Guild Wars 2

One day, I was traveling with my Norn Ranger from the Portal of Lions Arch to Hoelbrak and I asked myself:

How do the people of tyria deal with the sudden climatic change that a Gatetravel brings with it?
I mean, you go from a tropical Temperature of Lions Arch, Warm and with a High Humidity probably, to the freezing temperatures of Hoelbrak in a matter of seconds. Normally such a change would break down the circulation of the body and there may be excuses for the other races, but what about humans and animals?

How can my Human stay completly fine, and for example my Snow leopard from the shiverpeaks, when entering a portal to a completly different climatic zone?

Well the portals are made from magic aren’t they? Unless there actually is an explanation given somewhere I think in this case a wizard did it is an acceptable response.

Above answer, magic, or I’d suggest that perhaps the human physiology allows for rapid temperature changing. After all, they’re only human in appearance, they’re technically aliens to Tyria. That being said, a Charr in Hoelbrak mentions it being cold there, unlike in Ascalon, so it’s probably more along the lines of the Asura gates helping diffuse the heat difference

Magic is always the boring answer, just like god.

The same thing can happen in real life with plane travel as well. You can go from a sustained temperature of the plane and airport, to a dry and cold place (lets say Alaska) and a humid and hot place (Florida).

Your regular body temperature can take a sudden fall or spike as soon as you exit, but we still survive. We’re just miserable during the time our body takes to adjust though.

Rapid temperature change is mainly kitten a body if it keeps happening. I once worked at a grocer and had to get things from the freezer. The freezer was set below 0. Outside, in the middle of summer, it was in the mid 30s degrees celcius.

The only time it caused me a problem was once when I had to continually bring alot of stock out of the freezer. I went in and out of the freezer many times in an hour and before the end of my shift I felt very sick. However its relatively easy to adapt to the temperature otherwise as long as it isnt too extreme, particularly if you dressed for it.

I also think that perhaps Sylvari may be less vulnerable to changes in temperature around them, since they don’t have normal bodies. I’m not sure what the temperatures are like in Ascalon, probably moderate. So I would assume that Charr with their dense fur, adjust relatively well to both cold and warm weather.

Norn are unnaturally resistant to the cold weather. Many Norn wear not much of anything at all while living in freezing temperatures. Maybe they are equally resistant to warmer weather as well.

As for humans and Asura, they both live in hot climates currently. A human in real life can easily adjust to sudden cold or hot temperatures, it just doesn’t feel very nice.

Asura might have some issues adjusting to the cold, since they are from a tropical jungle. But if they travel through Kryta first, the temperatures drop a bit more gradually. Still, from Kryta to Hoelbrak is quite a drop in temperature. I also wonder if Asura are more affected by the cold, due to their limited height. I would expect they are deeper submerged in snow, and thus freeze up rather fast. An Asura would probably want to pack some thick fur clothing before traveling to Hoelbrak.

Well we do know from the Edge of Destiny book that there isn’t too much of a temperature diffusion as you walk through. The first time Eir walks through the gate from Hoelbrak to Lion’s Arch she makes mental note of the extremely rapid change from the cold dry atmosphere of the shiverpeaks to the hot moist atmosphere of LA. That said, it isn’t lethal in any realm that I know of. If you are wondering why our characters don’t feel any ill effects from it you might as well be wondering why our characters don’t have to stop and pant after running for 2 hours straight. It’s just game mechanics.

Just assume your character had the chills or even a bit of vomiting during the load screen . Gate travel is instantaneous – the art is there just to cover up the couple seconds of ugly arrival-shock.

