Rutherford

Rutherford is an airship salesman working for the Liberl Orbalship Corporation who's first met in Ruan.

He's an inhabitant of the town of Zeiss where he's living in a house in the northern part of the city block together with his wife, daughter and father, though when Estelle and Joshua first run into him, he's on vacation in Ruan together with his father Randall and daughter Muriel, having hired a tour guide to show them the sights around town. Throughout the chapter, he and his family can be seen taking in the various sights, like the park with the lighthouse, the Langland Bridge and the church with the stained glass windows illuminated by the Ruanian sunset or relaxing on the terrace behind the Lavantar.

The vacation is not exactly uneventful either. At one point, his father accidentally drops his dentures into the water and the three of them have to hire Melvin, a bracer, in order to retrieve them. The three of them also nearly took an involuntary bath in the Roubine river themselves as they were standing on the Langland Bridge when Mayor Dalmore, in his attempt to escape from Estelle, Joshua and Kloe, opened the bridge in preparation to escape with his yacht. Fortunately, the three of them weren't standing exactly in the middle and could get away before the bridge was raised completely. Rutherford and his family make it back to Zeiss just before Estelle and Joshua do and life returns to normal for them with Rutherford getting back to his job, Muriel returning to Sunday School and Randall going back to spending most of the day at the Forgel Bar in Zeiss.

Upon reading in the newspaper that the Arseille docked in Ruan for a while, he rued the fact that he and his family left town just before the airship took off, as he really would have liked to see it. Part of the reason for that is the fact that Rutherford was involved with the royal airship's production. Due to his position in the Orbalship Corporation and knowledge of airships, Rutherford was approached by both Central Factory and the Royal Guard during the construction phase to act as advisor. While he's no longer directly involved in the process, he's still kept in the loop about the general going-ons and even has a meeting with Hugo from the design room when one of the engineers quits the engine project. The difficulties with work make him long for the relaxing days in Ruan.

While in Zeiss, he meets Dodge, a merchant from a less technologically developed part of Calvard, and helps him pick an appropriate heating orbment, which the latter was looking for, but had trouble picking due to his lack of technical knowledge and the overabundance of available options. Rutherford later mentions he hopes he'll meet Dodge again since the country will most likely expand its trade with the Calvard Republic eventually and it'd be a good idea to make contacts early.

He gets his wish when he runs into Dodge again later on and gets roped into showing the enthusiastic Calvardian merchant around the Zeiss technologically advanced airport, awakening a profound fascination of airships and airship trade inside the latter.

Later on, Rutherford plans to travel to Grancel and would have been on the same flight that Estelle and Joshua were initially going to take, but the unexpected army inspections of the air traffic caused the bracers to cancel their tickets while Rutherford was forced to deal with a huge delay, though he still arrives in royal city before the Bright siblings do.

Rutherford initially came to sell ship fuselages to the travel company in Grancel and stick around for the birthday celebration if things went well enough, but due to the army's ever-toughening inspections and the threat of the birthday celebration's cancellation looming over the city, he decides that people in Grancel probably have other things on their mind than business deals right now, so he decides to return to Zeiss and check back up on the rejuvenated Arseille project at the factory.

Relations
Rutherford is the husband of Sotiria, the father of Muriel and the son of Randall.