Shem is a land of decadent despots in the west and fierce nomads to the east. This influential nation of over 15 million people is a powerful commercial engine, drawing in wealth through overland trade via the well-traveled caravan routes that criss-cross the arid deserts and pastoral meadowlands. Trade is the life's blood of Shem and its debauched city-states seem to specialize in their manufacture of goods, living off of the unending camel trains. The luxuriant kingdoms are constantly at war with each other, each trying to steal domination of various trade routes, trying to destroy competition in search of ever elusive monopolies in some good or another. The Shemites are well known as slavers, roving the Black Coast in live ships, trading and raiding for "human trade goods" to sell on the block in Shem. The Shemites themselves are also sometimes taken as slaves - the founders of Gazal in the deserts of the Black Kingdoms used Shemite slaves.