Travenburg arrives as a silhouette against sky — a city-sized mass of stone and architecture suspended where nothing that large should be, hovering above the Rhoidan Ocean at altitude. Flying ships dock at its air harbors. Cable cars cross between districts, visible from a distance as moving points of light. As your vessel approaches and docks, the smell is the first remarkable thing: clean. Salt air, yes, but nothing of the harbor rot or waste that marks every other port. The streets are broad, stone-paved, and luminescent lamp posts line them at intervals. At night, the entire city glows softly from below.

The people wear white — predominantly white, with color appearing only in badges, coats of arms, or religious symbols. Everyone moves with purpose. Loud voices, arguments, and the ambient chaos of ordinary city life are notably absent. Guards are present at regular intervals, but they are not threatening — they are simply there, present, watchful.

The most disorienting detail, once noticed, is the trees. They line every major street, and their leaves are not green — they read the emotional state of those who pass beneath them, shifting through blue, red, yellow, purple, white, and the rare and unsettling black. Touching them is a capital offense, enforced without warning.

Travenburg has no fixed location on any map because it moves. It floats above the Rhoidan Ocean, propelled slowly by means the Delman family has never published. It maintains a general circuit that keeps it accessible to major trade routes between the continents, and its air harbors accept traffic from flying ships at all times.

The climate above the ocean is temperate and variable — mild springs with light rain, warm summers with oceanic breezes and tropical showers, cool amber autumns, and crisp winters. Snow falls rarely, and when it does, the goblins of the undercity intensify their street-cleaning operations within hours.

What lies directly below the city is open ocean. The shanty towns — the production neighborhoods where butchering, manufacturing, farming, and mining occur — are not on Travenburg itself. They exist in associated locations serviced by flying ship routes, keeping all productive-class dirtiness at a distance from the city's surfaces.

Travenburg's society is formally divided into four classes, and class is visible at a glance from dress. The Workers occupy half the city. Nobles hold roughly a tenth. Merchants fill a third. The Clergy reside in the Parish Grounds. Movement between classes is possible in theory and is used by the administration as a motivating promise — in practice, it is uncommon enough to be notable when it occurs.

All races are present and mostly tolerated, in proportion to their economic contribution. Goblins specifically occupy a unique position as the undercity custodians — revered as the essential force behind the city's defining cleanliness, they move through maintenance passages ordinary residents never see.

Travenburg's economic engine runs on two rails: the internal commerce of the Merchant's Quarter and the external trade facilitated by its flying ship fleet. The city itself is a financial center — banks, moneylenders, and trade negotiators operate here at scale. Goods from across the world flow through its air harbors and bazaars.

Production happens outside the city. Butchering, manufacturing, farming, and resource extraction all occur in the shanty towns and associated operations serviced by the flying ships. Finished goods are imported back into the city for sale and distribution.

The 10% levy on goods passing through Travenburg sustains city infrastructure and funds the Delman family's continued operations.

Eateries in Travenburg focus on assembly and presentation — butchering is prohibited inside the city, so meat arrives processed. The cuisine reflects the city's trade connections: ingredients from across Dort appear in the markets. Meals are clean affairs with the presentation carrying as much weight as the food itself. Public dining spaces are common, designed to accommodate the city's emphasis on order and shared space.

Travenburg runs on compliance. Order is the city's primary cultural value, and it is not merely enforced — it is genuinely believed in by most long-term residents. Littering draws a fine. Loud disputes in public draw attention from guards within minutes. Dress code violations — wearing colors not appropriate to one's class, or failing to maintain the white-dominant requirement — are a "cultural offense" subject to re-education.

Children attend eight years of mandatory schooling, learning trade skills alongside the city's values. The curriculum is administered by the administration, not individual families. Public decorum is paramount: Travenburg citizens are broadly courteous, measured, and private about their actual opinions of any given thing.

The re-education programs are the city's signature justice instrument. Designed to correct rather than punish, they combine therapy, education, and community service. Whether they succeed depends heavily on what the offense was and who is administering the program.

An annual celebration of the Delman family's establishment of the city. The Noble's Enclave opens portions of its grounds to the public. The Parish Grounds conduct simultaneous ceremonies across all major faiths. The Merchant's Quarter hosts large communal meals. It is the one day of the year when the class stratification is ceremonially relaxed — and the only day when color is broadly worn without restriction.

Music in Travenburg is largely ceremonial or ambient — performances for public spaces, processional music for civic events, soft accompaniment in the eateries of the Merchant's Quarter. Bards work the inns and gathering halls. Visual art leans toward civic themes: murals in public spaces depict the city's history, the Delman family's legacy, and allegorical scenes of order and unity. Individual artistic expression outside these channels exists but draws social attention of the uncomfortable variety.

