Well-Known Member
The Gears Of
- Intent: A submission for the Wondrous Ruins of the Past contest, Prompt 2: "The remnants of an ancient transportation network drift in the far Unknown Regions."
- Image Credit:
- Gear Image: Google Search, Tineye, exact source undetermined.
- Time Portal by Lucas/Leutche, DeviantArt, ArtStation
- Rutger van de Steeg, Art Station
- Canon: N/a
- Permissions: N/a
- Links: World Between Worlds
- Planet Name: "The Gears Of"/The-Gears-Of
- Demonym: Gearwanders
- Region: Unknown Regions
- System Name: "The Gears Of"/The-Gears-Of
- System Features: Massive Semi-Corporeal Gears rotate slowly against each other, powering arcane breaches of reality at their various contact points. Some gears are not wholly there, and the entire set seems to be rotating across an unseen axis, phasing some of its gears out of existence and propagating new ones.
- Location: Empty Hex sharing a border with Durace and Quethold
- Major Imports: N/a
- Major Exports: Technology not yet invented, Technology lost and unrecoverable to time, Technology that should not exist in this reality.
- Unexploited Resources: Technology not yet invented, Technology lost and unrecoverable to time, Technology that should not exist in this reality.
- Gravity: Variable, typically Zero-G but near contact points the gravity wells from different worlds leak out
- Climate: Primarily vacuum, though some mixed cold atmospheres hang near contact points
- Primary Terrain: Artificial
- Atmosphere: Type IV Primarily
- Capital City: N/a
- Planetary Features: Massive glowing artificial gears that come into contact and produce rifts to different eras on certain planets in the galaxy
- Major Locations:
- Denon Rift: The present day.
- Time Length: Unknown, one day, it may close
- Terminus Rift: Just after the Second Battle of Endor, Nagai Survivors battle the New Republic.
- Time Length: 1 Day
- Csilla Rift: Hours before the Annihilation
- Time Length: Hours
- Nar Shaddaa Rift: Hours before Yuuzhan Vong orbital bombardment and Vongforming begins
- Time Length: 1 Day
- Antecedent Rift: A massive party is happening across the planet, during the time period when the Red Ravens were in control
- Time Length: 1 Week
- Corellia Rift: A day before the first Netherworld Crisis, billions will be raptured into Chaos, and half of Corellia will suddenly share space with an extra-galactic world transported from the Yuuzhan Vong galaxy, causing massive devastation never before seen on Corellia.
- Time Length: 2 Days
- Lorrd Rift: Height of Kanz Disorders, when the Legendary Slave Pits of Lorrd were being constructed and millions of Lorrdian slaves were perishing every day. In a week, a Jedi will come with a military contingent to Liberate the world in a heated battle.
- Time Length: 2 Weeks
- Coruscant Rift: The future
- Time Length: Hours
- Lianna Rift: The Clone Wars Battle of Lianna
- Time Length: 1 Month
- Lothal Rift: During Thrawn's orbital bombardment of Lothal's Capital City
- Time Length: 1 Day
- Ord Mantell Rift: Pius Dea Crusades era, before Savrips were forced to near extinction, a bounty on Savrips has just been issued.
- Time Length: 1 Year
- Korriban Rift: During the arrival of the first Jee'dai Exiles
- Time Length: 3 Years
- Lehan Rift: During the battle of Lehon, where the Kwa seek to destroy the uplifted Rakatan's Infinity Gate
- Time Length: 3 Weeks
- Dathomir Rift: The final retreat of the Kwa civilization, defeated by the Rakatan Infinite Empire
- Time Length: 1 Month
- Gree Rift: During the border disputes with the Kwa Holdings and the Gree Empire
- Time Length: 1 Year
- Denon Rift: The present day.
- Force Nexus (Optional):
Intent: Something to be felt by all characters that is otherwordly and strange to any alignment
Nexus Name: N/a - Nexus Alignment: Other. The future is always in motion and the dark side clouds all, but here the pathways of fate intertwine and fixate on strange times of impending calamity. As the battle for the light and the dark across the stars in both space and time, neither the Dark nor the Light claim supremacy here. The force flows strangely at this nexus, alien to those who approach it.
- Size: Planetary
- Strength: Strong (A strong influence on the area and the people on it. Powerful enough to be renewed in the event of a great cataclysm, and unlikely to be altered.)
