[Moloch]

Doria is a place of no modest history. Located in the south of the Greater Aen Empire, and limited by the whereabouts of the Silent Expanse, it works as a heavily militarized city-state under the vassalage of the crown. 

Its origins date to the age of myth, when the world was still young and humans were few. Legend calls it the place where Ualdir buried the first of his sons, whose ichor bled out past the thin and virgin soil and formed the river of Mardi — baptized after him —, from which the first Dorian man emerged. Whether the assertion is true or not, drinking from the stream of Mardi is a rite of passage for the few young men who survive their weathering and training.

The leftover blessings of the godchild, supposedly lethal to lesser men, are said to excite the fires of war and fury in a warrior's stomach, planting the seed of a perfect soldier in an otherwise mortal vessel. They who recover from the illness of Mardi's phantasm are believed to be fated to become heroes or generals of legend. It is said that men born in this land, fed on harvest grown from the soil that Mardi lay beneath, are unlike regular men. Their complexion is different, vibrant, and olive in color. Their eyes bear an iron-upon-sand tint of red, and their bodies are trained to withstand punishment and great strain.

Yet, few are the boys who ever make it to the point, for conscription is mandatory for all youths aged eight, and its drills are ruthless. It is the conditioning lapse with the highest mortality rate documented in all of modern Aegis, though its results make this excusable since it has made the city-state known for training the most ferocious, effective, and loyal infantrymen in the region.

Doria has never been documented losing a war, and is highly looked upon by the current Queendom of Irene II given their ability to successfully hold the front against Barsburg through the lands of the frontier for over sixty years. Their popularity (fame either good or bad depending on who refers to them) goes as far up as sainthood, for Saint Ignatius — after serving in a conjoined deployment upon Dorian soil — adopted many of their practices, and returned to his homeland bearing the banner of the Hoplites, held as a memento to ever recall their fellowship til the day he died.

They are not an area of great wealth, but their population is equally low to match. Its army is only ever constituted of a maximum of a couple of thousand, and despite the fact that its approach and equipment is rustic and upfront in nature, they seldom err out of athletic virtue, tenacity, and strategic knowhow.