Location from The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
The most elite military academy in the Nikara Empire — a mountain fortress-city where the Empire's future generals, strategists, and weapons are forged, and where an orphan from the south learned that she was the most dangerous thing in the building.
Sinegard is simultaneously a university, a military base, and a proving ground. Students are organized by discipline — Combat, Strategy, Linguistics, Medicine, Lore, Siege — each under a master who teaches according to their philosophy. The social hierarchy is brutal: noble-born students from powerful provinces dominate, southern students are looked down upon, and the curriculum is designed to break anyone who can't keep up. Beneath the military academy is something older and stranger — the Lore wing, where Jiang teaches shamanism to students the other masters have given up on, and the caves where Niang Niang mutters prophecies that nobody listens to. Sinegard is built on top of knowledge it doesn't fully understand, which is fitting for the institution that trained both the Empire's greatest defenders and its most destructive weapon. The academy is destroyed during the Federation War, rebuilt, and destroyed again — a cycle that mirrors the Empire's relationship with the power it trains but can never fully control.
A fortified city built into a mountain, rising in tiers of red-roofed stone buildings connected by covered walkways and steep stairs. Training yards occupy every available flat surface — combat rings, archery ranges, obstacle courses. The architecture is old and imposing, military-functional beneath centuries of institutional grandeur. The Lore wing is older than the rest, set apart, slightly unkempt. Above, the mountain peaks disappear into fog. Below, the city cascades down to the plains.
Also known as: Sinegard, Sinegard Military Academy, The Academy