention that it gives the village a natural barrier against attack *because bears*, and isn't so obvious as Rivers. These guys are all missing nin after all.

 

[Galeiam]

Bears is literally the only safe choice here...

 

[Vindictus]

Bears is literally the only safe choice here...

Click to shrink...

"The death world horror movie bear land? Yeah, that's the safest place we could think of!"

"What were your other options?!"

"Oh, a potential mecca of mercantilism, a prosporous little farming country, and Totally-Not-Tibet... You know. Dangerous places!"

"... I think your danger sense is broken."

 

[Galeiam]

Demon Lords territory, Orochimaru....yeah Safe.
Then we have Fruit and River which while good civilization starters at certain times...Post Civilization in during Warring periods they just become good staging grounds so picking one of them will lead to a lot of conflict pretty soon. Not to mention why the hell has no one else picked such prime locations.

 

[Guile]

Demon Lords, what?

They're a bunch of monks and mikos and pilgrims!

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

"If I had to pick.. the land of Shrines." you decide.

You're immediately left with derision from most of the gathered ninja criminals, but the lazy man just leans back, thoughtfully stroking his short beard.

"You're going to have to walk me through the reasoning behind that decision." he suggests.

"W-well, uh. The main benefit is... who's going to look for you there? The country is all shrines and shrine-tenders, tall rocky cliffs and rope bridges over chasms, and little in the way of natural resources." you outline. From the perspective of a healthy civilian village, or even of a trading outpost, it isn't ideal, but for an organization of thieves and murderers...

"Ah... I see where you're coming from. And better yet, the stone in that area is really fragile and brittle, so it's nearly impossible to bypass the ordinary traveling routes. Trying to walk up or along a cliffside will just leave you with a bunch of nasty spills, worse if you try to jump. There's some ore veins in there, but getting them out without triggering collapses is a big problem."

.... You didn't know that yourself, but it sounds like the sort of thing a ninja might keep in mind. It sounds like he might be more familiar with the area than you are.

"So the benefits... are that it isn't likely that any of the older villages are going to pick up on exactly what's going on, where, until it's too late to really interfere. And they would, if they cottoned on. Longer term, invading is going to be pretty tricky. High grade shinobi aren't going to have much trouble moving through difficult terrain, but the grunt lines.... aren't getting through without making it really obvious that someone's heading in. Small groups or solo infiltrators might be a problem, but they always are. Not bad."

He shrugs.

"Of course, there's going to be trouble getting jobs coming in, and importing food and supplies through. But hey, that's your problem to figure out, right?"

That shark-like grin is back. And for all that the man is a solid hand-span shorter than you, he effortlessly lifts you with only one arm. That's... that's the power of a ninja, you guess.

"Finish your swill, and anyone who wants in, get your asses to the land of Shrines." he barks, tone just shy of giving orders. Just enough to keep volatile superhumans with a dim view of authority from speaking up about it, you guess. "Move quietly. If the point is to set up a place that we won't be found too soon, then one of you lunk-heads dragging a hunter on your tail defeats the point, right?"

"Fuck you, Nara!" The axe-woman barks, before slamming herself back down into her seat in a very clear declaration that she'll take her sweet time getting there, if at all.

By the time she's finished, you've been carted out the door, and then for all the man's deceptive slowness the world is going by very quickly.

"There's long term benefits for the land of Shrines, too." He muses aloud as... good gods, you're covering distance in minutes that should have been hours of transit. "We'll have to discuss that later, though."

A finger presses deliberately at your throat, and everything goes first grey, then black.

You wake up in a dark room that smells of dust and mold....

.....

This is the back of a large shrine, isn't it? Converted into an office. You're sort-of draped into an almost-seated position across an out-of-place chair.

"Oh, you're awake, Leader." the lazy man says, simply. "You were out a few days... longer than I expected."

You've been unconscious for days!?

