Azure Three is what happens when, after a few hundred years, a city starts believing its own propaganda. Streets are spotless, signs are clear, and every child can recite a safety pledge before they learn prestidigitation. The Enforcers manage, mentor, and memorialize infractions. But hey, the trains run on time, and the fine for improper sigil storage has never been more affordable. Civic pride here fills the void the First Three gods left when the mortal wizards killed them and erected Wuh-Zhei on their graves. Or at least, that’s what the plaque said when I stood in Oathkeep said swore my loyalty to one of the Senate’s wizard factions for the rest of my life.
Beneath the Enforcer green banners and Azure blue sigils, this district is the machine that keeps the rest of the plate alive. Goods from every plate arrive at Port Azure through the Grand Opening. Everything from Plate Three’s other districts funnels into Azure before being exported. Citizens come to shop, to file, to sue, or just to pass through the train station on their way to wherever it is that wizardly people go when they go places.
Port Azure
When each plate of Wuh-Zhei is the size of a city and the city itself rivals a country, the importance of processing imports and exports cannot be overstated. This is felt acutely in Port Azure. It is a subdistrict built for motion, pressure, and paperwork. It serves as Plate Three’s primary conduit for goods, especially the vital trade artery between Plate Five and Plate Three. It runs on divination stamps, manifest codes, freight charmers, and the unyielding schedule of the Pentigarch Elevator. Every delivery route pulses through the gates here: the hourly Pentigarch, the high-bid Sutherline, the courier-driven Mistyzip. Port Azure is not designed for comfort. It’s designed for throughput in and out of the Grand Opening. Marshal Creek’s Enforcers keep it spotless. Trade Warden Goldson-Lee’s diviners ensures it’s by the book. The Senate keeps it funded. If Port Azure paused for even a day, Wuh-Zhei would stagger.
Pentigarch Gate Docks
The clocktower of the city, metaphorically. Every hour, you can hear it lurch. A deep-throated chime rolls through Azure’s steel bones, followed by the groan of spellmetal as the Pentigarch Elevator docks in the Grand Opening at its namesake gate. Five sided and freight sized, the platform stretches over 700 feet across, outlined in glowing abjuration runes and lined with cranes, lifters, and spellcasters shouting for clearance. It is the largest, most important elevator in Wuh-Zhei. It does not run early. It does not run late. It rises and falls on the hour, exactly, and has for longer than most family lineages.
Pentigarch Gate was is almost exclusively for freight, the giant arteries of the supply chain coiling through its platforms like veins through a beating heart. Plate Five loads here, Plate Three distributes, and all of Azure West pulses to its rhythm. Some call it the “Schedule.” Others call it “the Mechanome.” But everyone agrees on this: if your cargo isn’t sealed five minutes before the bell tolls it isn’t leaving plateside.
Mistyzip Gate
There are three terminals at the Mistyzip Gate station: downbound departure, downbound arrival, and upbound. Couriers take the safefall, an open-air spellchute that drops from Plate Three to Plate Four at regulated velocity, no harness required. Downbound arrival is where couriers from Plate Two disembark. This gate is for parcelboys and message runners, for packages small enough to carry but too urgent to wait. The upbound Mistyzip is a standard elevator, in theory, but it spends more time moving between levels than actually docked. It departs every every ten minutes.
Sutherline Gate
The signage still says Expressway Gate, but we all call it the Sutherline. A freight elevator smaller than the Pentigarch but faster, because it moves the moment someone pays enough. Highest bid wins. What started as a civic shortcut for urgent deliveries through the Grand Opening has become a bidding pit for the city’s richest exporters. These days, most call it the Sutherline. There’s no law reserving space for Senator Sutherland Dash’s spellweapons, but if you’ve ever been mid load when a handler in Paragon green tells you you’ve been outbid and have five minutes to clear, then you’ve met the “Sutherline Dash.” It’s clean. It’s fast. It’s rigged.
Pentigarch Gate Customs
The Pentigarch Gate Customs and Processing Hub is the chokepoint for all goods entering or leaving Plate Three. It is a hulking multi-layered building that is part streamlined magical bureaucracy and part decayed dystopia rendered in arcane absurdity. Cargo is sorted by its augerprinted stamps and pre-approved shipping sigils or its lack thereof. Various divination panels specialize in different types of cargo. Anything flagged as anomalous is diverted into the inspection pool, where a time-consuming Enforcer search awaits.