- Accessibility: N/a, Planetary
- Effects: Those who walk across The-Gears-Of seem to lose their sense of causality, unsure of what order of events actually take place. Those with strong will tend to construct their own sense of what order of events took place, sometimes to disastrous effects, as some events may not have taken place yet... The effect seems to be most powerful nearest to the contact points of the Gears, where Wheelspokes to Elsewhere exist.
Along The-Gears-Of, there are contact points that cause the flow of reality to coalesce into geometric vortices. These contact points have come to be called "The Wheelspokes Elsewhere", as all of them lead to strange eras across the cosmos. Some of them have been open long enough to be cataloged, though many remain undiscovered, and all of them seem ephemeral and temporary.
- Lucidity: Crossing the event horizon of these Wheelspokes Elsewhere has been likened to waking up from a dream you can't quite remember having. Fragmented memories slowly coalesce into their proper order after time has passed.
- Hostility: The-Gears-Of and its Wheelspokes Elsewhere are lonely and devoid of native residents. However, once the Wheelspokes Elsewhere is crossed, the inhabitants on the other side are universally about to experience a cataclysmic event.
- IC Rules: The order of events arriving at a Wheelspoke is jumbled, and it only becomes clear several minutes or even hours after crossing one.
On worlds affected by The-Gears-Of, there are peculiar gaps that pose strange images of worlds beyond. Crossing them, however, leads never to where it is expected but to The-Gears-Of themselves. The weary traveler that enters a strange idyllic landscape in the back alleys of Denon may find himself inexplicably riding the grinding cogs of the Gears, without a sense of how long he's been there, or if he can even trust his own memory.
- Lucidity: Falling through a Gaps-Of has been likened to falling asleep and waking up disorientated a day later, after only being unconscious for an hour.
- Hostility: There are no residents of the Gaps-Of, though it is likely to make most who fall through them especially agitated and confused, which may bring hostility
- IC Rules: Gaps-Of exist on the worlds listed in the locations and appear to lead to somewhere/somewhen else, but actually lead to The-Gears-Of. Once falling through a Gaps-Of, a traveler should find a Wheelspoke Elsewhere to find a place and time to explore... or find a new residence in once its Gap closes...
- Native Species: N/a
- Immigrated Species: N/a
- Population: Uninhabited
- Demographics: Incredibly sparse visitors of all varieties, and many different eras of time.
- Primary Languages: N/a
- Culture: A cohesive culture in the traditional sense of the world is essentially absent from The-Gears-Of, but there is a small and eccentric society of entrepreneurial smugglers that have commodified the transit through the Wheelspokes Elsewhere. Forbidden lost artifacts, arcane technology, the next centuries' top rifle, an invisible market of temporal trade takes place in secret Shadowports surrounding The-Gears-Of. Or at least, they seem to pop up whenever it comes into existence and disappear along with it once it's gone.
- Government: N/a
- Affiliation: Unknown Forerunners (Presumed Extinct or Abandoned)
- Wealth: Wealthy. You do not get to The-Gears-Of without wealth. You do not leave The-Gears-Of without wealth unless you perish.
- Stability: Low. There are no laws here, there is no security or safety here, you bring what you need to survive and excavate, and hope no one is better equipped or more ruthless than you are.
- Freedom & Oppression: All is permitted on The-Gears-Of, might is right and so is currency/barter.
- Military: N/a
- Technology: Above and beyond reasonable understanding and expectation of galactic standards.
The history of The-Gears-Of is, by its core nature, entirely non-linear. It isn't even certain if it even belongs in this universe, timeline, or reality. Scant few scholars have ever had the pleasure of studying The-Gears-Of in any significant detail, and the few that have seem to have strange and fuzzy recollections of their limited ventures. Rumors persist that the machine isn't even whole, but the bearest shadow of some larger, unseen, unknowable engine, hence the name "The Gears Of..." with an intentional ellipsis of what the Gears belong to.
What is left unknown to the galaxy, is that The-Gears-Of was once part of an ancient civilization which never discovered the traditional methods of faster-than-light transit. Hyperspace and other superluminal methods of travel never came across them, as they found something infinitely superior. They sent capsules to distant places, with a device that opened a portal back to their point of reference when it arrived. This meant any given capsule that was destined to arrive in its location, was instantly accessible to this civilization.
However, unknown dangers awaited this civilization. Strange breaches to other realities, paradoxical monstrosities, invasive alternate timelines, all came upon the original designers and left the massive, sprawling, untameable network of their civilization to become all that was left of their legacy. An unfathomable multi-dimensional engine, whose shadows cast into nearby realities poked holes into its timelines.
This construct is one such shadow, merely the gears of...
