I cannot find anything in my account that says what I've earned, what I've been paid, and what I'm owed. To say I don't get paid until N exceeds 5 x difficulty + delta tells me exactly nothing. What is my N

Do you have any plans to provide transparency for miners

I think PPLNS is the worst thing ever conceived for miners. I can see why you like it since payouts significantly lag work done.
I guess in 14 hours I'll see how much I'm paid for the first block found since I started mining here.
This is one of the most transparent pools out there and yes PPLNS can be confusing (payouts originally had me confused also - search PPLNS and read) and it is up to you to crunch your own numbers.
If you are looking for a pool that has a glitzy GUI with all the canned reports I suggest you look through :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.0 as this might not be the pool for you.
You will also need to be patient as if you recently joined it will take some time for your full payout to ramp up (if you do wait you will be glad you did). Kano has explained his payment method several times
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.msg9855962#msg9855962w Good Luck and Happy Mining.