With a history painted by warfare, western Immoren has long boasted a robust and lucrative mercenary trade. In fact, many companies have charters older than the royal they serve. One such company bears the red-blazoned insignia of a ferocious horned hound: the Devil Dogs or “Dog Company.” Established more than 180 years ago by Grigor Dorenski, a former kapitan of the renowned, the Devil Dogs benefited from several decades on the Khadoran payroll. During the Second Expansion War, however, they revised their charter to never again accept Khadoran coin.
The impetus for this change happened in 464 AR, while Kommander Telyev Zerkova pounded the northern Ordic borders. As the lives of Khadoran soldiers disintegrated like ocean waves crashing against rocky cliffs, the northern nation contracted mercenaries from wherever they could be found, including Dorenski’s Devil Dogs. Dorenski faithfully carried out orders to take Boarsgate as Zerkova led his army against the walls of Midfast. Unknown to Dorenski, Zerkova never expected the Dog Company to succeed—only to absorb forces from Midfast as the kommander made his grand entrance. The all-too-capable mercenary army toppled the fort in a single night and day, however, sending the Boarsgate garrison retreating for Midfast—which strengthened the defenders enough to repel Zerkova’s army. Embarrassed by this folly, Zerkova refused to pay the Devil Dogs. Dorenski rewrote the company’s charter in his own blood, swearing the Dog Company would never again fight for Khador, even if they were the last paying kingdom on Caen.
Nearly 150 years later, Dorenski’s great-great-nephew lost ownership of the company to an enterprising Thurian named Samantha MacHorne. A former pistoleer, sometimes mechanik, and full-time gambler from Merin, MacHorne had been seeking greater fortune for some time. She saw that with a little discipline, focus, and new equipment, the Devil Dogs could be the most lucrative prize she’d ever won.
The Devil Dogs rallied around her vision, and two years later Captain Sam MacHorne and the all-new Dog Company began hiring themselves out as the best professional anti-warjack unit gold could buy. Boasting slug guns custom-built for blasting armor, chains and nets for entangling warjacks, and heavy pick axes to dismantle them plate-from-piston, the Devil Dogs are once again a force to be reckoned with.