In Gate, there is a vast amount of knowledge eternalized in monoliths, written in what has come to be understood as the ancestral language. However, there is greater complexity in terms of the types of things that can be found as a source of knowledge, and in some rarer cases, they even enable the training of some kind of power. In this text, I will focus on the game system and the story background. Thus, I will first describe basic concepts about powers and essence, and then I will explain in detail the five main groups of powers available in Gate. The style of text here will be substantially different from the previous ones because, at this moment, I will focus on explaining more than on showing.
General Concepts:
The Ancestral Language: When the first colonists arrived in Gate, they found colossal structures with monoliths inside. Most of them have only some kind of information related to the place where they are or related to a remote era before time came to exist in that multiverse, about civilizations and people who lived in a past and separated timeline that no longer exists. Knowing that there are things written in monoliths on the surface of Gate about those timelines that are gone, what is called the ancestral language is not actually something completely universal since the ancestral languages of prior multiverses are entirely different.
The ancestral language (in M8/9) is understood as the language used in a substantial part of the material written on the surface of Gate, particularly those that describe a location. All of these are standardized and consistently associated with the current multiverse. In particular, there is the special case of multiverses 8 and 9, which have a temporal continuity (the cataclysm event, or big bang that makes M9 come into existence); for some reason, this event did not eliminate all of M8. Therefore, the standard ancestral language of M8 and M9, as well as what may be found in U8, will be practically the same.
In "The Unforgettables," most things are in this standard ancestral language, referring to M 8/9 (multiverses 8 and 9). An example of this is the Vabala, which can be translated by nano translators, even though it is a challenging task to accomplish. There is also a Nailia dialect that has very similar phonetics to the ancestral language but forces syllabic division and uses many cultural neologisms. The Nailia language writing is entirely different from the ancient language writing, besides their phonemes being the same. In Nailia, different characters form each syllable in a rigid standard, so there will always be a consonant-vowel pair, always in that order.
However, older literary materials, such as the poetry about Cernutos found in the first house, are related to what happened in a past multiverse (M7). Although it has similar characters with the same sound, the meaning is not precisely the same, and nanotranslators are not able to help much in these cases. Material from past multiverses is a source of research among many knights. Because of that, there are various interpretations of its meaning, as is the case with Seneca's interpretation of the meaning of the poetry that Amanda showed to the group. In the crisis scenario of New Metropolis, with the banishment of the knights and the fall of the houses of the Academy, much of the knowledge was lost to the public. Amanda knew about Seneca's interpretation and the original poetry, but the exact interpretation and complete discussion about it were no longer available.
Therefore, any learning technique that is explained in the ancestral language, if nothing else is said, implicitly refers to the current multiverse. To facilitate access to this for rational beings arriving in Gate, in all the houses of the Academy, there is a library of monoliths, and in every library entrance, there is an index monolith that organizes the material. Moreover, the same index monolith provides means for anyone who touches this monolith to learn the ancestral language in various ways. In the first house of the academy, the index monolith is far superior to all others. It has an intelligent shard that literally materializes phantom teachers to teach students about the ancestral language of Gate, making the learning process far more effective. Outside the academy, the material found scattered throughout Gate has a much more erratic learning method, and in the Underworld, it is even worse; things are much more cryptic and dangerous than on the surface.
In terms of the game system, every character who wishes to train powers will respect a maximum limit that varies from multiples of 10 magnitudes, which will be shown later. According to the rules of the game system, people from Earth without any contact with Gate would be able to train their physical, mental, and social capabilities normally as they usually do, depending a little on talent but mainly on time and effort in training. Without powers, training appears in the game system as attributes ranging from -10 to -1 (normal human level), with 0 being the limit between natural and supernatural, and -1 being the peak of that attribute without using superpowers. A simple example: a normal human would have strength between -5 (moves their own weight +32 kg / 70 lbs, assuming Earth's gravity) and -4 (own weight +64 kg / 141 lbs). If this same human wishes to increase their strength, they must proceed accordingly, training their physique in a gym or other sports activity. The usual maximum for a human would be -2, and the absolute maximum value without powers would reach -1 (being able to move their weight +500 kg / 1102 lbs, it would be the strongest human who ever lived, bordering on the capabilities of a demigod).