Mistyzip has an adjunct inspection checkpoint, while the Sutherline technically maintains a customs office on site, staffed only in emergencies. On a good day with the right arcane stamps, your cargo can make it through in fifteen minutes. But most merchants live under the fear that even their simple crate of peaches from Jade could get held long enough to mold because of a misaligned smell glyph.
the Warden’s Estate
The Warden’s Estate is the logistics hub and overflow wherehouse of Azure Three. Everything that travels through any of the ground level Azure elevators is the responsibility of Warden Philo Goldson-Lee: a tall, alarmingly thin dragonborn with ink-stained cuffs and an unbreakable belief in the purity of paperwork. Although appointed by the Senate and reporting to Marshal Creek, Philo is loyal to exactly one thing, the rules as written.
Philo is not corrupt. Philo is not political. Philo is not helpful. His job is to move things, and that job is done best when nobody bothers him. The freight routing charms are calibrated. The schedules are set. The laws are printed and by all the leylines, they will be followed. If a clause contradicts itself, he will enforce both. If an elevator is exploding and the evacuation paperwork isn’t filed, then people will wait. He is completely correct, entirely humorless, and utterly impossible to intimidate.
Azure Heights
Azure Heights has a reputation. It’s where you get your permits, file your complaints, register your mistakes, and attend the weekly Townhall you hope nobody takes seriously. It’s where the Enforcers live, where the consultants operate, and where the lines don’t move. But over the last fifty years, something changed. Plate Three embraced the myth of its own order. Civic pride bloomed. Now children grow up dreaming of green uniforms, and visitors to Freedom Park take pride in following all 172 posted rules. Citizens even brag at their neighborhood barbeque about how long they waited at the Hall of Essential Licenses and Logistics.
Enforcer Headquarters
The Enforcer Headquarters of Plate Three is the most visibly pristine and oppressively tidy structure in Azure Heights, a building that broadcasts the illusion of order as a kind of civic spellwork. It is the nerve center of Marshal Cleo Creek’s doctrine: that clean streets, strict routines, and daily safety pledges are enough to hold back the Unraveling. Enforcers are outfitted here, drilled here, reprimanded here, and, often, celebrated here for issuing the most punctual fines. While the building includes short-term holding rooms for those awaiting transfer to Obsidian, it is not a prison. It is a machine for sorting citizens into compliant or suspicious, and it does so with manic efficiency. This is the place where safety lives. The Senate makes the laws, the Authorities interpret the laws, and the Enforcers decide which of the interpretations are enforced.
The largest quota under Marshal Creek’s reign has been civil citation compliance. Every Enforcer must issue at least thirty Corrective Behavior Forms per cycle, even if only for noise modulation or improper sigil storage. The policy extends to the station itself. Enforcer green has never looked so “lawn grass on a Sunday morning” freshly trimmed, green.
Vanum Convention Center
The Oracle Oliver Vanum Convention Center is Plate Three’s largest multi-purpose civic venue. A modular complex built for conferences, expos, ceremonies, and official gatherings. From marketing summits to spellcraft showcases, it’s where Wuh-Zhei stages its respectable events with respectable backdrops. The main hall seats nearly 2,000 and can be subdivided by conjuration partitions. Families, companies, and Authorities book it months in advance.
The Enforcers manage the deed and collect the profits in the name of community building. Marshal Creek insists that every week, the hall hosts a public Townhall. Residents gather to voice complaints, submit proposals, and hear updates from civic representatives. Whether anyone important shows up is a toss-up. But the room is open. And once a quarter, the Enforcers host a bake sale on Townhall night, attended by every Authority and a handful of upstanding citizens who submitted complaints months in advance. It’s not democracy. But it feels like it, for exactly long enough.
Hall of Essential Licenses and Logistics
It’ll be a cold day in the Hall for Essential Licenses and Logistics before they accept a single form with an abbreviation (it doesn’t have air conditioning). It would be uncouth to wish your worst enemy even an afternoon there. The building has more lines than chairs across multiple winding floors, yet somehow only a single public restroom, by the exit. Marriage licenses. Official documents. Permits for a New Faith co-pilot. If you don’t apply for your faction pin when the recruiters visit your high school, you’ll end up here. Probably not for the rest of your life. Maybe.
Hypothetical Endangerment Limitation Location
If your spell product, or magical event might affect anyone other than yourself, odds are you need to first consult a Forecast Wizard (Lesser Diviner Oracles). Hypothetically, your magics could endanger others and certainly, you want to ensure a limitation to your liability. Permits from the Hypothetical Endangerment Limitation Location are where Plate Three ensures that magic used in public, for profit won’t spiral into citywide catastrophe. Nobody wants to be the merchant who accidentally sparked an Unraveling.
Red Wizard Consultant Assembly
Not all consultants are Chronomancers, but most of them are. Called across the city to optimize workflow or time stop disasters (literally). The Red Wizards help shave seconds off conjuration protocols to keep Plate Three running just a little faster. Ruby’s factories, Jade’s orchards, and Citrine’s fabrications all benefit from an extra turn in the right moment. Just a touch overclocked. Just a little Hasted.
