Derican Imperial Army

Throughout history, each era has had an army that dominated the battlefields and what they all have had in common was that they all seemed to rise from nothing and conquer a region or in the case of the Ancient Empire the whole of Mirateia for a short period. During the current era, the army that has the strongest claim to be the dominating force on the continent is that of the legions that fight for the Empire of Dercia. At the same time, they are roughly equal in size to some of the other nations' armies or even slightly smaller compared to that of the Ibraghian Theocracy the Dercian legions outclass the other armies with their discipline and loyalty to their nation and is these factors that have led other nations scholars and generals to worry that the legions could one day overrun the entire continent, had it not been for one small detail, the Empire of Derica is not interested in expanding their borders beyond the Dercian region and that is unlikely to change after 1200 years. As the territory that were under the control of Pearlhal expanded, new people also began to be recruited for the armies and while today the people of the Empire have integrated well, the largest group of recruits still comes from the Crienia people.

Early history

During the early history of Pearlhal the army of the city consisted mostly of the noble retinues that acted as an elite force with the common people making up the main body of the army, during these times the army mostly acted as a way for the government to maintain their sovereignty against the surrounding nations.
For most of this early part of the army history, the armies of Pearlhal stayed in this form but under the short time the Ancient Empire ruled over the city, Pearlhal experimented with the cohort system and it was during these years that the legions would take their current form when the Ancient Empire fell and withdrew from the region it became unstable and within a few years the First unification war began in which the legions were first tested on a large scale.

Middle history

During what scholars have described as the middle part of history, the legions of what had become the Kingdom of Dercia were still fighting the first unification war and had been doing this for centuries, the legions had been field tested and perfected, they still suffered defeats of course but these were most of the time down to the legions being outnumbered and or the enemy general having a better strategy than the Dercian. During the early and parts of the middle history, the legion's armour was still not uniform and it mostly came down to what the individual soldier could afford or loot from defeated enemies but during The Decade of 5 Emperors which were a civil war in what at that point had transformed into the Empire of Dercia with the rise of Empress Krea Astalles following the Dercian victory in The war of Western expansion, but during the Dercian civil war the side of the loyalists began to equip their soldiers with a standard set of armour, this was partly to make it easier for the soldiers to identify each other during a battle but on a higher level it made logistic easier, likewise the new armour were also of better quality than what the soldiers had used earlier so the army medics began to notice a significant decline in serious injuries as the new armour protected them better.

Current time

Currently, the Imperial legions of the Dercian Empire enjoy the longest peace period in the Dercian region since the fall of the Ancient Empire, While some scholars have expressed concern that the peace is making the soldiers soft and decreases their ability to fight should the Principality of Clifia try to invade once again. The legions themself are not concerned about the long peace and are doing what they can to maintain the peace, they are patroling the coastline against pirates or potential enemy invasions and Geralt's wall are constantly manned by the best soldiers from the 9th Legion.