Kingspire

The Spire
Archmage Wylon is the current leader of the magical college. A gnome wizard, he specialises in abjuration. He is extremely interested in ancient artifacts, and is a keen student of history. He was also a student of Archmage Aster.

The archmage's quarters are located in a pocket dimension, accessible only to the holder of the ceremonial key of office. Inside is a personalisable office space, with a private library, workspaces, alchemical laboratories, creature pens and more.

Lower in the spire is a dedicated teleportation circle, experimental and practice spaces, lecture halls, libraries, observatories, dormitories and everything one could need for a working university. The number of mages is equaled by the number of staff, and there are numerous non-magical researchers and academics as well.

The spire itself is a marvel of architecture and engineering, unsurpassed in the entire empire and entirely impossible without magical reinforcement. It stretches over a kilometer into the sky, apparently carved from a single piece of unblemished white marble. It has a circular cross-section, broken by the occasional statues and bas-reliefs of Mythic Age heroes, steeply climbing to a point where it cuts the clouds like a fin. Around the base of the spire sprawls a maze of architecture from across the centuries, which houses the various working buildings needed to keep the university running, including kitchens, stables, storehouses, foundries and more.

The City
The surrounding settlement is fundamentally linked with university itself. Because there is a fundamentally richer and more elegant culture that naturally occurs around the University, it has become a haven for artists, craftsmen and high-class merchants. Kingspire has the finest examples of glasswork, metallurgy and high-quality fabric in the Empire, and the culture is second to none, with players and musicians travelling the length of the continent to perform at the many theatres and music halls. There are also a large number of statues and carvings, including the Lion of Victory that stands on the shore of Lake Tremere, and more museums than the next five largest cities put together.

The architecture of the city shows unique indicators of elven heritage, as previous the elven insurgency it had the highest concentration of elves in the Empire, and it was the capitol of the traditional elven homeland of Cemryn as well as the Empire as a whole before the schism. The architecture uses lots of natural leaf, root and vine imagery, and the houses are almost universally wooden with high pointed ceilings. Though far fewer elves live there now, the traditional homes are still in use, taken over by more recent immigrants.