1. Cuetlachtli-Tēpētl (“Spine Mountain”) — Central Palace
This is the divine axis of Kilk-mire. The Cuetlachtli-Tēpētl rises as a sacred vertebral column forged from ossified titans and calcified divine beasts. It is said to be the fossilized remains of an ancient world-serpent slain by Xandera in her youth—a relic she hollowed out and claimed as her throne.
Each vertebra is a sanctum, monastery, war-council, or throne-chamber, where undead aristocrats kneel in bone-cloaked silence. At its base lies the Tlamictlālli, or “Field of Slumbering Teeth”—a courtyard of fossil gardens, half-buried skulls, and still-twitching jaws that whisper prophecies in dead languages. Entry is strictly regulated by the Tlacatzontli, her skeletal bodyguard order.
This tower is not just spiritual—it also serves as the ley-pulse conductor, routing necrotic energy into the city’s sigil-grid and powering the other districts like a spinal nerve.
2. Cihuatl-Mictlan (“Women’s Death City”) — Sepulcher Warrens
Named for the death realm where women who died in childbirth were said to go, Cihuatl-Mictlan is a tangled sprawl of ossuary slums and necrotic tenements. Bone stacked upon bone, the buildings here resemble termite hives of marrow and sinew. Ghost lanterns flicker from every doorframe, lit by soul-wax melted from condemned spirits.
Many of the city’s disposable undead are created, stored, and discarded here. Reek-smiths, bone-sellers, and children born into necrotic servitude populate the alleys, constantly bartering soul-tags and animated limbs. Feral undead roam in controlled packs, wearing glyph-plates around their necks to identify their masters.
Despite its poverty, the district thrives in its own macabre way. Cults compete in necro-theater, staging ritual deaths to impress recruiters from the higher castes.
3. Pusik’al-Naj (“Flesh-House”) — Embalmer District
Within this district of fleshwrights and anatomical architects, Pusik’al-Naj stands as a bio-alchemical labyrinth. Stone ziggurats ooze blood and steaming preservative mists. Deep inside, tlamatini crafters carefully sculpt sinew and bone like artisans shaping jade, creating hybrid beasts, necrotic clones, and arcane prosthetics for high-born clients.
Mummified servant-monks wander the district to deliver reagents. Giant mortuary mills process battlefield corpses brought in by the Calavera Caravans—funeral guilds that roam the countryside harvesting death.
Rituals here are performed atop pyramids shaped like flayed torsos, where sacrificial spirits are siphoned into liquid soul-amber and bottled for use in resurrection rituals.
4. Itzkal-Ocoxalco (“Obsidian Ossuary District”) — Mausolytic Quarter
Carved directly into the deep obsidian bedrock beneath Kilk-mire lies Itzkal-Ocoxalco, a necropolis revered for its memory crypts and echoing tomb-cathedrals. Bones are filed like records. Ancestor-lore is carved onto the skulls of honored lineages. The catacombs beneath this district extend for miles, some say into forgotten hells.
Guarded by Ahuilnemeh—ancient monks bound in silk and bone—this district functions as both spiritual sanctum and political arena. Nobles vie for space among the vaults to inter their flesh or soul. Here, diplomacy is conducted not through speech, but through the conjuring of ancestral ghosts to argue on behalf of their bloodlines.
The sacred Xikolli Archives, a chamber of whispering bone scrolls, houses the contracts of all who’ve sworn loyalty to Xandera—etched onto bones, blood sigils, or spirit-woven tattoos that still writhe when read.
5. Tzompantli-Nāntli (“Mother of Skull Racks”) — The Arena & Execution District)
Within the open, bone-fanged amphitheaters of Tzompantli-Nāntli, blood and honor are offered in equal measure. This district is named for the tzompantli, ancient racks where skulls of sacrificial victims were displayed—and here, that tradition continues with artistic cruelty. Rows of skull-trees bloom along streets and colonnades, each “fruit” a preserved cranium, polished and engraved with the story of its death.
