Skillful! [T/O]

[Molokai]

SPOILER: Click to show

Tracking
Rank: "D"
Skill: Skill
Effect: Characters use this skill to follow the trail of animals and other persons.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: Can be learned by an Animal. Tracking means the user found a trail if they gain the check, while failure means they did not. If user fails this initial skill check, they simply cannot find that particular trail. After finding a trail, further checks may be necessary depending on the situation. Darkness, falling rain/snow, a dust storm, moving from one terrain to another (such as from sand to rock), one trail splitting into 2 or crossing water are examples why a user might need another Tracking check. Look in Task Skills thread found in the Skills and Traits Index for more information. Each time learned user gets 5 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

-0/10-
-0/125-

For all of his combat prowess, Taisen had barely even touched on the surface of the aspects of being a ninja that didn't involve fighting. It was about time he took the time to remedy this issue, and he decided to start with teaching himself how to track things.

Of course, he first needed something to track, and it had to be something that would make a decent enough trail for him to learn on. So, naturally, he created a shadow clone of himself and sent the clone off into the wilderness.

Giving it a few hours head start, Taisen occupied himself doing push-ups and stuff before finally starting to look around for a trail to follow. First things first, what did he know about his quarry? Well, it was a clone of himself. Specifically, it was big, clumsy, wore lots of black, and was often loud. So, he started searching the wood line for evidence that something large and ungraceful had passed by, although he wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for. Eventually, he noticed in the mud a wafflestomper boot print right on the edge of the underbrush. He pretty much knew exactly what it was from, but he made a point of examining it to practice looking for details.

Judging by the variations in size from one side of the print to the other, it appeared that the toe end was pointing into the woods, predictably enough. Also, based on the curvature of the boot print, which was not much, it seemed as though it was the right foot of whatever it was. Estimated to be a size very large, it did seem to match up with the description he had of what he was chasing. Of course, differentiating tracks was a different skill in and of itself, but luckily he recognized the sole pattern and the print was the deepest and freshest in the area anyway.

Looking up from the ground, he searched the immediate area for anything that might have been disturbed by a large presence passing by it. Sure enough, there was a wet muddy patch on top of an exposed root, indicative of something with muddy feet stepping on it. Also, a small sapling had been pretty ruthlessly smashed. Between both of these was more boot prints, although slightly less pronounced where the ground was harder or more covered in leaves. All of this made it pretty clear where his quarry had entered the woods and which direction it was going. So far so good.

He started walking in the direction, trying to match the steps that he could make out. He kept his nose to the ground, very carefully examining the orientation of the pronounced and muddy prints in fear of them veering off. After a while, however, the soft ground started to harden and a greater quantity of leaves littered the forest floor. Thus, the prints became harder and harder to distinguish until they disappeared entirely. Suddenly struck with a lack of idea what to do about this, he went back to the last print he could clearly identify and looked all around from there.

Faintly, he could see that just beyond a group of trees in front of him there was an opening with waist-high grass instead of trees. There was, of course, no indication that his quarry had gone in that direction, but he went over to examine it all the same. Sure enough, after a few minutes of looking very closely at the edge of the brush, he saw a smashed sapling. Emerging into the grassy clearing right where the smashed plant was, he could then clearly make out a trail of flattened grass that led right into the woods on the other side. Feeling heartened that he had rediscovered the trail, he followed the flattening and ducked back into the wooded area.

From there, he became lost again. There wasn't any mud left, so footprints weren't anywhere to be seen, and all of the underbrush looked the same. He didn't even know where to begin looking for disturbances that he could trace. Just then, something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. Snapping his vision to his right, he saw himself just casually sitting next to a campfire that he had somehow totally failed to notice. The smoke the fire gave off was light, and the flame was small and not very bright, but the crackling sound was unmistakable.

Not exactly hard to track, the clone was. It made Taisen pause for a second and wonder if he should rethink how he moves through areas like this. After all, if he could find himself, anybody could.

[Father 'Suke]

+10 TP
+37 SP

37/125 SP

Note: when training skills, please also include a note saying you have able learner or any other appropriate bonuses to be applied.

