Rihisto Šâr-Keš      A-mah-ur Šin’ar      Karāš Šin’arin
Ki-zi-ga Šid’ia      Elû Šid’iain         Zalisha Šâr-Keš

 - Transliteration of an ancient Sidoian paean

At some point deep in the mists of pre-history one of Nave's continents sank into the ocean, carrying with it the entire Shinarian civilization. Today only their slave race, the Sidoians, remain. They have long roamed the earth searching for remnants of their former masters knowledge.

The majority of Sidoians are wanderers and explorers. They only make pilgrimage home to Sidoia a few times in their lives to share their discoveries. Their culture, divided into workers and philosophers, revolves heavily around the mathematical and geometric skills they use in their quest for lost knowledge. These talented nomads often sell their services as teachers and craftsmen.

The meticulous dogmas of Sidoian society have resulted in a racial inclination towards logic, reasoning, and sagacity. Despite their intellectual skills, they’re a powerful people who value raw strength and endurance over physical agility.

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In general, Sidoians almost seem to have a physical need of being a part of a clearly structured and hierarchical collective, no matter their individual position in that collective. Normally and historically, the tribe structure with its worker and philosopher arrangement is what constitutes this collective, however most Sidoian tribes and many individuals are now spread out in the world, with only sporadic contact.

By all appearances, it seems the collective a Sidoian belongs to must have strict social and/or religious rules and dogmas rooted in mathematics, numerology such as Isopsephy/Gematria, geometry, “logic”, and similar.

Without this, they become what could be described as mentally unstable. One could almost compare the Sidoians and their society to something like obsessive-compulsive disorder; in a Sidoian tribe with its plethora of regulations, the individual Sidoians show no symptoms of this compulsive behavior, it is as if the society with all its compulsive dogmas is making up for the “affliction” of its individuals.

However if a Sidoian is not part of such a collective, he or she will personally start to show compulsive symptoms instead, in very irregular ways. The compulsive symptoms vary between individuals and are not “organized” like the tribe dogmas are—they may appear as anxiety, an urge to count and measure things over and over again, excessive hoarding, aversion to particular numbers or time periods, and all kind of nervous rituals.

However, although there are a multitude of rules imposed by Sidoian tribes doesn't necessarily mean that there are “punishments” of any sort for breaking them. A Sidoian simply doesn't break rules, because the idea of following rules—whatever the rules are—results in a mental reward, whereas breaking a rule leads to severe mental anxiety and uneasiness.

In a Sidoian tribe, this of course gets even more emphasized as their culture also teaches them that breaking rules upsets the balance of things:

"The rules and rituals are there for a higher purpose, we just have to learn more to understand what that
purpose is."

This means that a Sidoian orphan raised in an outside community, if asked the question:

"Why don't you break the rules sometime, everybody else does?"

Would probably answer:

"I don't know, it simply feels wrong inside."

Whereas a tribe-member probably would say:

"It upsets the balance of things."

This is because those are the words they have been taught, and said words correspond well to their feelings.

This following of rules doesn't have anything to do with ethics or being “good”, as a Sidoian wouldn't hesitate to follow rules that for instance tells them to kill, and still answer “It feels wrong inside” if asked why they don't ignore those rules.

In a tribe, breaking rules is almost solely done by mistake, and if anyone does, it is his or her loss, and there is seldom any need for any punishment. In the case of an individual breaking the rules on numerous occasions, resulting in negative effects for the tribe, he or she would probably simply be cast out.

These two properties of the Sidoian mindset—the need for being a part of a collective, and the need for rules—affect them and their society in a number of ways in the post-Shinarian world.

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Solitary Sidoians are usually very lost in the world, and lone wanderers will often give a socially distrait, absent-minded, confused or somewhat deranged impression, although they might be extremely talented in their actual trade.

Unless they join some form of group or society, and unless that community imposes strict rules or allows them impose strict rules in return, there is always something lacking in their lives, and they start to show compulsive symptoms.

Another problem is that many non-Sidoian communities have countless conflicting or paradoxical rules without Elders or Jurists to consult. A rootless Sidoian trying to follow conflicting rules, without guidance, is subjected to enormous mental pressure and is likely to eventually get confused, depressed or even schizophrenic.

In an acute or life-and-death situation with conflicting rules, they may break down, panic, or mentally repress the entire situation—simply mentally blocking off the people and/or objects involved as if they didn't exist.

Other Sidoians might find somewhat of a substitute in heavily regulated professions, perhaps as slaves or slave-drivers, or—unless they are met with suspicion and prejudice—in military organizations, advanced construction, law and jurisprudence, and administrators of economy or staff.

However, even the most complex organizations and rules of other cultures usually pale in comparison to those of a Sidoian tribe. Furthermore, most other human professions with strict or complex rules means a harsh environment, and/or have equally hard punishments for breaking the rules, even by mistake, and that is something a Sidoian might not be prepared or wish for.

Needless to say, Sidoians are commonly known for their loyalty and adherence—which has nothing to do with “loyalty” as in allegiance or devotion, with it being a straightforward result of their mindset—and some have attained high ranks in non-Sidoian societies.

Sidoian tribe-members visiting another society will frequently ask about and meticulously try to follow its rules, but as they have the rules and laws of the tribe to rely on, and as they already “belong” to a tribe, they are much more mentally stable.

