Peder's earliest memory is being hauled up onto the Black Fisher, ship of the vicious Red Pirate Reborn, Kemper Bane. Kemper, for reasons of his own, took the boy in when he had cast a thousand other children into the waves as bait. Peder can't recall why, but Kemper always referred to him as "Mister Monsapple," and though he knew that was not his name, he kept it all the same. The rest of the crew called him "the Vimalan boy" or, if he was lucky, they conceded to calling him by the only name that he knew for himself, "Peder."

He quickly became part of the crew, being at a young & impressionable age, he took to their way of life. He picked up the language & lingo, he picked up the sailing skills, & he picked up the morals of the reever trade. Though self-serving comes first & survival of the fittest is key, comraderie is also a major point of the lifestyle. There's no honor amongst reevers, but there is affection. Kemper Bane himself took Peder under his wing, & many thought Peder might be the next Red Pirate.

Then, Kemper made port in Merukis & kicked Peder off the ship. At the age of fourteen, Peder was a tough, vicious sea dog turned street rat, & there he fell in with various groups. From the Thieves' Guild, which strangely left Peder alone, to the Beggars' Guild, which sometimes gave Peder handouts, Peder found Merukis to be oddly receptive... until he met a younger street rat named Martin, who talked him out of a foolish caper that would only have served to make Peder wanted by the police--who did not seem very receptive to Peder.

Martin & Peder became friends & helped organize a crew of street rats, big & small, to run wild in the streets of Merukis, until one day, strangers came & ransacked the island. Martin vanished. Peder, left to lead what was left of the street rats on his own, couldn't handle the sudden leadership & responsibility, & snuck aboard the Night Ripper, ship of Captain Aleksander Njenavjsh, where he had to kill a man to make a berth for himself. Aleksander noticed Peder quickly, & though he did not remove him from the crew, he took to bullying him. For the next several years, Peder waited for the chance to kill Aleksander for the cruelties of the first night he met him, the night Aleksander had him flogged & doused in ocean water.

Peder would, indeed, have killed Aleksander but for the intervention of a strange captive. During one of the raids of a Taggaran coastal city, Peder & two of his crewmates found a Vimalan princess asleep in an inn room. Seeing her beautiful body & luxurious wealth, they decided to capture her to ransom later. The three bound & gagged her & dragged her back to the Ripper, where Aleksander dragged her belowdecks. Though she was just another in a long line of captives, something about her face struck Peder as familiar. He followed Aleksander down in time to find him just finishing his conquest. The pirate captain threw the woman to the ground & growled, "So you're a Monsapple, aren't you, Olivia?"

The woman weeped in response, barely nodding. "Your father," Aleksander growled in his heavy Maskovian accent, "runs the Monsapple Trading Company, then?"

She nodded, sobbing. Peder, jumping to the conclusion that he had found not just a relative, but a rich one, stepped forward & confronted Aleksander. When the captain realized Peder's belief, he burst into laughter. The girl just stared. Before Aleksander could respond, though, the girl burst into violet light...

...Peder woke up in the sea, bound to a raft of barrels, naked. Fever dreams over took him. In a strange vision, Peder saw a thousand houses burning. Atop them all, he danced in battle with Aleksander across the roofs. Around him, dozens of faces stared at him through the flames, including Olivia, Martin, & Kemper. As he fought, he heard a voice, coming from the various faces (though always the same voice), say, "Blood of the Line seeks Blood of the Line. Only the Princes of the World may stand against the Tide of Corruption. You are either with the Unifier or against him."

When he awoke, he found himself on a stretch of desert on the Taggaran coast...