[Molokai]

SPOILER: Click to show

Tracking
Rank: "D"
Skill: Skill
Effect: Characters use this skill to follow the trail of animals and other persons.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: Can be learned by an Animal. Tracking means the user found a trail if they gain the check, while failure means they did not. If user fails this initial skill check, they simply cannot find that particular trail. After finding a trail, further checks may be necessary depending on the situation. Darkness, falling rain/snow, a dust storm, moving from one terrain to another (such as from sand to rock), one trail splitting into 2 or crossing water are examples why a user might need another Tracking check. Look in Task Skills thread found in the Skills and Traits Index for more information. Each time learned user gets 5 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

+2 Rolls for Able Learner Trait.

-0/10-
-37/125-

Some pretty good progress was already made. Taisen always had an easy time learning new things, even things he had to figure out himself. This first exercise had taken so long, though, that the sun was beginning to set. Where most people would have seen this and called it a day, Taisen saw an opportunity for more training. He created another shadow clone and closed his eyes as it went off into the wilderness. Once the sun was finally in contact with the horizon, he set off after it.

Now, he already had a pretty good idea of which direction his quarry went just because he could hear it leave. However, some hours had passed and he wasn't quite sure precisely where it started. With the encroaching darkness, he got started looking around for the signs. Footprints would have been easiest, but the ground around here was much drier than it had been back at his starting point. If there were any, they would be faint. Of course, they would stand out against animal tracks, as it was doubtful that many deer wore boots, but even in full lighting they would be hard to identify on the hard ground. So, he picked his head up and looked around for other things that might identify which way a big, clumsy guy might have gone.

Against a particularly large tree, Taisen noticed that one of it's tiny, sapling branches was bent in a direction pointing away from where the clone had originated. Deciding to take a closer look at this, he examined it thoroughly and found cracks on the bent part, indicating that something had pushed it on its way passed. Given the height of the branch, it was definitely something Taisen's size. Starting there, he pushed passed in the direction that the branch was pointing, already struggling to deal with the ever deepening darkness.

A little further along, Taisen noticed a steep but short gulch crossing the path that he thought the clone might have taken. By now, he had already pulled out his fancy new goggles and had set them to night vision. So, with everything green and slightly grainy, he decided to give this gulch a look for a minute. Sure enough, not too far from where he had first happened upon the gulch, there was a line of freshly disturbed dirt running down the gulch with a pile of crushed leaves at the bottom. Clearly, this was an indication that something had slid down this hill at some point, and there was a pretty good chance it was the clone. Making sure to slide down the very same place so that he was more or less in line with where the clone had gone, he continued down the trail.

Much to his dismay, he came to a small creek before he had located any other signs of passage. At this point, he thought it was impossible because he had no way of knowing if the clone had crossed the creek or just decided to follow it so as not to leave a trail to begin with. Of course, the creek itself would be the trail, but only if Taisen knew for a fact that his quarry had decided to follow it. Hoping to find some sort of indication one way or the other, Taisen hopped the creek and examined the opposite bank for a while. No footprints anywhere to be found except for the ones that he just made, which implied that if the clone had taken a similar path it would have left similar prints.

It was hard to notice, but something caught Taisen's eye as he scanned the creek itself. Because it was nighttime, water didn't evaporate as quickly as it would have during the day. So, when the clone splashed some water on a nearby rock as it followed the creek, the clearly directional splashing pattern on a rock. The algae on this rock also implied that the part of the rock that was now wet wasn't likely so because of the changing level of the creek. Amazing how such small details can make a difference if someone pays enough attention. Taisen committed to following the creek and after a couple of miles he saw footprints in the bank mud. Easy, peasy. He switched his goggles to thermal imaging mode and was immediately presented with a pitch black world. However, far in the distance, just behind the tree line, was a bright, white dot next to a smaller, undulating white dot. A man next to a fire. Found him.

Taisen came bursting into the clearing and took off his goggles, met with his clone sitting there roasting weenies. Puzzled as to where the clone got the weenies, but less so that he was totally stoked about finding it again, he dispelled the clone and posted up next to the fire that it had created. As he sat beside it, he mused again on all the ways that he had tracked himself and thought about how he could cover his tracks later. Step one: don't light fires.