Freedom Park
Freedom Park is a peaceful retreat at the heart of Azure Heights, where citizens are invited to enjoy curated nature under gentle guidance. Signs kindly remind visitors: don’t walk on the grass, don’t climb the statues, don’t sit on the wet paint and don’t forget to breathe (as long as you’re not breathing too loudly). The crown jewel of Plate Three glows softly with Enforcer green; the magic foliage always smells freshly cut, that’s the acid infusion. Because yes, the rules exist for a reason the grass can be life threatening to walk on.
Arkmagelton
It’s basic gradeschool knowledge: Plate Three was the original plate built after the fall of the First, before Wuh-Zhei was suspended. The founding father Arch-Mage’s lived in the circular zone surrounding the Plate Three Grand Opening while preparing the city’s lift. Over time, “Arch-Mage Town” slurred into Arkmagelton, and locals love reminding non-residents just how important that makes them.
This district houses the elevators between plates, the transit systems connecting Plate Three’s districts, the courts that keep the law humming (or crushing), and everything else that keeps Plate Three greased when it’s not on fire.
Plate Three Station
Riveted to the eastern border of the Grand Opening, the Plate Three Station is where the City’s promise of downward mobility meets its paranoia. It is the only public Plate Three elevator with consistent access to Plates Four and Five. Double shafted; both run downbound until the sixteenth daily lurch of the Pentigarch Elevator. After that, one line returns up for a four cycles of the Pentigarch.
The morning crowd moves fast. Security charms flicker but rarely trigger unless someone smells like rogue summoning. Evening, though, nothing moves without being seen. The Watch Diviners operate with two Enforcers each. If you’re flagged, you don’t get refused. You get “held for reevaluation.”
GO Station
Most people don’t stay in their own district forever. Travel across Plate Three runs through the Grand Opening Station, or GO Station, with its primary stop here in Arkmagelton. Trains, buses, and teleport lines all converge, connecting every district to the Azure hub. It’s not just for commuters,GO also handles freight bound for Port Azure and the workers who move it. Busy and loud. Saturated with patriotic propaganda, magical advertisements and featuring the best hole in the wall eateries north of Rhodonite.
the Azure Corridor
Connecting Plate Three Station to GO station and the Courthouse of Arkmagelton, the Azure Corridor is the most patrolled and spotless stretch of parallel roads in all of Plate Three. Marshal Creek’s pride and joy, it’s a showcase of what Plate Three wants to be, orderly, efficient, and impressive to visiting dignitaries.
Stalls are allowed, but only with city approval and getting one is harder than registering a New Faith Copilot. Lining the corridor are civic hotels catering to every tier of traveler, most notably the overpriced Vista-Minor and the suspiciously underpriced Hero’s Feast Inn.
Plate Three High-Court and Law Arena
If you want something stamped and approved, go to Azure Heights because that is not what the Court is for. Civil, magical, familial, or governmental, if two parties can’t agree, they end up in Plate Three High-Court and Law Arena. Trials are staffed entirely by Judging Constructs, semi-sentient golems who don’t sleep, don’t argue, and never miss a citation.
Every ruling is final… unless you invoke a “Double or Nothing” Challenge of Verdict. Enter the law arena. Win, and you walk. Lose, and your sentencing doubles, if you’re alive to hear it. Third Plate Head Attorney Goreye and his team of artificer attorney’s keeps the constructs running, but otherwise don’t get involved. Arcane justice.
Lower Arkmagelton
Countless diviners for hire, private detectives, professional notaries, and even law golem dueling gyms operate as private firms across Lower Arkmagelton. The burrough also houses a scattering of high-rise apartments, mostly used by day commuters working on Plate Four or Five due to its proximity to the Plate Three Station.
Azure Ring
The Azure Ring crowns Plate Three at a height of 110 feet, rising above the port and commuter stations like a halo of bureaucracy. Built around the city’s oldest elite transit line, the Ring has swelled over centuries to accommodate the growing demands of the Authorities. Ten stories of sealed offices, private transit corridors, and arcane relays now span its circular structure. Access is limited: either climb the 220 step Stairs of Allegiance or arrive via one of the regulated levitation lines approved for official use.
