The Cerulean Palace, in the Sand-Herald District of Ank'Harel, is the main center of governmental power in the city, featuring the Tower of J'mon Sa Ord, the city's leader.
Exterior
The palace is an extraordinarily imposing structure, the largest in the city, dwarfing the nearby Ord Bastion. The ornate palace exterior is embellished with brass-accented turquoise and lapis lazuli and overall appears purple-blue in coloration, with a dozen towers made of a slightly translucent, glassy material reminiscent of falling water. The central tower, tallest of them all, has a spiral texture to it. Around the palace there are courtyards with gardens and patches of grass. A staircase leads up to the tall, heavy front gates; these gates have a bright turquoise color, and many of the pillars, statues, and carvings around the exterior grounds have turquoise detailing and trim. The main palace structure is an architectural marvel with hundreds of massive pointed arches that taper to smaller arches deeper into the interior, forming long halls of black- and white-speckled marble that are ornately decorated and which echo with each footfall.
Chamber of Judgment
A central chamber at ground level of the complex is known as the Chamber of Judgment. Its surfaces are decorated with intricate tilework, and the room is dimly illuminated in a blue glow by sunlight shining through its ceiling of thick but barely translucent, deep blue crystal. It has steps and seats, and on a stone dais is an intricately carved, sapphire-studded bronze throne that is said to be a duplicate of the one at the top of the tower above.
Throne Room and waiting room
Near the Chamber of Judgment, through a hall, is a lavishly decorated waiting room with silk-upholstered couches and chairs with a similar blue glow. A small room adjacent to the waiting room is a cylindrical chamber with smooth walls of blue-purple quartz-like material, and this apparently 15-foot-high room is actually a magically-powered lift held by four thick chains. As the lift rises, the spiral lines of the central Tower of J'mon Sa Ord become visible along the (now much thinner) translucent, shimmering walls, offering a somewhat blue-tinted, refracted view of the entirety of Ank'Harel, the nearby environs of the Rumedam Desert, and even the Aggrad Mountains in the distance to the north. The door at the top of the lift opens to a pair of staircases, both leading to the platform at the top of the tower.
This platform, exposed to the breeze and passing clouds by a large arched opening with a large balcony, is the throne room of J'mon Sa Ord, and the walls have high arched windows and around a hundred translucent tapestries, 50 or 60 feet high, in a multitude of colors of silk and other cloth. The center of this chamber has a step-like set of circular platforms, at the center of which is the ten-foot-tall throne of shiny bronze studded with hundreds of sapphires.
Courts, dungeon, and guards
The Hands of Ord are active in the palace, as it is also the location of most of the city's courts, and under the palace is the labyrinthine dungeon known as the Oblag, the Scarlet Oubliette, or Scarlet Prison. Contested cases are heard in the palace by judges, and those involving especially odious crimes are heard in the Chamber of Judgment with J'mon Sa Ord presiding and announcing the verdict. When Vox Machina visited the city in early 811 PD, close to fifty Hands could be seen patrolling the grounds around the palace's front gates, and the guards were suspicious of the adventurers.