"It's a build up city with a pretty high population - less now that there have been attacks by the Serpent. They have a long history here, filled with all kinds of things, but they seemed to have followed our own history for the most part. Starting off simple, becoming more complex. Stuff like that. There isn't too much of a spirituality now but previous ages have had a much stronger sense of it, meaning that there are myths and fairy tale-like stories describing what they believed and how they thought things worked.
"The original population of Mandalus have a kind of military, but it's not much which is where we come in. ...and that's about as much as I've looked into at the moment."
Of course it didn't help that he spent his first few days sulking. Things were going great for him and then everything was taken away. So he had to obey and fight this war in hopes of returning to his own time and place.