The City of New Straum has historically been divided into Wards, administrative divisions that rose up from the earliest settlers of the region. The City began as a community of indigenous tribes: humans from the eastern deserts and halflings from the tropical climates of the distant south. They converged in the heart of the Strumland basin, where the Northriver forks around Andue Island. As the nomadic peoples began to make the area a permanent home, they called their village i'Ya'anga (meaning, The place where water is and is not salted.)
Several centuries would pass (the oldest archeological records date to the early 1300s, but oral tradition places the beginning of i'Ya'anga closer to 3200bc) before the Old Kingdoms of Alcyon found the region. Lord Grafford Von Straum III, Captain of Arch Dutchess Agatha's ship, the Goldspire, spied the deep-water harbor in 1512, calling the whole basin "Straumland."
Following Straum III's discovery, other foreigners came. Some came by choice, as colonizers, while others were forced to come in bondage and servitude.