The City-on-the-Flat is the capital city of The Flat, in Harkania, as well as the capital of the Harkanian League itself.

It is the largest city in the world, stretching across about 100 square miles and is home to 5 million or so inhabitants. It is the center for all Clockwork industry, the leader in military vehicle production as well as the home of numerous world spanning organizations: The Holy Order of the All Seeing Eye, the International Guild of Mechanical Engineers, the Brotherhood of Steel, and countless others.

It is often said to be the center of the circle, for even if other cities are older or more resplendant or more steeped in legend, the City-on-the-Flat is the beating heart of human civilization, the very outer limit of what mankind is capable of and the very apex of the human race itself. The City had a name once, but it has been lost to history. It does not need one. It is the City-on-the-Flat, but it might as well be The City, for no other place where human beings lived is as worthy of the title.

The sheer size of the City is overwhelming, but was once a humble settlement of the Mynoth people, built as a temple complex to their god, Mynothis. Nestled in a bend in the river Karge,  the center of the settlement was a huge cyclopean tomb to ancient Mynoth kings. When Merod Lightbringer shattered the Mynoth, the took the temple complex for his base camp, against which he would plan his battle strategy against the Darklands. He camped in the the tomb, throwing the corpses of the dead kings out into the streets where their jewlery was stolen and their bodies melted away into dust and ash and nothingness. For two long years Merod lived on the city's future site, unable to march north due to a pair of unbelievably harsh winters and taking the time to recuit more soldiers into his army. When he finally did leave, he left behind his trusted advisor Caro Toledo, to rule over the area.

Toledo quickly turned the City into a sprawling and thriving town, some 20,000 strong. When word of Merod's death in the north filtered down, he ordered the lower levels of the old tomb sealed off in homage to his fallen monarch. But it did not stop people from building over it. Within a hundred years the city was the largest in Harkania and the third largest in the world, after Questille and Pastoro. Fiarlairin Peake, a powerful mage in the city, began the task of building up over the sealed off tomb and as it grew taller and taller, impossibly tall through archimancy and mechanical ingenuity, it came to be known as Peake Tower.

The Sevillan Occupation brought with it increased arts and culture for the city, including Ricardo Skaldorvini, a Sevillan philosopher who would go on to found Skaldorvini University, still the largest and most respected college of science and natural philosophy in the Circle.

During 13th century, the City-on-the-Flat was used as a strategic military point to defend against attacks from Darkridge and the Greenmont, still independant of Sevillan rule. This proved to be a mistake as it brought numerous mercenary companies into the city who eventually united under a single banner. Calling themselves the Vanguard, they forced the Sevillans out of the City and began a widespread revolution that officially ended the occupation in 1485 PA. The Vanguard ruled for another hundred years or so, as a fiercely militaristic but economically lax series of Warmasters for life. Under their rule, the city swelled even further and numerous great minds in military strategy and design flocked to the city in order to curry favor with the best paying patrons in the world.

In 1501, the Vanguard invited delegates from the other recently freed Harkanian nations to the City to discuss forming a league of nation states which would be ablet to repel and further Sevillan military action as well as honor the 500th anniversary of their conqueror's arrival. All the states agreed and accepted, save the Darklands, which would not join until 60 odd years later after a long standing war of attrition. The City was chosen as the capital of this new League, in part commemorating it as the site of Merod's last major victory and in part recognizing the valor displayed by the civillians in ending the occupation and sewing the seeds of revolution.

 In 1598, however, the Vanguard made the mistake of putting their trust in a brilliant youth, apparently a clockwork idiot-savant who thereafter, like the city, woul have no remembered name of his own. History calls him the Mad Machinist. He pioneered the science of clockwork technology, combining mechanical engineering with thaumaturgic principles to unrivaled and deadly effect. In one foul swoop he staged a completely mechanized coup, and had all of the leaders of the Vanguard executed in brutal devices of his own invention, guillotines.

 The Mad Machinist ruled the City for forty years. expanding Peake Tower until it stretched a half mile into the sky, pushing the edges of the City until it covered almost 70 square miles and mechanizing almost every aspect of it.

Not only was the City a center for military production, it became a mecca for clockwork factories and engineers. The city developed the world's first public transportation system, a series of impossibly efficient sky trams which ran on millions of clocktech gears and flywheels and stoof on magnificent pillars which towered over the city.

These ran flawlessly until the Mad Machinist's gruesome death. A flywheel jumped out of place, though some insist it was sabotage and not accident. And the eastbound 7:15 sky tram was flung off the tracks, out of the air and into the posh Bashtarlle district south of Skaldorvini University. The tram caused nearly 1,000 deaths as it ripped and tore itself throught the city streets before finally coming to rest sprawled across 17 city blocks. The Machinist who had been inside the tram had been torn to pieces by shrapnel. The tram system, without the Machinists insane brilliance was not to be trusted and the program was shut down. The Bashtarlle quarter became the Bashtarlle slums, the tram was never removed from the streets but rather partly dismantled by squatters and built over as the march of civic sprawl pushed ever onward.

With the Machinist's death in 1642, the city formed the Industrial Parliament made up for nobility, engineering magnates and former Machinist cabinet members which still rules the city today. It is an elected body with three houses: Commons, Lords and Factors, which each have 50 seats and, from the 150 members elect among themselves a Prime Minister to speak for the Flatlands in League matters.

Districts

• Hammerhollow
• Bashtarlle Slums
• Skaldorvini Park
• Grand Factory Row
• Belleguard Hill
• Mieville Gardens
• The Temple Steps

Major Civic Monuments

• The Vauxhall
• Peake Tower
• Skaldorvini University