The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice – The Modern Gates, Part II

Yeah, somewhere in there…

To continue with the list of what’s going on with Yu-Shans gates in the modern world, here we have gates 13-24.

Personally, I don’t think that anything as significant as a gate to the realm of the Celestial Gods should ever be boring – and an awful lot of the original locations and gates were.

13) In the depths of the Java Trench within the Indian Ocean, this gate, while now buried in near-molten rock, is still surrounded by a circle of first-age pylons memorializing the defeat of The White Ram, guardian of Yu-Shan – or so most who peruse the ancient records believe. Of course, ensuring the death of a seer is more than a bit tricky; The White Ram had transferred a portion of it’s essence into the structure of the very gate it would be ambushed at – ensuring that a new incarnation of itself would eventually arise, transformed and free of The Lidless Eye That Sees, but with it’s old memories and powers. The Exalts who slew it’s body eventually detected the survival of it’s soul – but could find no way to extract it from the gate short of the destruction of Yu-Shan. While the pylons were intended to be an eternal containment, even first age materials begin to bend beneath the pressure of continents and the burning geomancy of the deep earth – as The White Ram foresaw. Soon enough, as a primordial deva measures time, it will be free again.

14) In the disruptions of the reshaping, two contradictory realities were formed and bonded together to create what is now Australia. In one, powerful Fey have been forged into totemic forms, and primordial behemoths of unthinkable power roam, constantly recreating the worlds wyld-infused lands – accepting any imaginable force and incorporating it into creations weave. Here, each morning dawns as the first day, unmaking what came before to transform it into what comes after. Rathess itself – and the Yu-Shan gate – endures here, at the heart of the Dreamtime.

In the other, and far more easily reached, version of reality we have the physical Australia – but there are ways to draw on the powers of the Dreamtime, and even now there are trails here and there which can lead one in and out of mundane reality – and occasional echoes in one world of occurrences in the other.

15) This gate of Adamant and Jade emerges on Neptune – where what was once a river of water now flows with liquid ammonia, and strange creatures descended from reshaped humans and their beasts are defying terrible storms, surging seas, and crushing gravity to spread across a world far, FAR, larger than the earth. While still primitive and tribal – held there in part by a shortage of ways to melt and forge the ice that is their worlds closest approximation to metal ore – the unexplored frontier is now ten thousand miles from the gate at it’s nearest point.

16) Within a series of mighty caverns deep within one of the major bodies of the Asteroid Belt bored gods – and some Lunar Exalts looking for a clubhouse outside of Yu-Shan – have installed a series of low-grade manses to provide atmosphere and local gravity, glittering veins of crystal to support plant growth, and a variety of eccentric creatures. It’s become popular as a place to take a walk in “nature” for the safer paths – and as an obstacle-racecourse for the tougher ones.

17) In Australia, in the depths of the eastern coastal forest, streams tumble down many miles of mighty gorges in cascading waterfalls as they rush towards the coast. Behind one of the dozens of waterfalls along the route of one particular stream lies a shallow cave – from which can be reached both the Yu-Shan gate, several ancient solar tombs, the rock-encased remains of Nexus, and a route into the Dreamtime through what was once an ancient wyld pocket. While the aboriginal people of Australia once occasionally visited here – trading the wonders of the Dreamtime for occasional favors from Heaven – humanity has forgotten the existence of this magical place for many thousands of years.

18) On the island of Sulawesi in Malaysia a Soulsteel gate stands within an ancient series of crypts and tunnels now hidden high in the central mountains – the last remains of Sijan. Here the stygian silence and darkness of ancient crypts weigh oppressively – and few are willing to disturb the place simply to reach an incredibly inconvenient location. Eventually some archeologist or treasure-hunter is going to locate the place – and who knows what they’ll unleash?

19) In tiny Tuvalu (Oceania) the location of the gate marks what was once a major battle of the Balorean Crusade – and most locals can trace their lineage to the fey court that held the area for much of an earlier age. While full fey are rare, the population is reasonably well aware of the true nature of reality – and supports much of the local economy by accommodating gods who wish to spend a little time on a Polynesian-style beachfront sipping an exotic gossamer drink.

20) Now located on the surface of a small asteroid floating in the “L5” region of the Earth – Moon system, this gate was once located within a shadowland. Now, with what is left of the area permanently adrift in the desolation of space, it effectively opens into the underworld – or at least into an isolated chunk of it, reflecting creation as it once was. Unfortunately, what once was includes the Well of Udr. The Celestial Lions usually keep this gate firmly shut and heavily guarded.

21) Oddly enough, despite now being located in the full Wyld, Xu-Lak has changed less than most of the other gates. It’s still Yu-Shans Embassy to the Wyld. Unfortunately, since the Raksha and Unshaped made a second – and nearly successful – attempt to destroy all Creation, Yu-Shan has VERY little to say to the Wyld – making this just another gate that mostly stays shut and very heavily guarded. Equally unfortunately, the gate now opens far enough out to be in pure chaos – making even defining a direction back to Creation virtually impossible.

22) The giant “Petrified” Tree into which this gate is carved has – with it’s relocation to the Kuiper Belt and colonization by some of the Fey – turned out to be less “Petrified” and more “slow silicon metabolism”. Over the past thirty thousand years it’s increased in size considerably and seems to be slowly collecting additional mass from the Kuiper Belt and bonding it together – becoming a truly colossal tree connecting fey iceburg-palaces. The fey, lurking in the darkness between the stars in their icy crystal fairylands have gotten even odder than most fey.

23) This lonely gate opens on a mass of ice in the Oort Cloud, where an assortment of artificer-gods and a few other entities with similar interests have built themselves a small stardock, and are experimenting with a wide variety of more-or-less magical ships and ways of surmounting the lightspeed barrier.

24) Located in Northern Russia, the indestructible ice of this gate occasionally spawns “frost giants” – mighty warrior constructs with a variety of ice powers. While these are, fortunately, less indestructible than the gate that creates them, they can be extremely dangerous.

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