Ravensgate

There are May 2016 and October 2016 versions of this entry from the original BHH Wiki available at (2016 I) Ravanasgatr and (2016 II) Ravanasgatr

The Ravensgate was a powerful force that intervened in the universe to trigger events and manipulate history. The Ravensgate was particularly important to BHH and the Maiestas Cycle, though it was presented very differently in each. It had easy access to both backwards and forwards time travel, so it had both advanced technology and magic at every point in the timeline, and was effectively timeless. The Ravensgate was highly secretive and it was only towards the late After-Human Era that anyone suspected such an entity might exist.

In BHH, most information about the Ravensgate came from Raven Olympia, who had an ambiguous but obviously close link to it. The Ravensgate in BHH was explicitly not an organisation; in one roleplay, Raven mocked another character for referring to it as such, saying he was "not talking about some shitty company." Instead, it was a force, or an entity. The Ravensgate was wholly unary, and no smaller bodies attached to it were ever mentioned. In 2016, Robert (who controlled Raven) stressed that his character's relationship with the Ravensgate was unique, though in 2021, he regarded it as uncontroversial that there were other Ravensgate agents—which was Kerry and Tom's understanding throughout the 2010s. Crystals were associated with the Ravensgate. Separately, or perhaps via crystals, there were also certain magical powers that the Ravensgate could give to its agents or suddenly take away, including invisibility.

In the Maiestas Cycle, unlike in BHH, the Ravensgate was an organisation. It had a complex internal structure defined by a tangled thicket of autonomous and competing councils, colleges and societies, each with their own agendas. It also tended not to have any specific association with crystals. The protagonists of the cycle, Macil Rava and Eithne Lunadelle, were bureaucrats in the Ravensgate that ran a sub-organisation called the Society for the Preservation of Peace.

History

The phrase "Raven's Gate" in Glastieven mythology goes back as far as "the game", primary school imaginative play that established BHH. Kian said that the Raven's Gate was how gods like the Olympans and the Old Ones gained access to Obur'ron, the universe where the narrative took place. The idea of a gateway called the "Raven's Gate" that allowed the "Old Ones" to enter the world was taken from the Anthony Horowitz Power of Five books, the first of which was even called Raven's Gate.

The modern concept emerged in the Oburron and Jenner paracosm. Initially, Kerry took Kian's line that the Raven's Gate was how the gods gained access to Oburron but interpreted it more figuratively, seeing the Raven's Gate as the means by which the gods carried out their will in the universe, i.e. triggering events and manipulating history. When the concept of gods was removed, the Raven's Gate (renamed to the Ravenasgatr) was left in an ambiguous position. Technically, its power was explained by it being a clandestine intergovernmental organisation — like a secret United Nations — but in practice, it was treated as far more transcendent, autonomous and obscure than that.

The Ravanasgatr of the Oburron and Jenner paracosm was a secret, all-powerful organisation that presided over the universe. Two particularly important sub-agencies were the Higher History Society (HHS) and Travelforce. The HHS was responsible for "writing the history books" and did things like informing emperors that they had to step down because it was time for their empire to fracture. It was accompanied by the Lower History Society (LHS), which handled the details and made sure history looked causal and the HHS stayed invisible. Travelforce (also sometimes Railforce or Gateforce) policed the Underworld, meaning all places where species mixed, such as space stations or interplanetary ports.

When the Acteriendian BHH roleplays started, Robert defined his character around the Ravenasgatr, and so he was the one responsible for defining it in the canon. He promptly renamed it to the Ravensgate, abandoned the HHS and other sub-organisations, introduced crystals, and had his character mock Kerry's character in game for referring to the Ravensgate as an organisation. Travelforce/Railforce did persist for a short while as a concept but its position in relation to the Ravensgate was now unclear.

Robert's version of the Ravensgate remained canon in BHH. However, starting with Kerry and Robert's failed attempt to create a new cycle called the "Evonian Cycle" in July 2017, the Oburron and Jenner concept of the Ravensgate as a bureaucratic organisation concerned with controlling the historical narrative returned. Tom and Kerry developed it further in the work they did for Maiestas, introducing the idea that its internal structure was based on autonomous, competing organisations led by dangerous personalities like Macil and Eithne that had been extracted from various points along the timeline. Given its power over the timeline, in the Maiestas Cycle it started to accquire metanarrative connotations, being instrumental in Kerry and Tom's attempts to tie the whole mythology into a single plot arc and give in-universe significance to its practical structures like 'cycles'.