One Million Gates

The One Million Gates refer to extremely powerful abilities wielded by various beings at the same magnitude as the effects wrought by the powers of the Outer Gods. This system of abilities was conceived and created by Un-Ruh, with the assistance of Oquut, in their research into creating more Outer Gods. Those who wield the Gates are known as Gatekeepers.

## Description

A Gate refers to any power defined by a single concept derived from the fusion of the whole or a fraction of a Pool of Possibility into a being. Pools of Possibility refer to a region in the Void from which universes spring from (that may share a few to all of their physical laws). These regions differ greatly in size, with some being limited to spawning a single universe while some can spawn an infinite number of realities. Gates are extremely potent by nature, but are not absolute; any metaphysical defense viable against an Outer God can protect against the effects of a Gate. Gates are narrow in what effects they are able to manifest, unlike Exaltations or Laws, but what they are able to do they can do so on the same scale as Outer Gods and other similar entities. Notable is the fact that Gates are only usable on large scales due to the difficulty of their control; all known Gates can only be feasibly utilised at or above universal scales.

## History

The conception of the One Million Gates occurred several centuries before the Outer God Un-Ruh trapped their rival Oquut. In the leadup to the first Aeon War, Un-Ruh sought means to ascend more beings to become Outer Gods, alongside ways for Transcends to reliably become such beings. While the Outer Gods derived from non-Transcended existed, such entities affiliated with the Weave numbered less than those ascended from Transcends. In order to grant the Isolationists a greater advantage during the growing tensions, Un-Ruh quickly turned to studying the Pools of Possibility scattered around in the Void. During one of these studies, the Outer God Oquut attempted to claim a pool that was under the observation of Un-Ruh, leading to a skirmish between the two. This sparked tensions between both Outer Gods, creating a brief, though bitter rivalry between the two.

While unsuccessful in their endeavour, Un-Ruh found a way to nonetheless grant a being a level of power matching the Outer Gods in a narrow area. While Un-Ruh's research was more thorough, their rival Oquut had claimed a significantly larger number of Pools of Possibility. It was during the First Aeon War that Un-Ruh found an opportunity to lure Oquut into a trap. Spreading a rumour that they had found a way to reliably ascend beings into Outer Gods, Un-Ruh lead Oquut to the Dark Forest, an immense Pool of Possibility created by Un-Ruh themselves. While the beings that acted as the custodians of the pool, The Empyrean and The Material, had been killed in the opening shot by Oquut, the numerous Transcended forces hidden in the realities within were able to ambush the Outer God alongside Un-Ruh to bring them to their knees. While Oquut was held captive, Un-Ruh took the opportunity to make a deal with them; in exchange for their freedom, Oquut would grant access to many of the Pools of Possibility they had claimed. Should they refuse, then they would face a specially made Opal Light designed to rob Oquut of their personality. Effectively held at gunpoint, Oquut relented and granted Un-ruh the pools they desired.

With Oquut's resources now in Un-Ruh's hands, the latter proceeded to create an initial batch of one million participants, each with a minor pool blended and fused into their being. Each utilised a unique effect, and with these, the Gate users were one of the deciding factors that won the war.

The most prominent incident involving a Gate user was during the event that would later become known as Minta's Folly. During the year 20 143 298, the Transcend-Shardbearer chimaera Arinya undertook a brutal reprisal against the Minta, ruling psychic entities of the multiverse once known as the Darklight Sphere. Several millennia earlier, Arinya had uplifted several Bound civilisations in the region, all of them on the verge of Transcending. She had left those civilisations at the order of the Outer God Indix in order to have the Gate of Convergence fused into her. When she returned, however, Minta had found all of the civilisations that she raised had been wiped out, all traces of their existence gone save for the few among their number who had Transcended to the First Stage. These few were enslaved, used as transmutation engines to create the various technologies of the Minta. Shortly after Arinya's departure to her superior, the Minta began their ascent into the dominant life form of the Darklight Sphere.