However their constant asking about rules—combined with their unquestioning attitude towards strange rules as long as they are not conflicting or mathematically illogical—makes them very easy to fool and has earned them a reputation as dumb in many societies.

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The shattered and isolated tribes try to uphold the traditional rules and dogmas, but as one of the main principles of the Sidoian people is to gather and/or retrieve knowledge, the rules change over time as new or lost knowledge is acquired.

This means that although all tribes have enormous lists of laws, regulations, rules, and they are sometimes very different. The tribes that do meet—either on Sidoia or otherwise—spend most of their time arguing over newly discovered knowledge and the validity of new dogmas, so even for those there is little or no consensus.

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There are many examples of Sidoian compulsive dogmas found across Nave, and only some of them are documented here.

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The rules of some tribes state that a person's free day of the week should be the same weekday he or she is born, meaning if you are born on a “Tuesday”, you will have your work-free day on “Tuesdays”.

Furthermore, a worker must do philosophical work (and vice versa) every 9th year, with the timing decided in accordance to his or her name when the digital root of the values of the letters in his name equals the digital root of the number of the current year.

For instance the merry butcher Sabas has a name with a value of:

S = 19, A = 1, B = 2

SABAS = 19, 1, 2, 1, 19

19 + 1 + 2 +  1  + 19 = 42

4 + 2 = 6

This means that year 258 (2 + 5 + 8 = 15 (1 + 5) = 6) Sabas must do philosophical work.

His next year of philosophical work is 267 (2 + 6 + 7 = 15 (1 + 5) = 6).

This of course means that the whole tribe must work via a complex rotating schedule.

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Akeheka's Fourth Rule of Commerce states that whenever anyone pays someone for a service, the sum must be multiplied by a huge random number, and a small random number must then be added to that number. These randomized numbers are most often generated with an abacus-like device.

The participants must then find out if the resulting number is a prime number or not before the trade can take place and the original sum can be paid. The collected numbers and their prime status must be reported to a counting official on a weekly basis.

Some scholars claim that this ancient rule was founded simply as a temporary means to gather a lot of prime/non-prime numbers so that Akeheka could reconstruct the forgotten Sieve of Uhu. As the Sieve of Uhu is long since constructed, the law has filled its purpose and is therefore obsolete and should be discarded.

Other scholars refuse to believe this, for a number of reasons. This means that some tribes still apply the law in all trade while others do not.

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Many traditional Sidoian names are palindromes which can be read in either direction, such as Ana or Lemel, or with spaces, such as in Ev Akave (evakave). Beside the palindrome names, names with mathematical twists to them are common.

Additionally, Sidoians will often change their names when changing occupations or ranks. Short names indicate status, so generally newborns are given very long names, whereas people with a very high rank may have only one, two or three letters.

Thus, a person might be born as Aheka Tôtakeha, and later shorten it by removing the outer 3 letters on each side to form Katôtak, and later to Tôt, and if he ever achieves a legendary status, Ô.

This generally means a shortage of names for legendary persons, as there can only be that many Ô's or A's or T's. However that does not necessarily pose a problem as the traditional Sidoian writing is based on pictograms, and as several pictograms can represent the same letter, an elevated person simply chooses or is assigned a symbol that represents that letter.

A person may therefore be known both as Ô and as “Burning Sun”, as the symbol for Burning Sun means “Ô” if read as a letter.

To complicate matters further, when a person is mentioned, the point in time in-context decides what name should be used. Akeheka, mentioned above in the Rules of Commerce, founded many more laws at later dates, but you will find that for instance the Sixteenth Rule of Commerce is attributed to Kehek (Kehek's Sixteenth Rule of Commerce), not Akeheka, as he had changed his name at that point.

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One might ask, why this inclination towards numerology, logic and mathematics, and why do they have these dogmas in the first place? Is it because of their former masters? Is it because they were slaves? Is it a religion, meaning is it for the gods?

The tribes don't know why; it is simply lost knowledge. A Sidoian would probably compare it to a great equation: they have many parts of it, but many of the fundamental parts are lost. As a result, they search for clues to those fundaments, and/or attempt to try and calculate them.

This is also why it is so difficult to add new elements to the equation, because they can never check the elements for errors, only make estimations. And this is probably also why many of the later social rules have expanded into areas of society which the original rules never touched.

A Sidoian scholar would say that at one point in time Sidoian “belief and practice” was purely concrete and logical, objectively speaking—but that at this point in time it is impossible to separate “science” from “religion” as more knowledge is required to know which of the new rules are right or wrong.

But a new rule is a new rule, and if newly acquired knowledge means that the calculations say that a temple should be constructed, but that it can only be worked at every 142th day, and that it should be 1.618 meters in width and depth, and 33.3 meters high, and therefore practically unusable, that is what will be built.

Rules may be very different from tribe to tribe, with some only following very mundane and trivial practices, while others lean fully into extremes. Most or all, however, include some form of math, logic, and/or compulsive behavior into their rules, with no shortage of the rules themselves in terms of quantity.

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The Sidoians of Myrland have dramatically increased the frequency of expeditions and pilgrimages to the Coral Sea. Since The Irruption—likely as a result of the earthquakes that marked the end of it—some of the ancient Sidoian islands rose from the ocean to expose hitherto unexplored regions.

This has led to the establishment of a small harbor and semi-permanent Sidoian outpost in the Sunken Isles, sometimes frequented by Alvarin explorers and curious scholars.

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