How can the Gates work? [SPOILERS]

[DavidBV]

Given what we learned recently about colors making the snarl the "most real" and strongest thing in the universe, how is it possible for the Gates to be unbreakable by it? the way Thor explains it, the Snarl should be able to cut through anything made of 3 colors or less.

Does the Gate ritual maybe involve green quiddity? otherwise we seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle here. Which wouldn't be surprising, given there's still other things like the "planet" not fitting well with what we know.

... or maybe Gates include the purple color already (assuming it's really a new color, which I'm not sure of). We still have unanswered questions about the Order of the Scribble; maybe they somehow tapped into TDO's power. Both Dorukan and Lirian, the Gate spell creators, are conveniently soul-trapped together by Xykon so maybe we can learn about all this from them later in the story.

Of course maybe the answer is "Gates are not 4-color, but they work because of... magic!" and that'd be it, but Rich seems to have a pretty consistent (and amazing) plot going on that, honestly, is exceeding my expectations with the latest developments; so maybe the origin of this spell is part of it as well.

[Fyraltari]

Given what we learned recently about colors making the snarl the "most real" and strongest thing in the universe, how is it possible for the Gates to be unbreakable by it?

Are they? The world is tri-colored and the gods made it so that the Snarl would need at least a millenium of pushing against it to break through. The Gates only held for 6% of that time and Thor still considers the world eventually doomed unless they reseal the Gates with some purple.

Bottom line is: the Gates are a temporary fix that looked stronger than it actually is.

[SaintRidley]

Ultimately, the gates are a short term thing at best. Even if not for the destruction of the gates, I expect they would have some kind of eventual failure point because, as you note, the Snarl is more real than the mortals and their magic. At the same time, however, as the mortals are made of more combined quiddities than the gods, I suspect mortal magic might be a bit harder to break through for the Snarl than the gods are.

The snarl has also taken longer and longer to get around to unmaking the world each iteration, and it seems to have some intelligence. So it may not have tried hard to mess with the gates yet because it hasn't fully awoken for this round of destruction.

[Jasdoif]

My theory is that the Gate compresses the rifts, reducing the "eyehole" the Snarl can "see" out of; while the spell behind the Gates blurs the Snarl's "sight". In combination, the Snarl can't perceive anything to lash out at.

[factotum]

I think you're starting from an invalid assumption--namely, that the Gates cannot be broken by the Snarl. This is never stated anywhere in the story that I can recall. Put it this way: if the door to your house develops a hole, and you hammer a piece of plywood over the top to keep the draft out, nobody is saying that's going to be permanent or that the piece of plywood is somehow stronger than the original door was before ir rotted away! What *will* likely happen is that the already rotten door will fall apart before the plywood panel does, because it's older and in worse shape.

This is exactly how the Gates work, IMHO--they're the magical panel placed over a rotten bit of reality to try and hold it together. Given a few thousand years the Snarl would break them, as it breaks anything else with three-colour quiddity, but chances are that some other part of reality would give way first--barring the sort of deliberate interference that is happening with these gates in the story, of course.

[DavidBV]

Thanks for all your replies, I had not thought of it that way and I admit they sound more plausible than my hypothesis of them being four-colored.