Marwen announces itself through the smell before anything else — damp earth, fresh-cut wood, and something floral that visitors from drier cities can't immediately identify. The Bellree Rainforest presses against the northern edge of the city, and the city has not pushed back so much as negotiated: the tallest trees remain standing, the streets wind around them, and the buildings rise alongside rather than in place of them.

The architecture is the thing most people remark on first. The woodworkers of Marwen treat timber not as raw material but as medium — the buildings show their grain, are shaped to suggest the forms they came from, and are maintained with a care that elsewhere goes into stonework. Carved balconies drip with hanging gardens. Eaves are cut into leaf shapes. The effect should feel overwrought and manages instead to feel inevitable, as if the city were a natural extension of the forest edge.

The Wartna River runs along the southern boundary, wide and calm here, and the docks are active — not a war port, but a working one. The city trades in objects that weigh relatively little and sell for quite a lot, which means the docks handle a steady traffic of smaller vessels rather than heavy cargo ships.

The population mixes elven and human residents in proportions that have shifted gradually over the centuries. The current balance is elven-majority but not overwhelmingly so, and the two communities have long since stopped organizing their social lives around the distinction.

Marwen sits on the northern bank of the Wartna River at the point where the Bellree Rainforest reaches its southernmost extent. The forest to the north provides the raw material for everything Marwen produces and the water from the river enables the city's cleaning, dyeing, and finishing industries. Neither resource is infinite, which Marwen learned the hard way and has not forgotten.

The city spreads outward from the river in a pattern that follows natural terrain rather than a planner's grid — paths trace contours, neighborhoods form around existing groves, and the largest trees have effectively become urban landmarks. The palace sits at the city's highest point, visible from the river but not imposing on the rest of the city.

The forest itself is managed. Sustainable harvest zones were established after the timber crisis approximately two centuries ago; the areas accessible to loggers are rotated, the old-growth sections are protected, and the recovery has been substantial. The forest visible from Marwen's northern streets is genuinely old and genuinely dense.

Marwen's population is majority elven, with a substantial human minority that has been present since the city's early growth period. The two groups have integrated well enough that neighborhoods are not ethnically segregated, marriages between them are unremarkable, and the notable families include both. House Slvanna itself is dual-lineage, which has made that particular question symbolic rather than practical.

The city also has a small but established artisan community drawn from other continents — craftspeople who came to study Marwen's woodworking methods and never left, or who married in and raised families. This community has contributed techniques that the local masters have absorbed and made their own.

The economy is built on craft exports. Marwen's woodworkers produce furniture, instruments, and architectural elements that command prices elsewhere that reflect their quality. The textile industry runs second — the silk and lace produced here use thread sources and dyeing methods that have not been fully replicated elsewhere. The master weaponsmiths are few in number but their work reaches courts and collections across Irna. Honey and venison are specialty goods: the forest honey is distinct enough to be valued as a culinary product rather than a sweetener, and the ethically culled deer herds produce venison that has found its way into the finer kitchens of Dort.

The water fee from Wartna River access is negligible — the river is not the bottleneck, the craft is.

Marwen eats from the forest and the river in roughly equal measure. Venison appears in everything from festival roasts to the stews sold in working neighborhoods. Fish from the Wartna is prepared simply — the city does not have a complex seafood tradition because the fish don't require much intervention. Forest mushrooms and herbs go into everything. Honey is used in cooking to a degree that visitors from elsewhere find notable.

The city's bread is dense and substantial, made from grain that comes upriver by trade. The drink of choice is a mead made locally from forest honey — light, floral, not aggressive — which is the thing that Marwen's merchants most consistently bring as gifts when traveling.

Marwen's defining cultural feature is the matriarchal governance of House Slvanna and the way it has shaped broader social norms over two centuries. The city is not rigidly matriarchal in daily life — it has not legislated gender roles in business or family structure — but the prestige attached to women in positions of expertise and authority is higher here than in most Irna cities, and this has compounded through generations.

The craft traditions are deeply tied to family and lineage. Technique is passed from parent to child; the best workshops are multigenerational. A piece of Marwen furniture made by a recognized family carries implicit information about craft history, not just current quality.

The city has a significant festival culture — not performative celebrations, but genuine community events organized around the production cycle. When the honey harvest comes in, when the loom season changes, when the forest management calendar turns — these are marked.

Each spring, before the logging season opens, the city's master craftspeople walk the authorized harvest zones with the Forest Management Authority. This is partially administrative and partially ceremonial — the trees to be taken are assessed, the areas to rest are confirmed, and the walk itself has accumulated enough tradition to be genuinely observed. The Queen attends when she is not otherwise engaged, which she generally manages to be.

When the major textile season closes in late autumn, the weavers of the Loomworks Quarter hold a night of display — finished works are hung from the balconies and lit. It lasts one evening. People come from outside the city for it. The commercial dimension (buyers attend) and the cultural dimension (it is genuinely beautiful) coexist without obvious tension.

Instruments made in Marwen are played in Marwen first. The city has a tradition of public performance that is tied directly to the craft — the best luthiers are known, their instruments are associated with particular players, and the concerts that happen in the riverside squares are informal but well-attended. The tradition is not for formal concert halls; it is for playing in public.

Carving and woodworking are the visual arts, and the line between craft and art is not observed. A chair made by a recognized craftsperson is art. The carved decorations in the Bethsia temple are frequently cited by scholars as among the finest examples of the form in Irna.

