Sida

""Those whom call this wasteland their home are nearly always blind to who they truly are. The denizens of this barren place hold a burning hate for the Gods, even going as far as to dub them demonic, yet none of them stop to think that they themselves may be no different.""

- Sariah Fellmeet, Harper Scout

Sida is a distant, chaotic-evil-oriented wasteland island several hundred miles off of the coast of Luskan. Most of the populace consists of raiders who band together into loosely organized gangs. Because it is rarely visited by tradeships, many of these gangs have taken to piracy at sea.

Economy
Like many other regions in Faerûn, Sida relies on slavery, which has elicited a bad reputation of it in the eyes of its far neighbors. Slaves are shipped to and from areas where slave trade is most heavy. Some nations of Faerûn even ship prisoners to this isle to be used as slaves. Piracy is also common, contributing quite heavily to the flow of money island-wide, and these acts of thievery usually come with kidnapping and expensive ransoms. Captured ships are sold to the highest bidders on the mainlands.

Slavery
Female slaves in Sida often fetch high prices depending on their condition. Due to the depraved state Sida is in, it is no surprise that female slaves are more common. Male slaves, however, are not all too uncommon themselves, used mostly in heavy labor. Powerful raiders often keep many slaves for themselves to ease the day-to-day troubles that come with living in these harsh wastelands, while some choose to sell the slaves to other figures of power for their own profit.

Religion
Most Sidans do not believe in gods. Due to the innate dislike of deific figures around the wasteland, religion is frowned upon, hated, and even feared by most in Sida by those who know of its existance. Thus, it is never expressed publicly; however, there are still religious sites hidden throughout the island, and even shrines to abyssal and infernal entities have existed. All of these known tributes have been desecrated beyond repair. Sidans often believe that the gods are demonic, and most have no qualms with killing a religious person out of some personal sense of justice. This does include the Archdevils and Demon lords, especially, and any creature with horns is believed to be a demonspawn and either hunted or avoided, whether or not they are devil or demon; to a Sidan, they're one and the same, as with even celestials and other mystical creatures.

Government
Each city is controlled by a particularly powerful raider leader, all of which are typically tyrannical in their rule. The laws laid out by these raiders are enforced by their underlings, the members of the gang. As such, punishment is often unruly, due to the raiders' own interests rarely being contained in this matter.

Rulership is seized by those with the power to take it by force. This makes Sida a kratocracy. Due to this, many (if not all) of its rulers are typically tyrannical. This is especially true when the ruler is chaotic evil in alignment, such as in Levenwilt. In Sida, Chaotic Evil raider warlords will typically do whatever they please without a care for what their people want, making it difficult to live in these societies.

History
Sida was, at one point, a fertile grassland. The massive valley spanning between the Dullblade Mountains and the Eastwind Hills was once a rich savanna full of all sorts of wildlife. Its people were happier, and violence was less common in those times. Then came the Hundred Year Damning, a war that lasted nearly two hundred years, and snuffed out almost all life on the island. Few survived, and those that did came out bitter in some way because of it.

The Hundred Year Damning
The Hundred Year Damning is probably the most influential event in Sida's history. Most do not know the gruesome details of the war, but it is usually described as a slaughter. During the one-hundred-eighty some years of this terrible event, Sida's population was reduced to a mere few handfuls.

It began when a particularly powerful Priest of Garagos created thirteen relics called the "Entropic Keys". These relics were specifically crafted to open a gate to the Abyss and release a frenzy of bloodthirsty demons upon Sida. The year of which this occurred has long been forgotten, but it was said that it took several decades for these relics to be made. The priest, who's name was unknown, then planted these relics in the major cities of Sida, which eventually made their way into the hands of unknowing merchants whom inevitably sold these relics to unsuspecting townspeople. Upon reading each rune located on the relics, it would activate. Only when all thirteen relics were activated would the summoning begin, and each owner of the artifacts was said to have been desperately possessed with seeking out the other artifacts. After many long years, to the dismay of the island, all thirteen were activated, and the Hundred Year Damning began.

""Fire rained from the sky, purging the land of its beautiful green, crushing and melting rock into sand. Mighty horned creatures stormed the settlements, slaughtering every living thing in sight and destroying monument and building alike. Entire cities sank into the Abyss, completely purged of life. It was a very sad, very terrifying time for my homeland.""

- As said by Aaliyah, Bardic warrior and late resident of Arelith.

No-one whom is currently alive has personally witnessed the terror, but the story is not an uncommon tale in the wastes. It is the reason that those of Sida despise the gods and the demonic. They may have once worshiped gods, but after the war, all of them are taught to believe that the gods cannot be trusted and do not care for the mortals, wishing only for them to meet their demise. This common ideal drives most Sidans mad with rage when encountering the faithful, and to a lesser degree, the wielders of magic. This is, however, not true for all Sidans.