I’ve been adding more bits about the city this week, putting more focus on culture than places.
Snails of the City
The Goblin City is home to countless strange creatures, but none are as beloved as snails. Snails have been revered in this place since before recorded history, and remain important symbols of civic pride. Giant snails can be found in parks and preserves and are emulated in machines, architecture, and magic.
The Dumpling Festival
Each year the city holds a dumpling festival celebrating dumplings of every kind. Goblin dumplings are notable for often being heart-shaped, but a great variety of traditional and novel versions are made during the festival. Feasts are held in every neighborhood and hosts take pride in providing dumplings for every taste. Wizards from Flavour Tower in The Towers District host a dumpling cooking competition during each festival.
Flavour Tower
A group of wizards who specialize in food-based magics built Flavour Tower in The Towers District. The ground floor of this highrise has a dozen restaurants serving foods either enhanced, prepared, or analyzed with magic. Other floors contain laboratories, kitchens, residences, and classrooms.
Universal Mobile Service
The city offers universal mobile phone service to all residents and visitors. Fast, reliable coverage is available everywhere and the well-maintained network is a civic priority. The prominence of a mobile phone shop in a historic building greeting arrivals to the city at Cell Tower is no accident; residents voted to dedicate the building to distributing access and devices as a symbol of hospitality.
Dragon Flight Square
Dozens of dragons call the city home and a square in the northeast of The Brutalist Bouquet is a gathering spot for dragons. The square has notable rhododendron displays surrounding it and a central topiary shaped as a clutch of dragon eggs makes the spot unmistakable even in the rare times when no dragons are present.
Sunflower Tower
A skyscraper in The Towers District resembles seven sunflowers tied together in a bouquet. The unmistakable structure houses some equally unmistakable people. The magic users here have altered their limbs to be covered in leaves and have variations of sunflower adornment on their heads, sometimes with manes of petals or scalps covered in clusters of seeds. Magics of plant shaping and body transformation are practiced with abandon here, but always toward the end of emulating or cultivating sunflowers.
Civic Podcast Service
The Goblin City is served by a city-run podcast network with content that is also broadcast on FM radio. News, weather, entertainment, and niche interests have daily or weekly ‘casts, and community-produced programming is facilitated through the service. Residents of the city have access to hosting through the service, and recording studios at city libraries are often booked by podcasters making episodes that are listened to widely.
Photo by Alex Hu @alexandwich on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/white-and-yellow-ceramic-bowl-6m_cJSVxUHs