Ghosts of Ascalon page 76, from Divinity’s Reach to Lion’s Arch:

It was no more difficult than stepping through the surface of a soap bubble. One moment he was in Divinity’s Reach, the rising sun just cresting the walls ahead of him, the city around him in deep shadow. The next moment he and the others were in bright sunshine, leaving him blinking and raising a hand to protect his eyes. The air itself was different, changing suddenly from the cool, damp morning air to something warmer, fresher, and smelling of salt. […]

From Ghosts of Ascalon, page 154-155

He felt his skin dry as he stepped through the gate. He had not felt damp in seaside Lion’s Arch, but now all of the moisture evaporated from his flesh, and the dry night air, still warm, forced its way into his lungs. Ebonhawke was perched on the edge of the Crystal Desert, and even in the dead of night the residual heat pulled the sweat from the exposed flesh.

From Edge of Destiny, page 88:

Eir and Garm strode through, feeling the membrane of magic snap around them. The sultry air of Rata Sum gave way to the biting cold of Hoelbrak.

From Edge of Destiny, page 143:

Eir stepped from the frigid solitude of Hoelbrak into the bustling heat of Lion’s Arch. […]

EoD isn’t very helpful, but GoA does give a bit more insight into the matter.

Either way we can see that the result is fairly instantaneous.

Lets use some physics for a minute, because another thing to consider is if there is a sort of magic barrier/membrane that the Asura gate has. Does it allow air to pass through it or not? Because if you take an asura gate at sea level like Lion’s Arch (which would have high air pressure, density, Warm and humid air), and it links to a gate in the high elevations of the Shiverpeaks (which would have low air pressure, density, cold temperatures, and dry air), the difference in air pressure and temperature would cause a black hole of hurricane force winds to form at the Gate in Lion’s Arch, sucking everything into it, and there would be a white hole of hurricane force winds in Hoelbrak, blowing out that warm, moist air. That interaction would continue until the pressure and temperature equals out, which if the gate in the Shiverpeaks was high enough in elevation, that equalization in temperature and air pressure would never happen. It might not be hurricane force winds exactly, but it would be difficult to stand in.

Well, thats what would happen in the real world atleast.

Well this is of course fantasy. But I can think of a reason why that would not happen. Geographically, the two cities are not right next to each other. Not even when a gateway directly connects one with the other. So there isn’t a low pressure zone where air flows to. It isn’t until you actually step through the membrane, that your body arrives in that other town. The same could be said for air. The air isn’t going anywhere, because it’s just a membrane, and the air does not know there is a pocket of different pressure on the other side of it. Thus, there is no significant air movement. This doesn’t stop air from moving through the gateway of course. It is possible that when you’re standing in front of the gateway to Hoelbrak, that you feel a slight subtle cold. But it would be really minor. But unless the wind is directly blowing into the gateway, I doubt it would be a very strong breeze.

I don’t think the temperature of air or the moisture of it goes through, for whatever reason. In Edge of Destiny, there’s a broken gate that cycles through many places – from frigid to molten areas. No mention of change in the air or whatnot for Logan and Caithe.

Unless that membrane was ‘magically’ forced to stay in place, it would start to bow outwards on the Hoelbrak end until it explodes in epic fashion and suddenly there is a miniature sideways tornado in the middle of town. I’m also just saying that something like Asura gates would work like that in the real world (in other words, unless there was a gross ignorance of the laws of physics (like,…I don’t know….Magic?), it would work horribly!)

Just think about what I said in terms of a spaceship or airplane. Inside the spaceship is pressurized air for what you would see at sea level. Outside the airplane is much less air at a much lower pressure , and if you were in a space craft, there is no air at all. Punch a hole in that plane or spaceship, and the air would immediately rush out, sucking everything with it that isn’t bolted down, and it would continue until the two pressures outside and inside were equal.

I would say, for all intents and purposes, that the magic membrane seems to prevent basic elements from pushing though. Both books mention the membrane snapping around them or perhaps wrapping around them as they moved though. This seems to suggest that some force (extremely minimal, “less than breaking a soap bubble”) is needed to move through.