The Arena of Chains, an enormous circular pit sunken into the necrotic clay, hosts weekly contests: duels between risen champions, ritual executions of condemned warlords, and necromantic “combustions,” where volatile undead are detonated for sport. Gladiators in this district are reanimated and trained, boasting enhanced musculature, taloned hands, and petrified bones—animated by the Bonewrights’ guild headquartered nearby.
Tzompantli-Nāntli also serves as a symbolic justice center. The Itzomiqui Judges preside over cases with sacred detachment. Punishment here is not death, but reanimation with shameful flaws—an eternal reminder of one's crime made visible to all.
6. Yaxkin-Chan (“Sun Spine” or “Spine Beneath the Canopy”) — Agricultural Necropolis)
Despite Kilk-mire’s necrotic nature, Yaxkin-Chan is a living contradiction: a district of agriculture, composted decay, and alchemical greenery. Designed around terraced bone towers that resemble ribcage segments and spine-like aqueducts, it produces bio-nutrient crops used in the crafting of embalming fluids, fungal meat, and ghost-fruits consumed in necromantic rites.
Fields are fertilized with the remains of failed resurrections and battlefield bone-dust, creating unusually lush marsh-rice, glowing mosses, and hexed plants that scream when harvested. Animated scarecrows patrol the crops, stitched together from avian bones and hexed bark.
Necro-botanists from the Tlilpotonqui Order study how the cycle of rot can yield eternal life. Every solstice, the district performs the Feeding of the Roots ceremony, where bones of executed criminals are fed to sacred trees believed to be tethered to the underworld.
7. Teōyaomiqui-Zacatl (“Field of the War-Dead”) — Military & Reclamation District)
Teōyaomiqui, the Aztec god of fallen warriors, lends his name to this brutal and militaristic quarter. Here, resurrected legions march in perfect rows down obsidian streets. Pyramidal barracks house the Mictlāmpilli Cohorts, undead formations trained for both foreign war and internal security. Warbeasts bred in the Pusik’al-Naj district are broken and deployed from this zone.
The bones of ancient conquerors are sealed in standing sarcophagi that pulse with spirit-runes, allowing commanders to summon their martial essence during campaigns. Strategic planning is overseen by the Xayacan Order, war-priests and bone tacticians who wear skull masks fused to their flesh.
This district also oversees the Bone Harvest, Kilk-mire’s most vital resource program. Caravans of scavengers leave from here to collect remains from plague zones, warfields, and ruins—anywhere death outpaces decay. These bones are tagged, graded, and ritually purified before being sent to the Embalmers.
8. Tlāltikpak-Tlāzohkamati (“Grateful Earth”) — Artisan & Bonecraft District)
A serene contrast to the city’s harsher quarters, Tlāltikpak-Tlāzohkamati is home to Kilk-mire’s most gifted bonecarvers, relic weavers, funerary sculptors, and glyphsmiths. Streets are paved with mosaic bones. Buildings sing with etched runes that hum in unison, casting ever-shifting spectral murals of past monarchs, slain beasts, and ancestral gods.
Bonecrafting is not merely functional here—it is art, reverence, and devotion. Jewelry made from saint-skulls, armor lacquered in marrow-sap, instruments carved from phalanges—all are created in open plazas where artisans chant while working. The Xicohtēcatl Guilds regulate quality, ritual, and symbolic purity, ensuring that no piece dishonors the dead.
Every creation made here must first be "awakened" through a rite in the Tlāzohkamati Furnace, a massive braziery that melts away impurities in both spirit and form. Many citizens make pilgrimage to this district not to purchase—but to bury offerings of failed art in the Shame Gardens, where thorned vines absorb regret and replace it with creative rebirth.
9. Mictēcacihuālcalli (“House of the Lady of the Dead”) — Ritual & Spirit Conclave District)
Named for the goddess Mictecacihuatl, the Lady of the Underworld, this district serves as the spiritual nexus of Kilk-mire’s priesthood. Cloaked in eternal dusk via a magical veil of twilight, Mictēcacihuālcalli is a place where the living commune with the divine dead. Massive ceremonial ziggurats are covered in death-flowers and blood-marble, surrounded by canals that ferry urns of spirit-ashes to and from the lower sanctums.
