Elven Gate Networks

Aestas is dotted here and there with the remnants of ancient Elven sites. While none of these are very large, a few remain semi-functional, their various features operating at a diminished level. The most interesting of Elven sites are the "Elven Gate Networks". Though every one is different, they all follow a similar pattern of a central hub site with several "nodes", which are themselves scattered across the surface of the planet. Few of these networks are connected to other networks at all, and each one has a slightly different layout and means of operation. Individual gates have many unpredictable characteristics. Some are one way, some only stay open for a time, some literally go nowhere, while others may harm the traveler if certain unknown preconditions are not met.  

These networks point to certain clues about the nature of their builders, the Ancient Elves. The lack of any standardization suggests that each one may have been an artistic or creative endeavor, perhaps even a vanity project of some sort. It is theorized by modern sages that the surviving sites were of minor importance, perhaps the equivalent of individual estates for nobles or the powerful. In the case of Elves, sages believe that the gates allowed an Elven lord to look in on his lands directly, no matter where they were on Aestas. Borders would mean almost nothing to such a civilization. When the end of Elven civilization came, the great cities and structures were utterly destroyed in the "Sundering of the World" some fifty millennia past. These small sites, for some reason, avoided destruction. They have suffered from abandonment and neglect, however, and the majority of Elven ruins are simply strange structures of haunting beauty, often inhabited by strange and sometimes terrible beasts. Even inert sites are shunned by "right-thinking people" for the most part. 

Elven gate networks are often coveted by nearby kingdoms, and the few that are known are usually seized and defended, or sometimes even concealed from the outside world. Interestingly, within a century they are nearly always abandoned again by human kingdoms, often sealed up and deliberately forgotten. Attempts to use the gates on a regular basis have always come to bad ends, whether by some curse, the covetousness of humans, or monsters and things from beyond reality. These latter things seem attracted to the gates.. For this reason, in the Keller Lands it is common to leave the management and study of Elven sites to the nearest "Mage's Tribunal:. Both the Pershamon Empire and the Ascendant Keller Empire maintain specific small by all-powerful ministries tasked with the recovery and study of Elven artifacts, and claim any and all of them as Imperial property. 

Deoron Gate

The Elven ruins in Deoron (a barony within Silverwater) are located about two miles up a trail from Satzen. None of the locals go there, largely out of superstition. The ruins themselves are on a precarious ridgeline requiring a somewhat risky climb, and the path is strewn with loose rocks and goblins and worse. The “standing stones” are an illusion, a mix of angles, magic, and simple aging. What looks like a loose menhir from a distance is actually a set of stones arranged around a amphitheater, lined itself with a fairly ornate set of stairs and platforms. Everything is made of a smoky blueish glassy material, actually a form of magically shaped quartz. The entire thing is covered with dirt, vines, and lots and lots of bones - mostly cattle, some humanoid, some “other” stuff. External surfaces are pitted with age, but faint elven art and writing can be seen within the material. 

Five archways can be found at intervals along the wall, and in the center is a delicate crystalline gazebo structure.The portal can be accessed by descending the stairs the correct distance, then entering the gateway arch in the center of the amphitheatre. Doing so will take you deeper down, instead of simply around the pit. It doesn’t matter which door you enter from, only how many rooms you pass through. If you leave via the room you entered the circle from, or if you pass beyond it, the gate will remain an inert arch. This essentially means that the Deoron Gateway has four possible destinations. Once a person leaves the stairs, the center structure will appear brightly luminous to them, and no other. 

• Gate 1: This leads to a single portal "gazebo gate", on a weathered beach, a few miles from a Yanoshi exile colony somewhere on "Far Shores". 

• Gate 2: This portal formerly led to an Elven shift realm, but in the last year has altered itself. Sometimes it leads to the Mount Ridnitsohka Gate, while other times it will take travelers to the Ethereal Plane or worse. 

• Gate 3: This portal leads to a single portal "gazebo gate", that is15’ underwater in a sunken ruin. It is just offshore from the island of Wawaahimotu, the "land half in shadow" in the "Savage Lands" archipelago. 