From my own physics knowledge, that seems… excessive. On Earth, the difference in air pressure between sea level and 2000m (where you’ll find most cities) is only about 20%. It’s not like the Hoelbrak gate would act as an industrial-strength vacuum. if there isn’t a membrane of some form preventing it, yes, you’d get winds from Lion’s Arch to the other cities (all of which I’m farily certain are higher above sea level than LA) but considering that it’s passing through a fairly small cross-ectional area as far as meteorological forces are concerned, I don’t think it’d get strong enough to hamper travel – the various cross-winds and other turbulence as it all tries to get in the gate at once would rob it of velocity. It’d be like the difference between a stampede in an open field versus panicking for the exits in a crowded theatre.

Chrispy.5641:

Unless that membrane was ‘magically’ forced to stay in place, it would start to bow outwards on the Hoelbrak end until it explodes in epic fashion and suddenly there is a miniature sideways tornado in the middle of town.

No it wouldn’t. There is a membrane on both sides of the portal. One in Hoelbrak, one in Lion’s Arch. But the two places do not exist in the same space together.

To illustrate: Imagine a glass of water with a piece of paper on top of it. The piece of paper is the only thing separating the water from the air. This is exactly what the portals are NOT. The water and the air are not in the same space.

Instead, now imagine two glasses of water in separate rooms. Would the temperature of one glass of water affect the temperature of the other glass in a totally different room? Of course not.

What I’m trying to explain is, air from Lion’s Arch would not suddenly be sucked into Hoelbrak, because Hoelbrak is not in Lion’s Arch. It isn’t until you step through the portal, that you’re suddenly in Hoelbrak. So the air of the two cities cannot interact with each other, since they don’t share the same space.

So what makes a water molecule go through the gate, but not an air molecule? If I can walk through, and if I can chuck a bucket of water through, then the wind can also blow through.

I also assume that the air inside someone’s lung, ears etc. travels with them. Otherwise people would have a whole bunch of immediate health-related issues.

So yes, air would of course be able to travel through… not via “pull”/low pressure, but via “push”.

draxynnic.3719:

From my own physics knowledge, that seems… excessive. On Earth, the difference in air pressure between sea level and 2000m (where you’ll find most cities) is only about 20%. It’s not like the Hoelbrak gate would act as an industrial-strength vacuum. if there isn’t a membrane of some form preventing it, yes, you’d get winds from Lion’s Arch to the other cities (all of which I’m farily certain are higher above sea level than LA) but considering that it’s passing through a fairly small cross-ectional area as far as meteorological forces are concerned, I don’t think it’d get strong enough to hamper travel – the various cross-winds and other turbulence as it all tries to get in the gate at once would rob it of velocity. It’d be like the difference between a stampede in an open field versus panicking for the exits in a crowded theatre.

I would like to Introduce you to Bernoulli’s Principle, which states that there will be an increase in Air/Fluid Speed occurs at the same time as there is a decrease in Pressure or a decrease in the fluid’s potential energy.

Using that crowded theater analogy you just said (and lets say its on fire), People are rushing for the exit as fast as they can, but they are slowed down when they reach the doorway. People push into each other, but no matter what, they can’t get outside very quickly. Once they clear the doorway, People are able to run away as fast as they can again. Decrease in the Density (number of people), the increase in the speed they are allowed to run.

And you don’t need much air pressure difference. Lets say, the difference between a balloon about to burst, and the surrounding air is all you need to create a strong wind (and also a loud explosion if the ‘membrane’ suddenly ruptures.)

@Mad Queen Malafide, there are some holes in your explanations, especially with the Glasses of water, but I dont have the time to get to it right now. I’ll get to them a little later

Edit; Typos

Chrispy.5641:

@Mad Queen Malafide, there are some holes in your explanations, especially with the Glasses of water, but I dont have the time to get to it right now. I’ll get to them a little later

Edit; Typos

I’d love to hear it. It’s all theoretical of course, and we’re speculating on something that is clearly fantasy. But it’s interesting to see how this could work (or not work).

