From: intraphase@gmail.com

" Here is your pen with freshly dipped ink and rice
papers. Is the checkerboard sufficient for your sacred tasks or
shall I get down on my hands and knees before you so that the tired
hard muscles of my lowly shoulders and back might serve as a worthy table
for your important scribing’s of vision"

" Evil Tolltaker Y-Clang your humor is returning and
the fog has cleared from your wine addled brain I humbly salute your obsequiousness in the supplicating way of my esteemed ancestors."

" Fhuk Yhue Twhoo Soothsayer "

" Yes Fhuk Yhue Twhoo Tolltaker"

"Shall we open the Bridge of Silence Iguanna"

" Yes the omens are right, the bridge may open"



Cry-Chang-E Chorus


What is that mighty guilded carriage and who is its important occupant that defies the long line of waiting carriages parked solemnly and patiently waiting in the Great City cue that is stacked on the avenues approaching and humbly waiting to cross the Bridge of Silence into the Countryside.




On most mornings the mandarin Warlord El Diablero was much to busy to concern himself with the comings and goings of the beggars and street urchins he tried to employ in some sort of meaningful and useful way so that they would not be ordered out of the Great City by the high mandarin council as useless persons of burden to the metropolis. As a Warlord he had the power to override the decisions of the mandarin council, but if this power was exercised

to consistently or imprudently eventually the mandarins would grow resentful of the usurping of their city powers by the Warlord and conspire in secret to make an appeal of relief to the distant Overlords and try to sanction Warlord El Diablero or limit the mandarin Warlords powers by temporarily forcing
him to cooperate with the bureaucrats and their endless streams of half brained investigators and dim witted flunkies who arrived at the lofty position of traveling governmental imbecile due to the distant Overlords own desire to keep these truculent gossiping troublemakers forever on the
move and rootless where they could not thwart the Overlords own desire for smooth commerce and efficient campaigns against the mainland’s occasional intrusion by ill prepared overly ambitious invaders.

El Diablero was a builder and salesman of fine and common carriages. Though his main and most lucrative enterprise was the rental and repair of carriages. The people of the Great City preferred to rent carriages on their journeys across the bridge and into the Countryside so as to not ruin their own fine and beautiful transports that were an expensive mark and symbol of their social station on the dusty rutted tracks that formed the sparse thin country roads. The young mandarins farming the outer Countryside land and hoping to accumulate enough capital to eventually move their homes and.. families to the city found it cheaper to rent common man-pulled hand trucks and

horse drawn four seat carriages from El Diablero so that their transport of the cities goods and produce would be an uninterrupted endeavor. The loss of a days business could spell the doom of a young Countryside mandarin who was forever locked in a vigorous daily competition with the other young mandarins for the commerce of the city. It was far safer to rely on the professional carriage shops and renters as long as they didn’t charge extortionist rates for their services.

El Diablero was on a mission of reassurance to his employees this morning and hoped to quiet yesterday’s storm of protest to the mandarin council of the
Great City.
While he was counting the returning carriages during yesterday’s business down by the Bridge of Silence late in the afternoon a High Lady of the city returning from the sweltering Countryside, whose sharp mind had become clouded by a full day of negotiating the strange worlds of the peasantry in the Countryside, her fine clothing sweat stained and now covered with dust
echoing the fatigue of her mind brought on by the long sweltering days travails of her countryside journey. The disturbance was not a disturbance at all but was mistaken for one by the High Lady. Two young street urchins in the employ of El Diablero had begun cursing violently and with full youthful vigor from across the city street at each other. All sorts of diatribes and befoulment was heaped upon each child’s ancestors and possible futures.
The High Lady suddenly snapping from the days pressures after having just crossed back over the Bridge of Silence and into the Great City leapt from the carriage and grabbed one of El Diablero’s urchins and began dragging him to the heavy black metal rented carriage. El Diablero fearing the horses might bolt and start a chain reaction against the long line of carriages standing idle with wheels locked waiting to be pulled up the hill by hand after the horses were unharnessed had felt compelled to intervene or risk enormous catastrophe.