• Gate 4: This portal leads to an underground single portal, in a small cavern collapsed at one end. The location is uncertain, but the dryness and scent of the air filtering in hints at a desert destination. 

Mount Ridnitsohka Gate

The Elven gate is located mountain near Ridnitsokha, a volcano located hundreds of miles into the Northlands, and the glacier is "Ymir's Tongue", the source of the Latshennan River. The area is far from civilization, quite desolate and cold. Somewhere in that wasteland are the Elven ruins. The trip is a long one - one hundred miles across the tundra to the river, then a hundred miles upriver to the mouth of the glacier, then an additional hundred miles up the glacier. Miles from the river, there is a large hole in the ice about a half-mile wide, surrounded by walls of solid ice about a hundred feet high. Ice rubble piles and melts at the bottom of the walls, but within the oval enclosure it is ice-free and quite temperate. Visible within is a lush, green forest, with several artificial structures within. There are a few tunnels leading out of the ice wall that may allow easier access. The glacier near the mountain is territory of an Abominable Yeti. Natural steam vents, water drainage, and the activity of intelligent agency have created a few tunnels from the edge of the glacier to the center. The lower glacier is home to a group of Yeti that hunt the mountainside near the valley, though they rarely enter the valley. 

The Elven ruins are largely collapsed from the effects of time, though the gates themselves are still intact. Everything is overgrown with vines, like a garden grown amok. Foundations of smoky crystal, graceful arches, pillars with worn relief art, all can be found in great quantity. Within crystal sarcophagi, elven bodies can be seen entombed inside solid gemstones. There is evidence of intruders coming through the gates - mostly bones and bits of armor and weapons scattered about. Some of great age, some more recent, and some unidentifiable. Nothing newer than decades old can be found. Like many Elven ruins, this site was a small settlement, a manor of sorts too small to be destroyed in the cataclysm, and too isolated from the outside world to be interfered with. The main "building" is simply a gracefully covered hexagonal pillar with doorways on each face. Most of the doorways are simply to rooms that are actually located in null-space. Most of the rooms are quite mundane for an extradimensional space, though the fabric of reality is getting a bit weak in some of them. Each room except the gate room has a series of doors that connect it to the other rooms. All of the rooms are overgrown with vines, and covered with leaves and detritus, showing signs of neglect. All of the stairways to the gate room arrive through the same gate, while exiting through that stairwell will take a person only to the room they desire... if more than one person is within sight of another, the stairway simply leads to the central pillar. This is a round room, with several portals - each one a mithril archway with small steps leading up to it. 

• • Gate 1: This gate leads to Gate 2 in Deoron, though it is unreliable and sometimes takes the traveler... elsewhere. 

  • Gate 2: This leads to a single portal "gazebo gate" located deep in the mountains at the center of the Mayhar Peninsula, not far from a hobgoblin city. It is concealed within ancient Montoc ruins, covered over by thick layers of jungle vines and seemingly unknown to the hobgoblins. 

  • Gate 3: A malfunctioning gate will dump the traveler into the Ethereal Plane, though unless the character is a planar veteran, it will be hard to tell. It is possible to get lost here. The gate will appear as an identical gateway in the mist behind the traveler. For unknown reasons, use of this gate attracts the attention of various dangerous denizens of the Ethereal Plane and worse. 

  • Gate 4: This leads to a single portal "gazebo gate" located in Taohuan territory. The locals have constructed a temple around the gate, and appear to worship an elf of some sort, as they have placed a large wooden statue of a male elf in a seated meditative stance in front of the gate. They are surprised by individuals who appear from the gate, but not by the idea that it would happen, and appear to be warily curious. 

  • Gate 5: A strange complex, similar to the Deoron Gate in construction but located on the moon Quarten. The sky is visible through a crystalline dome, but the surface of Quarten is essentially a hellish landscape of magma and fire. 

  • Gate 6: This leads to a single portal "gazebo gate" located near Uthman lands, in the "Plains of Soot and Ash". The ruins appear to be similar to Deoron, but are badly damaged. Only this one gate remains functional.