The Duchy of Tradgardland 1912...

The Guild of St Hermes has its headquarters in a rather run-down area of Tradgardstadt.The industrial grime litters every surface and taints the tattered posters advertising cheap soap, a visiting circus and the forthcoming visit by a team from the M.C.C. The shabby door onto the grubby street prepares no one for the glories (albeit faded and tatty around the edges) that lie within. The fresco paintings of a winged messenger flying over the Duchy of Tradgardland dominate the main room. They are illuminated by gaslights in the shape of Hermes’s staff. Executed in the very best Baroque style by a fashionable, if disreputable, painter of unknown origins this visual display hammers home for all to see just how important the guild members are- at least in their own eyes…
Many felt it was somewhat strange,ney heretical ,to have a pagan god as a patron saint but the Guild Master and members just accepted it as a sign of continuity and of the divine nature of their work. The Guild, traditionally, were responsible for all licensed message carriers, be they on foot, horse or even boat. They held a monopoly with regard to the breeding, maintaining and usage of carrier pigeons not to mention the ill –fated attempt to organise carrier hares some centuries ago. These days they were more familiar with the telephone and the telegraph but retained carrier pigeons as a Deluxe Service…
Today Edvard, Thirty-fifth Guild Master, in the Office for the past twelve years, surveyed the daily reports from Sunday – each written in immaculate writing in the large bound ledgers chained in the Hall of Scribes. Copper plate script was the order of the Day though three type writers were currently being trialled. He cast his eyes over the trite and the banal (every message sent by telegraph was copied even if it pertained only to socks, sealing wax or endearments from one lover to another) and his eyes stopped .He read it with more interest than was officially approved of. His eyes widened as he read on- things were changing in the Tradgardland Army and he knew just what The Guild of St Hermes could offer. He hastened to his office and prepared to use the telephone on his desk. He asked the operator to connect him with the office of General Von Bergmann directly immediately…