However, in Gate, things are pretty different. The environment impregnates every rational being with wild power. Anyone revived in Gate will return to life in terrible condition (0 HP, 0 Con, and other attributes as in previous life, i.e., between -10 and -1), will be unconscious (Unc. for d8+1 days, can be awakened emergently before with healing spells to restore HP to 1), but in the next few days after reaching Gate, it will raise all physical, mental, and social attributes to zero (they all rise by +1 every 8 hours until they all reach zero magnitude) even before training anything. Therefore, a human revived in Gate for the first time, even without training, would already have a superhero level strength of 0 (would be able to move their own weight +1 ton in Earth's gravity), and the same thing happens to all other species and individuals unless its attributes were already greater than 0.
Assuming the case of an older man revived in Gate, even if he choose to train no super power and keeps only his previous trained skills, he will still be far superior in potential than when they lived on Earth, because they would have improved attributes and will keep all the prior skills he learned all along his life, so in game terms he will keep all the bonuses on the attribute rolls from his trained skills, but those bonuses in attribute rolls does not modify the effects of that given attribute, only the roll is modified (skills count the days spent learning, the gain, however, is sub-linear as follows: 1-9 days: +1 skill, 10-99 days: +2 skill, 100-999 days: +3 skill, and so on, the number of decimal digits of training days will be the bonus applied on the rolls). As for training superpowers, things progress in a radically different way. An attribute actually goes up by +1 for every 1 XP used in the superpower, which practically doubles the potential of that attribute and also facilitates any roll directly. To use an XP, one must train the superpower (XP comes every 1 year of intense learning or 10 years of usual social and cultural activity, and if the person ventures into the Gate, they will receive extra XP by surviving stressful situations that test their capabilities to the limit). Finally, to train any powers, one must have access to an adequate learning source.
In the case of superpowers, the training source is more important than the time spent. Suppose the apprentice already has any one skill related to the same attribute as a superpower (i.e., a human that was an athlete training Super-Dexterity). In that case, the time spent in training it, although the skills do not rise so quickly as a superpower, counts as time spent on the training to the superpower effectively. Hence, the training and memories of people are indeed essential. Suppose any apprentice tries to train in a physical superpower that they have never trained in before as a skill, as a person who has never done any sports or physical activity their entire life on Earth. In that case, there may be some limitations of XP use (in table RPG campaigns, things like a maximum of 1 or 2 XPs in the same power per adventure).
The maximum limit of a superpower magnitude depends on the type of power and the source. In general, the technology level of the civilization in which the characters are inserted defines these maximum limits. In the case of "The Unforgettables," Liora and Silas have access to extensive training material that would be available in the Old Metropolis, something they managed to preserve from the public Oioi database, but they would have some difficulty in getting this type of thing in the New Metropolis network. In any case, the public technology level of Metropolis would be 9 (TL9), and the Oioi base is superior, having a TL of 13. Liora and the group, having developed their own physical training technique, gained a circumstantial bonus of +2 in the TL, raising it to 15 for physical training. As all of them have skills at +4 and share them with each other with Frank's magic power, the final TL for physical super attributes reaches 19. That is, in "The Unforgettables," everyone could train their physical attributes without problems up to a maximum of 190 magnitudes.
In the case of the colonists who first arrived in Gate, things would be quite different. Assuming that they come from civilizations that have just developed space travel, the TL of the civilization of origin would be 1 or 2. Assuming that they are humans with skills between 0 and 4 (0 to 9999 days of skill learning), when arriving at any structural monolith with a source of training for super strength power, the training limit of this power would vary between 10 and 50 magnitudes of super strength (assuming TL 1, depending on the skill trained by each one, a human who never trained anything related to strength would have the limit of 10 magnitudes, a human who trained strength intensively for 1000+ days during their life, could train up to a magnitude of 50). However, if these same humans learned super strength in the first house of the academy using the monolith with a phantom teacher, this would give a superior training bonus of +6 in the TL, and the maximum magnitudes would go to the 70-110 range. It is worth remembering that in New Metropolis there is control of populations by information silos. In Silas's remote village in the far East, the TL is maintained as 0 (nomadic slaves), and training depends exclusively on the time that each person can dedicate to learning. The Ebex still get a +1 TL bonus but only for super resistance; therefore, in Silas's village, assuming that there is no time to develop skills properly because they need to strive to survive, the maximum limits of superpowers for attributes hardly exceed 40 magnitudes.