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Chrispy.5641:

@Mad Queen Malafide, there are some holes in your explanations, especially with the Glasses of water, but I dont have the time to get to it right now. I’ll get to them a little later

Edit; Typos

I’d love to hear it. It’s all theoretical of course, and we’re speculating on something that is clearly fantasy. But it’s interesting to see how this could work (or not work).

Basically, the holes he/she is talking about in your argumentations can all sum up in the fact you’ve a misunderstanding of what exactly pressure is ( the kinetic theory to be more accurate).
Because of the random motion of the particles the air is made of, some WILL step through the asura gate. And, because the pressure in Hoelbrak is lower than the one in LA due to the higher elevation of the Shiverspeaks, the particles will see their access through the gate eased compared to every other direction thus implying a flow of air particles through the gate until the two pressures get equalized (which would take forever given the size of the world and the diameter of the gate).

So, to sum it up, if there’s a membrane you can step through, there’s no reason every other particles can’t (and in fact as pointed out by previous posts we know they do : your eardrums would blow up if no air traveled with you through the gate). So, if the membrane can’t prevent the particles from your body to step through, air should be able to go through as well inducing the effects described above.

I agree with that. However I do not agree that this would result in an increase in air movement. You see, as the particles move through the gate, it isn’t until they arrive in Hoelbrak, that they encounter no resistance and decide to stay there. The same goes for a cold wind flowing into the gate from the side of Hoelbrak. Nothing would stop the wind and snow from passing through, but the pressure difference would only matter the moment the wind and snow have arrived in Lion’s Arch, and not before.

So while you may argue that this would result in a permanent one-way flow of air, the idea that it would result into some sort of vacuum is nonsense, since the two spaces are not adjacent to each other physically.

Ok I see where your point is. However in order to be able to answer this particular issue, one would need to know exactly what would be the state of a particle standing at the very edge of the gate.
Because we don’t know for sure what kind of force would be applied to it : you cannot treat the gate like a solid wall because particles can go through but don’t know what forces the particles located on the other side of the gate will apply on this particle.
In order to answer this, we should know what kind of “resistance” a particle feels when going through the doors and if it could make up the different pressures of the two places.
If this resistance were high enough then the fact the air could cross it wouldn’t matter because its kinetic state wouldn’t pushing it to cross the gate beforehand. However it doesn’t have anything to do with the two places not being geographically related because if the gate were a thin wall without any resistance then we’d see a flow between the two places anyway.

Minos.3450:

However it doesn’t have anything to do with the two places not being geographically related because if the gate were a thin wall without any resistance then we’d see a flow between the two places anyway.

Well that depends entirely on how Asura gateways work.

If an Asura gate simply acts like a teleporter, then it wouldn’t be like a thin wall, and flow between the two places would not occur. A teleporter instantly transports matter from one place to another, without the two places being adjacent to each other.

However, if it acts like a wormhole, then it creates a rift that allows the two spaces to be adjacent to each other (like the portal technology in the game Portal). And this would allow objects and particles to flow between the two spaces freely.

In the game all we see is a bright purple field that we step through. We cannot see Hoelbrak from the side of Lion’s Arch. I’m not sure if this is simply a technical limitation, but perhaps the book explains this. This seems to suggest teleportation, rather than a wormhole.

It was a while ago, but I majored in physics and university. I know about Bernoulli’s Principle.

There are other factors at play, though. There is nothing magical about a region of lower pressure that sucks things towards it – regions of low pressure do not have a net gravitational force towards them or anything like that (much the opposite, actually – creating regions of low pressure in the vacuum is one of the ways to produce a region of antigravity, but that’s getting into quantum physics, and if nature abhors a vacuum, it abhors a region of space that has negative pressure even more – look up the Casimir Effect if you’re interested). It’s just that regions of lower pressure represent less forces that push back at anything headed in that direction as opposed to towards areas of higher pressure, leading to a net flow in that direction – which, in the case of air, we feel as a wind.

