Map of the city of Dos on the planet Kassidor

The City of Dos

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The danger in visiting Dos is you may very well never come back. It is not glorious or thrilling, but if you want to live an easy-going, cultured, urban lifestyle there may be no better place in all of human space to do so. Everything is beautiful, refined, casual, relaxing and pleasant. Some have compared its ambience to 19th century Paris, but Dos has no open sewers, no tuberculosis and almost no miserable paupers. 19th century Paris never had clean and silent tube lines, abundant hydropower, a thriving cinema, ubiquitous data service. About the only thing they have in common is a slight resemblance in architecture, a vibrant arts scene and romantic gas lamps.

It almost never rains during the light and that which falls during the dark is gentle and soothing. The weather is almost never unpleasant except when 61 Cygni erupts in a major flare and even then it gets only a little over 100F (38C). The winters are no colder than Kex or New Orleans, the summers are not as steamy as Navorkensville or New York. The darks are cool and often damp but frost is unknown, even in mid winter.

The city is spacious and low, covering as much area as the Yakhan but with less than half the population. Only the major business centers have elevator buildings, most residences are 3 to 6 floors of cut stone with crystal railings and trim. Streets are well paved and shaded. The style here is that the main room in a residence is also the bedroom, and in some there is also a tub designed for entertaining, though this is not as common as in the Highlands. Water service is available thruout the city without the hand-pumping that is common in the Highlands. Most homes have water heaters and at least half have plumbed lamps, but unlike Bordzvek, they do have to be lit by hand.

The poorest usually live on the upper floors of a wealthier person's house and share in many of the creature comforts. Homes with several large suites, a communal kitchen and many smaller rooms above are common. Quite often the poorest pay nothing for their space other than some cooking and/or cleaning. It is decidedly gauche to look down on or up to someone because of their income level and this is one of the most egalitarian of cultures even in this very egalitarian basin.

As well as being a center of arts and learning, the city is an industrial powerhouse. The rivers drop 1700 feet in the hundred miles of the complex and every bit of that water power is used by local industry. There is no interstellar trade in these products of course, and the electronics made here are illegal on Centorin, but all of the infrastructure that makes the city what it is, is manufactured here. That includes not just the consumer products but the lock fittings, the methane digesters that produce the lighting and cooking gas, the tubeway parts, the data screens, cinema projectors (they are all electronic incidently except for the light source itself), musical instruments, air-operated industrial power tools, automated looms and knitting machinery, stone cutting machinery, most of the luxurious coaches used thruout the basin, agricultural equipment, etc., etc., etc. And all this is done without a lot of noise, no smoke plumes, no grimy buildings and no loutish cargo handlers.

The basin has a lively and highly skilled cinema, and it is one of the four basins that exports to Centorin. Thus many have seen scenes from here since over five sixths of the basin's movies are made in the city of Dos or its environs. The romantic comedies are popular, though many mistake the locale for Novo Grosso or Amazonas because the grown housing so familiar from other Kassidorian movies is so rare here. The give-away is that Novo Grosso and Amazonas both use lev-rails instead of 51 inch tubes, both Amazonas and Novo Grosso use electric lights and have plentiful advertizing posters and in Dos the vegetation is not of Earth origin. While Dos is actually larger than Manaus, any scene from Dos makes it look smaller since there is no single center. The crime dramas are easy to spot because those from Dos are all investigation and no violence, very much different from the snapping blasters of the P.I.’s of Amazonas.

The liveliest arts and music scenes are in the neighborhoods around the university in East Knoye, across the lake from Dos Central. Here you will find quite a few advertizing posters for concerts or showings (about 10% of what you'll find around a Centorin public station in a smelly ranch town) and more people with avant-garde styles.

The women are, on average, more sensual and romantic and not as flamboyant and athletic as in the Yakhan, though this is a fine distinction and individuals vary far more than the differences in the average. Like almost all Elvish women they are easy-going and happy about their sexuality and enjoy bodily contact in almost all situations. However, on the average they are even more averse to oral sex than the remainder of Kassidor.

The lakes have many fine beaches, and in late summer the water is somewhat warmer than that in the Yakhan. As almost everywhere on the planet, no one swims with clothing, but some may cover up while on the beach. If she's not covered up, she will enjoy comments on her beauty but on average will not be as enthusiastic about it as in the Yakhan. Caressing a woman's bottom is considered polite here, but don't reach for her chest unless she invites you by putting it in contact with you or touching yours.


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