The young urchins instantly forgot their dispute fearing the more
horrid possibility of being kidnapped by one of the ghoulish people who were said to inhabit the city and were rumored to be responsible for the periodic disappearance of an occasional Warlord Child-Prince from high up on the hill of the Great City very close to the rocky Twenty Spire Black Castle.

El Diablero had found it necessary to physically stop the High Lady and it could have led to a great dispute between Warlords if the High Ladies
mandarin husband had not been so very much aware of his wife’s high strung nature and need for the country air. The mandarin Warlord had been very supplicating once his wife was out of sight and beyond earshot knowing he would never want to use his own fine and properly stored transports for his wife’s country excursions.

The titled ladies and gentleman who had been witness to the ruckus had
felt it was their citizens duty to file the usual days complaints with the mandarin council but El Diablero was completely comfortable with his own behavior regarding yesterday’s challenge and knowing the council would ignore

the complaint as it did almost all complaints. Still he knew as a matter of protocol that this morning he would have to make a bold display of confidence and generosity to reassure the street urchins in his employ and not suddenly find himself without walkers and groomers for his carriage works and horse stables on this side of the bridge.



Cry-Chang-E

Who is that small girl who hides secretively behind the line of carriages parked on the roadside waiting to leave the Great City this morning and cross the Bridge of Silence as the mandarin Warlord approaches from above.

Occasionally peeking out from the long line of rental carriages lined
up to cross the bridge Lady Small Feat awaited the approach of El Diablero in his mighty transport. Her partner in this affair was the famous Leper Woman of the Dark Society who sat in a medium sized brown and blue four seat horse drawn coach in between El Diablero's oncoming transport and Lady Small Feat who was practicing her leap into traffic and praying to the sprites and water gods of the Raging River under the Bridge of Silence that she might escape this most precarious maneuver against El Diablero the carriage renter without injuring her small lithe and tender young body. She was a follower of the mysterious Blue Prince. One of only a few street urchins to ever meet the young prince. He had come down into the city in one of his grey beggar disguises and had personally recruited her into the service of the secret Green Brigade. There icon was a Jade Pendant with gold leaf trim hung on a silver hook with a fine silver chain as its anchor to the sacred couriers of the Green Brigade.
The tiny young girl who had been dubbed by the Blue Prince with the honored title of Lady Small Feat was trained in many clandestine arts
and had been one of the chosen Jade-Sevens who had been taken as high as the Overlords summer retreat at the top of the Great City and lead up one
of the hollow black spires into the carved rock chamber with the child size window slits for observation and protection against the raging night currents that swept down from the northern glacial mountains in the distance.
The Blue Prince had carried a small plain basket with teas and biscuits and they had left the relative safety of the small hollow rock chamber held up by the black spires and crawled thru the half window on the north side out onto the overhang outside with its box-shaped black metal railings and solitary arch of stone at the end of the small walkway that drew outward and then sharply and suddenly up angling back into the volcanic rock of the hollow stone held high in the sky and wind by the twenty volcanic spires that
soared two thousand feet above the Great City below.
Lady Small Feat had been dizzy and unable to comprehend or fathom the experience as the Blue Prince had laid out the teas and foodstuffs in the gentle breeze but did her best to behave as she thought a refined mandarins daughter might. Within a few moments of settling down to sit and drink the Blue Prince had pointed across too the first high mountain of the countryside a thousand feet above the Bhagda Temple where a similar twenty spire teacup shaped rock hung high in the air and defied the winds of the open sky. The young prince of eleven years had spoken in somber tones of the plots and machinations that originated in the Black Castle on the other side of the Raging River implying many things yet never making direct accusations against the other castle and Lady Small Feat presumed it was her first lesson in diplomacy and the way of the young princes. She had sworn a solemn oath of secrecy to the young prince knowing of his difficulties and had been told that she was selected by a dream he had witnessed inside the Black Rock and was to be one of the Jade Seven inner circle confidants and closed circle to the secret of the Jade Pendant and the Grey Rider. When the messages that were passed thru the city by the mysterious Blue Prince she would be one of the seven chosen to enter the Black Castle thru its secret entrance way and passage

to the Blue Prince's private chambers where no servants were allowed to enter and from where the hollow Black Rock was accessed.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)