On Lotusgate

[Colette Brunel]

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Today, thousands of years later, the Kyonin side of Lotusgate has become the hub of a much larger aiudara network, its link to Alseta’s Ring long forgotten. The ruined portal in Alseta’s Ring exists as a reminder that nothing, no matter how exquisitely crafted or magically protected, lasts forever. The ancient techniques Candlaron used to build aiudara have been lost as well, so the chances of Alseta’s Ring being some day relinked to Kyonin are remote at best. In the Age of Ashes Adventure Path, Lotusgate plays no role other than as a reminder of the past. At your option, you could allow the PCs to discover a method to repair the portal once they’re very high level, but such an event is beyond the scope of this campaign.

First of all, is Lotusgate actually "the hub of a much larger aiudara network"? I thought that Lotusgate connected to Galtgate, and Galtgate was the hub.

The Lost Omens World Guide says:

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the capital of Iadara, where several aiudara—elf gates—link the elven realm to distant lands, and where the Sovyrian Stone that powers all aiudara is carefully hidden away.

Is this a retcon, with Lotusgate now directly being a part of an aiudara network in Iadara itself?

Secondly, it is not unthinkable that the characters might just identify Lotusgate for what it is, and its connection to Iadara, the capital of Kyonin. How would the downtime task of sending envoys to Iadara pan out? The PCs could send over 5th-level elven clerics Kellen Carondil (a Desnan well-suited to travel, no less) and Tarindlara Vallindel off to Iadara to engage in diplomacy; the town would still have a 5th-level cleric in the form of the local Caydenite. Going by this map, there are ~400 miles between Breachill and Iadara.

The diplomats could cast wanderer's guide to ignore terrain, pass through Druma, and make it to Iadara more or less without incident. On Speed 40 riding horses, as per page 479 of the core rulebook, they would travel 32 miles per day, thus arriving in ~12.5 days. But what would happen then?

As per the Lost Omens World Guide:

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Kyonin’s leadership has begun sending more diplomatic emissaries to other nations in preparation for a large-scale war that could ravage the continent. At the same time, this need for greater cooperation with other nations has led Kyonin’s leaders to open their own carefully watched borders to ambassadors and visitors from a wide array of ancestries and nations.

[James Jacobs]

Lotusgate itself is a hub for a much larger network, one that connects to all sorts of different aiudara on Golarion and even to some beyond. One of those portals it once connected to was the one in Alsetta's Ring, but when the Alsetta's Ring side of the gate blew up after Earthfall (when no elves were in Kyonin to notice), Alsetta's Ring was cut off from the Kyonin side of Lotusgate. The Kyonin side of Lotusgate wasn't affected by this explosion at all, nor were any of the other aiudara hubs that connect to Lotusgate.

The Alseta's Ring aiudara are prototypes. The first ones created, and once the process of being able to form multiple links to one gate (as in the case of linking Lotusgate to Galtgate and others) was devleoped, Alseta's Ring got more or less forgotten. It's the betamax to the VHS of the newer portals. Or the HD-DVD to the Blu-Rays of the more modern portals. Etc.

The idea of sending folks to Kyonin to talk to them about Alseta's Ring is beyond the scope of the campaign—how that might play out is left to each individual GM to figure out, but I'd suggest that Kyonin would send some envoys to Breachill to establish a presence there and they'd hire the PCs to run about and reactivate the portals. Use the elves of Kyonin as quest-givers in this case to keep the Adventure Path going.