Other countries : Amagal / Begus / Central
Author's note: Here's the fan lore I headcanon for Dorgania. The role-playing character here, the commander, will cover politics, economy, culture and a part of military topics.
I'll be honest. As a military fan, Dorgania is the country I had the most fun writing. Before I realized I had already write 125% more words than other countries. There are so many words that I have to separate it into 3 parts!
Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Dorgania is known to be a pragmatic country. Strong, rich, but cruel. Why do they rely on slavery so much? How do they build such a strong military? Let’s dive into the view of Dorgania to understand what makes them the way they are.
Geology
Dorgania spans across the western continent, huge swerves of land that are mostly desert. Water and vegetation are scarce but the underground is filled with precious minerals that are even more abundant than Begus, with some unconfirmed rumors even claim they found reservoirs of some black, sticky liquid. On their northern coast lies one of the only navigable sea bustles with maritime activities. Beyond their western borders connects a massive wasteland, roamed with hordes of monsters and demons that are a hundred times more ferocious and brutal than any monster seen in other 3 countries.
The populations are mostly consists of survivors/descendants from the original Dorgania (white people) and natives (black people), along with wide varieties of other species like orcs, elves and vampires. They generally live in towns founded near oasis, either natural or artificially made by Water Spirit. Due to some unknown incident a huge chunk of land at south east was covered in seas of poison and thus was abandoned.
Politics, Economy and Culture
Greetings, I am the commander of Lualombo. Even though I technically belong in military branch, a special position of mine requires me to dabble in other civic branches as well because there’s a chance for me to become some sort of “secondary prime minister”. I’ll explain later.
There was a time when Dorgania is just like Central. The society strives for the happiness of the citizens, which is peace. Governments prioritize social welfare instead of military. But everything changed when monster army attacked. Our peaceful country was flattened, and the kind heart of our people was trampled to the ground, both figuratively and literally. Since that day our mindset changed drastically. The spirit of Dorganians now lies in strength. We take pride as we joined the military or providing resources to them because then we can walk up the street with our head held high knowing we are contributing to the survival of our loved ones and humanity. Of course, we must sacrifice the happiness of some people,but that’s because we know a terrible truth that makes happiness irrelevant: Monsters aren’t picky eaters, to them happy humans are just as tasty as sad humans. If those monsters come through, they’ll commit atrocities a hundred times crueler than what we’re doing. That’s why military means everything to us.
When our neighbors are countries with an army, Dorgania is an army with a country!
Against something that can respawn infinitely, we must be careful with our finite resources. “Efficiency” is the principle of our economy. Different from dwarven weapons from Begus, which are forged in accordance with each blacksmith’s personal preference thus the quality is inconsistent, Dorganian weapon industries have standardized measurements and unified format to ensure the consistencies and interchangeability of each part. Same goes for our food industry as we must make the best use of what little arable land we have. Not only do we construct extensive irrigation channels, but we also carefully monitor the quality of the soil, temperature, moisture, sun light and potential pests to determine which crop must be planted, at which place, in how many numbers, and for how long to achieve maximum output.
Now the products are produced, it’s time to send them. We have constructed a massive network of roads spanning across our huge territory, with Rakake being the central traffic hub. Roads are carefully planned to connect supply chains of each industries and markets as well as allowing fast deployment of our troops. We are even keeping meticulous records on the movement of our caravans as well as the goods they’re carrying to calculate supply shortage/surplus in each towns. Such logistic system helps us preventing the same fate as Begus, a decentralized country too disconnected to its huge territory.
Apart from that, there’s one more reason our centralized government can maintain effective control over our vast territory: Teleport Stones. Imported from Amagal as part of our trade deals, these stones allow information to be passed almost instantly and allow Kagabangui to quickly respond to anything happened across the country.Thus the royalties can replace nobles with mayors directly sent from the capitals to ensure the loyalties of each region.
