Dodge

Dodge is a travelling merchant from Calvard visiting Liberl.

He's first met at Wolf Fort, the military checkpoint on the border between Calvard and Liberl and later travels to Zeiss where he stays at the Zahnrad Hotel and eats at the Forgel Bar whenever the hotel's kitchen is closed.

Dodge is from a remote village in a rough corner of the Republic that hasn't caught up with modern technology yet and apparantly has very different dress codes as well, since Dodge mentions having picked up some Liberlian clothes in order to blend in better in Zeiss.

Dodge's reason for travelling to Zeiss is to obtain a new heating orbment at Central Factory for use in his village, where orbments are apparantly rather rare. While Dodge is an orbment merchant at home, as a result of the rarity of orbments back in his hometown, Dodge doesn't have a great deal of technical knowledge about orbments and is considered a layman by Zeissian standards. He's confronted with this fact when he visits Central Factory's repair desk, asks for a heating orbment, is given a large list of all the different heating orbments the company has on offer, which only serves to thoroughly confuse him. The fact that the technically-minded repair desk operator pegs him as a layman and decides not to bother explaining his options in easy-to-understand terms doesn't help either.

Fortunately for him, he was noticed by the airship salesman Rutherford, who just finished a meeting with the head of the airship design department in the factory's main hall and who helped him pick the best option for the purpose it was needed for. Dodge later muses that compared to airships, heating orbments must be extremely uncomplicated.

That evening, he has a meal at the Forgel Bar, where he comments on the simplicity of the food (though he admits it does taste good).

He meets up with Rutherford again later and ropes him into showing him around the airport. Since Dodge's village has no airport itself, he marvels at the high-tech airport located in Zeiss and is even inspired to enter the airship business someday, though his village will need to have an airport first.