The Gates

Perhaps the most unique and strange feature of Tairos are the gates. Huge circular stone portals that stand as tall as a giant and loom over anyone with courage enough to step near them. No one knows where they came from or what the many strange runes mean that line their diameter. Some say the gods placed them here and that each portal was a means for the divine to visit their earthly worshippers. Yet no record of that exists in any holy text. Some say they were built by a civilization that rose and fell long before the elves first gathered. Yet no evidence of a previous epoch of enlightenment can be found. Others speculate that the gates came from alien beings that dwell beneath the waters of the endless blue or in the black depths of space but this too has no basis in fact either.
The only things that are known for certain are that the gates predate even the Serpent Kingdom and that Autumn Queen used them to nearly destroy Tairos.
Most of the gates were buried by the dwarves and the elves during the war with the Queen and in its aftermath. As civilizations faded and died after the Queen’s Rebuke so too did the drive to bury the gates. Today, seven known gates still remain standing and all of them are in remote or dangerous regions far from civilization.
The reason they were buried is in part to do with the great danger they pose, as the Autumn Queen demonstrated. Though it’s more than just what she used them for. Ever since the Queen’s Rebuke stranger and stranger stories have been told about them. That they activate briefly and on their own. That people have entered them never to return. Some say they can hear whispers coming through the quiet stone portals even now. Some hear the Queen even though she’s long dead. Some say they can hear the gods who have otherwise been silent. Others still have said they hear prophecies from the stars and from the depths of the ocean. The one law that Ghal Pelor, Melanthris, and Ghal Ankhar all have in common is this: the gates are not for us. Leave them alone.

Inventor(s)

Unknown, believed to be a race of entities called The Architects

Discovery

Elves were the first race to encounter the inactive gates

Total known gates: 9
Total known to function: 1 (In Cinderstone. Can only access Hell)
Last known location of destroyed gates: Melanthris, The Queen's Scar, The Drown Yards, Ruins of the Dread Forge and Mount Eternal