Hjolman Gatekeeper Lessons

Hjolman spends roughly a year in the company of fellow “students”, Talmarkin (a hobbit from a region called the Cradle of the world Isenes, you’re not sure from whence he comes), Buddi (a Spoon gnome from an era before the Wrath had dragged Carlita across the ocean or Katrina had ever been heard of) and Alice (a tight lipped Antarian who refuses to speak of herself or when she’s from).

You each spend time together learning from Gatekeeper Storok (and undead roken on Isenes) in a frozen campsite and old excavation site where a bunch of hobbits called Farwanders live, a dragon-in-hobbit-form named Opal, a mustachio’d kobold, an even surlier dwarf that worships the dwarven death goddess named Dolgrim and an elven swords-wizard alchemist named Alfondir. Y’all spend time learning from the Arch-Hagen Asthon in his suite of rooms beneath the First House of Manix – forbidden to explore further on pain of erasure from the timeline entirely. You spend time at one of the Rose Towers during their prime, filled with hundreds of busy wizards supported by a thousand other people, learning from the (not-like-them) ArchWizard Awdeny de Ciris Nightraven, Dean of the Rose Wizards and lastly from a rather tall rofka with fur like blood and eyes like a wolf, Dorlorn Stormcaller in Antarian before it fell to the Jesova Plague. Lastly, you learn most of the modern state of things from an ever bickering couple, a half-elven wizard named Morgeniese and a hoven witch named Beruniche who live upon the Singing Isle (Manix).

Raan was sundered into seven parts:

• Five fragment worlds, each a part of the whole of the Machine devised by the Roken architects, their Gol custodians, and the Far’i builders and their Maintainers.
• Andoz
• Elezgard
• Kyri
• Elderhan
• Syrsa
• Reivhar
• And the seventh, hidden realm of Uruna, the source of power to the Great Machine comprised of the new worlds of Raan and prison to the First City of Radiance.
• There is also Adrianna, the green moon of Raan, which simultaneously coexists in the separate space and reality of the fragment worlds – it acts as Anchor to the worlds of Raan in Creation, allowing each of their systems to synchronize with one another.
• The Machines of the fragment worlds were designed to work harmoniously together, but the Arch-Hagen of Andoz sought to betray and sabotage their brethren on the other worlds. This resulted in some of the fragment world machines being broken or altered, one was even severed from its other parts entirely – dooming that world, as none of the machines can operate entirely on their own.
• The Isenes Bridge on Raan was engineered to be fixed to the realm of Andoz, where it would function as a conduit and prison for the essence of the fallen Sigil (whome had been allies to the Arch-Hagen before they mutually betrayed one another, ending the war) that would be smuggled out of the Niaplex Construct by conscripted agents of faerie
  • Of course, the plan went awry, when said agents betrayed the Arch-Hagen, conspired with infernal forces and created the Hiklos, which now serve as both boon and bane to the Machine’s operations.
• Each of the fragment worlds’ functions, controlled by complex machinations, part physical, primordial, spiritual, planar and theoretical that are simply referred to as The Machine.
• Each world has a Heart, each Heart an immortal Guardian fused within a roken construct and compelled to defend it using all the powers available to the Machine itself to do so.
• Each world has a broken fragment of the stone tablet that SerRonin used to craft the first world of Raan; the Dh'nomah Moris. Fashioned into a large stone table, this is the control interface and mainframe for the Machine of each world fragment.
• The Machine was engineered by the last of the roken, children of the second-born of Radiance and natives to the doomed world of Isenes. Before the Rooks’ Destruction of the world, some had escaped to Raan. They were promised to be spared by the Arch-Hagen if they worked with them to create their new paradise from the death of Raan.
  • From stone and metal, the roken crafted servitors that would act as builders and custodians to the Machine of the worlds of Raan.
  • The roken were promised a new home upon the world of Andoz, but with their work completed and the creation of the Gol, they were no longer necessary. The Arch-Hagen sought to eradicate them once everything was in place, but something went wrong, and the Arch-Hagen seemed to have vanished.
  • As the early Hiklos rose to power over the world of Andoz, they suspected the roken had a hand in the demise of the Arch-Hagen, which made the roken a threat to their dominance and hunted them down. But not understanding their function as the Arch-Hagen had, the Hiklos likewise sought the destruction of their Gol servants. In order to save their creations, the last of the roken called out to their ally, Kare, the Primordial of Earth and begged them to safeguard the Gol, whom they had given life to – their children and legacy. Kare answered and granted seventeen of the Gol divinity, recording their names and minds within the Pillars of Jhor, where they would become eternal and vast. And so, the gods of the dwarves were born, and their will felt throughout Creation. The gods created the dwarves, he dwarves of Manix were formed from the metal and stone bodies of the Gol, and the gods as they were known in many other worlds, would shape and create other dwarves all across Creation.
    • The dwarves born and descended of the Gol, unlike the dwarves of other worlds, would retain a touch of the essence of that the roken Gatekeepers possessed – not enough to act as a Gatekeeper, but enough to feel a connection to the world at times.
    • In Hjolman’s case, this trace was ignited by his contact with the katrinium empowered Master Rune and then awoken by his passage through the Scar.[
• The World that both enveloped and was enveloped by the Machine was engineered by the Far’I, mostly forgotten children of the Second Born of Radiance, whom had crafted the prison realm of Barrier and the earliest realms of Kadartha, Kallis and Malsaan.
  • The Far’i crafted the Maintainers, also known as Keepers – mechanical and arcane spider-like constructs that scurry about within the hidden places of the world and tend to the maintenance of the Machine functions necessary to support the world itself.
    • The fate of the Far’I is unknown. Most scholars learned in these matters, if they know of them at all, assume them long extinct. But when you were connected to the Machine while you were within the Scar, you sensed them. They still live somewhere within the worlds of Raan.
    • The Maintainers continue to scurry within the guts of Andoz and its sibling worlds – you sensed them as well – going about with their programming, though you have encountered some during your travels in the depths, that have lost their way, gone mad or consider any intrusion an attack on the system they were designed to maintain.
• The Bridge and the Roken Pylons
  • The Bridge, four massive spires that touch the sky, capable of transporting a massive area between Andoz and the ancient world of Isenes, had been used to transport a First Born artifact from Isenes to Raan prior to the sundering of the world. The Bridge was then broken in the Sundering. The artifact, a construct called a Vault, is used to imprison and draw power from the chaotic energies of the Sigil essence that flows in and out of the Vault.
    • Only a Gatekeeper, with three assistants may activate a Bridge.
  • The Pylons are all but lost or destroyed. There are a few functioning Pylons within the depths, two in the Underdark, three in the fallen world of the time of the Twenty Kingdoms, and one within the Nulldark. There is one located on the surface, on the continent of Gannir, within the Kingdom of Dor and another in a valley in the Summer Kingdoms.
    • A Gatekeeper can use a Pylon or Machine Interface Panels to open a passage to travel between them (Pylons can open gates for multiple people to travel, but Panels only allow for the Gatekeeper themselves to travel).
• Travel via these methods can be risky given the varying conditions of these constructs, and often result in one-way journeys as the strain of use for the first time in many millennia caused them to breakdown.

