Gates

The jump gates are the megastructures that enable travel between the sectors of the Milky Way galaxy.

Economy
The cost to traverse a gate is in the range of 37-225, but this depends on the player's relation with the race controlling the gate; enemies will still open the gate but will charge 200% with a maximum of 300. Friends instead ask for 50% of the price with a minimum of 25. Whenever the player chooses to open a gate to a sector, that he visited before, the price is 10. Gates leaving the first sector are cheaper (25-50) and are not influenced by the diplomatic standing in the same extreme way. The exact price for a gate passage seems to be random, but gates between sectors with normal radiation are more expensive than others (>100).

Gates have a merchant, the option to refuel, very basic repairs and a general shop on either side, except for the gate leading into the last sector; it only has facilities on the non-Earth side. Gates of the Vine Consensus lack a shop. The shop offers 5 equipment and medical items. Allies can even buy up to 8 different items.

Gates only pay 75% for all items and resources, but in return only demand 75% of their normal prices for their medicine and equipment. Only Vine Consensus gates form an exception to this rule. They follow their own price roulette based on seasons.

Technology
The gates operate on static wormholes; nongravitating, purely geometric and traversable. After its creation one part has been moved through the galaxy to another nearby point to offer a permanent highway. However, while the wormholes themselves are nongravitating, the general facility surrounding and cultivating them is not. The gates have one of the highest gravities per size in the entire game and can in theory support a stable orbit. One of their main construction materials is the highly volatile Tylenium, an exotic matter completely unknown to Earth, but most likely needed to expand the wormholes during jumps.

Backstory
The gates are one of the greater mysteries in the Milky Way galaxy and no living race knows much about them aside of their current managers. Currently they are build and maintained by the Entrope, which use them to 'harvest' the galaxy and continue the wish of their last masters. While several aliens claim the gates as their border and control the traffic, the fact that even hostile factions can't prevent the player and other aliens from traversing the gates is related to their actual possession by the Entrope and their demand of absolute neutrality. They still shake the player for a capped amount of money though, most likely a bar set by the Entrope themselves. Vine Consensus gates have a different optical appearance, due to the dock being covered in branches and roots that change with their respective season.

The gates are older than all current galactic civilizations and were entrusted to the Entrope by the first intra-galactic civilization, the Maylaa, before their ascension to the Nextplane, the Harmonius Dream. The secrets behind their construction and the folding of space is lost in time and the Entrope do not wish to share that knowledge with anyone. All that is know is Tylenium, a dangerous material that the brave Reeve mine for the Entrope and the current gate managers to maintain and repair the gates in space. It takes a lot of energy to create a gate and this process could not be reproduced by any living civilization today outside of the Reeve, who had minor success. The distance of their 'Wormhole Device' however is very limited and the technology inprecise. Instead the Reeve make use of crash-landed gates as a form of transportation between planets and avoid space-travel altogether. These gates were repurposed by the Entrope themselves to help the Reeve develope their civilization as demanded by their legacy directive. It is also very likely that all planets chosen for the Reeve contain Tylenium so that they may be useful. It is hardly reasonable why the Entrope would send them to rather dangerous and deadly planets otherwise.

Only one race actually attempted to rebuild the gates in all their glory. The experiments of the K'schar had minor success and they build seventy four replicas, but those had a huge need for energy. Due to their lack of ethics in research, they destroyed entire habitable systems to gain the needed energy or due to the gates malfunctions. This led to the major factions of the galaxy banishing them to pockets of the controlled sector to conduct their research in entirely uninhabited regions for all eternity in their own little empire. It didn't mend their ways.

The gates existence prompted many races to be uplifted or to adopt technology of the precursors. This led to a slow decline of the galactic community, as many civilizations lost the drive of exploration and research and slowly drifted into a galactic age of decadence. The only race that stands against this trend are the K'schar. The K'schar define their own crippled species through a new twisted scientific ambition after being previously bred by a precursor race as cattle. Their lack of ethics most likely stems from their cynic look on their own existence.

To prevent this declines continuation, the Entrope have begun to shut down entire sectors of the gate network to allow promising primitive species to evolve naturally. Their hope is to revitalize the galactic civilization and stop its decline. Humanity is one of the chosen and the Entrope do not think that humanity is ready to join the galactic community. Maybe they are right...

Sol has a gate beyond the orbit of Pluto on the opposite side of the sun relativ to Earth's rotational position. The reason it was invisible up to the point of its reactivation might be connected to the Entrope's ability of matter comprimation. The gate was most likely compressed. The jump gate leading to Earth requires the keystone to supply the power for the travel back home and to operate the gate facility. However, the gate network was build without the Ceruleans as their energy source initially. Consequently, it also is an option for the player to hack the lock the Entrope put on the Earth gate to keep humanity isolated and drive self-evolution with a Raxact device. That way the keystone can be taken back to Earth with the risk of potentially incurring the wrath of the Cerulean Dawn and the player will not be able to chose if the gate will be destroyed. Without the keystone though the gate can not be operated directly, forcing others to hack the gate as well.

Like the spheres, all gates and their network are currently powered by Cerulean energy, which is bound in the keystones. They serve as a prison for the living energy of the universe which is to be dissolved and harvested, over and over. As an undying half-ascended existence, the Ceruleans can be exploited once in each of their life cycles until they recover. The Cerulean Dawn describes this imprisonement and extraction as terrible agony and even the now mostly instinct driven dark energy of the Withered Dawn fears this imprisonement enough to leave the player alone for good, if they repair one of the containment units of the Tchansu with Siobhan, the 'Totem of Famine'. The Ceruleans were captured and repurposed as an unending energy source for the gates by the Maylaa, after the ancient Cueddhaest invaded the Milky Way in their Cerulean Crusade and attacked the old empire. As punishment for the long and bloody war and to prevent the crusade from returning, they were imprisoned, hopefully forever. But then humanity deactivated one of their prisons, the sphere.

Even though the Maylaa were the first to trap higher beings, a similar fate later befell some of their own, as several of their kin were captured and trapped in the 'Ticking Devices' as wisps during their interactions with the galaxy. Those might have been experiments or prototypes of the later Charasharn. Otherwise only three races are without a doubt known to possess the ability to build or harness these devices; the extinct Tchansu, the Entrope and most recently, the K'schar.