Lagash - Arcanium District

The Arcanium is a district dominated by and intended for all manner of spellcasters, their servants, families, and whoever else they require. It is situated upon one of the great hills of Lagash, towering over the landscape and much of the city, second in height only to the Imperial Hill itself. Here, mages live their lives, hone their craft, and conduct all manner of terrifying experiment that make it one of the most unpredictable places in all of Lagash.

Layout

The Arcanium district is a mix of residential and commercial areas, each a small distinct clump of buildings onto themselves and each clustered around one of the 13 Imperial Schools of Wizardry that form the basis for all life in the district. The schools themselves are massive estates, housing dorms for their students and servants, teaching halls and laboratories. Everything else has sprung up around them, and in their wake, as the Schools have been known to occasionally move.

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The very edge of the district become a near slum, clustering to the walls that divide the district from the rest of the city. Here, the hanger-ons an hopefuls, the student rejects and failures, the escaped experiments live, clawing out an existence on the scraps from the wealthy wizardry-citizens. Beyond the occasional rift in space-time or upside-down rain, it is much like many other places in the world, with taverns and markets, forums were debates on magical theory are debated (or dueled) about, all warped with just a hint of magic.
Then, there are the walls - tall, deceptively thin with decorative spires and massive tower that connect the Arcanium to the aerial walkways that criss-cross Lagash, there as much to keep whatever the wizards do in as it is to keep others out.

Entering the Arcanium without residence there requires a permit of passage. The most common one is that of a student, emblazoned with the sigil of their school. There is a small and very careful market for fraudulent permits. Other permits are those of Patronage, either of powerful wizards, merchants, or even the Emperor... Or of work, for the kind of manual labor the wizards don't want to inflict on even their students. Some visitors are bounty hunters or the sort of adventure-type that a wizard invariably needs doing for any variety of mystical or mundane reasons, of which there seems to be an endless task.

Wizard's Tower
Most powerful mages maintain their own abodes in the form of commanding towers, usually attached to the school in which they belong. Any split become school and wizard can become a physical one, as the wizard takes their tower elsewhere.

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Landmarks

The Floating Gardens

Hovering between 200 and 300 yards above the Arcanium, the Floating Gardens are an exclusive place of leisure in an already exclusive district. Vast, round sections of dirt and soil, bound in a stone frame, float gently in the air, moving ever-so-slightly in an orbit that mimic the passage of stars. In each platform, flowers, plants, and delicate (also likely terrified) animals have been carefully groomed to places of enchanting delight. Here, Wizards go to enjoy some time off, feel the sun on their skin and the grass under their feet, in the kind of way only wizards do. It is considered a very prestigious place for an apprentice to take a date.
Should they require something more then just tranquility, the Arcanatrix who oversees the gardens also run a brothel with a clientele even more exclusive than the gardens.

The Mistake

"Well, I think we made a mistake" were the final world of the Grand Imperial Wizard Thannoth, just before he and his entire school collapsed in on itself. What remains was named in turn, though the other schools disapprove of it. Heavily guarded and distinct from the rest of the district by walls, sentries, and magical wards, the Mistake is a collapsed building and scar in the world. Magical friction regularly sets the air alight, and the few explorers who have been there say the light, gravity, and even space never behave as you think it should. Some room appear much larger than they should, some float in the air, and others burrow far deeper into the ground than the earth below them should allow.
It's home to all manner of corrupted magical creatures who always seem to infest places like that, according to wizards. In truth, they were more than likely survivor's of the school's demise and perhaps what the experiments that destroyed it were all about. Adventuring types can plead their case for a permit to explore the ruins, and the other school keep a close eye on anything they manage to bring back out again. Any surviving students of the School have been put under imperial sanction and have a generous bounty on their heads.

The Imperial Library

Standing above even the rest of the Arcanium and marked with the Emperor's own sigils, the Imperial Library is a repository of arcane lore that the Emperor - in his infinite wisdom and mercy (and don't let them hear you say otherwise) - has deigned share with the citizenry. In theory, any citizen in Lagash can visit the library and enjoy its non-magical content, but the process for acquiring a permit limits the potential readership a great deal.
Beyond the regular citizens, mages across the Arcanium fight for access to the more esoteric tomes kept there, ranging from work before the End of All Things to new works of magical art, exploring the World After the End and how it has changed magic.
Crafted of marble and furnished with no consideration for expense, the Imperial Library is one of the wonders of the New World and how the nobility can still extract shocking amounts of wealth from their subjects. Incidentally, careful positioning of windows, towers, and walls prevents most views from including Lagash's vast slums from within the library.

In The War

Once war came to Lagash and enveloped all of Lakhanavati, the Imperial Library soon becomes a fortress. The Emperor's mages descend upon its halls to claim anything useful to their cause, but traitors rise among them and it soon becomes a desperate struggle for survival.
In the end, the library's fate remains unclear (until WE ends, that is).