Arcaniksburg
Arcaniksburg is a city that was built with a grand dream in mind. A dream of magic and technology working in perfect unison to create a better, more prosperous life for the people of Duwallen. I stand before you, dear people, to tell you that this dream has been realized.
The jewel of the Menschen Empire, Arcaniksburg is a modern marvel. In its early days, the rich and influential of the town managed to gather enough resources and magic into one place to rip the city center from the earth and leave it hovering in the air, hundreds of meters above the astonished townsfolk. The Upper City, as it imaginatively came to be called, is now chained in place, with cable cars ferrying some of the greatest minds in the world in and out of its various workshops, laboratories, and luxurious accommodations. The city is the seat of progress in Duwallen, with the vast majority of advancements made by the nation - magical, mechanical, or any combination of the two - coming from within its walls.
The Problem Area
The act of tearing the Upper City free left a sizable crater in its wake. For over a century it's been an eyesore that generations of politicians have tried to have cleaned up, filled in, or otherwise dealt with, but the logistics simply never pan out. The Upper City's sewers and other liquid runoff pour off of the floating hunk of land and into the crater, where it may look ugly, but at least it's centrally located and out of everyone's way. What's more, this alchemical drainage eventually led to the birth and development of the Rattenvölkern, rat-like humanoids who had the unfortunate luck to be discovered by the Arcaniksburg elite before they were able to make themselves presentable. As such, the Ratten have been branded as inhuman monsters and are typically killed on sight. The general populace is guilty of taking part in these murderous acts, but in the majority of cases, it's out of ignorance rather than hate. The politicians and other elite of the city control the flow of information with an iron grip, and it behooves them to paint the Ratten as vermin and have them summarily exterminated. After all; they're in the way of progress.
Government
Arcaniksburg is overseen by a Burggraf, a sort of combination mayor and high judge assigned by the Imperial Court back in Sturmstadt. They have the final word in nearly all judicial and federal matters within the city limits, as well as unrivaled executive privileges within the Upper City in particular. For the other districts, they are allowed to assign - or in rare cases, arrange elections for - Bürgermeisters who will oversee the day-to-day operations on the ground level, and serve as federal judges in any matter not deemed important enough to require the Burggraf's attention.
Industry & Trade
Arcaniksburg is home to many of the greatest Duwallish minds of the last several generations. In everything from modern runelore to new Dwarven metallurgy techniques to alchemy to mechanical engineering, if it's new, revolutionary, or just plain fascinating, it's probably being pumped out in absurd - and frequently unsafe - quantities somewhere in town. While they cannot boast any specific advantages in most major industries compared to more specialized cities, lax corporate and industrial laws combined with unparalleled opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration makes for an environment of rapid and frequent innovation.
Not being directly on the nearby river means that Arcaniksburg isn't quite the mecca of trade its leaders would like it to be, but it does serve as a convenient trading position for those seeking to deal with the Bufogren and the Ceph, and the small sister-township of Handelshafen set down at the very end of the river's bend makes for a serviceable depot between Arcaniksburg and the Menschen capitol.
Infrastructure
Being the epicenter of the Menschen technological revolution, Arcaniksburg is at the forefront of civic planning innovation. Or, as its citizens might put it, it's loaded up with experiments and tech borrowed from other nations, not all of which quite work as intended. It's a city if wide, smooth-paved streets down main thoroughfares, but motorized vehicles have yet to quite overtake living mounts in popularity, leading to some rather wild traffic situations. Plumbing efforts, spearheaded by the city's burgeoning Cephan population, provide clean running water to much of the city, but mistakes during installation mean everything from sinkholes to exploding pipework can interrupt the daily commute, to say nothing of cross-contamination scandals, where alchemical runoff pipes have been accidentally fed into some poor neighborhood's drinking water.
Despite these glaring oversights, the city's populace does enjoy a remarkably high standard of living in the spaces between accidents, and all manner of hygiene, transportation, and dietary needs can be easily supplied by the most cutting-edge of technology. Just... maybe let the person next to you test the newest things first.
Geography
Arcaniksburg is set a short ways inland of a looping U in one of the many rivers that flow out of the Lebensee and towards the ocean. Though it is not technically on the river per se, canals and industrial pumps bring water from it into the city limits, allowing the majority of its structures to be placed safely up on a lop-sided hill, with only the aptly-named Flooded District and the various farms encircling the city falling on the marshy lowlands.
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