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Sacra Flumen, a prosperous, riverside city in Marioch Province, had long been home to Dathan's family. After a holiday visit to the ocean as a child, he always longed to live by the sea.  His parents divorced after his mother's third miscarriage, and unable to support her children, Dathan's mother split her offspring among her extended relatives.  Dathan ended up living with his maternal grandparents, a severe couple who imposed strict religious training on the boy. He never saw his parents again.  Dathan chafed under this oppression and developed a strong dislike for authority, particularly religious authority.

He'd wanted to study marine life as a young man, but the prevailing attitude of his grandfather concerning the "godless study of science" and the "wicked influence of the Lithians" prevented this from happening, and Dathan ended up in a seminary where he struggled in his studies and barely managed to complete a degree. During his final year at the seminary, Dathan met a woman named Elizabeth, with whom he fell desperately in love.  Elizabeth suffered from chronic mental illness, but found Dathan's company comforting and experienced a remarkable degree of recovery during their courtship.  They became engaged and intended to marry after graduation.  But just before his commencement ceremony, an army recruiter paid a call to the seminary campus looking for officer candidates, found Dathan suitable, and subsequently drafted him into military service.

While Dathan was attending his officer training school, Elizabeth stopped returning his letters.  He fretted she'd changed her mind concerning their future together, but in reality, Elizabeth drifted into a despondent state in his absence and later committed suicide.  Dathan heard this news shortly before his combat service began.  Thus, Dathan found himself bereft of all comfort, alone and emotionally adrift with an army marching inland, away from his beloved sea.