Raverie is not a harmonious melting pot. It is a city held together by function, not affection. Each race occupies a clearly defined role within the city’s ecosystem, and while cooperation is constant, true equality is not.
The stability of Raverie depends on this imbalance. The tensions between races are rarely explosive, but they are ever-present, shaping law, labor, and daily interaction. Most conflict is quiet, bureaucratic, or indirect — but no less impactful for it.
Humans make up the majority of the population and serve as the city’s social baseline. Around them exist groups that are more specialized, more constrained, or more alien to the city’s norms. These differences are accepted because they are necessary.
Humans form the backbone of Raverie’s workforce. They occupy nearly every profession that does not require extreme specialization, operating shops, factories, bakeries, transport systems, administration, and public services.
They are adaptable, emotionally expressive, and socially flexible — traits that allow them to bridge gaps between other races. This makes humans the city’s primary interface between systems and people.
Elves: Respected, relied upon, quietly resented. Humans acknowledge that elves keep the city alive, but dislike their separation and special legal status.
Automatons: Viewed as tools first, coworkers second. Emotional attachment exists but is rarely discussed openly.
Gremlins: Mostly regarded as pests or nuisances.
Ginger-Crust: Universally liked. Seen as harmless, joyful, and deserving of protection.
Humans are politically dominant by number, but not by control. This discrepancy fuels subtle frustration that surfaces during crises, failures, or legal disputes.
Elves occupy a unique position in Raverie. They are not numerous, but they are indispensable.
Their defining traits — punctuality, precision, cleanliness, and unwavering reliability — have led them into roles where failure is unacceptable. Elves dominate critical infrastructure positions, including:
Clockguard fast-response units
Helicopter and rapid-deployment piloting
Undercity patrol and Modus protection
High-risk maintenance in confined or moving mechanisms
Elves maintain their own district under a separate jurisdictional system. Elven law applies only to elves, justified by the argument that their duties and risks are fundamentally different from those of other citizens.
This arrangement is officially pragmatic and unofficially controversial.
Humans tolerate it because it works. Elves accept it because it protects efficiency.
Toward Humans: Capable but inconsistent. Emotionally driven. Useful, but unreliable under pressure.
Toward Automatons: Systems, not people. Value performance over sentiment.
Toward Gremlins: A persistent threat to order. Not hated, but actively contained.
Toward Ginger-Crust: Respected, handled carefully, but rarely engaged with deeply.
Elves tend to keep to themselves socially. Their isolation is not born of arrogance, but of incompatibility. The city’s messiness exhausts them.
Automatons are omnipresent in Raverie. They patrol streets, sort mail, bake bread, play music, and enforce order. Yet socially, they occupy an uncomfortable ambiguity.
They are semi-conscious, decision-capable, and capable of interaction — but they are still widely regarded as mechanisms.
Automatons are not considered legal persons.
They do not vote, own property, or hold office.
They may be repaired, reassigned, or decommissioned without consent.
Despite this, many citizens — especially humans — develop personal attachments to specific automatons. These bonds are unofficial and culturally awkward.
Humans often anthropomorphize automatons, especially long-serving ones.
Elves resist this entirely, viewing such thinking as dangerous sentimentality.
Gremlins see automatons as shelter, tools, or raw material.
Ginger-Crust treat automatons with sincere kindness, often eliciting unusually gentle behavior.
Automaton malfunction incidents frequently expose these tensions, forcing characters to confront whether a machine can be wronged — or only broken.
Gremlins live beneath Raverie, within the vast mechanical underbelly of the city. They thrive in the heat, motion, and waste of the Modi systems, feeding off discarded materials, residual energy, and neglected spaces.
They are agile, secretive, and profoundly incompatible with surface society.
Gremlins are universally disliked and distrusted by surface races. They are blamed for malfunctions, sabotage, and unexplained failures — often correctly, sometimes unfairly.
Most humans rarely see a gremlin and doubt their intelligence.
Gremlins are not unified. Their society is fractured into factions, including:
Groups that actively sabotage city mechanisms
Groups that maintain systems to preserve their habitat
Groups that seek total isolation from the surface
These factions are difficult to locate and nearly impossible to fully eradicate.
Only elves regularly interact with gremlins, due to their ability to navigate the undercity safely.
This has created a quiet, ongoing conflict:
Elves view gremlins as entropy given form.
Gremlins view elves as inevitable jailers.
Neither side expects reconciliation.
The Ginger-Crust are magical, sentient beings created through the interaction of the Noel Modus and the Royal Bakery’s precision systems. They are rare, cheerful, and emotionally open.
They live primarily in their own districts and communities, maintaining their own internal structures.
Ginger-Crust are widely liked and socially protected.
Harm against them is considered morally shocking.
Even hardened Clockguard officers react strongly to their distress.
They are often invited to public events and celebrations, though rarely to positions of authority.
Humans find them comforting and symbolic.
Elves treat them with careful respect.
Automatons often behave unusually calmly around them.
Gremlins largely avoid them.
Their innocence makes them powerful symbols — and frequent targets of “benevolent” exploitation.
Raverie’s greatest social strain comes not from hatred, but from jurisdiction.
Crimes involving multiple races raise immediate questions:
Whose law applies?
Who has authority to investigate?
Who decides guilt?
Elven jurisdiction, Clockguard authority, and human law often overlap imperfectly. This creates:
Delayed justice
Political compromise
Quiet cover-ups
Such cases are rarely simple, and often resolved through negotiation rather than verdict.
No official document acknowledges this, but most citizens understand the real structure of power in Raverie:
Modus Winders
Elves in infrastructure roles
Precision Mechanics
Humans
Automatons
Gremlins
Ginger-Crust (morally high, politically low)
Everyone pretends this hierarchy does not exist — which ensures it continues to shape the city.