Historians claim the archmage who founded Quantium, the capital of the nation of Nex, freely used Wish spells to improve the life of its citizens. Though the wizard-king vanished thousands of years ago, his city remains, a masterpiece of marble and magic.
Quantium is a city made to eclipse all others.
Imagine a city of a circular plot, 15 miles in diameter and encircled by a wide c-shaped road. Upon the road is set two golems the size of three-story buildings, patrolling back and forth ceaselessly. Both wear the blank countenance of the wizard-king who made them to defend his dream of a city.
The eastern city terminates at a mile-wide port that lets in water from the Obari Ocean, allowing treaders to dock with goods from abroad. Hidden below the waves of the city's portside lies the mouth of a complex aqueduct running beneath the city and into its heart- a 2-mile-diameter lake. Here, water gets cycled in, through, and out of the city in a similar fashion to the irrigation beneath Quantium's westward sibling, the city of Unknown. The grand palace and crown jewel of the capital and nation, known as the Unknown, sits with its surrounding campus on a half-mile-wide triangle of an island in the middle of the city lake, elevated 200 feet above the domes and peaks of the highest buildings. No bridges connect this island to the rest of the surrounding city. Any arcane thing could be an entrance to the Bandeshar, but its entrances and exits to and from the rest of the capital are strictly need to know.
The rest of the surrounding metropolis is more than colorful enough to distract anyone who walks through its streets, with its constant hustle and bustle and the variety of people and creatures in its streets. Gathered and curated flora and fauna are sown through the city's surface and the deep layers that fill its scattered parks and plazas, and the numerous statues, reliefs, mosaics, and inscriptions of the wizard-king- and occasionally, his formative cohort as well- decorate every other surface of the capital.
Travelers marvel at the two layers of the wider city. Quantium's numerous visitors and inhabitants enter the capital from the gates at its north and south rim in their open hours, through the 15-foot, miles-around wall inscribed with illustrations of the nation's mythic history. The wall fences the visible city in and extends out and over the portside. Visitors are then met with the first of many staircases leading up to the Juali- Quantium's 'Sun'- or down into the Nwezi, the capital's 'Moon'. These two levels make up the layers of the city. The Juali is partially visible from the treacherous Nexian countryside, constantly circled by the 20-foot Quantium Golems who patrol to and from the Obari shores and who occasionally peer over the wall, placidly checking the city of their charge. The Nwezi lies beneath the Juali, lit up with unusually hued arcane lights throwing dazzling colors from their glass sconces where visitors descend. Purposeful, circular gaps in the Juali expose the neighborhoods below to the natural light, and the complex, beautiful architecture built in the Nwezi below support the equally impressive city blocks above. Both are connected by patterned pillars, buildings, supports, and archways, and the deeper city is run through with canals and pipelines that make for small cascades and waterfalls from it aqueducts. All of it is hewn from handsome marble, precious minerals, jewels of floral hues, and elaborately shaped glass in colors to match.
Quantium is the perfect metropolitan representation of a man who disappeared into himself. As the capital city of Nex, the utopia the country's namesake imagined is metaphorically following his suit. This city, spun of cadres, circles, and coteries, lit up with magic and glued together with a lifetime's worth of wishes, is threatening to collapse under its figurative weight like the rest of the nation. The water that churns from the ocean into the city near the ports is more toxic than Unknown in Oenopion, thanks to the pollution Quantium's citizenry bleed into it with abandon during their day-to-day. The consequential Miasmere bay, which churns in and out of the city, has none of the Bath's sentient wisdom and twice its threat. All the spelndor of Nex can't hide the stain of Quantium's collective ego.
The capital is a beautiful thing- and beauty hewn of ego is the most fragile sort.