A brief update this time, hopefully with more to follow during the next two weeks.
So how are we doing?
As anticipated, nothing new has been written since last week and the story’s word count remains unchanged. I had a revelation regarding a certain plot which will occur later, but which I can start foreshadowing soon. This has been put into the notes for the relevant chapters. Other than that, truth to tell, I’ve been busy working on my exam project, which I turned in this Friday, so while I have written a lot, it was alas exclusively academical in nature.
The next two weeks…
…are looking up!
I do have a bunch of stuff I need to see to, but none of this stuff particularly requires my full attention or focus, apart from a single day (next Wednesday) where I have to defend my exam project. After that, I start getting lots of free time on my hands.
I am really hoping that I can finally get a lore post out (if not the chakra one, some other one which is less complicated), and I also think I can start getting a fair bit of writing done. I don’t know if I’ll really hit my writing stride in the next two weeks (if I do, anticipate a large word count increase), but I should certainly be able to write a whole lot more than I’ve had for the many past weeks. I’m frankly aching to get started.
Until next time!
The Forge 
Yeah more lore.
HOw you explain the summoned Animals?
Their kingdom exist in a remote part of the ninja world or in some parallel plane?
Why the accepet the pact fo fighting alongside ninjas?
Because some ninja created/bioengegneered them hundreds years before and they must serve all descendands?
Do they get something after ninja’s death? Soul, body parts, chakra cahnnels?
Do they require some scarifces (possibly human) on daily basis to keep the pact going?
I can hardly immagine anything I can offer a 50 meters high toad to risk his life for me.
Among various summons made by fans the one I liked most were the rabbits.
They talles is as talla as man but they are incrdeibly fast and ninja clothes looks awesome on a rabbit.
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The summoned animals are a very tricky subject. I could (and probably will) fill a longer lore post with my thoughts on them, but I do have a few points that I am fairly sure about – though I reserve the right to change the following lore points at any time. It’s all written on the spur of the moment, so take it as just that – idle comments, not definite fact.
First, I have to say that I don’t really like the, for lack of a better word, “flavor” that the summon races bring to the table. From a strategic/national perspective, either they must be highly significant, or they must be not particularly significant. There is little middle ground, here, and I don’t like the implications of making such contracts extremely significant factors in national considerations. I’ve gone with the second option. In short, whether someone in Konoha holds the toad contract or not, should not make a significant difference for Konoha’s military capabilities.
First, summons are physically a lot smaller than they are in canon. Canon has been very inconsistent about this, so I’ve had to make a choice. Fifty meter high toads or snakes hundreds of meters long are not a thing. They are still enormous, and they are still capable of using chakra and performing techniques, meaning they are formidable warriors – but they are not that ridiculously big. I haven’t decided on an exact scale for the largest animals yet, but when they do show up, I will.
Contracts are extremely rare, to the point that about as many people have them as in canon, only the portrayed amount of ninja around has increased a lot compared to canon, so the rarity of contracts has gone up enormously. Kakashi does not have a dog contract in IFF, for example. I found that actual intelligent usage of such a contract would change the character too much, and it doesn’t make much sense for him to hold that contract anyway – how and when did he get it? How is he holding on to it? Which payments are the dogs demanding from him? Wouldn’t it make more sense for someone in the Inuzuka clan to hold that contract anyways? Acquiring a summoning contract is a daunting task which few succeed at, and it’s rare to even get the opportunity to try. The Sannin are legendary ninja partly due to the fact that all three of them have summoning contracts. This is, to put it very mildly, extremely unusual.
I’ve also wanted to make the summons… stranger. In IFF, the psychology of the summon races is completely alien; very peculiar and inhuman. They are not easily understood, and only a fool would attempt to assign them human emotions and motivations. If you were to ask a toad why its clan formed a contract with a particular ninja, you would not be able to get a clear answer, and certainly not one which made any sense to you.
They do demand payment for services rendered, which can be anything from material payments to services performed for them in return. It’s rarely obvious how precisely the payment in question actually benefits them. Sometimes the payments can be very… odd and eerily prescient; sometimes people will only realize much later what they actually paid. The origin of the summon races is as unknown as the origin of chakra itself – it’s all shrouded in legend and myth, since the chaos of the sage’s time and the following centuries means that very few records were preserved.
There’s a lot of reasoning behind all of this, of course, and most of that will eventually go into some half OOC, half IC lore post. I don’t think it’s going to be the subject of the next one, though, which is why I chose to reply slightly in depth here. Perhaps some details will have changed by then, but the basics should definitely remain the same. Hope you found it interesting!
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In case you were really wondering.
Yes I found it extremely Intresting.
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