"Less people joined up from the bar than I expected... I wouldn't have bet on all of them, though." he allows. "On the other hand, some word of mouth is going around, so there's a few extras. Total of two A-class Jounin, four B-class Jounin, and a baker's dozen, unlucky thirteen Chunin."

He tosses a sheaf of papers onto your desk.

"Luckily, I heard about this temple. Some S-ranker on a bender came through, cleared out all the priests and pilgrims a couple years back... died not long after. The superstitious call it a curse, but if he was murdering holy men for no reason then he was probably already at least a little suicidal by that point. And by now the smell of blood is gone, ready for the bones to get pitched out, a new coat of paint, and someone else to move in."

There's a long, creaking noise from somewhere in the distance, followed by the sound of a roof collapsing. There's a puff of dust off of the walls, and you realize that the corners are filled with spiderwebs. You can faintly hear insects skittering from the disturbance, making the skin along your spine crawl.

"... Probably a good idea to do some structural repairs, too." he suggests, managing to sound like he doesn't actually care that the building might come down at any time. "That's going to need wood and good stone.... workers too, I guess. Good luck with that."

"Hold on, do any of the ninja have any building skills?" you ask quickly.

... the lazy man just laughs, like you've told a funny joke.

Well.

A location has been made. Seems like there's a well, a very deep one, so that's water. Food... might be more of a problem. They can probably at least cook for themselves, if there's something to eat, but....

You try to imagine the hardened criminals going around the temple with brooms and dust-cloths, beating out clothes and hanging them on lines to dry. Your mind fails to accept the image. It is... you think... the sort of mission that you can hire ninja to do if you have a lot of income to pointlessly dispose of, but you think they set the trainees to handle things like that.

You can't help but assess the situation and start clarifying what you need immediately. Builders and material are one. People to clean up and sort anything that was... left behind. It would probably be best to stockpile food and have someone on duty just to cook it...

How?

You flip through the papers quickly, reading... already taken a couple of missions, somehow. Ninja move quickly when they have a mind, and being able to confidently claim they're part of an organization instead of solo actors means that they can charge enough to take what they've become accustomed to and pass the rest into communal funds.

You don't think it's enough to solve even one of those problems just by paying for it directly.

"There's no way just paying for it is going to work yet. Not reading your mind, but your expressions are saying everything." the lazy man agrees. "I'm sure you'll figure something out."

.... you could delay non-essentials. Pay for what's needed most immediately, and then delay the rest for later. Or... you guess ninja can just take the things that are needed and go. Maybe the people too. That's... going to make it obvious that something is going on somewhere, though. There will probably be missions made for other ninja to figure out the strange thefts and kidnapping, in a strange sort of irony.

Maybe there's some kind of happy medium. If you can't even make a plan for this... it doesn't say anything good about your life expectancy, at the moment.

---

[ ] ??

 

[Vindictus]

I think he's confused Shrine Country with Demon Country.

That said, though, looking at the following map, River is in the lands between the lands of Wind and Fire- Which means it's not exactly likely to be the staging ground for a massive war, since Wind and Fire are pretty steadily allied aside from that one time, which can be laid at the feet of Orochimaru anyway.

Bear Country is just as likely to be a staging ground, given it's literally right next door.

EDIT- Oh, great, we get to go for middle of nowhere mode, K, thanks guys.

 

[ragoogar]

There's a Nara in this shindig? Or does Nara just happens to be his first name? Cause having a fucking genius backup kinda blows the contingency of making yourself irreplaceable in the bureaucracy you might eventually set up If the Nara can just take over if the situation gets dire enough.

Well, sustainability first I guess, Full Recon of the area, accounting of all supplies and harvestable resources, Repairs to the main facilities. etc etc.

 

[Guile]

There's a Nara in this shindig? Or does Nara just happens to be his first name? Cause having a fucking genius backup kinda blows the contingency of making yourself irreplaceable in the bureaucracy you might eventually set up If the Nara can just take over if the situation gets dire enough.

