Travis Norton

Travis Norton came into the world in Leid 4, 1841 AF, in the heart of the Ditch District—deep beneath Edison, where the city’s wealth and wonder rarely reached. His parents had little, and the neighbourhood even less, but Travis possessed from boyhood a stubborn glimmer of something defiantly bright. He grew up surrounded by soot-coated brick, flickering lamps, and the sound of dripping condensation echoing down rusted metal corridors. Yet even there, he found colour. He would later say that the Ditch taught him to look for beauty where no one else bothered to search for it.

When he completed preparatory school, Travis joined the district’s emergency rescue and firefighting force, a job as gruelling as it was necessary. Down in the Ditch, fires didn’t burn—they smothered, devouring oxygen and crawling through grease-slick ducts like living things. In 1861 AF, during one such inferno, a collapsing electrical conduit ignited an entire grid of soot and industrial residue. The blaze spread faster than anyone thought possible. Travis was found elbow-deep in the chaos, coughing blood, eyes streaming, hauling child after child from the orphanage before the upper floors gave way. By the time help arrived, he had saved all of them. The story made its way to the surface and caught the attention of the Radiant Shield Pickers, who offered him a place in the 1862 tournament.

Travis had no money of his own, but an anonymous noble provided the means for him to train. With those two years of tutelage, he entered a world far removed from the Ditch’s smoke and grime. When he joined the Radiant Shield, he was assigned to the Solspire Tower’s defensive regiment, where discipline, vigilance, and ritual structured every hour of his life. Though he was never the most gifted fighter, his unwavering diligence earned him steady promotions. He followed orders with precision, acted boldly when others hesitated, and never forgot what it meant to protect the vulnerable.

Beneath the uniform, however, Travis was a romantic shaped from softness rather than steel. His ebony skin, night-dark hair, and sapphire eyes cast him as striking even among the Radiant Shield’s polished officers, but he never quite believed it. He poured his soul instead into painting—landscapes, coasts, and the uninhabited islands scattered around Edison. On his little sailing boat he felt truly free, watching the shoreline unfurl like a breathing thing as he captured the motion of wind and water on canvas. Yet he never painted people. He insisted he lacked the skill, claiming he could never do justice to the grace of the Alsian form, convinced that human beauty was something beyond him—something he might admire but never replicate.

In the years leading up to 1869, grief and exhaustion began to settle over him like silt. Only his closest friends knew the truth: Travis had slipped into a deep, unrelenting depression. One hospitalisation followed in late 1868. Yet, paradoxically, these years also fuelled the most feverish creative breakthrough of his life. His work—moody washes of twilight colours, lonely horizons, and shorelines that seemed to ache—caught the eye of artistic circles in Barrogate. Even Stormwatch and the Wall District salons, notoriously selective, whispered his name.

Personality

Travis is a man of extraordinary tenderness in a world that often demands hardness. He believes fiercely—sometimes foolishly—in the goodness of others, clinging to the idea that beauty is worth chasing even when the world burns. His bravery is not loud or showy; it is the quiet, stubborn kind that keeps him standing when fear tells him to run. He is loyal almost to a fault and carries a haunting mixture of humility and longing. In conversation he is soft-spoken, thoughtful, and occasionally shy, yet with a surprising streak of boldness when someone he loves is in danger. Romance lives in his bones—he loves intensely, wholeheartedly, with a purity that makes heartbreak all the sharper. Above all, he is a dreamer, and dreams are both his salvation and his undoing.

Despite the weight he carries, Travis has small joys that anchor him. His favourite pastime—beyond painting—is taking his little sailing boat out alone at dawn, letting the mist roll over the bow while he sketches quick studies of the coastline before the sun fully rises. He hums when he concentrates, often without realising it, low melodies that echo old Ditch lullabies. He collects smooth stones from every island he visits, keeping them in his pockets until they wear holes through the fabric. And when he’s nervous, he taps the side of his paintbrush against his teeth—a habit his fellow officers tease him for, though he barely notices he’s doing it.