Peld

Peld has always supported a modest fishing fleet which benefits from a sheltered harbour. Small skiffs and lobster boats have been able to conduct close coastal operations at all times. When oceanic conditions have allowed it, deeper sea going vessels cast their nets in the rich and cold oceans between Myruthea and Zisleth. This was impossible for a long time after the Planar Conformation when the Deep Sleepers had awoken, badly affecting the fortunes of Old Peld for several centuries. More recently the presence of skrurtulgrippers in the northern waters since the Age of Shadows has given modern seafarers another problem, although it has not stopped deep sea fishing.   Forestry and quarrying operations take place along the coast around Peld and the town provides the services they need to carve and pulp the wood and dress the stone.   There are also a few arable and livestock farms to the south and west of the town, which provide the local population with a little variety in their diet but they rarely yield enough to provide any export income to the region since the climate is not well suited to any kind of agriculture. There is, however, a small but more lucrative business associated with a trade in mistleflowers from the punished plains to the west. These are gathered by the nomads and processed in Peld to produce mistleflower oil, a valuable item for mages and alchemists.     Northern plain cakes also arrive from the west and are sold at the market.

Ancient Peld

  The town is first mentioned in ancient records saved from the city of Ralsimoor, from which we learn that it was established as a minor port and a small fishing centre by 8727 BPC.   For about one hundred and seventy years it had little significance until 8563 BPC, when an overly ambitious local ruler declared the Great Northern Dukedom of Peld. At this time, by all accounts, Peld was still not much more than a minor northern harbour in Myruthea and the Great Dukedom was a much exaggerated title for what amounted to the town itself and interests in the shipping that was based there. Although it was of trivial importance on a global scale, the Dukedom was one of a relatively few towns and cities which remained independent of the Triple Enfolding.   In 8481 BPC, the Duke ordered his navy to conduct a survey expedition in the northern oceans. On the small polar sub-continent of Zisleth the town of Iceholt was founded two years later in 8479 BPC. Over the following decades, Iceholt became increasingly important as a centre of magical studies and products created at the pole. Power in the Great Northern Dukedom shifted slowly away from Peld and towards the mages of Iceholt. In 8394 BPC, the self proclaimed Mage King declared the Kingdom of Snowborne with Iceholt as its capital and now Peld was relegated to the second city in the new country, merely a port for them to access Myruthea.   Nothing much changed until the dramatic events that followed the Sundering at the end of the Thousand Year Alliance when the climatic bombs unleashed by the vengeful Fey induced an unnatural ice age, with the consequent deep glaciation of most of Tinturbean and northern Myruthea as far south as the southern shores of Lake Oxylium (even though the lake itself was spared). Ancient Peld vanished under thick layers of sudden glacial white and was to all intents and purposes destroyed in 7231 BPC.  

Old Peld

  The reconstruction of Peld which took place between 4414 BPC and 4406 BPC was funded by Empress Galea as a demonstration of the commitment of the Old Pale Empire to continuing expansion and the opening up of the north. At this time, the glaciers had retreated to leave behind the bleak punished plains but very little remained of Ancient Peld and the town was effectively rebuilt from the ground up. Old Peld was then used as a base for Admiral Romein's Expedition to Zisleth which concluded with the disappointing recommendation that Iceholt and the entire continent, though now accessible with difficulty, were not worth repopulating.   Old Peld was almost burned to the ground in 1216 APC during the Arcane Supremacy in an accidental conflagration fuelled by a warehouse filled with barrels of fish oil and a powder house that held mining charges. The explosive results were so devastating that the settlement was abandoned for more than two hundred years.  

Middle Peld

  From the 1470s APC onwards, settlers began to return to the bleak northern coast and the town of Middle Peld was built around the ruins of Old Peld. The motivation for a northern port was driven by the growth of Quarowl and the desire to provide new trade routes to Tinturbean which was becoming richer under the Puzzle Lords Directorate. To a limited extent this did succeed. During summer, ships from Peld were able to make the crossing of the Orothonian Ocean and engage in the exchange of goods and people between continents. But the seas around Peld are unnaturally cold (perhaps some special local spite of the post sundering climate) and ice prevents travel for much of the year, so it was never as successful as the more southerly traditional ports, such as Sunrock, Jebbin City and Tylisfort with which the town was competing.   Nevertheless Middle Peld was a viable regional centre for logging and mining for three thousand years and provided some of the services of civilisation which the nomads of the punished plains occasionally needed. Towards the end of the Age of Shadows in the year 4959 APC, a sizeable meteor struck Magicians' End, impacting in the ocean between Myruthea and Zisleth. The event, known as the Skyfire Strike and the Drowning of Peld raised a tsunami which broke hard and high against the northern coast of Myruthea and on Zisleth but Peld was the most drastically affected settlement, utterly destroyed by the wall of water that washed over it. Owing to the dark nature of the times throughout the world, there was little energy or enthusiasm to reconstruct the settlement in the fifth millennium and the town was again abandoned.  

Modern Peld

  Modern Peld dates from the time of the Third Popular Ascendancy when conditions on Magicians' End had stabilised after the dramas of recent centuries. The Market Beacon which was built in 5328 APC to provide light in the New Square is usually considered to mark the re-foundation of the town, although settlers had begun to establish homes here for perhaps fifty years or so by then.   Whilst Peld has never been anything like large enough to count as a city, it has nowadays restored its status to that of a regionally important town and is a useful port for the Trans-Oceanic Empire, which it joined with little fuss at an early date.

The Market Beacon is the best known landmark in the small town, providing cheery lights fuelled with oil and supplemented with arcane subtleties to endure they are bright enough to illuminate the whole of New Square.