Well, sustainability first I guess, Full Recon of the area, accounting of all supplies and harvestable resources, Repairs to the main facilities. etc etc.

Click to shrink...

Nara Insert-name-here sure didn't get into the ninja business to administrate, here.

[X] Okay, first is to visit the moneylenders. The shadier the better, really; they're more likely to take out loans at usurious rates which they can use to lean on their clients later, but leaning on ninja... doesn't really work so well. And if we need to murder them all, people are less likely to complain about the local yaks (or whatever) getting axed. For now, one more poor pilgrim acquiring money at any cost doesn't seem too hard to accomplish.
-[X] Food is the most immediately pressing issue. Focus on that first.
-[X] A surprisingly large issue will be hiring builders and cooks. If the moneylender thing works out, it might be smart to hire builders from further away, people who haven't heard the superstition, and pretend to be priests reopening the temple.The cook potion... perhaps we can find someone younger, who is somewhat disenchanted with the whole priest lifestyle.
-[X] If we have more ninja than we jobs, collecting alms might do the trick for now. Combines acquiring (small) money with spy work, unlikely to look out of place in a land of monks and pilgrims.

 

[Silversun17]

bandits, their the key to solving our problems. have some of the sneaker of the ninja covertly take out the bandit gangs in the region and we can loot their stuff to pay for a fair chunk of what we need.

 

[Lon]

True We should set it up as a protection deal. We first send out our ninja for advertisement of our new village and to gather resources and then hopefully depending on how they do it'll bring in the resources and jobs.

 

[Darkened]

Bandits, the solution to our problems.

Steal the things we need, work the situation into getting OUR village commissioned to figure out where stuff went, then pin the blame on bandits and claim that they already seem to have sold it off.

Sadly, the bandits all seem to have come down with a rather sudden case of dead and, as such, can't dispute our claims.

 

[Lon]

[X] Send out the ninja to find the local bandit camps.
- [X] After we find them. Locate places around the bandit camps that have stuff we need and have our ninja raid them and leave clues that make it look like the bandits caused it.
[X] If everything goes to plan, the locals should post up jobs to get rid of the bandits that 'raided' them. Do those jobs, and raid the bandit camps for supplies and workers.

So something like this?

 

[Roarky]

Nara Insert-name-here sure didn't get into the ninja business to administrate, here.

[X] Okay, first is to visit the moneylenders. The shadier the better, really; they're more likely to take out loans at usurious rates which they can use to lean on their clients later, but leaning on ninja... doesn't really work so well. And if we need to murder them all, people are less likely to complain about the local yaks (or whatever) getting axed. For now, one more poor pilgrim acquiring money at any cost doesn't seem too hard to accomplish.
-[X] Food is the most immediately pressing issue. Focus on that first.
-[X] A surprisingly large issue will be hiring builders and cooks. If the moneylender thing works out, it might be smart to hire builders from further away, people who haven't heard the superstition, and pretend to be priests reopening the temple.The cook potion... perhaps we can find someone younger, who is somewhat disenchanted with the whole priest lifestyle.
-[X] If we have more ninja than we jobs, collecting alms might do the trick for now. Combines acquiring (small) money with spy work, unlikely to look out of place in a land of monks and pilgrims.

Click to shrink...

Um, moneylenders.. That seems like a terrible idea to me, even shady ones, as they will most likely go for the more profitable option of SELLING INFORMATION ABOUT US. Even if they don't right away, as soon as they are paid back, and we are starting to stabilize as a village, they will do so to earn an extra profit. That's assuming they don't do so before then out of fear we'll kill them before paying them back, or just after to keep them quiet (which would also send up flags for the professional spies and assassins looking for us. I'll think about your other suggestions when I'm home, and not on a ridiculously small cell screen.

