Gate of the Ancestors

Travel Log: Calika - Gate of the Ancestors

In the hills of Calika, you can find one of the many strange structures from Alana's past. The arc, made of a black, cold, and very smooth material, has a diameter of 12 feet, with 5 feet of it still sticking out of the mud. At three points of the visible part, the arc has almost foot-wide sleeves around the outer edge, with a square, flat surface at the front and back. Hundreds of small nozzles arranged in five rows cover the inside of the large ring.
When Geertruud sent the pages describing the gate, Margo informed her colleagues at the Gnome Workshop about the discovery, showing them the detailed drawing of the visible part of the gate. The gnomes brainstormed a few ideas and then built and packed up the equipment they thought was necessary and sailed over to Calika. They named their team GEF: Gnomish Expeditionary Force. Sadly, due to some misunderstanding at Charakur harbour customs, their whole baggage was moved into the customs storehouse and the gnomes were put under arrest.

Design

Each of the six sleeves of the gate can be opened by touching front and back and then push it to the backside. Almost the whole square part will move out and give access to a small compartment that can take a power cell. When all six compartments are filled with loaded power cells, an inch wide green line will start glowing all around the gate. When the gate is receiving, the line will glow blue, if the gate is deactivated or does not have enough power, the line will glow red.

Entries

In its working state, the gate is connected to a huge network of exits everywhere. You can travel to a different location under the following conditions:

• The gate must be active and powered up.
• You need to have a special token for the target location and activate it when entering the gate, or have someone enter the gate with one before you to set the route to the destination.
• The destination gate must be active.

If a token crosses through the gate, its destination is set until a token with a new destination enters.

Plot Hooks

Quest series: It's just a jump to the left...

• Gnomedy of Errors - Get the gnomes and their equipment out. Precursor for the other quests, as only the gnomes know where to find the gate. This can be done by bribery or break-in into the jail and then getting the bot out of the armoury, followed by escaping on camels, mules or goats.
• ...and I'll take the low road - On the way, the gnomes will use all kind of equipment to measure things, compare and examine, but that's just gnomes playing explorers and looking important. In fact, they just follow their compass (but that doesn't look cool). There might be an assassination attempt, but that would only happen because someone mixed up things and followed the wrong group.
• Diggin' it - Sunken into the mud the gate will not be usable, it must get dug out and placed upright. Involves building a winch, pulling ropes and getting dirty in the mud. The bot alone cannot do it, it just sinks into the mud each time, so getting it here was completely useless.
• No Power - The gate contains six corner stones (aka batteries in their slots): three are completely destroyed, three of them need a recharge. To activate the gate, all six stones must be present and fully functional. Replacements for the three broken ones can be found in ancient underground facilities elsewhere in Alana, the three empty ones need to be recharged either in one of those facilities (where more preparations might be required) or via a recharger built by the gnomes that will require silly parts to work, and the impact of lightning (think of the gnomes building a giant apparatus with a long cable up to a hill top so it gets struck by lightning).
• IDK - To be able to use the gate, one needs to find information about how those gates work. There has been a description in the master chamber of another underground facility. But it has been robbed and sold several times, so a chase with detective work will be going on.
• Pay The Ferryman - Find one or more tokens for target destinations. Those have been found by tribe members and are used as jewellery. They will only be given in exchange for jobs done.

Alana

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A world full of wonders.

RUINED STRUCTURE
The Banishment

Founding Date

1600 AB

Type

Portal

Parent Location

Calika

Gnomish Expeditionary Force

Julika

Made by Tillerz with MidJourney (commercial license).

Luitbert

Made by Tillerz with MidJourney (commercial license).

Tinsel

Made by Tillerz with MidJourney (commercial license).

Tonton

Made by Tillerz with MidJourney (commercial license).