Stairs of Allegiance
The Stairs of Allegiance don’t rise to a specific height, they rise until they’re done with you. They begin at GO Station and spiral upward through carved history and bureaucratic spellwork toward the Azure Ring. Those who work there will assure you it’s just five steps. Others climb for an hour before giving up and turning back. Some swear they stopped at rest landings, water fountains, even a dais with a telescope. Others insist no such features exist. In the blockbuster Illusioflic Wizard Smith Goes to the Ring, a courier collapses beside a glowing plaque and mutters, “Life is like an Azure stairway. You never know how far it goes, or whether you’ll even be allowed to enjoy the view.”
Oathkeeper’s Keep
Halfway up the Stairs of Allegiance, suspended in air by ancient magic and bureaucratic tradition, floats the Oathkeep, a ceremonial courtyard styled after the battlements of an old-world castle keep. Its stonework gleams unnaturally clean, reinforced by enchantments and civic pride, and five skybound annexes orbit its edge, one for each of Plate Three’s sanctioned Wizard Factions.
For most of the year, the courtyard sits empty, silent but not forgotten. A few symbolic rituals. The odd diplomatic duel. But in summer, the Oathkeep awakens. Faction recruitment season turns it into a theater of ceremony and pageantry: families crowd the viewing platforms, teens duel under supervision, and children recite loyalty oaths that will shape their entire civic lives.
Seat of Authority
The Seat of Authority is a sealed web of towers where twenty-five independent Authorities each make their own rules. The Senate passes the laws and the Courts argue their edges, but it’s the Authorities who interprets them and decides what actually counts. How hot a conjurer’s oven can run near a wild magic leak. Which enchantments actually qualify as services rendered. Whether rebound casting a recursive chain lightning into yourself counts as animal cruelty while polymorphed (it is in Jade but not in Rhodonite).
he public isn’t welcome. To petition an Authority, you climb the Stairs of Allegiance and drop a scroll into a box. That’s it. No waiting room. No face to yell at. Maybe you get a receipt. Maybe not. Enforcers decide your fate. Authorities decide the rules they follow. The Enforcers write the fines. The Authorities decide what’s a crime.
Major Ring Station
Major Ring Station splits neatly into two wings: Dimension Door Station, where Plate Two professionals arrive in polished bursts of teleportation during quarterly visits to their holdings, and the Azure Direct, a private elevator relic too gaudy to be decommissioned. Once a marvel of elite transit, its velvet seats and enchantment tuned compartments now serve a nobler function: hauling entitlement. It hosts mid ascent parties for the uselessly wealthy, usually teenage scions throwing illusion fueled ragers while floating above the working class. Both wings remain profitable forms of travel, overseen by the Transportation Authority.
Azure Extension
What started as a few market stalls by the port is now a full subdistrict of official shops and semi-permitted semipermanent semiprofessionals. South of the lake. East of the Heights. The Azure Extension is a monument to arcane zoning drift.
If your friend says “I need to go shopping,” they mean “I’m going to the Extension.” Because for some reason, the city refuses to put anything besides grocery stores here in Citrine or Ruby or Jade. As if centralizing every errand into one location is a sacred civic ritual. Maybe it is. Every Sunday. And if you don’t go to the Extension… do you even love your Wizard Faction?
Cityville Strip
“Your problems can be solved with a short stop in Cityville Strip on the way home from work”. The poster peels, but the illusioprint floats clean. Between the Azure Lake and Citrine district runs a corridor just half a mile wide, but walking end to end will eat at least eight hours of your day. You’ll enjoy enchanted arcane display windows as you stroll the spell cooled promenades. Every product that fuels Wuh-Zhei’s daily life moves through here first. Regulation grade uniforms? Enchanted cookware? A school safe familiar for your kid? You get it on the Cityville Strip.
Senator’s Bazaar
The Senator’s Bazaar looks like a pop-up, but it’s anything but temporary. Every stall is permitted and approved. While the Cityville Strip moves units by the ton, here it’s just people, trying to make a life. No enchanted salesfloor or branded flux display, just handmade tools, daily greens, and spells carved with care. Grocers shout. Enchanters carve sigils in real time. Every item’s a need. If you have a good eye, you’ll walk out with something made this morning by someone who gives a damn.
Skygem Mall
Half open-air, partially sideways, Skygem is where you go to hire somebody to do it for you. It’s where Plate Three gets things done, with pride. Tailors who know your district’s stitch code. Barbers who follow transmutation hygiene protocols. The kind of spell-cleaners who know how to handle an inkburst without reporting it. Reliable workers offering licensed services. The signs hover in elegant formation, shifting subtly by schedule. This is what public service looks like when the Enforcers don’t have to work so hard because the workers keep themselves clean.
Skygem shares a seamless spell grid with the Earthgem Mall of Amber. A regulated loop of upkeep, self-care, and sanctioned improvement. If you’re seeing a private doctor in Earthgem, might as well get your shirt pressed at Skygem on your one day off.