Tarkhetan sits on the Needle—a narrow promontory jutting into the Tarkhon Strait—controlling the sea passage from both shores. The city is built on this chokepoint deliberately: whoever holds Tarkhetan holds the strait, and whoever holds the strait controls trade across half the world.
King Selron II governs from the Imperial Hall, a structure the Neferati founders raised six centuries ago and that every subsequent dynasty has been careful not to alter. The city's ceremonial vocabulary is still Neferati in form: the architecture, the processional routes, the feast calendars. The humans who hold it maintain the forms of what they displaced.
The cathedral at the city's center houses the Evertorch—the eternally burning flame that Neferati founders kindled from the sacred fire of Yaif. It has burned since Tarkhetan was founded, through every political transition, every dynasty change, every war. No emperor has extinguished it. No one has tried. The Evertorch is the one symbol all factions agree is too dangerous to touch.
Tarkhetan is a city of merchants and functionaries as much as soldiers. The strait trade fills its coffers, and its port handles more cargo than any other city in the region. Embassies from the Kingdoms of Fire maintain a permanent presence—too numerous, the court has noted, and too interested in the cathedral.