Bethsia is Marwen's primary deity — the faith that governs natural anomalies and the mysterious aspects of the world. The Bethsia temple in Marwen is built into a living tree cluster, the walls incorporating the trunks, and the interior is lit by a bioluminescent phenomenon in the wood that the priests have studied for centuries without arriving at a complete explanation. The carving throughout is the finest concentrated religious artwork in the city.

Bethsia is an appropriate patron for a city that lives alongside the forest and has cause to take its peculiarities seriously. The priests tend toward scholarly documentation of natural phenomena — the more unusual the occurrence, the more interest it generates among the clergy. This gives them an unusual relationship with Queen Slvanna's magical work.

Human residents maintain shrines to various Irna-wide deities. None has a significant formal presence in Marwen, though the craftspeople have a strong informal tradition around Caminus.

The original settlement at the Wartna River crossing predates House Slvanna by several centuries. The first community was elven — artisans drawn to the Bellree timber, who established the basic woodworking traditions. Human settlers arrived over the following century as the river trade developed.

The house arrived approximately three hundred years ago as an already-established family with both elven and human lineage and an existing reputation for governance. They took over from a succession of informal leadership arrangements that had worked well during the city's small period and were inadequate for its larger one. The matriarchal system arrived with them.

Overharvesting in the Bellree's accessible zones reached a crisis point when the yield per season dropped sharply and several old-growth sections showed signs of collapse. House Slvanna's response under the Queen of that era was the creation of the Forest Management Authority and the rotation system that has held since. It was economically painful for a generation and is now regarded as the decision that preserved the city's entire basis for existence.

A textile worker identified a silkworm species specific to the Bellree understory and developed a cultivation method. The resulting silk is structurally different from mainland varieties — finer and with a particular natural sheen. The discovery was within living memory of the oldest residents and is treated as recent history. The lace tradition developed in parallel as an application of the new thread.

Marwen is prosperous and aware of it. The Forest Management Authority's regime has allowed the old growth to recover to a point that production quality is actually better now than before the crisis. The Queen is focused on the political situation regarding Oshala's expansion, which she regards as the primary threat to Irna in the current period. She is not wrong, and her attention to it pulls her away from domestic administration more than she would prefer.

House Slvanna holds authority by hereditary claim and has governed Marwen for three centuries. The matriarchal structure is the house's defining characteristic: leadership passes through the eldest daughter, men who marry into the house take the Slvanna name, and the reigning queen adopts the name "Slvanna" upon ascension and holds the throne for a maximum of two centuries. The current Queen has held the position for forty-seven years.

The house is financially entangled with the city — they receive levies from the craft guilds, own significant river frontage, and the palace grounds include some of the finest old-growth timber on the urban edge. This is not disguised.

Elf, Female — present reign 47 years

Holly Jofir came to the throne in her early fifties — young for an elf to take on a two-century commitment, which was the point. She had spent the preceding decades building a reputation as a wizard of genuine ability and a political operator of similar skill, the two things House Slvanna values in a successor.

In public she is composed, precise, and not particularly warm — the ceremonial aspects of the role are discharged without performance. In private she is more direct and considerably more interested in the arcane work she keeps being pulled away from. The Oshala expansion has become the primary external demand on her time, which frustrates her because it is a real threat and therefore cannot be deprioritized.

She leans on Hass to manage the domestic administration she finds least engaging. He is good at it and does not appear to resent the arrangement.

Elf, Male — consort, Queen's primary domestic administrator

Hass took the Slvanna name upon marriage and then declined to use it except in formal documentation, which is technically within the rules and which the Queen allows. He is a Bellree Forest elf with genuine administrative competence and no apparent ambitions beyond ensuring that the things he has agreed to manage are managed well. He is more visible in day-to-day city life than the Queen, which some people mistake for greater authority than he actually holds.

Elf, Female — the council chamber, formal hours
Elara has held the chief advisor position through the last Queen and the current one, which creates a mild institutional tension she navigates carefully. Her expertise is in diplomacy and in the older magical traditions that Queen Slvanna studies; the two of them have a working relationship that is something like collegial.

Elf, Male — the river docks, most hours
Faelar manages trade flow and keeps meticulous records of what moves through the Wartna. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of which merchant is reliable and which requires watching, and he shares that information freely when asked by the right people.

Elf, Female — the palace and city patrol rotations
Lirel runs the guard with an emphasis on pattern recognition over incident response. Marwen doesn't have significant crime; she intends to keep it that way by noticing things before they become incidents.

Elf, Male — the palace arcane laboratory
Thandir and the Queen share magical research interests that have produced, over the years, a productive collaboration. He is the more theoretical of the two; she is the more applied. He also mentors promising young magic users from the city.

Human, Female — fifties — the Hollens Workshop, artisan quarter
The most recognized living name in Marwen woodworking. Her workshop produces perhaps forty major pieces a year, each commanded before completion. She is opinionated about what she will and will not make and has declined commissions from the Crown on aesthetic grounds. The Queen found this interesting rather than offensive, which says something about both of them.

Elf, Male — seventies — the northern forest boundary
Basal has held the primary warden position for thirty years and regards the Bellree with something beyond professional care. He was present during the final years of the original crisis and has never fully relaxed. His inspections of the harvest zones are thorough to the point of being slightly obstructive, and the Woodworkers' Guild complains about him regularly. House Slvanna declines to intervene.