Outside the window, Nangorod struggled it’s way through the morning. Anrada watched as merchants ducked between tents to deliver their goods on time, and small queues formed outside government shelters for the daily bread and fruit suppliments. This place had emerged so suddenly after the Hokkaido War it didn’t even have proper buildings or streets, and it had somehow managed to sustain the brunt of factional infighting after her coup. It was here, the symbol for everything wrong with her country, that she had chosen to make her first personal visit as head of state.

Stepping back from the window, she looked around the room at the assembled staff, a collection of military and civilian officials who were scouring over papers and discussing their ideas. She’d assembled them to give her a situation report on Kamchatka, a few from the old government, most from the new. They had told her that without expansion or trade, her state would be dead in two years. She was just thankful they had been willing to say this to her face - convenient truths and yesmen were a reality of single figure rule that she was quickly coming to despise.

A few looked up as she took her seat back at the table and thumbed through her handout again. It seemed like there were three courses of action to take. Address the issue of starvation here in the south, search for new sources of materials to exploit, or find someone out there to trade with. She fiddled with a pen for a moment, and circled the second.

The First Action: A military ranging by the 2nd Goshan across the Kuril land bridge to the mainland, to establish a region of control. They would be instructed to reach the Arctic Coastline by the end of the year - though she didn’t expect them to make it so far so quickly. With them would go prospectors, surveyors, who would go ahead of the pack and investigate the lands beyond for useful materials and prosperous valleys.

The arrangements were made, and a number of the officers filed out of the room. One down. Later today she had to meet an official from China, it seemed. And tomorrow? She turned a page in the binder and glared at the inscrutable diagrams of fishing routes. Tomorrow… would be painful.

[Expanded to: RE064, RE063, RE066, RE073]

[The sad Abstract of a country that can afford 10,000 soldiers, 40 tanks, 200 planes, but somehow only 3 boats. I put a machine gun on one.]