Location from The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Rin's hometown — a poor southern market town where a war orphan ran a shop, studied for the Keju exam by candlelight, and burned herself to stay awake because she'd rather die than stay here.
Tikany is where Rin begins and what she's running from. It represents everything the Empire's provincial hierarchy does to its bottom tier: poverty, limited opportunity, exploitation by local merchants and opium dealers, and the assumption that people from the south don't amount to anything. Rin's foster family runs an opium dealership — a detail that connects her origin to the drug that will later become her shamanic conduit. The town's only value to Rin is the Keju exam — the imperial examination that, if passed, grants admission to Sinegard. Rin studies with a desperation that borders on self-harm (literally burning herself to stay awake) because the alternative is spending her life here. Tikany is not a villain, but it's a cage, and Rin's entire arc begins with the fury of someone who will do anything to escape it.
A small, dusty market town in the Rooster Province — one of the Empire's poorest southern regions. Narrow streets lined with shops and stalls. The architecture is functional without pretension. Everything looks tired: the buildings, the people, the economy. It's the kind of place talented people leave and average people resign themselves to.
Also known as: Tikany, Rooster Province