The theatre analogy is apt, because gas molecules bump into one another (strictly speaking, come close enough for electromagnetic repulsion to come into play) all the time. That’s why you get flows from regions of high pressure to low pressure in the first place – because as each molecule gets bumped around, it’s less likely to get pushed off course if it heads towards the region of low pressure. If no other elements come into play, this has a cumulative effect – once a flow is established, any gas molecule in the region of the flow is more likely to be pushed in the direction of the flow than in some other direction. It’s like if you get caught in a crowd going in a particular direction – it’s easier to go in the direction of the crowd than to go against it. Same with air, except air doesn’t have a brain that’s telling it to go in any direction apart from the easiest one to go in.

For a significant wind to build up, though, still takes time. There’s also the original directions of flow before the pressure distribution to consider – which is part of the reason cyclones are, well, cyclonic rather than simply rushing into the centre until equilibrium is reached, as would happen in any accretion disk-like situation without preexisting angular momentum. (Which, as an aside, is why the entire galaxy hasn’t already been sucked into Sag. A, which does exert a force on everything around it, so a big thank you to angular momentum.) So, assuming your ‘massive hurricane’ scenario was valid at all, it could be countered by operating the gate only for limited periods of time at once rather than leaving it open permanently. Which, according to the books, is what actually happens – them being open all the time in-lore is a mechanical convenience for the players, not something that is actually happening.

Now, onto the influence of the aperture size. The Bernoullis Principle does not dictate that opening an aperture between a region of low pressure and a region of high pressure is going to create a beam of wind leading directly into the aperture without disturbing any of the surrounding air. Instead, there’s going to be a net flow of air towards the portal (on the high-pressure side) from all directions. However, the air molecules coming in from angles that aren’t directly in front of the gate is going to lead in an increase in density on the high-pressure side of the gate, as well as introducing components of momentum in directions other than towards the gate, which is going to disrupt the flow.

As another analogy, think of a road during rush hour. If you have a section of road with no traffic entering from side roads, and there aren’t any trucks or other slow vehicles serving as mobile roadblocks, then the traffic could be quite dense and still move at a reasonable clip without interfering with one another. When you start getting traffic coming in from side roads trying to merge into the main traffic flow, though, that’s when you get congestion and traffic jams. While, granted, this is more extreme than happens with air flows, the same general principle applies.

This is why real hurricanes tend to build up over the ocean (or flatter areas of land) and then dissipate once they hit land (particularly land with hills and mountains and the like). Out in the open ocean, there’s nothing to interfere with the wind building up more and more until you get, well, a hurricane. Once it starts hitting hills and trees and large buildings, the gas molecules that get deflected from the terrain start interfering with those flows, and they begin to break up. Similarly, the wind into the portal would be slowed by eddies and cross-winds formed from air coming in from directions that aren’t directly into the portal.

You would get a wind on the low-pressure side, similar to how a fan can create a horizontal column of wind in front of it in an otherwise mostly still room, but that wind would spread out and dissipate quickly (not even lasers can maintain a perfectly straight beam over long distances).

Now, I don’t have the resources to do a full simulation, but there are certainly more complex forces at play than ‘large air pressure difference = MASSIVE WIND!’, and pretty much all of those more complex forces are acting to dampen the wind, not to strengthen it.

Either way, though, descriptions in the books indicate that there is a feeling of some sort of ‘membrane’ on crossing the portals – something about the portals does provide a resistance to those crossing, albeit a resistance that’s easy for an asura (let alone a bigger creature) to cross. Thus, the most likely scenario is that this resistance is actually sufficient to prevent air molecules from crossing over and thus the whole question about pressure differences is a moot point.

I feel you guys are over complicating this a bit. In the Asura concept story “That Old College Try”, we see that Asura technology is able to target specific lifeforms. In this story, Dlixx’s wargolem preforms a massive Death Blossom attack that kills everything in range except for his krewe; the shots go right through them, harmlessly.