Finally, in terms of attribute magnitudes, each magnitude effectively doubles the effect of the power in question. When the difference between attributes or magnitudes of other similar powers is greater than 10, the one with the highest value gains supremacy over the other, which means that it does not need to make rolls because it would gain an automatic marginal success, or if the one with supremacy choose to make rolls, it would never have critical failures. For example, a normal human with Str -4 (move own body + 32 kg / 70 lbs) will play tug-of-war with a cockroach with Str -17 (bite strength of about 5 grams / 0-18 oz); in this scenario, the human will never lose (automatic success). If they are stressed because of something, they can roll for the test (for example, if they are too afraid of cockroaches), but they will never lose the tug-of-war game. If they fail the roll, they will probably freeze or run away in panic or something, but they will not lose because of physical strength failure against the cockroach.
Essence Reality: Super Attribute and Technology Powers
Description: These are powers whose origin is training and knowledge. In the case of technology, all power comes from the scientific method, that is, things that can be replicated, tested, learned, and taught. Reality essence powers imply that there is some structured knowledge about the effects, even if always incomplete, its origin is well defined and understood. In Gate, science and technology are at such advanced levels that, in many instances, it seems like something supernatural, something magical, but this is not what happens with these reality powers.
There are, however, two borderline cases. The first case is in areas of science that try to understand the other powers and other essences of Gate and use mixed essences even without an adequate understanding. An example of this is the experimental power of super luck, whose effect is somewhat mysterious and not very palpable since Chaos is involved, but the training techniques are well defined. Other borderline cases are Cosmotechnology, or technology that calls into question the cosmological explanations that the basic science is based on, and is inferred to be the same all over the multiverses. In general terms, the Cosmotech devices are quite rare and complex to activate. An example of this is the 4 mysterious devices in the Schrogae ship that even Silas couldn't figure out what they are for.
Requirements: To train the powers of reality essence, a minimum of time and resources are necessary. If not specified differently, the maximum training is 10 times the technology level (TL) in which the apprentices are inserted, with the TL calculation being the following:
- Base TL of the civilization (which varies from 0 to ~30 if one assumes that the theory of proton decay in the universe is true and sufficient to eliminate the possibility of rational life in the universe, in which case a civilization that does not destroy itself during all this time would reach the limit close to 30, but it could be ~120 if one considers black hole decay as a hypothesis for the end point for rational life, or much higher as ~10^120 considering that the limit is the Poincaré and de Sitter cycles), with 20th-century humans having a TL between 0 and 1, humans in the era of common space exploration in science fiction literature would reach a TL between 1 and 2, peak of the Bo or Dzaobudine civilization TL between 4 and 5, Old Metropolis in Gate between 1 and 9 (some quality sources could reah up to 15), New Metropolis at 9, Shadow Shards at the peak of M8/9 reached 18, Shadow Universe of M7 reached 25).
- TL bonus for apprentices whose essence is Reality, added to the base TL of the civilization:
- +1 TL per personal essence point.
- +1 TL per level of personal specialty (for one related superpower only).
- +1-3 circumstantial TL (also limited to one superpower, for example, Ebex have +1 in super resistance, "The Unforgettables" group has +2 for physical attributes for having developed their own martial art).
- +1-6 TL quality of the material (limited to the power or powers for each source, e.g., Vabala would have +3 for mental attributes, House 1 of the academy would have +6 overall).
- +X TL per magnitude of special superior technology device for training (the dojo structure that Silas is developing already has plans to at least offer +3 TL Dex training when Liora gets close to her personal limit of 190).
General Effects: Reality essence powers generally directly affect the base attributes of the characters so that they turn a normal person into a superhero with immensely expanded capabilities. In addition, powers related to superior technology allow the creation of science fiction devices that border on the supernatural. One of the great advantages of these powers is that access is universal; the person just needs to train to learn and develop, and they are also discreet. There is no special way to detect the use of technology or super attribute powers without observing the effects or with specific sensors for each case. The disadvantages are that, in terms of bulk power, they tend to be slower, although reliable. There are also limits to what can be done with technology; the time consumed for everything is crucial, and finally, every technological device is vulnerable to certain types of powers that act only against structural things, and in some instances, the possibility of being hacked.
