In my five days, I had drafted a plan that involved multiple options dependent upon decisions that the mainland makes. After all, its not like this is our decision alone to do what we want, it partially relies on what the dwarves are willing to do as well. I was quite interested in seeing what the other ministers had come up with as well.

We reconvened to go over everyone's one and five year plans. About half of the plans were absolute disappointments, and really showed a fundamental lack of understanding for anything outside of their own sphere of influence. It wasn't just one side of the argument that had this scope issue either. Whether it was the army minister or the minister of terrestrial resources, they both had a very poor understanding of the rest of the economy, with their plans mostly just detailing out their portion of the economy with very vague allusions to what everyone else would be doing.

The bad presentations were also quite short, lasting a few minutes at most. Though I do wonder whether or not they were always intended to be that short, or if some of the ministers had shortened their own presentations after listening to better ones, simply because they no longer liked their own plan compared to another already presented one.

The naval minister's plan was quite interesting to me. For the one year plan, he wanted to focus heavily on upgrading our production of ships and their ammo, and the five year plan focused on essentially providing military support along the coasts of the dwarven continent. While it isn't necessarily a bad idea, it does have a few flaws. Foremost that it doesn't actually allow the dwarves to really retake their continent, and instead, would spread their defensive lines out over a much larger area. The enemy demons would be isolated to the center of the dwarven continent, but breaching the center would be a difficult task in and of itself.

Further, in a year, if we really focused all our efforts on it, we could probably double our production rate of ammo and ships, meaning about 2 ships a year, and the ammo to supply it. While a few ships can affect single battles, the dwarven continent is large enough that we'd need significantly more to turn the tide of war from the combat capabilities of our ships. It takes a lot of material to make one ship, and their main purpose is naval combat, rather than land support.

The aquatic resources minister had a slightly different take on the matter, but with very similar buildup. Essentially, their plan comprised of increasing manufacturing for the various items that could assist the dwarves in their war effort, whether that be artillery or otherwise, such that the fighting armies are more well armed and can potentially turn the tides all while they continue to build up a war debt with us. It was a very pragmatic approach to the situation, leaving it to the dwarves to determine what they believe they need to help end the war. Of course, if they lose the war, any profit is out the window.

The administrative minister laid out a decent plan too, centered around isolationism. They laid out, on a timetable, various projects that we have that we could be building on the island to strengthen ourselves, from expanded farming areas to further developing the far side of the island. They went out of their way to plan out projects that would benefit pretty much every minister here. It was a very convincing argument, which essentially pointed out all the sorts of improvements to our own lives that we're sacrificing by getting involved at all in the war.

The plan I laid out was quite different. My plan, should the dwarves agree to it, is to go around and gather up the dwarven refugees in other countries who wish to work to protect their homeland, and bring them to our island to do the labor necessary to expand our production of military goods. The first year would involve the initial relocation efforts and the planned construction and mining. We'd have the dwarves expand out the mines and metal processes, while we focus on expanding the necessary expansions to fluorite and explosives manufacturing.

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If things to well with my coming tests, one of the things we could begin manufacturing are the tanks to use for war. Since I suspect that Elora has already gathered the basic information on fluorite manufacturing, among other processes we developed, I'd much rather us be seen as the presenter of this technology to end the war, rather than the elves. So, if the tide of the war begins to shift into the dwarves favor, we can help them to begin building out these manufacturing processes in their own country to further accelerate the end of the war.

In exchange though, we'd want formal ties with the new dwarven country that forms, along with either a certain amount of resources as an agreement as well as an apportionment of land from the mainland that we could utilize as something of a trade hub for our future dealings. While that price is somewhat steep, if the elves and the humans are seemingly backing out of the war, we'd be the only ones betting on the dwarves. Should they succeed in retaking their homeland thanks to our help, the political ties between our countries should grow quite strong.

I also presented the counterpoint on the matter. We've sent the elves away, and a few of the humans have a bit of a grudge against us. We're an island nation, which means we have limited access to certain valuable resources. While our island is quite blessed, there are still certain things we can't get our hands on here. If the dwarves fall, we're essentially out of access to the mainland who may end up deciding it's easier to wipe us out than let us continue developing. Even if they're using decades old counterfeit technology they stole from us, it's possibly they simply overwhelm us. I doubt they'd make the same mistake Rathland did either.

Should the dwarves not want to take up with offer, then I advocated for a plan similar to what the aquatic resources minister said, where we simply try to provide what we can to shift the war ourselves, and failing that, we take in some refugees, and begin adjusting our manufacturing towards self preservation over time.

The reframing of the discussion as action plans did actually result in some ministers changing their votes. The initial round of votes was still quite distributed among various plans, but then we had open discussion for a about a half of an hour before another vote was called and the votes were starting to consolidate around my plan, the aquatic resources minister's plan, and the administrative minister's plan. After two more rounds of discussion and voting, my plan narrowly captured the majority vote, which included getting a vote from the administrative minister himself. The next step was to see if the dwarves would even agree to relocate their refugees here to work.

The next day, we presented the plan to Shasta. This resulted in a lot of negotiations. Many of the dwarven refugees on the human continent are already working towards the war effort, which complicates matters. My counterpoint was that, if times are desperate, and the humans are starting to abandon the dwarven continent, how will the dwarves who have been helping with the war effort until then feel? I'm not saying they need to be forcibly relocated, only that they should be given the choice to come here to produce weapons that can potentially what they're doing now. She agreed that it should be possible, but that a decision of this level would require Kao to sign off on it. In fact, pretty much all our requests require Kao to sign off on them.

The idea of ceding a portion of their land for us to build on, and the potential for an ongoing tax that they pay to repay us for our technology and assistance both are a bit too steep of a price for her to agree to herself. Which made me wonder what exactly she even was authorized to negotiate for in the first place. Perhaps she was only sent here to essentially try and buy a superweapon off of us or something? In any case, we don't really have such a weapon, but we do have the ability to manufacture things that would augment the dwarves military might by a considerable amount.

A ship will be dispatched in three days to go negotiate with Kao, and, should the deals work out, the ship will begin going to gather refugees to bring to our island.

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