Tortured Land

The Tortured Land, also called the Tortured Lands, was a barren area in the northernmost Moonsea region.

Geography
It lay beyond the Moonsea, north of the Ride and just below the southern edge of the Great Glacier, west of the northern Galena Mountains and east of Anauroch and the northern tip of the Border Forest. There was no clear border with Anauroch; only where the plants ended and bare rock began marked where one had left the Tortured Land.

The landscape was formed from lava flows left by ancient volcanic eruptions that were then carved by flowing glacial ice. Scattered around were weird stone pillars and rock formations, which were smoothed by the wind into natural sculptures, with jagged parts where bits broke off. There was also ice, similarly wind-carved.

Flora & Fauna
The Tortured Land was much more moist than the desert of Anauroch, which permitted a lot more plants to grow.

There were small prey animals and strangely shaped and savage monsters. The only other inhabitants seemed to be the bats that laired in the few caves of the area.

Inhabitants
Few outsiders went into the Tortured Land, and fewer still lingered there long enough to explore, let alone map it. It was believed to be a cold and harsh wasteland of rampaging monsters.

However, in a secluded part of the Tortured Lands there lived the ondontis, a community of pacifist orcs dedicated to the goddess Eldath. Fifteen tribes lived in harmony with the land through farming and foraging.

In the late 1360s DR, a Moonstars agent based in Whitehorn monitored events in the Tortured Lands, Anauroch, and Frozen Forest.

History
Circa, a shield dwarf clan dwelling here declined to join a dwarven war party in raiding peaceful settlements of the Border Forest. Convicted as traitors by their kin, they were exiled from the Tortured Land and migrated north onto the Great Glacier. After a year-long journeyed, they settled in Novularond, but only four members of the clan had survived. They went on to found the Innugaakalikurit clan, the modern-day arctic dwarves.

After the fall of the Netherese survivor states, a group of pacifist refugees from Rulvadar passed through the Tortured Lands and settled in the neighboring mountains near the Border Forest. Joining the people of Yrlaancel, in the, they founded the city of Ondathel, later Myth Ondath, a city dedicated to Eldath. The people adopted a group of orphaned orc children and raised them in the faith of the Green Goddess. When that city was destroyed by the Ice Queen and the Gatekeeper's Crystal in the, these orcs were among the few survivors. They lived on in peace in the Tortured Lands as the ondontis.

The ondontis were discovered unexpectedly by a scouting party out of Zhentil Keep in the. Shortly after their first meeting, fourteen of the fifteen tribes were captured by Zhentilar raiders and taken to the Citadel of the Raven to be used as slaves and breeding stock for a new army. The final tribe left, isolated at the time, escaped into deep seclusion and avoided later raids. They employed the divine magic of their clerics to conceal themselves from the slavers. Thus they remained by 1369 DR.

During the Era of Upheaval the majority of the Tortured Land was occupied by flind-led gnoll tribes. The ruins of a forgotten city known as Frozen Flindyke to bards, could have once been a bastion of civilization for these gnolls in times past or could have been the home of a settlement of humans, surrounded by the gnolls. The truth was lost to the sands of time but the shamans of Yeenoghu who ruled over the gnolls and flinds were said to have been descended from those who summoned the Trio Nefarious that aided in the fall of Myth Drannor.