Among the origins of power in Gate, Reality powers bridge the Chaos of nature with the order of intellect (Shadow). Reality powers are more distant from magic (Balance) and the mysterious art of the knights (Darkness). Despite this, the Reality essence permeates all other essences without absolute opposites like Shadow (order) vs. Chaos (disorder) or Darkness (idealistic ethics) vs. Shadow (pragmatism).
Essence Balance: Magic Powers
Description: Magic powers are those that can be trained, practiced, and learned, but depend entirely on the rational being that employs them, making it impossible to replicate or test with a direct method. This defines the great difficulty in the understanding of magic powers, the same way other established knowledge could be understood, because the way that magic works varies from person to person. A person would spend infinite time understanding how magic works for them only, and this unfortunate thing does not happen with scientific knowledge. Science is as open and potentially infinite as magic, but experiments can always trace the path of science development since the phenomenon that explains science is natural and the same in the multiverse, shared among all rational beings that could follow the very same experimental path, reach the same results, and use the same knowledge to develop technology. With magic, the phenomenon that explains everything depends on, and fundamentally is, the magician himself, who acts as a rational being who does the magic. That is why the scientific method will not have guaranteed success in establishing knowledge about magic, except in particular cases where it can make reliable quasi-experiments based on observations and probability.
Magic is learned in Gate and separated into schools. The greener the magician, the smaller their signature in their spells, because they are learning how to use them. With each group of spells learned within the same school (5+ spells for each cycle), the magician may enter a new cycle that increasingly personalizes their effects, until at the apex, the effects of the magic reflect their will and, above all, their personality. Magic is therefore like the signature of the magician, as a rational being, in the universe that surrounds them, in the same way that the ancestral language is not a language with only communicational intentions, but also a way of preserving rational trail in the universe, with both magic and language being somewhat similar tools for this endeavour.
Magic can be learned by coming into contact with any kind of Gate monolith, but in a wild and uncontrolled way (for example, one needs nothing beyond being in Gate to train the Super Mana power, and after that, the apprentice could use mana wildly without any school of magic). The magic didactic monoliths in Gate allow the magician to use this magical energy for much more powerful and directed effects (as it happened with the Vabala, the same thing could be done using magic didactic monoliths in the houses of the academy). Magicians can also teach apprentices in a much better way than the trial-and-error process of studying only with monoliths (for example, when Ramirez is teaching magic to groups of revived humans). After magicians learn magic, they become a source of magic in any location they are in (really any location, even inside dreams).
Requirements: To train in magic, it is recommended but not really necessary to have the base potential, that is, to start producing mana with one's own body (this means Super Mana power at 1 magnitude or more). In addition, if the magician wants to learn the techniques of the Gate magic schools, there is special training for this (Spellcasting power that allows the magician to learn magic schools as if they were skills, and also increases the maximum magnitude of their spells when casting them, and also the schools of magic are skills that gives bonus to Int or Wis rolls wich maybe handy for some magics).
In addition to powers, the magician needs to spend time learning each of the 25 schools as mental skills, with 12 of them usually linked to wisdom, and 13 of them linked to intelligence (the magician can optionally link some other attribute used in a given school of magic with the training skill, but for this they must develop a personalized form of training). They can keep only one single school open when the skill in that school is between magnitude 1 and 3 (they must train for 100 days to reach magnitude 3 in that school). After the magician reaches magnitude 3 in the first school skill, they can open another different school as a new skill, and to open the third school, they must have reached magnitude 3 in the first two schools, in other words, there should be only one open magic school skill at levels 1 or 2.
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For a magician to be able to train a fourth school of magic onwards, they must first close one of the previous three open schools, which means that they must have magnitude 5 in one of them (which takes 10000+ days). The magician can never have more than 3 schools of magic open at the same time. Suppose they do so for some reason, as magic depends on the magician's peace of mind to work. In that case, it is expected that they will be consolidated in the wrong way into the essence and become flawed, and it means that the magician would need to do all their schools all over again to correct the flaws.
A magician can learn all 25 schools of magic if they want and have time for it. As soon as the magician closes a school (mag 5), they start to be considered a specialist in it. To teach an apprentice, a magician must have at least 4 magnitudes in a given school. If eventually the magician raises their skill in a given school to 6 or more, they will begin to develop their advanced spells (they will need learning sources for this, or it may take much longer to develop an advanced spell alone). The advanced spells form a new cycle with 5 spells (6 to 10 magnitude in the skills). If the magician insists on learning the same thing and continues to focus on the same school for magnitudes 11 or more, they will end up developing superior spells, and some schools require quite rare sources for this type of training to have any effect. Beyond this, there are 2 other spell cycles (at 16+ and 21+ magnitude in skills) that do not receive a name because there is no knowledge of any culture in any multiverse that has developed such a thing.
