Nan Qlang

Cradled by cliffs of golden sandstone and bound by a bridgework of architectural marvels, Nan Qlang stands as the second largest city of the Yun Sacred Empire , and arguably the most breathtaking. Built across and around the immense gorge known as the Great Qlang Canyon, the city is an elegant testament to the Empire’s harmonious balance of nature, power, and artistry.

The Great Qlang Canyon cleaves the city in two, running from the mist-wreathed northern cliffs all the way to the sun-drenched southern terraces. Over time, Nan Qlang has grown to embrace the canyon as its heart rather than its wound. Multilevel causeways and ornately carved bridges span the chasm, connecting bustling districts and ceremonial quarters with a grace that defies gravity. Some structures hang over the canyon on vast bronze chains; others descend into it, their glass pavilions and shrine towers clinging like swallows to the stone.

Nan Qlang’s architecture is a wonder unto itself. Every building is handcrafted and adorned with glazed clay, painted lacquer, and filigreed wood, with rooflines that curve like wind-swept waves and eaves that catch the light like spun gold. Public gardens spill over rooftops in carefully tended terraces, and even the humblest tea shop displays intricate tile mosaics and engraved copperwork. Towers rise like stylized lotus buds, and entire neighborhoods are constructed into the canyon walls, creating vertical districts where scholars, poets, and mystics live in silence above the whispering river far below.

The city’s most renowned moment on the world stage will come during the The Golden Palace Exhibition of 1870 , a grand cultural and technological showcase that will draw dignitaries, engineers, and artists from across Nyria . The exhibition took place in a luminous pavilion straddling the canyon itself—a feat of stone, silk, and spiritsteel that will become one of the empire’s proudest achievements. It is during this event that the first demonstrations of cloud-lantern navigation and spirit-glass computation will be unveiled.

Though it stands in the shadow of the imperial capital, Nan Qlang remains a living legend—a place where tradition and innovation embrace in mid-air, where every street corner sings with wind chimes and incense, and where the canyon walls themselves seem to echo the heartbeat of the Yun Empire. In Nan Qlang, the sky is a mirror, the stone a stage, and the city a song whispered across the ages.