I would imagine that the same technology able to exclude specific lifeforms in this manner would also be able to do the opposite, and in a more general fashion. Rather than “shoot everyone except my crewe”, you could do “exclude all matter except living organisms and their possessions”.

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/That_Old_College_Try

Here’s a thought. The gates aren’t one sided, the transportation works from either side of the gate. If the gate is able to sense the pressure on the “membrane”, having it only actively open the gate when there is a difference big enough between the pressure on the two sides.

Another thought I came up with is that the gates are most likely fixed to the relative position of the receiving gate – if not, some interesting situations could arise. Think about dropping a gate on a mountaintop.

It is currently unknown just how Asura tune their gates. We know from GW 1 that originally a lot of gateways (but not all) were linked to the central transfer chamber, but probably not any more.

I also do not know if it is possible to change the tuning of a gate, once a connection has been established. We do know however that the gateways can cross vast distances. Even to other continents.

Yes, it is possible to change a gate’s attunement. In Ghosts of Ascalon the Lion’s Arch gate would switch between LA and Ebonhawke during certain times of the day. It wasn’t until after Edge of Destiny that the queen got the Ebonhawke gate built.

That is most interesting. I haven’t read any of the books you see.

Certain gate technology is actually quite flexible as far as placement / positioning / destination goes. In Edge of Destiny, Snaff had a portable (coin sized, expands when activated) gate that could connect to various other places from anywhere. Granted, all of his tech was pretty advanced compared to what other Asura have though, which is likely why gate positioning / tuning tends to be a bit more rigid with the run-of-the-mill ones.

actually I though that Asura gates works somekind like Stargates in the seril which the same title – with that exception that You are not chosing “adress” upon each activation, but You are tuning gate one to another and they are open as long as you won’t tune them to not being connected… also in gw1 only way to close asuran gate was destroy it

and in named before serial there was some explanation about that “air and other” problem – there was some episods when that was conection between for example stargate that was under the water and some that won’t and that was explained there I think why that water didn’t flood all the base
with the air and asuran gates would be same

btw. about climates… I had today similar effect when going out of home as going between some asuran gates that is in different climates…
I home there was nice, perfect I could say…
when I leaved first though I’ve got…
immediate incineration….

I think the gates work in a totally different way. I think they are always on but in “standby,” as seen by them always being active. Now imagine if everyone has a “gate key” that the can program to tell the gate where to send them. If you want to go to the Black Citadel, you program the key, walk through the gate and arrive at the Black Citadel. You could then reprogram the key for Lion’s Arch, take a step backwards and arrive there. Theoretically, certain codes could be blocked. If you programmed the key for Fort Trinity and don’t have clearance, it won’t take you there.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the gates worked similar to the Stargate gates, seeing as they were somewhat inspired by them, lol.

Justdeifyme.9387:

Magic is always the boring answer, just like god.

although the boring answer in tyria is not “a wizard did it” but “an asura did it”

Crossplay.2067:

I think the gates work in a totally different way. I think they are always on but in “standby,” as seen by them always being active. Now imagine if everyone has a “gate key” that the can program to tell the gate where to send them. If you want to go to the Black Citadel, you program the key, walk through the gate and arrive at the Black Citadel. You could then reprogram the key for Lion’s Arch, take a step backwards and arrive there. Theoretically, certain codes could be blocked. If you programmed the key for Fort Trinity and don’t have clearance, it won’t take you there.

This isn’t how it works in the books, though – the gates are tuned to a location at a preset time by asura technicians on both sides of the gate.

It’s possible that the system you propose could be implemented, but I don’t think the asura want to give non-asura even that much control over the gate network.

Amadan.9451:

Justdeifyme.9387:

Magic is always the boring answer, just like god.

although the boring answer in tyria is not “a wizard did it” but “an asura did it”

“Magic!” doesn’t need to be a boring answer, becuase where the Asura are concerned magic is just a type of science. (They aren’t conjuring this technology out of thin air, they’re like artificers. There’s a specific internal logic and methodology to it.)

