On the Gates

If you’re reading this helpful little pamphlet, whether sold to you by urchin, priest or knave, then it means that you’re in Ahskra, and new to boot! Now, I’ve met many folk new to this great city and its many splendorous sights, and all ask me the same thing: Oh Silanki, oh sage, explain to us the gates! Well my dear consummate traveler, my beloved tourist carnevaleer, that I shall do, and I shall do so briefly yet in language filled with flowery delight!

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Forsooth, it is I, Silanki Premo Dontori, best-traveled traverser of Ahskra and surrounds! Many are those foolish adventurers who chase gate after gate, planet after planet, wandering thirsty across deserts, feverish through jungles and sun-burnt across the seas! Gormless gallivanters one and all, for all the pleasures of the planets, of the all too wide cosmic expanse, are to be found right here, in the City of a Hundred Gates, in the Mother Metropole, Ahasker herself!

Now you, dear friend, being wholly new, either entered through a gate or came from afar across the oceans or continents of Krask, greatest planet in this arm, or any arm for that matter, of our illustrious galaxy!

So why, you ask, if having entered through a gate, should I educate you on the matter? Why must I explain their nature if you, oh strider of worlds, have tasted their far-flinging bounty for yourself? Why, dear sir, madam, or other applicable title, ‘tis quite elementary: not one gate is the same, whether in form, functioning, or, most obvious of all, destination.

Let us say that you, illustrious traveler, have entered our city fair through the Beggar’s gate, perhaps borne through the void via ship to that most barren of places, that near-empty rock called Herkau’s Folly. You spent some time among the now-civilized tribes who reside within those caverns and tunnels, marveling at their seamless grasp of the old magics, tech lore so long-forgotten that the mountains themselves do not remember!

And then, first leg of the journey done, you were led along the halls to the Beggar’s gate: A simple steel box with a door, barely the length and breadth of a single person. And my friend, you stepped through, as mavericks tend to do! How did it feel? Mere seconds, yes, yet gut-wrenching all the same, with colors sans names whirring past your head, the sensation one of falling, flying, rising, indeed, it feels as if you are moving in a formless, eternal ether! And then, less then a minute later, you step through into Ahskra, stepping out of another closet, though one daintily engraved, for before the Wyr Beggar came to claim his land, a baron had indeed used that very closet, that once-inactivate gate, to hang his coats!

Ah yes, oh fellow wanderer of the worlds, the gates are manifold in their variety!

Let us take the Free Gate, rumored by some to be the oldest by far, though I myself believe that this honor belongs to the Eternal! Regardless, after paying your fee to whichever gang happens to find themselves in possession of the gate and surrounds, you step up to that great, towering obsidian portal, and you walk through... and walk, and walk and walk! I hope you brought along food, friend, and drink aplenty, for some wander mere hours through the black void, while others are unlucky enough to be trapped in that limbo realm for weeks! No uncommon sight it is to see wagons stacked with naught but water barrels and dried foods, entire merchant caravans clearing away half their inventory space merely so that they can bring along enough provender for the uncertain journey!

And so we move to form, with the Serdinine Gate itself an amethyst hoop floating six feet in the air, and the Scale Gate being naught but a wooden frame mortared into a mausoleum's entrance. Then there is that great attraction, that ever-stretching monolith that is the Dead Gate, a towering structure of red sandstone stretching half a mile into the air, and being two-hundred yards wide!

Form, function, location: whimsical and wonderful in their myriad variety as the gates are, their true power, their true majesty, lies in the very mystery of their existence! Many are the scholars and magi and witch-folk who through the long ages have attempted to ken, to replicate, to further harness the great power that the portals bring. All to no avail! Once there was an attempt to detach a great stone block from the Dead Gate, through pulleys and traction machines and entire herds of slaves pulling with rope and chain. Not an inch did the block move, and not a scratch did these labors leave. I speak true, friend, for if there is one constant that all gates share, whatever their parent material, their shape, their paired locations, why, they are all wholly indestructible! No tech-mad magi can tear them apart to delve deep into their inner mysteries, no jealous Sveni Ovlak can destroy their rival’s most hallowed property! And is this not how things should be?

Should we travelers not revel in the fact that all the myriad worlds are connected eternal, with Ahskra fair at their very heart? Yes, a million-fold yes! And so I, humble Silanki Premo Dontori, bid you a fond adieu and wish you many happy travels in this greatest of all cities, Mother Ahasker!

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Proceeds from the sale of this pamphlet go to the Dontori Guild of Ahskran Venturers. If you’ve paid more than three tins, you’ve been scalped! For those new to Ahskra, or merely curious, we of the guild say this: Be sure to seek our other pamphlets for enjoyable and informative reading, listed here

~On Ahskra ~On the Sveni ~On the Square ~On Old Ahasker ~On Feg Crags ~On Krask ~And many more besides!