The Minta began as sapient manifestations of a realm of existence known as the Empyreal Sea. This realm of existence acted as a mirror realm to all of the universes within the Darklight Sphere, where the consciousness of the Bound beings within were reflected in the Sea. Over time, the Minta began to manipulate the beings connected to Sea, in an effort to render their existence independent of that of the beings within the Darklight Sphere and to increase their power in a psionic apotheosis. With the expertise of countless species across the infinite expanse of the Darklight Sphere, the Minta managed to achieve their goal in a mere decade. Now that they no longer needed to depend on other beings within the Sphere to exist, the Minta began to retroactively genocide every intelligent being connected to the Empyreal Sea, alongside erasing any possibility that any being other than them could exist. Those they were not able to completely annihilate were the few billion beings who had reached the first stage of Transcendence in the civilisations that Arinya had uplifted. The Minta then proceeded to enslave these outnumbered and outgunned individuals, repurposing them to create the structures and works of their own civilisation.

When Arinya returned to see the progress of her children, she was confused on arrival to see that they were not present. Upon glancing upon all the timelines of the Darklight Sphere, however, she realised the extent of the devastation within that multiverse. All the Bound species within that multiverse were erased from existence, as Arinya noted the void that took their place in the timelines where she once remembered they had been present. A quick investigation by the Gatekeeper led her to a group of enslaved First Stage Transcends that she recognised to have been those she had uplifted. Upon hearing their account, Arinya proceeded to meet with the leaders of the Minta, in order to find a peaceful resolution to her grievances. Arinya attempted to negotiate with the Minta with various resources and alternatives to their current methods of construction and crafting, but was either rebutted or outright mocked by them. Adding insult to injury, the Minta attempted to enslave Arinya by trying to ambush her after both sides agreed to continue the negotiations at a later date. This being the final straw, Arinya proceeded to use her newly acquired Gate in conjunction with her abilities as a Shardbearer on the entirety of the Darklight Sphere. With the Gate of Convergence, every reality within the Dark Sphere's Pool of Possibility converged into and became subsumed into the reality that Arinya was located in. With every Minta forced into one reality, Arinya wrote a Poem of Ending into her second usage of her Gate, erasing every Minta from existence (and stopping any resurrection methods save for a few working on the now extinct beings) before causing every possibility within the Darklight Sphere to converge on a single truth; that not even the concept of the Minta nor any entity that carried all their characteristics could exist, never mind the actual beings themselves.

Arinya moved all the First Stage Transcends left over to the Weave where they could heal from the mutilation that the Minta had forced on them. Few of the survivors speak of the incident, and even fewer will recount what happened during their time under the Minta.

After the incident, the Darklight Sphere has become a dead zone with only a single universe (and the part of the Empyreal Sea its attached to) still remaining. No entity that lacks defenses against the concept of death can remain in the zone without being erased from existence. To this day, the incident remains a cautionary tale to any being or civilisation within the Weave remnant wishing to engage in wanton genocide. The Darklight Sphere itself remains a taboo location, with only a few outposts stationed within run by a skeleton crew of Shardbearers, Transcends and Elixir Immortals.

## Creation

The creation of a Gate involves the usage of a Pool of Possibility. The entirety of a minor pool or a fraction of a larger one is extracted from the Void and focused by the abilities of an Outer God or a sufficiently powerful Reality Engine into the specific idea of its intended power; the concept and its corresponding effect that it would be defined by. After it has been focused, the Pool is combined with a Void Pattern that is then imprinted onto a being. Void patterns being configurations of Void protoplasm (Void presence that doesn't exist as matter nor energy) made to express certain effects. Often, the implantation of a Gate is accompanied by the imprinting of other Void Patterns that makes usage of the power intuitive and instinctive. The being with the implanted Gate is then known as a Gatekeeper.