Voltaria

Also known as the city of songs, or the garden city, Voltaria is famous across the continent for its devotion to music and the arts. No Volta child is raised without a thorough education in theater, song and the art of performance, and most Voltarian citizens have some passion or hobby in the arts in addition to their everyday profession or craft.
Bards abound in the nation, and festivals and craft fairs are frequent and wondrous. Coupled with the vibrant greenery of the nation and its numerous taverns and inns, Voltaria is something of a choice destination for vacations and honeymoons, and its sweetened watermelons are considered a treat all across the continent. Despite its small size, the nation boasts many famous performers and works of art, and monuments and sculptures of merit are constructed so frequently that certain public squares rotate their art according to the season, displaying as many as four different statues or sculptures over the course of the year. 
Honesty, both literal and emotional, are upheld as the chiefest of virtues in Voltaria, and crimes of deception are often punished more harshly than the very acts they were meant to conceal. Lying to a Voltarian concerning anything important at all is considered a grave insult, and the citizen is unlikely to trust or even associate with the individual again.
This honesty is possible because of a tradition called the "Fifth Freedom," wherein someone who does not wish to reveal certain information simply invokes the Fifth freedom and is understood to be explaining he or she is being pushed into information they'd rather not reveal. Attempting to push someone to explain themselves after such an invocation voids any right of the questioner to expect an honest answer, and visitors to Voltaria must learn quickly that though few people will be genuinely dishonest, it can be very difficult to access information which someone does not wish to volunteer.
The Military:
The fact that Voltaria is the smallest of the city-states and has all of this cultural and material wealth necessitates a strong defense force, and Voltaire is one of several of the city-states to require each citizen to spend some time in the military. The various biomes of Voltaria have strong ties to elemental magic, and Voltaria is the only city-state to marshal cavalry that ride on or inside of elemental beasts.
Voltarian culture is very instrument-based, so perhaps it's no surprise that Voltarian military regiments tend to be organized by weapon, with most army's subcommanders being a high spearman in charge of overseeing spearmen, a high archer in charge of overseeing the archers and so forth. Critics claim that this causes organizational problems, as it's more difficult for Voltaria to field mixed forces oriented towards specific tasks that blend types of units, and denies command positions to those who are great tactical minds but may not be the most proficient soldiers; but the conventional wisdom in Voltaria has always been that anyone supervising the users of a type of tool ought to be a master of that tool.
Voltaria tends to stay out of conflicts, and is one of the only city-states to never advance outside its territory during the great wars. Its rolling terrain and proximity to mountains and lakes makes the region unusually defensible, and coupled with the ability of the army to cover the relatively short distance from end to end of the territory in less than two days, it's no surprise that no serious invasion of the country was conducted, though it was bombed at one point by Highspire War Alchemists. That damage aside, Voltaria is one of the best places in the world to see founding era buildings and technology because it hasn't suffered being razed to the ground and required a complete rebuild like so many other parts of the continent. It's perhaps ironic, then, that machine shops for anything other than improvement of the arts and limited defense purposes are rare in Voltaria. The community on the continent best positioned to take advantage of access to old world technology seems to be the least interested in any serious research.
Voltarian Problems:
Voltaria has its share of woes, and the small nation has ongoing problems with cults, hedonistic crime, smuggling and incidences of wrack energy outbreaks far more frequent than the city-state's size would lead one to expect. Some whisper that the hedonistic and decadent artistic culture of Voltaria attracts the wrack energy to it, but it's more likely that sharing a border with the badlands is to blame.
Voltaria is also one location that's struggling with the recently emerged cult called the Children of Joy. The badlands on the outer borders of Voltaria are one of the primary staging areas employed by the cult, and many miles of what was once barren dustland are now covered in the bizarre organic material that the Children deploy around their settlements. This fleshy expanse has recently begun creeping into actual arable land on the very borders of inhabited territory, and if it comes much further into the interior Voltaria may have to make some difficult decisions about what it's willing to tolerate.
Voltaria is also the home of the enigmatic Engelkin, a powerful and reclusive race of spirit creatures the size of titans whose goals and origins are almost entirely a mystery. They claim certain defined areas as territory, often caverns near the base of mountains, and rarely emerge. On occasion, one will go mad, and rampage through the surrounding countryside. Engelkin never raise arms against one another under any circumstances, so the Voltarian military has the dangerous job of containing or putting down these enormous spiritual entities. The fact that Engelkin go berserk is kept as closely guarded a secret as is possible, all things considered, as the government worries that curiosity or concern about the creatures could lead to impositions on Voltaria's sovereignty.
Voltarian Adventurers:
Voltarian citizens tend to take up adventuring because they want to compose (and/or feature in) the numerous tales of heroism and valor that they grew up witnessing. Some learn more quickly than others that the theatrical versions of these endeavors leave out numerous types of hardship and danger, and the relative paucity of quality art outside their home leads many citizens to eventually return to their homeland.