Every dusk, priests and soul-chroniclers conduct necro-litanies, singing to the dead whose skulls rest in the Thousand-Eyed Wall, a great serpentine mural of chattering crania. Incense made from powdered phylacteries fills the air, carrying prayers between realms. Beneath the ziggurats lies the Dream-Hive, a sprawling subterranean chamber of spectral cocoons where mediums sleep, dreaming messages from those lost or unrisen.
This district is the heart of death-as-religion, housing orders like the Yohualli-Sibyls and Teonanacatl Seers, who ingest embalming fungi to glimpse truths hidden to the waking eye.
10. Nacazxōchpan-Tlālli (“Land of Ear Flowers”) — Education, Lore, and Research District)
A contradiction of softness within stone, this verdant necromantic academy district is named for the Ear Flower, a poetic Nahuatl term associated with listening, wisdom, and memory. The buildings here—vaulted bone-halls, crystalline ziggurats, and fungal observatories—are grown or summoned rather than built, shaped by necro-druids and bone-gardeners.
Here stands the Codexum of the Hollow Tongue, the grand academy where acolytes are trained in fields such as soul-binding logic, curse mathematics, and resurrection jurisprudence. Animated chalk writes autonomously on bloodstone tablets. Disembodied professors lecture through humming skulls suspended in green stasis-jars.
The scholars of this district, known as the Tlāltikauhpilli, maintain the Grand Necrolexicon—an evolving ossuary-library of every known necromantic rite, including those banned or long forgotten. The entire district is considered sentient; when intruders or heretics enter without permission, the walls shift and maze them into eternal confusion.
11. Tlāzolli-Panōtl (“River of Filth”) — Infrastructure & Waste Reclamation District)
Beneath Kilk-mire’s grandeur lies the dark, sinew-veined arteries of Tlāzolli-Panōtl. This is where the byproducts of undeath are processed—withered marrow, spent soul residues, failed conjurations, corrupted husks, and fleshblight run-off. The district is crisscrossed by rivers of glowing sludge, funneled through bio-filtration gardens and necrotic lichen fields tended by the Cuitlāchtli, a caste of disease-immune workers stitched together from various species.
Despite its grotesque function, Tlāzolli-Panōtl is an engineering marvel. The entire sewage and ley-drainage system of the city is centralized here, powered by geothermal corpse-reactors and siphoned through the Nine Maw Drainwells—gigantic fleshy pits that belch reek and power in equal measure. Nothing is wasted; refuse is alchemized into fertilizer, bone slurry, spirit ink, or embalming base fluids.
Only the most iron-willed or damned serve here, but they are respected. Their mantra: “From filth comes function.” Their patron god is Tlazōlteōtl, eater of rot and absolver of waste.
12. Tlamikizpan-Tlatepētl (“Mountain of Quiet Sacrifice”) — The Forbidden Zone / Throne Tomb)
Not officially recognized in most civic records, Tlamikizpan-Tlatepētl is a sealed zone beyond the limits of the city’s necro-cartography. It is an artificially raised earthen necromantic mesa, accessible only through hidden catacombs that wind for leagues beneath the main city. It is said to house the original corpse of the first queen, buried alive upon achieving godhood, her heartbeat stilled by her own command.
No one enters the tomb and returns unchanged. The air is static. Time dilates. Some say the bones of fallen cities are embedded in the walls here, screaming silently through vein-carved fossils. A single black pyramid crowned in eternal eclipse rises at its center, and there the Obsidian Choir resides—twelve mouthless figures who have never moved, yet whisper to the queen in dreams.
Many believe Tlamikizpan-Tlatepētl is Kilk-mire’s failsafe. A last rite. A divine anchor to ensure that if the city ever falls, the throne-tomb will rise and consume all that defied it.