Highpond

Flying castles, apprentice mages running around everywhere, newest research in the field of magic... and frequent arcane accidents involving fireball-burnt buildings   -----------------------------------------------------------------------   Highpond serves as the capital of the Highpond region, East of the other Palanthas regions, North of the Red Desert and South of the High-Vale Mountains. However, it isn't the typical metropolis style crammed up city with a dense population structure inside some kind of city walls. Instead, the city expands a larger area with various districts. The main sector of Highpond was built on the shore of a lake that shares the same name. Here are located the Highpond Castle, most of the military barracks and functions aswell as the senate halls.   North of the central district lies the dwarven district. Highpond has a very large dwarven population, due to it's relative vicinity to the mountains in the North. The dwarven community sends their own representatives to the senate.   There are other smaller communities around, but to the South of the central district one can find the grounds of the Arcane University. The University is the most expansive magical institute in the mainland, and possibly the entire world. One can find institutes to all schools of magic here, and the University encourages light competition between the different schools and their respective organizations. While studies and research between schools is allowed and even encouraged, all students must pick a main subject. This has lead to the organizations fighting over which one has the most graduates. Although Evocations is the evergreen favourite, the Conjurers school building is literally a flying castle! Even Necromancy has it's own school, albeit not very popular one. The defilement of the dead is frowned upon, though.