[Father 'Suke]

62|125
+25 SP
+10 TP

[Molokai]

SPOILER: Click to show

Tracking
Rank: "D"
Skill: Skill
Effect: Characters use this skill to follow the trail of animals and other persons.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: Can be learned by an Animal. Tracking means the user found a trail if they gain the check, while failure means they did not. If user fails this initial skill check, they simply cannot find that particular trail. After finding a trail, further checks may be necessary depending on the situation. Darkness, falling rain/snow, a dust storm, moving from one terrain to another (such as from sand to rock), one trail splitting into 2 or crossing water are examples why a user might need another Tracking check. Look in Task Skills thread found in the Skills and Traits Index for more information. Each time learned user gets 5 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

+2 Rolls for Able Learner Trait.

-0/10-
-62/125-

Taisen had always been a quick study, and for some reason teaching himself to track had captured his interest. He returned to his forest a few days later during one of the nearly constant rainstorms that plagues Water Country. Just like before, he formed a shadow clone and set it off in a random direction while he closed his eyes and la-la-la'd so he wouldn't hear it. Several hours later, he spun around a few times and stopped facing some random tree, then began the tracking process.

Already, he started to wonder why in the world he did this to himself. Somewhere in the world, a shadow clone of himself was probably sitting next to a fire like an idiot, while the real version of himself tromped around through the mud and rain like an idiot. With his idiot nose to the ground, Taisen started digging around for signs of where the clone had gone. Rain, of course, would wash away most everything, which was why he chose to challenge himself during a rain storm. However, it didn't appear as though it washed away everything. Sure enough, the most common and visible of all signs could still be seen, a goddamn foot print. His big ass boots left an indentation in the soft ground so deep that it basically turned int a foot-shaped puddle. Not only that, but there were some specks of mud on the plants around the print, which Taisen perceived to be a result of mud kicking up as the clone walked.

Feeling pretty good about himself, having been able to identify a trail even in the rain, he headed in the direction that the print was pointing. Suddenly conscious that the longer this took, the more awash everything would be, he tried to keep his pace up as he moved through the forest. The trail wasn't as faint as he expected it to be, which was working out in his favor. Turns out, the fact that it had been raining for a while before he arrived softened the ground enough that the muddy footprint thing from earlier still applied. Useful, too, was the fact that the clone was big and made deep prints anyway.

Beneath a particularly leafy tree, where the ground beneath was ever so slightly drier, Taisen discovered a glob of mud on an exposed root. He was pretty mystified by this until he decided to scrape his boot on a different one and found the mud to look almost identical. It hit him then, the mud globule thing was from the clone scraping its boot in the same way. Pretty obvious after he thought about it, really. At least he knew he was on the right track. Speaking of right tracks, though, he suddenly found it very difficult to figure out which direction the trail headed off in right after this. The underbrush was thick, but made more flexible by the moisture so it didn't break as often. There weren't any footprints in the mud that he could easily spot, either. Circling the tree and looking in any direction he could think of, he found himself genuinely stumped.

Stopping to think about this, he tried to imagine what he would do if it were him. It was helpful that it was actually him who was doing it. On a hunch, he started looking at some of the knee high leaves in the area. Nothing, at first, but around the side of the tree that was almost going back the way he came, he spotted some faint mud traces on top of some leaves there. They were very hard to see, almost completely washed away, and they were going almost directly back the way the clone had gone. Still, it was a trail, so Taisen committed to following it even if it turned out to be nothing. Most surprisingly, after a short time of going in that general direction, he again picked up the muddy footprint trail. Mud, a tracker's best friend. If only everywhere was equally as muddy.

In the distance, he could see between the trees and brush, was a rocky cliff just beyond the tree line. It seemed tall, and the trail appeared to be leading directly to it. Taisen figured it was possible that the clone had sought shelter from the storm, and an indentation in the wall of this cliff would be perfect for that. The trail was also indicating such things, as Taisen noticed a few more boot-scrapings as he continued on. Breaking out into the small clearing between the trees and the wall, he looked it up and down and tried to figure out which way the clone had gone. Being the idiot that he was, it didn't take long before the wafting odor of a campfire came drifting on by. Busting out his heat vision goggles again, he saw a large heat source radiating from somewhere to his left.

Sure enough, there sat the stupid clone next to its stupid fire, warm, dry, and very much discovered.

[Father 'Suke]

+10 TP
+25 SP

87|125

[Molokai]

With quite a lot of progress made in only a few short days, Taisen decided to get back into the village and start working on other techniques. Important to remain balanced, it is.

(exit)