

[X] The Gambling Bodyguards

The idea of this plan is to acquire money in the least risky ways, and see if we can achieve our goals with minimal risk, while keeping open riskier opportunities if this doesn't pan out. We won't commit to purchasing things until later (especially chocolate), and we won't rule out certain courses of action (like stealing stuff or going high stakes gambling), but we'll do the safe stuff to start and hope it pans out. If it starts to look like it won't pan out or Inoue returns, then we reconsider and update accordingly (read, vote for another plan), exact conditions to be met for revision are below. This means to start, we'll be doing bodyguard work (or other mundane jobs) and low stakes gambling. The plan has several parts. First, we will be training throughout the week, maximizing our effectiveness for what we're doing now and preparing contingencies for if we need to steal something. Second, we'll be making lots of money, by working mundane jobs in the mornings-afternoons and running a gambling scam in the evening. Here's the breakdown.



Training:



Hazou (51 XP): Master of the dice & locks

Chakra Regeneration 5 [10]

Chakra Capacity 5 [15]

Manipulation 3 [21]

Deception 5 [26]

Deception 6 [32]

Mechanical Aptitude 1 [33]

Mechanical Aptitude 2 [35]

Mechanical Aptitude 3 [38]

Remaining XP = 13 (Will need to earn 15 XP to get to sealing 4)



This build increases our available chakra by 100, allowing for 10 more henges over the course of the week. It also increases deception to 6 for Hazou, which will be important, as that is likely what we will need to roll the most for our gambling scheme, or to spot if someone is deceiving us. It should still leave him with enough XP to get to sealing 4, barring something terrible happening. We'll be using our bloodline to help us train Mechanical Aptitude as a contingency for if we need to steal something (lockpicking).



Keiko (49 available XP): The Watchtower

Chakra Regeneration 4 [8]

Chakra Capacity 4 [12]

Diplomacy 1 [13]

Diplomacy 2 [15]

Awareness 8 [23]

Awareness 9 [32]

Manipulation 2 [36]

Deception 3 [39]

Dexterity 3 [45]

Remaining XP = 4 (Will need to earn 20 XP for weapons 9 or Stealth 9)



This build increases our available chakra by 100, allowing for 10 more henges over the course of the week. It also brings Keiko up to at least average diplomacy ability, and slightly above average deception. She can also act as a second fairly high awareness person for the team. Given the rule change on deception, we'll want Keiko to get to higher deception levels. That said, she will probably want to train weapons once we're out of the city, to maximize the bang for our sealing buck. 20 XP should be achievable before we finish training with Kagome. Also, this allows for her to potentially become substantially stealthy if necessary for a scheme later in the week.



Noburi (35 available XP): The diplomat

Chakra Control 5 [10]

Presence 3 [16]

Diplomacy 5 [21]

Diplomacy 6 [27]

Stealth 4 [31]

Remaining XP = 4 (will need to earn 7 XP for stealth 6)



Noburi is our chakra battery, which is very important for this mission. Increasing chakra control to 5 gives him 30 more Chakra of storage. He also should be our public leader when we engage in open dialog. Giving him diplomacy 6 should make that possible. Finally, his stealth is the lowest of all our stealth scores, so we want it higher for anything which will require stealth, which is a lot of things.



Making the Money:

Execution note: We propose this plan to our teammates, not demanding that they follow it, but offering it as a plan for us to follow, letting Noburi be the leader and final decision maker. If both Keiko and Noburi think another plan is better, or that there are revisions we should make to this plan, we make those revisions or follow that other plan, but we do push for this plan (we're now a fairly socially aware young ninja after all).

Preparations:

For the remainder of tonight, we each work on perfecting 5-ish throwaway henges we can each use in a bar, and practice how we'll be playing craps (give Keiko and Noburi the rundown on how it works, and go over betting procedure and whatnot). In general, we expect to use 4-5 henges a day, 1 at the start to go to work, 2 or 3 for gambling, and the original 1 to return to our lodgings. This should cost us 120-150 chakra. Sleeping regains ~ 90 chakra, and we should regain about 90 chakra during the day (unless we run into trouble). That gives us a net +40-70 chakra per day to practice henges, and have as a buffer if we run into problems, or expand our gambling to 6 locations per night if time permits. We also have a net chakra capacity of 240 CP, which should make us reasonably safe, even if we wind up at mildly low chakra levels (e.g. if we're jumped at the end of the day, we still have some chakra to fight if necessary).

Mundane work:

Come morning, we look for work, preferably as bodyguards (without reference for now). We try to get a job for the three of us for hours when people won't be gambling too much (e.g. during the morning/day/afternoon). If a job as a bodyguard is not forthcoming, or if they are not needed that day, then we look for other means of money making during the day, ideally as supply runners or messengers. Note that if we accept a job requiring travel to a different city, we can get paid for time we didn't spend traveling (since we can move faster than expected since we're ninja). Spend about 10 hours doing this (0700-1700)

Estimated earnings: 1,200-8,100 ryo (depending on luck and job availability). If we get a job that pays more than 300 ryo per hour per person, but requires doing stuff at night (and isn't excessively dangerous for us), then we do that and have it cut into our gambling time.

Gambling:

Come evening (1800), we go to a bar, (one of the 12 places Hazou found where people play craps). We each go in with about 400 ryo per person. We play craps, and make reasonably small bets, ending with us collectively having earned approximately +100 ryo per other person in the game (so if there's 6 other people, we leave averaging about 600 ryo each, which shouldn't be too suspicious. So we earn between 300-800 ryo per game (split between the three of us), depending on how many people there are. If nobody seems to care about the money, or there's a sucker playing, feel free to earn more money. Once we've made a little more than we wanted, lose a couple times, then leave (one at a time). Reconvene somewhere else, re-henge (if we've used the henge twice already), and go to another bar. Go to 5 places, making intelligent revisions on each visit (if we lose all our money instantly, just stop, if we make a bunch, and nobody really notices or cares, win more, etc. We've got two people with 9 awareness, a 6 deception and a 6 diplomacy, let's use it to help our plans). Ideally, we spend 45 minutes to an hour at each location. If it gets past midnight, retire and go back to the inn. Spread out the chakra exhaustion so that nobody is ever below 20 CP (use Noburi's barrel). If we get through all five places and it's before midnight, try to find some more places to go to tomorrow. End by doing a debrief (preferably led by Noburi), and analysis of earnings and a couple suggestions on improvements for the next day. Dump almost all of Keiko and Hazou's chakra into Noburi's barrel (to help fill it) and sleep for 8 hours.

Estimated earnings: 1,500-4,000

Day 2:

Analyze how we did on day one, and update. If gambling didn't work out (i.e. we made less than 1,500 ryo from the night or people got incredibly suspicious), abandon that plan. If we got a really high paying job, pursue that. If things went about as expected, and we made between 3,000-11,000 ryo total, repeat our actions the next day. If something went terribly wrong, stop and replan a course of action.

Day 3:

If we're not at at least 10,000 ryo, reconsider our plans.

72 hours before meeting Kagome:

If all goes well, this is where we next reconsider our plans based on how much money we've made. We consider if we need to work on stealing things, do a larger-scale craps game at a casino, or do something else. Ideally, we'll have at least enough ryo for everything but the chocolate at that point, preferably more.

If Inoue comes at any point, reconsider plans based on her information, and update money making plans to include her.