Valley of the Sidhe
Although the name is now bitterly ironic, it was not always so. In the most ancient of times, this was the Elven homeland and here stood a great forest. When the elves fled to Sidhe-Praxen after their ejection from the region after the Demi-Sidhe Revolt, the humans and half elves who lived there began to rapidly "improve" the area. The within a few centuries the forests had been clearcut away, fueling the powerful rise the eastern city-states of Old Alexia, several of which have long since been swallowed by the sand. The region prospered under cultivation, and was one of the major theaters of the Prophet's War. Eventually, after centuries of unsustainable overproduction, desertification began to set in. Although the discovery in Western Alexia of a gold mine in the 1100s(?) kept the Alexian state lurching forward, signs of the decline were evident as early as the 1000s. By the late 1200s, some cities had been desettled and the growing desert was causing political instability in Alexia. By the mid-1300s, the instability was severe enough to prompt Odessa's military occupation of Western Alexia in the late 1300s, leading to the Wydmoor-Odessan conflict that would usher in the Scism Wars.
Also known as the Valley of Dust or Great Sidhe Desert, it is a large and still-expanding silt desert where the elven forests once stood in the north coastal regions of the mid-Mainland. Over the course of centuries it has swallowed large sections of arable land and led to major internal displacements including large refugee migrations to Wydmoor and Odessa which led to crises in the 1400s. By the 1500s it has covered much of the former nation of Alexia with only a few settlements remaining scattered along the coasts to the north or mountains to the south. While the reason for its' expansion is much debated a consensus has not been reached and some fear mongers have suggested it will eventually over take the entire Mainland.
At some point in the last century, a forest sprang up toward its East side. It is considered haunted, and to some an omen more pressing than the Valley itself.
