Godpath

The entrance to a Godpath portal in Sagacia, a city in the
New Rozsan Empire, Waking Materia.

"Godpath" is the general term for permanent, erected portals between planes. Since their rediscovery, they have provided a supremely useful alternative to the highly dangerous practice of Voidwalking, eliminating the need to travel to planar margins, to navigate the Void by star chart and to endure the debilitating, reality-cancelling effects of Voidspace. Instead, one seems to travel through a mysterious and barren dimension all to itself, devoid of flora or fauna but host to some odd phenomena.

All Godpaths within the GECR are property of the Daybreak Empire, and passage through them is strictly regulated and taxed by Empyreal forces. Though they know how to operate the Godpaths, is questionable whether Daybreak understands the arcane methods behind their creation as no new ones have since been erected. Though discussion of it is discouraged in Empyreal company, it is widely believed there are many hidden or yet-undiscovered Godpaths. The means to operate them independently of the Empire is highly sought-after by their enemies, mainly the Rebel Gods.

Properties

The dimension contained within the Godpaths is largely empty, bereft of endemic plant or animal species. The sky is a sand-coloured morass (see Banner). There is no weather, the air dry and warm. The ground is flat and reflective, giving the feeling one is walking along open air. The only major feature lies on the horizon: a dim halo of light that indicates the path's terminus.

The distance one must travel through a Godpath has no known relationship to the distance covered in the Familiar Universe: broad planar distances can sometimes be covered in only a few hours, while portals between neighbouring planes can sometimes take days.

Time Echoes

But the most notable property is how time behaves in the Godpath dimension: as time goes on, "time echoes" are created of the travelers therein, both future and past, that fade in and out of existence. Mostly these echoes are distant things from the viewer, barely visible on the horizon, but sometimes they manifest near to each other. As all echoes are fully conscious manifestations of the travelers at different stages of the journey, they can converse with each other if they so desire, allowing travelers to "meet themselves" in the truest sense of the word. Veteran travelers tend to realize quickly that there is little to be said to oneself, however, and most report that the novelty wears off.

A Godpath portal opens on the plane of Nira-Nonn.

History

The history of the Godpath portals is opaque. They are at least 9,000 years of age, dating at minimum to the height of the great Meta-Virsalis Empire, a mighty interplanar force based in Eridún that is thought to have rivaled or even exceeded Daybreak in scope. Whether Meta-Virsalis was responsible for the portals' creation or whether they, too, were mere borrowers of an even more ancient magic is debated.

Dormant for millennia and with their original purposes largely forgotten, the Godpath portals and their environs tend to be richly layered in religious and scholarly culture, host to generations upon generations of those seeking meaning from these astounding edifices. Settlements adjacent to the portals tend to be dizzying quilts of diverse architecture. With the rediscovery of the Godpaths' underlying magic by Daybreak, a new layer -- this one of commerce -- has since formed, with storefronts and Empyreal barracks often dotted haphazardly among ancient temples, kirks and tabernacles.