Gate

The First Gate above John's house

Gates are two-way portals located across the heroes' planets.

A special set of gates called “The Seven Gates” are located directly above a hero's home between the planet's atmosphere and the surrounding Medium. In order to reach each gate, the client player's house must be built upwards by the server player. The first gate leads to a location on the player's designated planet, the second leading to the player's server's house on their planet, the third further into the server's planet, fourth on to the server's server's house, and so on.

There are other sorts of gates, like the Return Nodes which rather than advancing the player in the game, seem to return them to their starting location or at least to their house.

If a player attempts to go through a gate leading to the planet of a player who has not yet entered, the gate skips that planet and goes to the next. In Davesprite's timeline, the gate which would have normally led from LOHAC to Jade's LOFAF instead led to LOWAS.

Dave looking at one of his gates

It is feasible that one can simply float or be thrown to each gate, but Nannasprite states that in John's case it would not serve his purpose well. In one timeline, John skips straight to the seventh gate using his Rocket Pack, but as it turns out, the seventh gate leads him to meet with his denizen, a battle which someone who hadn't worked their way up to would be sorely underleveled for. This may be why Nannasprite advised John against it in the first place, as skipping ahead would leave him very underleveled and unprepared for the following gates.

Rose manages to build John's house up to the first gate, and John fights his way past numerous Shale Imps and Crude Ogres in order to get there. Afterward, he leaps through the center of the gate in a triumphant pose and is teleported to a different part of the Land of Wind and Shade; his second gate further in LOWAS transports him to Rose's house in the Land of Light and Rain.

Jane is seen jumping into a gate above one of LOPAN's pyramids. Later in the alpha kids' sessions, they begin to use fenestrated walls as a more convenient way to travel between planets.

The gates' colors match the players' associated colors. Also, they are destructible; Rose manages to destroy her first gate at the end of Act 4. She confirms its destruction in the conclusion of her walkthrough in the beginning of the Act 4 Epilogue.

The seven gates are a reference to the seven chakras, also referred to as gates by many. By opening a chakra, one enters a new level of understanding with one's self. The eighth chakra is unity with the universe, or enlightenment, so Skaia would be considered the eighth chakra since it gives infinite creative potential with the universe. Frog temples have seven spirographs on the sides and at the top instead of the Skaia spirograph, have a frog on top. The frog represents the universe, so this would be another allusion to unity with the universe in the eight gate.

The relative distance between two gates.

The gates are animated Epicycloids, shapes that can be drawn with a Spirograph. The Seven Gates, or at least the spirograph image, appear frequently throughout the comic.

• It appears as a 'logo' of sorts for the Sburb game, as well on the package for the server CD and the CDs themselves.
• It appears on John Egbert's calendar as the picture for April. It surrounds the Sburb house icon in this instance.
• It appears as the loading/install screen for the Sburb beta.
• It appears on nearly all of the deployed Alchemization equipment.
• The unprototyped Kernelsprite looks like it.
• It appears on the hatch of WV's Skyship Base and Caliborn's station.
• It appears on the fuel tank and storage compartments of WV's laboratory.
• It appears on the outside of Caliborn's station.
• It surrounds Skaia whenever the Incipisphere is shown.
• It appears as the "spirograph" in the door in the center of WV's lab.
• It appears as defense gates of Skaia that send the meteors of the Reckoning to Earth.
• The different variations of the Gates appear on Jade's flowers, as well as on one of her loading screens.
• It appears as one of Jade's many shirt symbols.
• It appears in the bottom of the 'S' in the Skaianet logo.
  • Young Jade and young Jake are shown to be wearing Skaianet Shirts with variations of this logo.
• It appears on the side of the Skaianet Laboratory before it is unestablished.
• One appears over each of the players' grist caches on the gristTorrent program.
• The White Queen holds a key in the shape of a gate.
• The gates are depicted on the side on the Frog Temple.
• It appears on the top of the White and Black Kings' staffs.

The Trolls' Gates

The trolls' planets and client-server connections.

It remains unknown how many gates sit above each troll's hive in The Medium. In the kids' session, each planet has two gates associated with each player (aside from the one in question) and an extra for the Denizen. If the trolls follow this pattern, they would need to have 23 gates in order to have full access to each other planet. It is more likely, however, they also have seven gates, corresponding to their Frog Temples. Vriska also implies to Tavros that his 7th gate would lead to his denizen, although she was lying and sent him to his second gate instead, which led him to her hive. Assuming her misdirect is based on truth, the trolls may simply have 7 gates that only take them to a few of their coplayers' planets - this is at the very least partially supported by Karkat being present on Gamzee's planet, as Gamzee is his server's server. The same applies to Equius arriving on LOLCAT.

All troll gates which have been seen match the respective troll's blood and text color. For Karkat these two are not the same and his gates are shown to match his text color only. This may be, however, only another instance of Karkat's blood color being "censored" before its reveal, similar to when he was stabbed by Jack.

Dead Sessions

No gates are created in dead sessions, as there are no other planets to explore. To meet their denizen, the player has to travel to the planet's core by themself. No gates have been seen in the planets generated by Caliborn's denizen, either.