Tarankota

An ancient city at the south point of the Devouring Expanse separates the lifeless dunes and the raging waves of the Bellowing Sea. The city is actually many cities built upon one another throughout the centuries.

There is the undercity, a series of interconnected buildings and corridors deep below sea level. It is host to pirates, rogues, and profiteers, who come to Tarankota by desert or sea. The only law in the undercity is that there is no law, and anyone venturing into its depths must know how to navigate the cutthroat world of criminal scum unless they’re planning on losing their wallets right before losing their lives.

Above the city is the overcity, tall intricate spires reaching towards the skies. This is where the elite lives, those who, until recently, controlled who lives and who dies in Tarankota.

Most commoners live in the layers of mismatched housing blocks in-between.

But the so-called elite no longer have any say in the city’s governance. That power has fallen to the Dragon Emperor, who usurped the city that he now calls his own. Anyone who dared oppose the great dragon perished in flames; the rest, the survivors, quickly learnt that it’s better to be ruled by a dragon than to be eaten by one.

The Dragon Emperor himself lives in an enormous castle remarkable for its Gothic architecture and design. The castle stands on an artificial island inside a man-made lake. Some say that the castle is as deep as it is tall, reaching to the very bottom of the undercity, with many unexplored caverns leading toward it around the island’s perimeter. Intricate gargoyle figures on the castle’s roof oversee Tarankota’s central district, reminding its inhabits that the Dragon Emperor forever holds their fates in his razor-sharp claws.