The Black Gate is Closed

[Brian]

After a twenty minute long ride in a relatively comfortable carriage, Bjorn and Phil find themselves at the Gate complex.  Which is to say, the structure of walls that surround the Gates.  The walls are about eight meters high, and stone, and it's otherwise a square looking structure, with the Gate presumably in the middle.  Some tesla coils and other antennae looking devices poke up over the ramparts, arcing crackling electrical energy back and forth between various of them in no particular pattern.

The carriage stops about twenty meters away, and the road to the Gate complex's gates (and recursion is a theme, here) is attended by four stiffly attentive guards, and another pair sitting in a tiny guard-booth inset into the wall aside the Gate's gate.  They all salute crisply at the sight of the royal carriage.

[Bjorn]

"So, anyway, don't ask me," Bjorn informs Phil casually.  "Go do yer shit."

[Dracos]

"What, don't want to see?" Philip shrugged, heading out of the carriage and towards the guards.

"Good day, we have been permitted by the king to examine the gates," He politely informed the guards, heading to pass the guard booth towards the gate proper.

[Bjorn]

Bjorn tags along behind Philip, because hey, if you're going to take freaky spirit-hallucinating drugs, you might as well take a trip.

[Brian]

The guards salute stiffly at the sight of the shiny pocket-watches, and the gate opens up, revealing a short, dark passageway before another gate.  It, too opens, just a little bit behind the outer gates.  Within, a hunchbacked figure with a cane limps forward in an awkward hustle, panting, "Apologies, apologies, was not informed of guests." 

Once Phil and Bjorn are through the inner gate, they find themselves surrounded by mysterious crackling equipment, and within that, another walled off section -- this one has an archway instead of a proper 'gate', and through it a courtyard is visible.  Within the courtyard, faced by two giant, shiny, lens-covered ... well, they're probably weapons of some sort.  Super-laser cannons of some sort, directed squarely at the Gate.

And Gate it is; a giant archway, just like the one depicted on the absent Quincy's robes, or Phil's spare holy-book.  The thing is probably about two and a half meters high, and a meter and a half to two wide.  It's arched stone, and currently has no visible opening -- more like a doorway just standing in the middle of this cleared courtyard than anything else.  One side is white, the other black.

Once eyes adjust to the light, the hunchbacked figure is a middle-aged man, his spine bent nearly in half, his right shoulder significantly higher than the other.  His face looks like it belongs on a statesman, not a disfigured creature such as himself, though he looks to have missed shaving the last few days.  "I am Sark, custodian of the gate facility.  The Gate technicians are in the labs beyond; you wish to speak to them?"

On the opposite side of the court-yard is a small house-like structure, windows facing the Gate itself (though, on edge; the weapons face the actual openings).

[Bjorn]

"Indeed," Bjorn replies to Sark.

[Brian]

"This way, then, Masters," he says, ducking his head and limping on a long path that goes around the imposing Gate, and the idle cannons directed at them.  In passing, the Gates are not open, and look rather like solid stone.  There's undoubtedly a trick to it, but for the moment it appears inert.

Once the cottage/barracks is reached, Sark raps on the door.  "It should be just a moment," he assures his guests.  "Is there anything you will require?"

[Dracos]

"Not at the moment, thank you, Sark," Dracos replied politely, looking over the gates  from the distance and seeing if there were any symbols or things of meaning on them to him, anything that his book had referenced.

[Brian]

Other than color (from one side, the gates are white, from the other, black), they are wholly unremarkable.  Oddly, from up close, there's no definitive line where the gate changes colors, more like it seems to change as a whole depending on which angle it's viewed from.  One face of the gate is directed spinwise, and the other is antispinwise.

While Phil is searching for deeper meaning in the rock, the cottage door opens, and a trio of young men in jumpsuits and smocks spill out.  The apparent leader, a slightly older, sandy-haired man who's just tall and thin enough to look terribly awkward (in fact, he nearly trips over his own feet in his haste to rush to Phil's side), calls out, "Er, sorry for the delay, good sirs; can I be of assistance for you?"

[Dracos]

"Yes, you are the technicians of the gates?  Are you also their researchers?" He looked over the trio, considering them as he turned his attention away from the gates proper.

[Brian]

"That's right," the tall one says, nodding quickly.  "Well, apprentice Gate Technicians, anyway.  I'm Maximilian, as it happens.  The masters themselves have been called to attend a session of the Council.  Their testimony was required for something."  He looks apologetic.  "Is there anything I, er, we can help you with?"

[Dracos]

"A pity, I was hoping to talk with them.  I'd like to see their research on the gates, Maximilian," Dracos asked, saving the fancy comments for later.

[Brian]

Spotting Phil's pocket watch, Maximilian swallows uneasily.  "I....  We could answer your questions, maybe?  They....  They shouldn't be away long."

[Dracos]

"Well then, I'd like to read over their research and hear about the current experiments that are being performed here," He figured that the apprentices could do that at least.  He had tons of questions, but there was no need to be overeager about asking them.

[Brian]

Bjorn follows Phil as the underlings gladly show him into the dormitory.  The cottage has two sections, one which is a hall/barracks for the junior engineers, and then private room/offices for the presumed seniors.  The walls of every room are walled with bookshelves, crammed with hand-bound hand-written books.

Generally, Phil finds an awfully small amount has been written in any given book, and most of what is written covers a lot of the same information.  But essentially, the Gates are activated through touching a series of glyphs around each face of the door to open them.  It takes 25 different symbols to complete a sequence, and every sequence must contain that same number of glpyhs to open.  Thinking back, Phil doesn't remember seeing any of the glyphs on the generally unadorned looking stone -- so they must be very fine, or very small.  The books list about a thousand of them, too.  Some few are known reasonably well, as far as determining what _kinds_ of effects they will have on people who go through them.

It also appears that the Anabaran equivalent of a lab rat is an alley-cat.  Furthermore, many glyphs that will change people have no obvious effect on cats.  References are made to files in a college in town somewhere, and likely any more dangerous information would be kept there.  Ultimately, Phil determines that opening a Gate requires some complex password to make it through unscathed, and no one's figured out what it is, yet.

The dark and light sides are the Regression and Progression Gates, respectively, and there are two known 'final' glpyhs.  One only opens within Anabara, and one opens to (from this facility) Windhurst ... but some price must be paid to go through, either way.

By the time Phil has finished this study, reinforced by the nervous mumbling of the junior Gate technicians, an hour or so has passed, and the distant sounds from across the courtyard suggest the return of the Masters.