Gatekeeper

• The Gatekeepers were select Roken that had undergone psionic and spiritual surgery to fuse Primordial essences into their own, allowing them to become tuned into and capable of interacting with the foundations of Creation.
  • It is also the “science” that ultimately resulted in the Sigil Virus on Isenes that killed millions, created the Sigil (and later the Hiklos) and caused the madness of the Rooks that resulted in the destruction of their world.
• Only Gatekeepers can control and manipulate the primordial technologies that the roken had engineered from the realms of Abenlore that predate Creation and manifest ideas their father, BalGez had smuggled out of Radiance.
  • Gatekeepers were tasked with the maintenance and stewardship of the First and Last Gates, which defended Abochia (Creation) from the primordial realm beyond the First Gate and the unknown realms beyond the Last Gate.
  • They were the masters of the Bridges that united the earliest Places in Creation and the Gatekeeper Pylons that allowed swift travel within the earliest realms of Kallis, Kadartha, Barrier, the Vortice, Isenes, Raan, Trowe and Malsaan.
  • The Gatekeepers were the guardians of the hidden passages in Creation to the First City of Radiance, defenders of the First Born that dwelled there. Later, they would become their jailors. And in the end, their executioners.
• The primordial mutation of the Gatekeepers was mirrored to a lesser degree in their Gol creations so that they could fulfill their functions as custodians of the Machine.
• The functions of the Machine could also be controlled to varying levels through Interface Panels located throughout the Machine as well as the “Table”, which essentially has master control over every aspect of the Machine of its associated world fragment.

Shissar Spires

• The shissar, also children of one of the Second born, had been allies to the roken. When the roken were killed, they took what they had learned, adapted and constructed arcane versions of the Spires, such as what the Spire Wardens of today use. In place of the Gatekeepers, the shissar devised spells that would allow wizards to activate the spires. While the spires operate largely upon arcane lines, using the mysts or weave of Andoz to open gateways, they still rely upon roken design foundations – which would allow a Gatekeeper to hijack the spires in a similar manner to using a Pylon to travel.

The Machine

• The Machine of Manix is broken and continues to breakdown as time passes. It isn’t capable of drawing on each of its sister worlds, relies on an engineered and unreliably unpredictable (thanks to Titania & Lucifer’s interference) cycle of Sigil chaos energy for some functions, and only has half of its support constructs fulfilling their role (the Maintainers, but not the Gol). The Machine is capable of using its conduits to the elemental Primordial planes to manage shortages, but the steep decline has been in the past three centuries, caused by the destruction of the Dh'nomah Moris. Without the function of the “Table”, the Machine has been unable to execute contingencies to course correct events and malfunctions or redirect power and resources to and from the worlds systems. And so it has continued to slowly break down over the past 300 years.

Orin and Mother

• The roken had created a web, a vast network within the roots of Creation, in the fabric of the firmament between the Rift and the Creation upheld by the Primordials formed into pillars upon the back of their fallen king.
• All of the roken technology is rooted into this network. At its’ heart was a mind they had given birth to as a whole from their own sum of intellect as a species. This entity was called Orin. Orin was the operator and caretaker of the every increasingly complicated network and all its functions.
• But when Creation was invaded by denizens from the future; the taevwar - descendants of the roken that had been further mutated by alien divinities and corrupted by hubris – these creatures came from a future realm called Antarian and sought control over Creation, not only in their time, but from the beginning.
• Their attack on Isenes came in the form of an attack on Orin. They introduced a virus into the network, which attacked Orin and would eventually absorb it. The attack was called the Mother Program. And now, The Mother is the meta-mind that dwells within the ancient roken network. It’s task was to disable and sabotage network functions being used by the denizens of early Creation and to expose the city of Radiance to the Antarian invaders. Between the Sigil Virus and the failure of the roken network followed soon after by the Hagen-Sigil War, Creation as it had been, was lost.
  • An odd note, the system that operated the network in Antarian in their “present” time, is Orin prior to the creation of the Mother Program. In their “bubble” outside space-time, the Orin was never affected by their attack on it in the past. Although eventually Orin “died” during the Jesova Plague that would eventually lead to the evacuation and abandonment of Antarian.
• The roken network still exists and due to the Antarian virus, the timeline within the networks past and future seem to share a commonality with one another. Mother remains within the network, but what its function or goals are now is unknown.