However, there are some limitations for the stones. First, each stone only goes one way to the pre-determined location, thus you can’t use it to infiltrate the enemy and each back-and-forth transport would need 2 stones. Second, each stone can only be registered with one user and the user couldn’t bring too many people & cargoes with him, which limits its use in transportation. Due to these limitations and high price, we reserve the stones for government and military to send crucial messages, evacuate VIP from danger, or transport emergency supplies and reinforcements.
The blooming economy, the meticulous infrastructures, the absence of threats from monsters and demons and the prosperity of our people, all these wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t conquer the indigenous tribe. During our exodus to search a new home we’ve come across countless native tribes massacred by monster army. Their eyeballs dangled out of their sockets like pendulums while monsters swallowed their intestine like sausages. (I’m not exaggerating. Refugees from the fallen city Pheralos can confirm the brutality of those monsters.) We have sworn to ourselves we’ll never let others suffer the same fate as we do. That’s why when we finally arrive to our new home and learnt that local people are totally ignorant of the upcoming threat, we did the only thing we could to save them: Unite them with force. Before we arrived, these tribes have been fighting each other for generations and uniting them with compassion would take too long (if not impossible) to stop the encroaching monsters, thus conquering them is the only option. If they couldn’t even defeat Dorganian army at our worst, they stand no chance against the monster army that destroyed our original country.
With populace subjugated, we reallocated resources to be used in a more efficient way and enslaved some people. We’re not racists like Begus. There are also some white slaves and black free citizens while orcs, vampires, elves and even succubus working with human isn’t a rare sight in Dorgania. It’s just that the monster threat forces us to practice strict meritocracy. With our traumatic experience with monsters, we white people are more willing to sacrifice for the society, like working extra hour instead of spending time with family, while black people seldom do so because they’ve never experienced hell like we did. As a result, most white people generally achieve better results than black people thus these white people got their deserving reward in correspondence with their hard work.
In a nutshell: We don’t care what race you are or what color of skin you have. If you are useful, then prosperous life awaits you; if not, then slave you go.
The result speaks for itself. With cheap labor from slavery and mass resources obtained, Great Wall of Dorgania completed just in time to repel monster army and saved not only us, but also all those natives and all other 3 neighboring countries. If you’re still not convinced, just look at the difference between Newkungu and Pheralos. Newkungu used to be a mere oasis settlement but with the protection from Dorgania, slave workforce and reallocated resources, it had transformed into a prosperous town with its renowned entertaining industry run by a kind fox girl and magic industry lead by the famous magic tutor. In comparison, Pheralos is far beyond the protection of our wall thus they enjoyed their precious little independence until… well, we all know how well things turned out for them, don’t we?
Despite this, there are still some noises from Central that criticize our measures while intentionally ignore what we’ve contributed. These sanctimonious fools sit on their fertile land, kick up their feet with luxurious tea in their hand and preach about high ideals, little realizing the reason they have the leisure of mood to write up such lofty speeches is because we Dorganians have been spilling sweat and blood stopping monsters from entering their country! Thankfully, these noises are still minorities in Central so they don’t strain our relation for now, but backlashes from our populace have already started to pop up, with some radicals even suggest we should intentionally let some monster armies march straight into Central to make them understand the hell we’ve been through.
Water Spirit understand this. She saw it firsthand on how important these measures are required to protect both Dorgania and other 3 countries. Thus she’s willing to overlook our measures and help our government as best as she could. We really can’t thank her enough. Not only does she draw out water, but she also helps us with some defensive installations like moats and stuff. She even manages to tame indigenous species of monster girls so not only would they not attack us unless we strike first but they’ll even occasionally donate their monster drops. She promised she’ll keep helping us as long as we don’t go any crueler than necessary.
An exception worth mentioning is the elf village Orchel. These elves seem to have some sort of magical connections to the forest and can produce more food, wood, herbs, and magic items if organized by their elf mayor. So we made a deal with them: We let them rule themselves as long as they pay extra taxes and follow our mobilization law when needed.