An archmage is a social title. In Old Metropolis, it was attributed to people who closed (5+ magnitude in skills) at least 12 or 13 schools of the major groups (intelligence or wisdom). In New Metropolis, this number dropped to 3 schools. However, unlike the Old Metropolis, it is supposed that the magician has 6+ in at least one of those schools, reflecting the pragmatism of the new society, which values magicians who specialize in performing a particular task rather than those who have broader knowledge. The opposite of this is the title of 4th house archmage, or mage-knight, which requires all 25 schools to be at least open to receive this title. The magicians' titles do not serve effectively for anything other than massaging their egos and for bragging rights.
Furthermore, magic schools expand the magician's intellectual capacity and, therefore, do not count toward the limit of skills that they can specialize in throughout their lives normally (which is generally 3 for all skills).
In terms of maximum magnitudes of powers, the powers directly associated with magic or Balance (Super Attributes used in any of the schools, Super MP, and Spellcasting) have no limit if the magician's essence is also Balance, which implies potentially infinite magnitudes for those powers, although the limitations of study reflected in the skills are severe and consume a lot of time. For a magician who has Balance essence and decides to learn other powers, they must follow the same usual limits, but without being able to count on their Essence as a bonus (so, Frank and Petra would have 40 less maximum magnitudes for physical attributes than Liora, because their essence became Balance after learning magic from the Vabala and gives 0 bonus on the TL and maximum magnitude for those superpowers).
General Effects: Basic spells have almost identical effects between all magicians, with only some tiny modifier that personalizes them. Advanced spells onwards have more particular effects related to the magician. Each school of magic has 5 spells per cycle (5 basic, 5 advanced, 5 superior, etc), and the magician has to learn all 5 before changing cycles, but can learn them in the order they see fit inside the same cycle.
Spells often have effects somehow related to the meanings of the syllables referring to them in the ancestral language, but this is not always true. In the other direction, an experienced magician can spend an immense amount of time trying to find some meaning of something written in the ancestral language coming from the Underworld and without any previous translation, the chances of the interpretation working are minimal, because like the effect of spells, the meaning in the ancestral language depends on the author of the communication. Since the author is a rational being from a previous multiverse (at best), the chances of not preserving enough connections to capture the meaning are huge.
Finally, in terms of spells, each magnitude in the school of magic skill gives the magician access to a new spell from that school, and to use it, the magician may or may not use mana to enhance the power of the effect, with the maximum effect being proportional to the magnitude of the Spellcasting power. A magician can cast their spells at minimum magnitude (zero), which generally does not consume any mana. In these cases, the effects are proportional only to the magician's attributes, and each of the spells will have specific rules.
Essence Shadow: Psionic Powers
Description: These are powers derived from remnants of other sources (usually magic) that have consolidated into a completely new form of learning, more than just a point located somewhere between science and magic. Shadow powers are defined more as a detour than as a bridge. While the psionic apprentice values order and internal balance above all, their relationship with the external world and other sources of power is radically opposed. Shadow challenges chaos(Chaos powers) as order, while, at the same time, flowing to challenge ethics(Darkness powers) as pragmatism. For psionics, the world is divided and reduced into dualisms, an eternal conflict, but only in the interface of the individual with the world around them. The synthesis between the poles and the dialectical steps beyond dualism are exclusively internal. The cosmos for the psionic is inside their mind, and they do not usually seek any harmony with the external world, unless it is through control and domination, making the other part of themselves before questioning if this is right or wrong.
Although shadow powers and their practitioners raise reckless ethical questions due to the way these powers are configured, the complex that defines a psionic individual does not necessarily make them an antagonist against everything and everyone, nor make them painted as evil. However, due to the conflicting nature of their powers, the apprentice must take special care not to let their power take over their identity, nor compromise their ability to communicate with the world around them that does not share their internal cosmology.