So the best thing we can do isn’t to try and shoehorn Asuran magical devices into real world physics, but instead understand them in terms of what we know about other Asuran magical devices.

The problem isn’t saying “it’s magic”; the problem is saying ONLY that without further elaboration. Fact of the matter, it is magic.. but there’s more to it than that.

One thing to note is that you only need to activate a gate from the other side to re-establish the connection between two, as seen from the dynamic event at Parnna’s Gate in Metrica Province, but you must have a receiving gate, as seen in EotN, where Vekk destroying the gate stops destroyers following through it. However, experimental gate technology requiring no receiving gate is at works, as seen in Professor Portmatt’s lab.

The first case might be working because the receiving gate was already attuned, or because it was an older gate that lacked security.

The second, come to think on it, doesn’t seem to be the only example of experimenting with gates with no receiver – there’s a heart in Brisban Wildlands that seems to be based on that as well, and there is the case of Snaff’s portable gate.

Can the gates transport inanimate matter without the presence of a living being nearby? In all cases in-game that I’ve seen, people never hurl stuff THROUGH an Asura gate. They always carry it through on their person, or on pack animals.

If the gates are tuned in such a way that non-living matter cannot pass through unless it’s in the immediate vicinity of a living creature, that might explain why there’s no atmospheric heat/moisture transfer between the gates from one region to another.

Zaxares interesting theory, but we cannot check it – stuff transport in Tyria is actually made in the way that….
just put everythinng on dolyak.

Zaxares.5419:

Can the gates transport inanimate matter without the presence of a living being nearby? In all cases in-game that I’ve seen, people never hurl stuff THROUGH an Asura gate. They always carry it through on their person, or on pack animals.

Well, in Eye of the North’s opening, we see Vekk blow up a gate to stop the Destroyers from following them. I think the Destroyers might just be made of fire and stone, so they clearly can come through gates. So if the material they are made of doesn’t matter, then why would it matter if they are inanimate, or animate? And are Destroyers technically alive?

Destroyers are basically fire and stone animated through magic from all I can see. They do not really have any of the basic needs that you see in things that are clearly defined as living, such as food, shelter, procreation, etc… I would personally say that they are not alive, but they are animated so idk where it stands on this subject. Nothing I have seen seems to point towards a differentiation between the way that gates react to objects of differing compositions or levels of animation so I would say that it is probably not an issue. I mean you would probably hear an asura somewhere talking about the dangers of bringing supplies through without proximity to living material.

Asura go spend years learning the principles of metamystics. I doubt RL bookah humans will be able to theory craft every aspect of how it works. :P

Perhaps the restriction is down to creatures that have some manner of cognitive awareness. This would include not just Destroyers, but also other forms of dragon minions like Risen, Icebrood and Branded. Animals, too, can run through a gate. I’m unsure if golems can pass through gates without an attending master, however.

If no appropriate “traveler” is nearby, perhaps the non-living matter simply bounces back or passes through the gate without actually getting transported (i.e. it lands on the other side of the departing gate).

Zaxares I have such situation often with my characters :P
crap that means that my human character aren’t alive :P

PS. actually that’s an issue with only some of the gates that need to click “travel” to get transported…

Maybe it just transports matter. We know it doesn’t transport enery waves or else we would be able to see trough the other side. If this is the way it works it would also prevent the transfer of the kinetic energy and so wind from blowing through or heat being transfered. Come to think of it it would probably need to disasemble the matter on one side and reasemble an exact copy on the other side or else the lack okittenetic energy would render you very flat on the other side since your movement of walking trough would be stopped :/ hmmz this needs some more thought..

I would say the idea of disassembling you and reassembling you is quite possible. I say this because it is premise behind travel through stargates in Stargate SG1, which many people point to as the inspiration for Asuran gates and asurans in general.