Motif · from book 4
The Gate of the Feral Gods
An artifact, celestial-tier by Carl's reckoning, in three parts — two pocket watches and a winding box — buried by legend in the Necropolis of Anser and hunted by a gnome commandant, a changeling principal, a glass mage and a dead bugbear. Dial a time on one watch and it mirrors on the other; times are places; wind the box and a one-way portal opens for twenty minutes, and when it closes the opening side stays open into the Nothing until a feral god comes through. Carl assembles it on the fifth floor and uses it to empty bubbles, and then to flood a city.
The feral gods, the Nothing and the pantheon that made them: the pantheon.
First appears: Book 4
Series arc
Through book 5
Taken, with a receipt for the ninth floor (B5 ch. 1); not sold but lent, against collateral that regenerates only on the next floor (B5 ch. 3).
Open threads
Status is open or resolved; the chapter after it is the last one that moved the thread.
| Thread | Opened | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The Gate, kept, and what it costs to use | B4 ch. 34 | open · B5 ch. 3 — Lent, not sold, against four cretin mercenaries and two spells; a receipt for the ninth floor. |
All threads: Open threads.
Through book 4
Named on a boss card, called a myth, then three pieces: a watch from a dead commandant, a box from a punched mage, a watch from a dead changeling (B4 ch. 9, B4 ch. 16, B4 ch. 21, B4 ch. 26). Ghazi's note explains it (B4 ch. 23). Used to escape a shark, to empty fifteen hundred people out of their bubbles, to send the changelings home, and to flood Larracos (B4 ch. 27, B4 ch. 33, B4 ch. 34). Kept.
Where they appear
| Book | Chapters they are in (of the book's) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods | 14/35 | 9–10, 12, 15–17, 20–23, 26–27, 29, 34 · the book's own page |
| 5 — The Butcher's Masquerade | 4/78 | Ch. 1, Ch. 3, Ch. 58, Ch. 69 · the book's own page |
By book
The Gate of the Feral Gods in book 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods
Finding it
Named on Ruckus's card as the treasure a bugbear spent twenty years under the sea for (ch. 9); 'a myth', says Juice Box, then not: two pocket watches and a winding box, one with her brother, one with Kane, one with the mad mage (ch. 10, ch. 15). A forged watch fools Leon (ch. 11); Carl decides to take the house the old way for Kane's watch (ch. 12) and loots it from a corpse with a letter (ch. 16); Ghazi's winding box comes in a scorched satchel (ch. 21); Henrik's watch is looted on a sinking bridge as a court freezes the world (ch. 26).
Using it
Ghazi's note: times are places, the box arms when the second watch catches up, a portal for twenty minutes, then a two-way hole into the Nothing until something comes through (ch. 23). First use: three crawlers and a column of seawater onto a beach, and Who Let the Gods Out? (ch. 27). Then fifteen hundred people gated out of their bubbles, one bubble at a time, a feral god left in each (ch. 32, ch. 33); a portal from Imani's bubble to the sixth floor for the changelings (ch. 33); a decoy in the sand and the real gate under the sea into Larracos (ch. 34). Kept, not sacrificed: 'This isn't going to be a one-time thing.'