All shadow powers are absolutely discreet, sometimes even more discreet than technology powers. Absolute invisibility is one of the trump cards of the psionicists, and perfect illusion is another card. Reality for the psionic is only what they perceive as truth, and their powers cause this to be reflected in the real world, imposing their cosmological vision into reality, but in a way that avoids associating the effect with its original actor, because after all, the universe is inside the psionic and therefore is their servant, and not the other way around, so there is no action from the psionicist to the world to be perceived to someone else, but the world acts shaping into the psionicist will as it should rightly be. Every psionic is the omnipotent God of their own world, on a path to perfection, until proven otherwise by something, if that something is powerful enough for that challenge.
Shadow powers are a fabulous way to obtain powers of almost unlimited potential without attracting anyone's attention. This can fuel revolutions, whether virtuous or tyrannical. It is solely and exclusively up to the psionicists to decide what they will do with their powers and, hence, their responsibility. The ability to do things without being noticed, including committing crimes without punishment, makes such powers a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are incredibly efficient at reaching a goal; on the other hand, it works like the ring of Gyges' dilemma, breaking down the moral identity door, because without communication with others, there is no feedback, nor consequences. The maturity necessary to use this kind of power without getting lost in the valley of shadows is immense, almost unbearable for finite rational beings, yet hopefully plausible.
Requirements: To learn psionic powers, the apprentice necessarily needs to train in the Super Psionics power to isolate their identity from everything else and initiate their internal training. After that, the apprentice just needs to spend time (and XP eventually) in internal meditation to train their powers, which may need complete isolation from any disturbance or other power sources. The form of learning is done only internally or via psynet anonymously. If they have a teacher at hand, they could preserve their previous essence; if not, and are on their own, their essence becomes Shadow, and they will trail the lone path, but for that, the place they start the meditation needs to have a Shadow essence trace of any kind, could be a place where any psionicist was performed before, or a place where psionicists had often entered the psynet.
Psionic powers do not exactly have requirements for the apprentice. Any apprentice can learn the basic powers of super attributes without any problems, as if having Reality essence. If the apprentice has only psionic powers and no other power besides super attributes, their essence may become Shadow only; if that happens, they will gain access to certain advanced powers. Furthermore, Shadow permeates all the other super attribute powers, making them essentially psionic over time, which means that any psionic, regardless of its path and with any quantity of Shadow essence, can, for example, train their super physique to extraordinary levels and without any limit of maximum magnitude, and only with internal simulations inside their mind. No one will know that they have them, nor their magnitude, making this asymmetry of information a fascinating strategic advantage in many situations.
A curious passage in "The Unforgettables" about psionics: Silas had mentioned to Frank, when they were discussing what the psionics would be when Frank was visiting Rocatrista the last time, that in Silas' village he had heard of a person with psionic powers, but it was a childhood memory and Silas thought it was something linked to physical powers that seemed to do nothing. Potentially, it would be a psionic master of the Art of Soma using his powers discreetly so it "seems to do nothing", and who probably learned powers far beyond what was allowed for slaves. The same power that can be used to control populations by the Alphas can also be used to promote a revolution and break any bound.
General Effects: Psionic powers are divided into 7 basic arts that can be trained directly like any other powers (1 XP raises the magnitude by 1). Each of these powers will have at least one active and one passive facet that confers a specific effect that eventually increases in power with direct training. These effects are identical for all apprentices, varying only in potency. The first of these arts (Art of Genesis) allows the apprentice to learn all the others on their own, as well as giving some control over the psionic energy that is used to activate the other powers. The other arts (Soma, Mind, Space-Time, Voice, Vision, Power) have specific effects, and they have little variations in their foundation but are very potent and malleable during their use.
Grand Psionic Masters generally have two self-excluding paths to follow. Those who choose the internal and lone path will have exclusive Shadow essence that confers a specialty in one of the seven arts with enormous potential. If, however, they choose the external path, they can become generalists and eventually get in touch with the eighth house of the Academy to learn an eighth art (Art of Darkness) with peculiar powers that are complementary to the knight's skills. In neither case does the choice of one of these paths define the personality or ethics of the psionic master in an absolute way. In both cases, the challenges are placed at a new level. Following the internal path, the master may sink into an abyss within themselves, losing the perception of other realities. By following the external path, the master may learn an art that is radically opposed to all the others but will keep all of them as part of their essence, nurturing a permanent internal conflict. In both cases, the powers developed by the psionic masters are entirely personalized and exclusive to each person, as opposed to the basic powers that are always the same for everyone.
