Lóen Chaéon (concept)
Lóen Chaéon, or 'Dragon City' in Kathuni, is the capital from which every legitimate ruler of Kathun-Kai has ruled since the polity's inception with Dragon Empress Yao Ren Cai. Despite little of ancient Lóen Chaéon remaining in its modern incarnation (even its original name being lost to history), it has been one of the east's largest cities for at least several thousand years before the birth of Yao Ren Cai. Often called the 'greatest of cities' or 'city in which the world sits' by Kathuni scholars due to its grandeur, reports of it were met with doubt by Aversarian scholars who heard the tales before their first attempts to journey east. When Magi and cartographer Eothos Aethacros became the first Aversarian allowed to not only see, but enter the city, he immediately wrote over thirty pages in his letter home describing his amazement at the city's grandeur, claiming the myth's were not true but actually greatly downplayed.
The city itself stretches across the entirety of the isle of Daogao and is centered around an inert Tower that over centuries of development has slowly dissapeared beneath a massive facade of Kathuni architecture. While originally a large settlement near the tower linking down to a smaller port, subsequent rulers have built a city stretching across an island roughly the size of the Imperial Isle of startlingly impressive architecture, endless amounts of monuments and fountains, and over a hundred gardens and parks the size of most cities. Some Aversarians have noted that by Aethacros' description, it was likely most of the city was infact uninhabited, and that the 'gardens' and 'parks' that dominated over half of the island existed due to the impossibility of building a city so large.
Kathuni law has the penalty for observing the capital, even from the sea or across the straits, to be a crime worthy of death or blinding. Kathuni merchants traveling through the trade centers around the tributaries that feed into the Bay of Ren Cai are required to either blindfold themselves or remain below-decks while passing the city, normally having their ships guided by local sailors from the emperor's retinue for a hefty fine. Shipping not effected as such belong to the Imperial Holy Merchant Fleet, captains and sailors personally ordained as priests by the emperor's servants to allow thme to pilot massive barges that dwarf most warships past the city. Despite its grandeur and the mythologization in Kathuni culture, however, the last scattered fragments of information that has traveled west along the now-silent merchant routes speak of the city being in great crisis. A magical blast from the formerly inert tower at its center (occurring simultaneously with Frodbrokna seemingly summoning forth a great host of monstrosities that have occupied the empty portions of the capital. The district in which the emperor and their servants dwell is now perpetually under siege, and attempts by their Banners to liberate the now eldritch streets have been disastrous.