This is the capitol of the Megaloth Empire. The Tower is carved from a natural rock spire and clad in reflective metal sheeting. The city is on a half-graben plateau 4,000 feet above sea level, overlooking an isthmus and the sea. Being the most defensible city in the world, they pay the price in the exorbitant logistics required for trade. A massive network of canals, locks and lifts impose a heavy tax on everything. But they offset the expense by passing the financial burden onto the rest of the world, since their man-made port is a choke-point that global trade must travel through. (Except for those crazy or desperate enough to risk sailing through armed whale territory)
One of the most technologically advanced in the world of Talifar, Megaloth City makes the most of hydraulic power, having a dam on the lake above them, they pipe the water to power things like elevators, trams and looms. While certain technologies are repressed (Electricity, Gunpowder & Internal Combustion) by the Wardens, (who's job is to make sure no single species on Talifar destroys the others) The human, majismontem, and other sentient species who call Megaloth City their home have found ingenious ways to facilitate better living through innovation of labor saving devices, leveraging their position as a world super power, and maintaining freedom (from their perspective) and order for all world trade.
"Bowmark passed through the dark tunnel under the aqueduct into cold light and a shock that made him pull up the goatish he was riding. People behind him shouted. He nudged his goatish to the side of the stone-and-tar-paved road so he could examine the city without impeding anyone. He sat on his stinking beast, stunned to immobility and silence at the view of Megaloth City. The capitol of the Megaloth Empire was Minerstown multiplied by thousands, hundreds of thousands. A great plain spread in front of him until the ground was abruptly broken—many ropes away—by a mighty cliff wall hundreds of strides tall. The plain was riddled with canyons and holes so geometric that they had to be man-made. The holes plunged a hundred or more strides into the ground. Carved all round their inside walls were tiers of dwellings, roads, and ramps. This network of pits and pillars all pointed towards the greatest monument to human and majismontem ingenuity in the world. The Megaloth City Spire, taller than the cliff behind it, loomed over the plain like a finger pointing at the sky. Its magnificent proportions made the sprawling metropolis around it look like an ant hill. Covered from top to bottom in beaten copper and silver, the Tower gleamed ferociously in the setting sun. Intricately carved arches, balconies, windows and slowly spinning windmills dotted the exterior like ornaments, adding complexity to the Tower’s impossible magnitude. At its base stood gates ten strides tall. An array of spires, pinnacles and banners sat proudly on top, like a crown, clearly communicating that only the most powerful of the powerful resided within." The Scarred King: Book 3
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