Essence Chaos: Chaotic Powers
Description: Chaos powers are extremely rare, generally learned unintentionally after exposure to chaotic effects that are usually a mixture of other powers or something that is complete and pure chaos. There is no safe or guaranteed way to learn this type of power, and although it is plausible that there are masters and apprentices, it is not the kind of thing that rational beings usually do if they intend to preserve their sanity.
Some powers, like specific spells that are difficult to control or experimental powers like super luck, may have some interference from chaos, but true chaos powers and the chaotic essence are much more extreme things. The person exposed to chaos powers who decides to embrace this path instead of running from it sacrifices control in exchange for power, including control of what they are learning in many cases. The only thing that is not sacrificed is the willpower of the peculiar apprentice.
Chaos powers are a gambit where catastrophe is not a matter of luck but of time, extremely dangerous but liberating. The learning of such powers, fortunately, is somewhat safer than their effective use, mainly because it is not necessary to do absolutely anything to develop them after they are learned for the first time (just put XP and hope to increase the power potency exponentially). And since the will of the apprentice is preserved, it becomes of immense importance because they can decide to use these powers rarely, only when everything else fails, as a trump card that may or may not work.
Chaos powers are obviously not predictable, with a single and curious exception. If something or someone tries to control or contain chaos against the will of its user, then what happens is that the effect of chaos will be multiplied in power and will produce some overpowered effect regardless of who used it or what it was used for. It will always be terrible for whoever is the unfortunate one who tries to control it. It is always terrible, always... Even if the one trying to control chaos was the same person who had called the chaos effect in the first place. And if the same effect is again contained or controlled, it will be multiplied in potency again and again. It will fall like a meteor on whoever tries to control it in an even worse way than before, and so it grows exponentially to infinity if chain-contained, until it explodes all the barriers. Chaos can never be contained.
Requirements: The only requirement to learn chaos powers is to be unlucky (or lucky) enough to find a powerful enough source of chaotic effect, plus the courage (or lack of common sense) to try to learn something from the bizarre event instead of trying to stay away from problems. There is also no requirement to increase the potency of a chaos power; what can happen is that chaos powers can eventually modify other powers of the apprentice and even their essence.
General Effects: Chaos powers are not structured in the usual way. There is a group of powers that can be used in moments of stress without much prior idea of what they can do, and another group of powers allows the apprentice "to learn" random things, whether they are chaotic or not.
One crucial thing for apprentices of these powers to survive their use, in particular the powers to be used in moments of stress, is to learn the power of super willpower as fast as possible. This can eventually offer the chance to the chaos user to redirect some effects if there is enough time and ability to perceive what is happening when using them.
In terms of brute force, chaos powers have potency similar to basic spells and simple psionic powers, except in cases of extreme luck or bad luck. However, the malleability of effect and the particular ability of not being able to be controlled can make such powers situationally fabulous. Evidently, the user will always have to be very careful with what they are doing.
Essence Darkness: Knight Skills
Description: Knight skills are powers whose origins cannot be known by a finite rational being. Their training is shared by a master, generally to a single apprentice at a time, even if that master is a fragment of someone from a past multiverse who communicates through a monolith. That is the way in which the first knights learned their art in the houses of the Academy.
The mystery and the human condition, in this case, the condition of all rational beings and not only humans, and the incompleteness of capturing infinity, will always be recurrent themes in the apprenticeship of the knight's art. The concept of darkness is present as the incompleteness of the understanding of the world, and the concept of knight refers to the pursuit of virtue, or in ethics as a way of discussing, studying, and seeking what is good and virtuous, as well as the intellectual process of learning and all its developments. However, the knight's art is not only theoretical and somewhat philosophical but also has effects superior to any other powers in potency, produced directly from the very essence of the knights who use them.
Although this type of knowledge is linked to ethics as a path of understanding, it does not imply that people who learn such skills are ethical or moral. It only implies that they potentially have awareness of what is happening, and with that, they would indeed have the moral duty to act accordingly. However, in the practice of their actions and intentions, nothing obliges them to do so. The power of the knights will work in the same way if they use it to do evil deliberately.
