Whatâs up with the Shinobi?
The Dragonblood Village was not a ninja village.
It wasnât a massive city like Narutoâs Konohagakure, it was an actual village â a subsistence-level farming community where the people struggled to grow food from infertile land. These people were too busy fighting the land and its wild beasts to support a trained military force like Konohaâs shinobi corps.
It couldnât have even been like a ninja village from the real world, or else the Shinobi and other trained members of the village would have been serving as spies and mercenaries for King Medius or some other powerful figure. But the King and his people would rather destroy the Dragonblood Clan than make use of them, and itâs only after the destruction of Dragonblood Village that any clansmen venture to the city to become mercenary adventurers.
By all appearances, the Dragonblood Village just wanted to live and let live, focused more on merely surviving the hostile environment of their home and trading with their few neighbors rather than interacting with any of the kingdoms.
It does still make sense that someone like the Shinobi would exist. The Dragonblood Clan know their enemies would like to destroy them, and the Divine Family likely attempted attacks in the past. The power granted by Atruumâs blood wouldnât always be enough, so it makes sense the community would permit some of their own to focus entirely on training for combat rather than farming the land, with the community providing them food in return for protection.
So the Shinobi was born to one of the villageâs previous guardians, and he and his friend were trained from birth in the arts of stealth and combat, so that they could one day take over as the sentinels watching over their people.
What makes less sense is why his friend would be considered a ânukeninâ for running away to Marlayus, and then hunted down and forced to return.
As I understand it, the primary threat a ârunaway ninjaâ posed to a ninja village was exposing their existence and giving up all of their secrets. But what secrets would a poor farming village have? The villageâs enemies knew exactly where it was.
It just seems like a waste of time and energy hunting down a trained ninja who doesnât want to serve the village anymore. How is capturing him and dragging him back supposed to change his mind? They canât spare the resources to imprison him, and they canât trust him to not run away again, and clearly they didnât intend to kill him since the Shinobi was bringing him back alive when the village was attacked.
Oh, and I think someone over at TVTropes supposes that the Shinobi and his friend were trained by the branch of the Dragonblood Clan in Marlayus, but that doesnât make any sense either. If the two branches had so much contact with each other, why would anyone care that much if his friend ran away from one to join the other?
Indeed, the Shinobiâs friend running away to that specific country seems to me to be the only hint we have that anyone in the Dragonblood Village knew anything about the existence of the Marlayus Dragonblood branch.