No single deity holds civic authority in Travenburg. The Parish Grounds houses multiple orders in relative harmony — the city's administrative philosophy is that orderly worship of any recognized deity is acceptable. The Clergy class manages the temples and operates as the city's spiritual infrastructure without asserting doctrinal dominance.

All recognized faiths of Dort are represented by at least a small congregation. Deities of knowledge, order, and commerce are the most heavily attended. Fujin has a small temple that the administration regards with some wariness — the god of chaos and storms is an odd fit for Travenburg's sensibility, but the worshippers are quiet about it.

Amnyth worship is tolerated nowhere the city administration can verify it. Whether this has driven it underground is the kind of question no one asks at the Parish Grounds.

The Delman family built Travenburg. The historical record of how — the engineering, the magic, the financing, the timeline — has never been fully published. The family maintains a library in the Noble's Enclave that is understood to contain the full account. What is known publicly is that the city was established above the Rhoidan Ocean deliberately, as a neutral point accessible to all powers without being subject to any of them. The founding philosophy was trade and order: a city that worked because everyone in it had a reason to keep it working.

The undercity — the maintenance levels beneath Travenburg's streets — was built as part of the original infrastructure and entrusted to the goblins who helped construct it. Their contract with the Delman family is one of the oldest standing agreements in the city. The goblins maintain the water towers, the drainage systems, the lamp stones, and the street-cleaning operations. They are essential and invisible, which is exactly how the arrangement was designed.

At some point in the city's history — the Delman family records are exact on the date but the information is not public — the sentient trees were installed in every major street. Their origin is unknown to the general public. They read the emotions of those who pass beneath them and communicate that information through leaf-color changes visible to anyone nearby. The calming aura they emit reduces the frequency of public conflict measurably. The prohibition against touching them is enforced as a capital offense. Whether the trees are also communicating what they perceive to someone in the city who reads the information is a question the administration declines to address.

Travenburg is prosperous, orderly, and tightly controlled. The administration runs smoothly. The social contract — work, comply, and be provided for — holds for the majority. The minority for whom it doesn't are in the re-education programs, in the shanty towns, or no longer in the city. The Delman family's grip on the city is complete and rarely tested publicly.

The Delman family founded the city and have run it in every meaningful sense since. The Noble's Enclave governance structure formally includes a council of appointed administrators, but appointment is the family's prerogative. Law is enforced by the city guard, backed by truth-detection magic in the court system. The legal standard is consistent and the process is orderly. Outcomes for those without connections trend toward the official penalty table.

Human bloodline, multi-generational — Noble's Enclave

The current Delman family head does not hold a public-facing title. The family appears publicly at civic events and administers through appointed officials. They are known to be deeply invested in the city's reputation for order — disruptions that reach the outside world are addressed swiftly and conclusively. Family members do not discuss the origin of the sentient trees, the complete content of the founding library, or the precise mechanics of the city's levitation. These are framed as proprietary matters.

The city guard is a professional force recruited primarily from the Worker's District, trained at the city's expense, and uniformed in white with grey detailing. They are present throughout the city but concentrated in the Merchant's Quarter, the government offices at the Noble's Enclave perimeter, and the air harbors. In the Parish Grounds they are present but deferential. Guard in the Worker's District are less formally deployed — block wardens handle most incidents at that level before guards are called. Magic is routinely used during formal proceedings to confirm testimony.

The re-education programs run for varying durations depending on offense severity. They are administered in dedicated facilities outside the main districts and combine structured therapy, education, and supervised community work. Completion restores full civic standing. Non-completion — defined as repeated non-compliance inside the program — escalates to expulsion from the city.

Goblin, Mixed — Undercity maintenance passages

Not a single figure but a collective: several dozen goblin families living and working in the maintenance levels beneath Travenburg. They are revered, in the specific way that essential infrastructure is revered — appreciated, not fully seen. Their foreman, a goblin matriarch who has held the position for forty years, deals directly with the Delman family's estate manager and nowhere else. She is not known to give her name to outsiders.

[Additional notable figures to be developed by GM as needed — merchants, clergy leaders, notable guild members, guard captains]

What crime exists in Travenburg is quiet, professional, and aware that the sentient trees create a permanent ambient surveillance problem. The Merchant's Quarter has a functioning black market in goods that either bypass the air harbor tariff or originate from outside the official supply chain. It is run by people who understand that the trees turn black near violent intent and conduct their business accordingly — clean hands, indirect transactions, records that can withstand scrutiny.

The larger criminal question is the shanty towns. Outside the city's formal borders, the production towns operate under lighter oversight. Labor conditions there are harder, justice is less formal, and the organizations that run the extracurricular economy of those towns are not subject to re-education programs.