Knight's skills were banned in New Metropolis for several reasons. First, one thing that happened in Old Metropolis, any knights or apprentices with Darkness essence attract attention at a universal-scale level, even if they do nothing, they can feel each other essence anywhere in the multiverse, and many powerful beings, wich may be much less virtuous than the knights, can feel their presence in the same way. Opposed to what happens with Shadow, the Darkness essence is absolutely perceptible at a level far superior to a clumsy magician and their showy visual effects when using their spells. A single knight apprentice arriving in a city will make all the people in the city, animals, plants, and even the stones know that something weird is approaching and that whatever it may be, the sure thing is that it is disturbing, causing at least a generalized fear of the unknown.
Another reason for the banishment of the knights is that they, supposedly for studying ethics and having a power of legendary proportions, were immediately blamed for not being able to predict or prevent the cataclysm. The fact that after the cataclysm, bestial and dangerous creatures appeared throughout Gate hunting them also ended up convincing the knights themselves to stay away from civilization, at least until they were sure they could minimally protect the others. And finally, the number of knights after the cataclysm is minimal; apparently, whatever caused the cataclysm of M8 had them as a priority target.
Requirements: A knight apprentice needs a master and access to a house of the Academy. There are knights without a house, but this can compromise their training and potential. To learn any knight power, the apprentice must first develop their essence potential with the Super Aura (AP) power. After that, it is suggested, but not necessary, that they learn a Gate Philosophy skill without any associated attribute (this gives no roll bonuses), which would serve to understand better what is happening in Gate and its deeper mysteries, as well as literary open places like the houses of the Academy and other dangerous locations, and eventually find and use Gate artifacts that have this type of knowledge as a requirement. Another interesting thing about this skill is the ability to try to understand the ancestral language in the Underworld of past multiverses. At least it is better than trying to figure it out only by trial and error with knowledge of magic.
Another disadvantage of knight powers that can be seen as a choice requirement is that they are very restricted in type and quantity. Usually, the master teaches only one technique to the apprentice because the master usually has only one as well (with exceptions of the knights of the first house who can teach and learn various techniques, and the 5th house knights with no starting techniques but may seek an artifact early in the apprenticeship). An apprentice cannot depend on learning new skills from other masters since it takes too much time (at least 100.000 days for each technique after the first; on a campaign, the party should spend a Milestone just for this, and it takes time to learn). In addition to this restriction of malleability, the power of the knights consumes a lot of energy from its user, and an energy that is not quickly restored as with magic and psionics, so the use of power is also restricted to the number of times it can be used without a good time resting.
However, despite the intrinsic complexities, the power of the knight's skills has no equal and is far superior to any other. Knights who have Darkness essence become even more striking than other knights because the other powers also become Darkness. The only advantage of this is that all knights can train the powers of Darkness essence to infinity without the need for external sources, after having finished their basic learning. So, knights can eventually have a technique that they learned from their master and that they never dedicated much time refining, but after that, they become generalists in the most diverse sources of power in Gate. Mage-knights, Technologist-knights, and even Psionic-knights and Chaos-knights.
Knights can also specialize according to the eight houses of the Academy, which are numbered according to subjective concepts, with the popular names of the houses being the following: 1st house - learning, 2nd house - healing, 3rd house - divinity, 4th house - magic, 5th house - philosophy, 6th house - combat, 7th house - arts, 8th house - mind. Outside the houses of the Academy, there are orders of knights with a more specific learning path, such as the order of Tempus that studies time, space, and psionics, generally related to the 8th house. Also, the order of the dragon that functioned as armed forces in Old Metropolis is generally linked to the 6th and 7th houses. Or the Order of Phoenix, which is linked to the world of the dead and rebirth, related to the 2nd, 3rd, and eventually 4th houses.
General Effects: The power of the knights is also a kind of signature, which can be passed on to an apprentice, creating lineages of knights with similar powers. A knight can eventually develop a new power, but this involves at least 5 in the Gate Philosophy skill and a reasonably broad exploration of the world to do such a feat (plus the 100.000 day requisite as mentioned before). If the knight is a member of one of the houses of the academy, there may be some ease in specific powers; the knight orders, on the other hand, are only of social effect and mutual interest and have no game system advantages.
The use of powers in the knight's art is always an event of apotheotic proportions, exponentially increasing the knight's already extreme ability to attract attention. The effects of the power are unbelievable, even by Gate's standards. The average potency of such powers is dozens of times superior to magic or psionic powers.