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| - The Portal Network refers to the multitude of portals in towns and dungeons linking together various locations in Dereth.
- Simply put, there are lots of "islands of habitability", and conventional travel between them, if possible at all, is time-consuming, expensive, and generally not attempted unless there is absolutely no other choice. However, there is a set of gates or jump points connecting them together, allowing for near-instantaneous travel. This results in what can be called a "graph universe": the connected islands/communities/planets are vertices and the portal links are edges, and the rationality of travel between them depends not on the distance, but on the existence of a known link between them.
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| abstract
| - Simply put, there are lots of "islands of habitability", and conventional travel between them, if possible at all, is time-consuming, expensive, and generally not attempted unless there is absolutely no other choice. However, there is a set of gates or jump points connecting them together, allowing for near-instantaneous travel. This results in what can be called a "graph universe": the connected islands/communities/planets are vertices and the portal links are edges, and the rationality of travel between them depends not on the distance, but on the existence of a known link between them. In science-fiction versions, it is common for portal transits to induce disorientation, hallucinations, or nausea which make starship crews temporarily extra-vulnerable immediately after transit. Considering that it would take thousands if not millions of years to set up an interstellar Portal Network without any other means of Faster-Than-Light Travel, it is not uncommon for such things to have been made by the Precursors, in which case the gates are usually (though not always) Lost Technology. As these provide both a relatively realistic form of Casual Interstellar Travel and justifies the concept of Space Is an Ocean enough to permit choke point naval battles, Portal Networks are common throughout all but the hardest varieties of Speculative Fiction, which disallows teleportation altogether. They are a convenient means of providing simplified game mechanics, and so are common in both video and tabletop games. In addition they allow writers to avoid making embarrassing scaling errors, if done right. Compare Teleporters and Transporters, Cool Gate, and Hyperspace Lanes. For a videogame sort-of-equivalent, see Warp Whistle. A Portal Door may be used as the medium of transport. Examples of Portal Network include:
- The Portal Network refers to the multitude of portals in towns and dungeons linking together various locations in Dereth.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)