Garland

The Demon Kingdom Garland (ガーランド) is the demon nation in Tortus. It was previously known as the "Igdol Empire" (イグドール) during the age of the Liberators.

Layout
Garland's territory comprises most of Tortus' southern continent with it stopping just beside Reisen Gorge.

Ideology
Garland's religion revolved around worshipping the god Alva. It was believed that Alva was the one "true" god of Tortus, and that Ehit, the god worshipped by the humans was deemed to be a false god that usurped Alva's title. This in turn has greatly motivated the demons to wage a war against humanity to eliminate the false faith of Ehit from the world. This fanatical devotion was all ironically created by their "true" God Ehit, who Alva served under, and unknowingly to the demons, was in fact nothing more than Ehit's servant and a lesser God. Alva successfully cultivated this religious belief and fanatical devotion within the demon race in order to make them all the more manipulative as his pawns for his mad game. This resulted in the demon race blindly and fanatically following Ehit's orders and whims unknowingly through the decrees of Alva.

Since magic was the cornerstone of the demons's civilization, the most magically powerful of them would be their ruler, with the title of "Demon Lord". This individual was regarded as a living avatar of their god, which turned out to be true, due to Alva having possessed each Demon Lord for many years.

History
During the age of the Liberators, when the Demon Lord discovered that his illegitimate son Vandre Schnee could use Ancient Magic at a young age, he used him to create an army of empowered monsters in order to enact a large-scale war and exterminate humanity. The end result, however, was a stalemate, in which both sides suffered heavy casualties.

One year after the war, the Demon Lord's position was usurped by his other son Rasul Alva Igdol. As a result, the Igdol Empire had started focusing its efforts on domestic affairs and had maintained that for over ten years. In that time, there had only been a few small skirmishes between Igdol and the human kingdoms. In addition, Rasul was planning to resume his father's work of creating an army of enhanced monsters in an effort to conquer the entire world. His plans, however, were foiled thanks to the Liberators, when it was revealed that Rasul was under the control of the demons' god Alva throughout his reign as the Demon Lord.

After Rasul returned to his former self, he revealed to his people the true nature of Tortus' gods as evil and manipulative, while also preaching for cooperation amongst the other races. This, however, only served to divide the demon populace and gave way to the rise of three factions: The "Demon Lord" faction, which was the smallest of them, who remained loyal to Rasul and agreed to support his ideals, the "Orthodox Faction", that still believed demons were the superior race and wished to eliminate humanity, and the "Neutral Faction", which was the largest, that still supported their nation, but remained sceptical of Rasul's leadership. When the Liberators were preparing to confront Ehit and the Holy Church, Rasul pledged the Demon Lord faction's support in their crusade. Unfortunately, the Liberators and their allied were ultimately defeated by Ehit and forced into hiding. Ehit then retaliated by magically hypnotizing the people of Tortus to hunt down and kill everyone affiliated with the Liberators. During that time, Igdol had allied itself with the Grandort Empire and launched an aerial assault against the Liberators that were fleeing though the Obsidian Tundra. Although they succeeded in killing many of the Liberators, some of them managed to retreat into the Haltina Republic.

Several days later, while still under the effect of Ehit's hypnosis magic, the Igdol Empire entered into a war on the vampire nation Dastia. Furthermore, both the Grandort Empire and the Kingdom of Velka were preparing to invade the demon empire. In the end, however, Ehit ceased hypnotizing the people of Tortus after striking a deal with the Liberators's leader Miledi Reisen. As a result, the Igdol Empire entered into a truce with the church, though Rasul had been forced into exile and took residence in Dastia.

At some point over the next thousands of years, Igdol had been renamed "Garland", and had still maintained its hostile relationship with humanity. The last great war ended in the demons' defeat due to the aid of an infamous group of mercenaries, who would later become the founders of the Hoelscher Empire.

Throughout the next 300 years after the last war, the demons were in a perpetual stalemate whenever battling the human kingdoms, but they eventually managed to gain the upper hand after General Freid Bagwa conquered one of the Great Labyrinths and acquire the Ancient Magic that allowed him to create powerful monsters under his control. When the humans responded to this development by having their god Ehit summon a group of "chosen heroes", the demons attempted to either recruit them to their side, or kill them if they refused. Ultimately that plan failed, but they had managed to acquire the aid of one of them to become their spy in the Heiligh Kingdom.

Garland launched a military campaign that simultaneously targeted most of the human nations on the northern continent, as well as the beastmen nation Verbergen. Despite their best efforts, they were all thwarted due to Hajime Nagumo and his allies.

When Ehit decided to wipe out all life on Tortus, the demons were deemed as the "chosen race" that would avoid the rest of their world's fate, and were transported to the realm of the gods, known as the Sanctuary. Although most of the demons were teleported within the Sanctuary, several dozen of them were left behind due to the intervention of Hajime, who unsuccessfully attempted to enter the Sanctuary in order to rescue his lover Yue, whose body had come under Ehit's possession. Hajime killed many off the stranded demons, before his collapsed from over-exerting his mana, as well as the wounds he received from earlier fight with Ehit. The surviving demons were later confined within the place dungeons.

Three days later, the Sanctuary would be destroyed after Hajime rescued Yue ad killed Ehit. However, all the demons within were able to escape thanks to Freid, who teleported them back to Garland just before he was killed by Tio Klarus. As the rest of Tortus was recovering from the aftermath of battling Ehit's forces, the demons were all placed in suspended animation in a magic room that stopped time. The demons that survived Hajime's earlier rampage were released from confinement and tasked with watching over them, while slowly reaccelerating them back into a ew society where all the races of Tortus were now working to live in peace. Furthermore, they were aided by a small enclaves of demons who disagreed with Garland's policy of demon-supremacy and took on a self-imposed exile until Ehit's death, as well as the Heiligh Kingdom, who maintained a small garrison in Garland as a peacekeeping force.

"Zero" Timeline

 * Iguld (Capital)

Notable People

 * -|"Main Series" Timeline=


 * Freid Bagwa (General)†
 * Davros (Captain)†
 * Celeka (Vice-Captain)†
 * Cattleya†
 * Mikhail†
 * Reiss
 * Balen†
 * Divoff†
 * Fidra†
 * Heather†
 * Kramer†
 * Logan
 * Gadner
 * Gert
 * Eri Nakamura (Sleeper Agent)†

Note: †; deceased


 * -|"Zero" Timeline=


 * Rasul Alva Igdol (Demon Lord)
 * Karm Tranlit (Prime Minister)
 * Angol Mittlight (General)
 * Elga Insut (General)
 * Lestina Ascion (General)

Trivia

 * The name Garland is of Anglo-Saxon origin. The place-name probably grew from a field-name referring to a piece of land I the shape of a spear, from the Old English "gara", plus the Old English "land", from the Proto-Germanic "*landą", meaning "land".
 * Garland's architecture is nearly identical to the Heiligh Kingdom, with the only difference being that all of the buildings’ roofs are rust-red.