Name: Four Corners Trading Post
Population: Predominantly Ylian working class with a large population Klyros merchants one Diabloi and a group of Kran builders
Services: Builders, Multiple Markets, Smithies, Food, A tavern, two inns (one for the Ylian workers and the other for the Klyros merchant upper class), a bridge which transports paying customers from the current level in the stalagmite to either the one above or below (only one way - the way back costs an additional fee)
Level: second from the top - the \'bridge\' takes people to the 1st level and the 3rd level.
Setting/History: The Klyros are practical, intelligent creatures, which often makes them good merchants and entrepreneurs. About a hundred years ago when the transportation system between the levels of Yliakum was still being develloped a group of approximately twelve Klyros were confronted by an ancient looking Diabloi who told them that he knew of a way for them to make enough profit to shower their children\'s children in then unimaginable earnings. The Klyros thought about his offer and decided that they had nothing to loose and thus accepted it. The astute Diabloi pointed out a small town of Ylians on the second level of Yliakum and then pointed out two enormous city-states which had sprung up on the first and third levels. The aforementioned locations, to the delight of the Klyros, who had immediately understood the significance of the small town,, would have been within miles of each other had they been on the same level. The Diabloi then pointed out that the current trade routes between the great cities take nearly five months to complete one way due to the merchant\'s obligation to go around several mountainchains to the nearest route through the second level, into the third and then to the third level city-state.
The Diabloi told the Klyros that he needed their silver tongues in order to pursuade the local peasants to allow them to use the area for a lift to the next level. The Klyros had suspected such but they became alarmed since they thought that the diabloi intended for them to build the structure. He asured them that their job would be to do nothing more than fly the support cables to the other levels so that his workers could do the rest. Understanding their actual place in the endevear as mere workers and soothers of the peasants the Klyros demanded assurances of the promised profits. The diabloi assured them that they would come in time...
When the Klyros arrived at the small town, named The Four Corners, the diabloi\'s \'workers\' a squadron of nearly two hundred warrior Kran had already enslaved the villagers. The Klyros realized finally that they would have their riches... they were the \'good cops\'. The diabloi greeted them as if he had never seen them before and demanded that they leave... the Klyros played along and eventually had the peasants full support. Since they were so small in number, they told the peasants, they could not defeat the Krans or the evil Diabloi sorceror... so the peasants submitted to the rule of the Krans with the hope that the Klyros would free them once the Klyros had recieved the gold from the lifts to do so. The Diabloi furthered this rumor, which he and the Klyros had coplanned, by appointing the Klyros as leaders of the project. It took several decades to complete the lifts using merely sheer manpower (the Krans proved to be gaurds not workers). The Klyros and the Diabloi, now rich, knew that the peasants were too poor to go off in search of a better life if they were freed, so they did the only logical thing to do: they freed the Ylians and watched them dumbfounded stay exactly where they were.
The city itself is merely a toll-road of sorts between the upperlevels and the massive capital cities above and below them. The Klyros rulers have grown old, rich, and fat. The Diabloi, still alive, lives in a large obsidian palace nearby surrounded by his army of Kran and a large number of the choicest Ylian serving girls...
The Ylian on the otherhand are extremely resentful of their masters who have only prospered from the Ylian\'s toils. There are a number of secret resistance groups residing within the city planning a coup d\'etat vs. the Klyros, Krans, and Diabloi... maybe if they can be persuaded to join together they will someday prevail...
Architecture: The city consists of two areas: the inner city, which contains the Klyros merchants and the Diabloi\'s castle; outside the walls of the inner city the houses are chaoticly pieced together lean-tos where the Ylian lower class resides... The gigantic bridge system is within several fortified (physically and magically) barricades directly in the center of the new city.