Editing Beyond the Gates of Antares (section)

==Ages and Gate Collapses==

As previously mentioned, the whole structure of Antares is not stable and gates collapse. Thus far, 6 collapses have been recorded, each marking the end of its respective age. Every time a collapse happens, thousands of star systems become completely cut off from the rest of the Antarean Nexus and, depending on how much they relied on imports from other planets, they may revert to any previous technological level, including techno-barbarism

Although the gates eventually rebuild, they don't necessarily reappear in the same place within Antares, so rebuilding connections is not straightforward. Not only that, the time that a system stays out of reach from the Nexus is not straightforward or linear. Due to unknown shenanigans, the time that passes within connected systems and unconnected systems is not the same, relativity notwithstanding. This means that an unconnected system can spend 1,000 local years before it's connected again, but only 100 years would have passed within connected systems, or vice versa. Yeah, it's weird like that.

Of the collapses, onee can be directly attributed to the Vorl, who gave panhumans a run for their money before fucking Antarean shit up by doing chronoplasticity experiments - causing the 3rd collapse. Many years later, the panhumans caused the 6th collapse by destroying Vorl gates, which led to a domino effect.