Living Gate

The Living Gate is a now-destroyed portal that served as a barrier between the multiverse and the Far Realm in the age before the mythical Dawn War. It's shattering resulted in the birth of the shardmind race.

Purpose / Function

Before it's shattering, the Living Gate was the only way for creatures of the multiverse to access the Far Realm and prevented the denizens of the Far Realm from intruding into the Outer and Inner Planes.

History

Created by unknown means before even the time of mythology, the Living Gate had the ability to serve as a portal to any plane in the multiverse and even planes beyond.
According to legend, a group of gods in the days leading up to the Dawn War visited or discovered the Living Gate, peering inside and viewing the Far Realm beyond, witnessing terrible secrets that forever changed them. The gods promised one another to leave the Gate alone and never return.
But one lied. During the Dawn War, one god returned to the Living Gate, killed its guardian, and flung the portal wide, releasing the corrupting power of the Far Realm into the multiverse and allowing the aberrations that live there to enter into reality. Later during that same war, a few gods returned and, unable to close the portal, instead shattered the Living Gate. Doing so prevented the leakage of the Far Realm but also allowed entrance into and out of the Far Realm from anywhere in the multiverse instead of it being relugated to only the Living Gate.
Following the Gate's destruction, its shards were flung across all planes and crystal spheres. These shards, imbued with the power of the Gate, were both anathema to abberations and possessed the ability to weaken the borders between planes. Over centuries, some shards eventually found one another and were coalesced into the shardmind people, fragments of pure thought given substance with the desire to rebuild the Living Gate and once and for all seal away the Far Realm. To do so meant collecting each and every scattered shard, including their own.
Though originally united in purpose, shardminds over time developed differing beliefs on how best to protect the multiverse from the intrusions of the Far Realm. The Thought Builders pursue shards of the Living Gate to assemble into a new Gate, collecting pieces and safely storing them for the time when they can all be gathered again. God Shards are individuals that believe themselves to be the inheritors of the Living Gate, seeking to empower themself with the pieces they find to form new bulwarks against the Far Realm. Finally, Shard Slayers believe that the Living Gate will reform naturally only when every shardmind is slain, so that their life essence may return to the site of the original Living Gate and form it anew.

RUINED STRUCTURE
During the Dawn War

Type

Portal

Parent Location

Astral Sea