**Edit** Okay, now that I'm home, I'll admit how I typed it looks more abrasive than I meant it to, but I feel my point still stands. The moneylenders can easily lean on us by setting hunter-nin on or trails, and them suddenly disappearing would have the same effect. Raiding places without using enough chakra to make it obvious we're missing-nin might be a good idea, but until we're better established taking official missions would also be suspicious and have us being looked into. If, however, some of the richer bandit gangs were wiped out by "Rival Gangs" or a band of traveling mercenaries who were just passing through and thought it might be worth a reward, we might be able to swing that.

Alternately, we could exchange some jobs for repairs or supplies instead of conventional funding for a short time to cover the repair expenses. If those same bandit groups came across the unfortunate workmen as they headed home, we could keep them quiet about the new monks as well. You know, the odd ones that had a secret, underground compound dug under their shrine and had all sorts of secret passageways installed. And their odd meditative practices that involved sitting on the sides of trees.

 

[Guile]

Um, moneylenders.. That seems like a terrible idea to me, even shady ones, as they will most likely go for the more profitable option of SELLING INFORMATION ABOUT US. Even if they don't right away, as soon as they are paid back, and we are starting to stabilize as a village, they will do so to earn an extra profit. That's assuming they don't do so before then out of fear we'll kill them before paying them back, or just after to keep them quiet (which would also send up flags for the professional spies and assassins looking for us. I'll think about your other suggestions when I'm home, and not on a ridiculously small cell screen.

Click to shrink...

I'm not really seeing the danger. We go to them as a single person looking for money, not any kind of missing nin group. Then when they come to collect, we have our ninja murder them.

At no point in those sequence of events does it seem likely to me that some yakuza will have the opportunity to narc on us.

 

[Lon]

I'm not really seeing the danger. We go to them as a single person looking for money, not any kind of missing nin group. Then when they come to collect, we have our ninja murder them.

At no point in those sequence of events does it seem likely to me that some yakuza will have the opportunity to narc on us.

Click to shrink...

On the other hand, there's probably a reason why most missing nin don't do this. I mean, Zabuza was entirely willing to honor his dealing with Gatou even though it probably would have been easier to just kill the guy. So there might be things we're missing. Even Akatsuki was willing to honor their deals. And they had the power to not need to listen to anybody.

 

[Roarky]

I'm not really seeing the danger. We go to them as a single person looking for money, not any kind of missing nin group. Then when they come to collect, we have our ninja murder them.

At no point in those sequence of events does it seem likely to me that some yakuza will have the opportunity to narc on us.

Click to shrink...

I don't thing that would get around the red flag. I mean, a moneylender (if it's a shady one, then almost certainly with ties to a group of yaks if not being one out right) goes to collect money, presumably with bodyguards or enforcers, disappears while going to collect money from one person. Either that one person is strong enough to take them all out himself and most likely a missing-nin or foreign agent acting in another country*, or he is acting as a front man for a group of people who don't want to be found, in this case meaning ninjas who are up to something that they don't want any word getting out about. That of course means it's something that they want to know about.

*After all, in political situations, if foreign shinobi are acting in an non-ally nation, every other group of shinobi will want to know why since that can radically change the geo-political climate.

 

[Heaven Canceler]

On the other hand, there's probably a reason why most missing nin don't do this. I mean, Zabuza was entirely willing to honor his dealing with Gatou even though it probably would have been easier to just kill the guy. So there might be things we're missing. Even Akatsuki was willing to honor their deals. And they had the power to not need to listen to anybody.

Click to shrink...

Same reason that a Mafia Boss normally doesn't outright lie to the People he makes deals with. If people know he is a lying bastard, no one will make deals with him. Worse, it is only a question of time until someone hires their own Shinobi to get rid of him, especially if there is some Family member of the guy he killed still alive.

 

[Roarky]

Well, I have to admit, Shrine country exceeded my worst fears. However, there is the little mention of something special about it from the missing-nin that I find quite interesting and promising, so that balances it out some. This will end in either glory or fire, with plenty of each along the way, I bet. >