Spelph

Spelph (Gothic: Spelf) is a city in the County of Donne, Yonderre. It is the largest settlement in Stonne Barony with a population of 122,871 as of the 2020 Donne Popular Census. Spelph is the largest settlement on the Spelph River and the second largest in the Black Forest, with the only city larger than Spelph being Nouvelle-Toratino. Although governed seperately as a special district, the area and population of the nearby Spelph River Valley is counted towards Spelph's total.

Founded around 650, Spelph remained a small town within the influence of the important town of Stonne until the onset of the industrial revolution in Yonderre. The city then - especially through the Beauregard Steel Works - became one of Yonderre's most important coal and steel centers. Spelph is seat to several of the Barony's authorities, as well as to three of the 100 largest publicly held Yonderian corporations by revenue.

Etymology
The Burgoignesc name for the city, Spelph, is derived as an exonym from the native Gothic name Spelf. It is thought by historians to refer to the Spelph River on which the city lies. The Proto-Gothic root from which this noun is derived is *spēgal- (older reconstruction *spēal-), "to reflect" (or "to mirror, to show back, to visualise"), which is also the source of the modern Gothic Spiegel, "mirror" or "reflection", presumably in relation to the river's ability to reflect imagery.

Ancient and medieval history
It is known from excavations that Spelph has been inhabited by humans since at least the Paleolithic period. Studies of the genetic makeup of Stonne's prehistoric inhabitants show a high frequency of the y-chromosome haplogroup G2g, a common genetic trait amongst the Gothic peoples. Khovihnihk tribes migrated from the coast of the Vandarch around the third century BC, settling a town where the modern city of Spelph is. The Khovihniks were eventually pushed north and out of the region by the Goths during the Great Gothic migration of the seventh century AD. The ancient Khovihnik ruins in Spelph are now a tourist attraction.

Dan Lärdmann attests in his Chronica Gothica from the late 9th century that the holdings of Stohn and Spelf and their surrounding lands were under the rule of Ingmar the Ironwilled, who had sworn fealty to Grand Chief Ricfried of Don. Spelph was a small farm town in this period and is known from local records to have suffered a great fire in 852. A small castle was completed in Spelph in 1004 by the town's Chief Sigismund of Spelf. Spelph was spared combat and surrendered without a fight in 1474 in the Conquest of Joanusterre.

A tally of his holdings ordered by the Steward of Donne Rachet d'Agostino in 1520 records Spelph to be home to a studdery, blacksmith, butchershop and tanner. Spelph is also especially noted for the presence of several tower mills that were used to efficiently grind grains from the nearby farms. An elderly hermit was killed in 1535 when her home in the forests north of Spelph was torched by a mob amid rumours that she was a witch, accused of having cursed the cattle of Spelph to lactate sour milk. A serial egg-thief, a charcoal burner who lived alone in a hut on the banks of the river Spelph, was murdered with pitchforks in another grizzly display of mob justice in 1536. The upgrade to a watchhouse from a simple catchpole helped alleviate the issue of vigilante justice as criminals no longer had to be brought all the way to Stonne to be brought to justice.

The First Potato War had it's beginnings with the Potato movement rising up in Spelph in 1556 in protest of the import ban placed on potatoes, although the movement was also spurred on by the emerging Great Confessional War. The movement garnered widespread support and the peasants of Stonne and Spelph banded together with those of the surrounding Baronies. They laid siege to Stonne Monastery briefly but failed to take it, instead opting to capture and loot Stonne Castle. The peasants of Stonne Barony soon linked up with a likeminded band of peasants in Nouvelle-Torantino and marched on Donnebourg. Although the peasants were defeated the following year far outside Stonne Barony, the repercussions of the diminished workforce was felt in the region for generations to come.

The town of Stonne became partially destroyed during the Battle of Stonne that decisively ended the Yonderian Peasants War in 1643 when the Black Host of Fabian Löwenschiold made their last stand there. Because of the damage done to Stonne, Spelph was given market rights and thus uplifted to the status of market town, hosting the traditional Black Forest grand market that year. The grand market has since been alternating between the two towns annually.

Industrial Revolution
Stonne was at the heart of the industrial revolution in Yonderre. For several centuries logging in the Black Forest had been rafted down the Donne River via the Spelph River for use in the shipping industry, as construction timber and for other purposes. This branch of industry boomed in the 17th and 18th centuries and led to large-scale clearances and major deforestation. The takeoff stage of economic development came with the railroad revolution in the 1840s, which opened up new markets for local products, created a pool of middle managers, increased the demand for engineers, architects and skilled machinists and stimulated investments in coal and iron. With the expansion of the railway and road network as alternative transportation, rafting largely came to an end in the late 19th century.

Until around 1800 the guilds, the landed aristocracy, the church and the goverment bureaucracies maintained many rules and restrictions that held entrepreneurship in low esteem and gave little opportunity for them to develop. From the 1800s and 10s a new focus on agriculture based on sugar beets, turnips and potatoes that yielded better harvests was introduced, which enabled a surplus rural population to move to industrial areas. In 1800 the population was predominantly rural, as only 10% lived in communities of more than 5,000 people, and only 4% lived in cities of more than 50,000 people. After 1815 the urban population grew rapidly due to the influx of young people from the rural areas. Particularly Spelph and Loneur grew in this period, with Spelph overtaking Stonne as the most populous city in Stonne Barony by 1840.

The Beauregard Steel Works was built in the Spelph River Valley in 1841 and was the largest factory in Donne until construction of the Fabrique de Sainte-Catherine. The Beauregard Steel Works was one of Yonderre's leading manufacturers of steam locomotives throughout the 1840s and 50s. A long stretch of railroad was laid to connect the steel works with Stonne, from where it connected to Donnebourg and Yonderre at large. This caused a rapid growth of industry in the Spelph River Valley, with the majority of the workforce living in the nearby cities of Spelph and Loneur.