A brief history of Saana’s Third Gate, as occurring within the brief history of Saana’s second Second Gate, as occurring within the brief history of Saana’s Second Gate.

You see, the second Second Gate would eventually spawn a much more famous—although still fairly esoteric—disciple, She Who… [AN: multiple epithet riddles hinting at but never just saying directly, ‘The Third Gate’, the crazy lady ranting during all of this on stage.]

First, in a period cloaked in darkness, this woman, a player from Somalia, seemed to have apprenticed for some months under the imposter, the second Second Gate. As part of his cult, she'd lived at his monastery. She’d joined his public lectures throughout Togavi’s wind-swept cities. She’d preached his holy word and received the unholy laughter.

Then, at some point—as is often the way with these mystic roleplayers—the apprentice received her own divine revelation. This caused her to break from her mentor, to earn at last her honoured Name…[AN: More riddle names to build hype]…The Third Gate!

As The Third Gate, she would go on to teach her own novel doctrine synthesised out of the second Second Gate’s teachings of Sufi-flavoured anti-Offworlder passivist revolutionary non-violence with the ideas of the sorely-missed Uncle PLH.

(PLH - that is, Peaceloveharmony, for those ultra-novices unversed in The Cripple x Merry Band Arc. An Earthfriend adventurer companion of The Cripple, PLH had run a webshow for kids in which he’d taught his Fuzzy Friendship philosophy, that monsters were also people and deserved our love. Going around with a cabal of the beasts made sentient and pacified, he’d treated them like any other regular companions and not killed them for XP as most Players do. It'd been a sort of vegan hyper-maximalism, the extension of empathy even to creatures that were expressly designed not to receive it. One might perceive this belief as satirical due to PLH’s association with The Cripple, but, no, Uncle PLH had just been a soft-hearted and much more likeable soul. In fact…

[AN: The hunchback describes how Henry’s Second Gate comedy passivism might have begun as a mockery of PLH’s hippy monster love.]

…Possible? We leave that for yourselves to decide.) The PLHxTyrant connection is its own fascinating sub-genre of lore - in this humble devotee’s opinion.)

Those at minimum two schools of thought, the one of The Second Gate, the other of PLH, merged schizophrenically within the persona of The Third Gate. In her and through her, they became a fanatical pro-Virtual-Realist message of a forthcoming apocalyptic unification event between Saana and the real world.

“But what’s The Third GatexPLH connection, Monsieur Multigrams?” you protest, my doubters of the undoubtable, “Didn’t you skip an essential key to the puzzle there? The Third Gate’s one half, as inherited from He in The Name of The Cripple Renamed The Second Gate, now shines upon our enlightened smiles as clear as sunshine, yes. However, you’ve ignored the shadows blanketing this other half.”

Unfortunately, in these first hours of lore consumption, the knowledge of those happenings has yet to be determined, their digestion awaiting a release of further arcana from The Universe’s pancreas. But, due to the woman’s Class choice and what's followed, some lore analysts have cobbled together one possible answer, and that I can share with a caveat to caution.

The Third Gate, as some claim, was originally a PLH fan. In a tragic backstory, she’d sought out the imposter Second Gate after mistaking him for the actual Cripple-turned-Second-Gate due to His and the beloved Uncle’s past acquaintance. Begging for the PLH's mysterious whereabouts, she'd been refused - the fake as clueless as herself. She then started to imitate him out of a mistaken belief it might ingratiate her and persuade The Cripple to change his mind. Her eventual separation would have corresponded with the catastrophic realisation she'd been duped. Alas, although she could leave the cult, by then, it was too late, and she carried on the acquired madness.

This lore interpretation sounds entirely plausible to our wax-clogged ears. Nevertheless…[AN: a completely self-unaware rant in which the hunchback criticises rival recap-bingers for ignoring the facts and he calls them out individually by a string of curse names.]…save yourself the embarrassment of sounding like those lunatics.

Re-returning to the brief history of Saana’s Second Gate.

And, yeah, that’s pretty much the whole background of The Third Gate, the saga of the sages revealed, clarified, and known.

…Huh?

What’s that, my seekers of secrets? "Your long-winded explanation, Eater of Epithets, that did almost nothing to introduce The Third Gate he’s about to duel, whose presence you only appended bizarrely at the end before slipping into another tangent."

Wrong. You’ve been given everything necessary. The rest of the tale is entirely deducible from the preceding if you were remotely paying attention. You've observed, very clearly, who this woman is.

[AN: I’ve gone back over the excised pieces again and again. There’s actually almost nothing on the ‘Third Gate’ whom the hunchback started off attempting to introduce. The next segment, his ‘clarification’, also doesn’t seem to say anything meaningful either. However, I’ll leave the full unedited transcript in case anyone else can figure out the point.]

Really? We’re certain about this, but fine, for the slow-witted…

Returning for the sake of the slow-witted to the brief history of Saana’s Third Gate, as occurring within the brief history of Saana’s second Second Gate, as occurring within the brief history of Saana’s Second Gate.

Well, to restate quickly who The Third Gate is, she believed—or at least the character being roleplayed believed, the distinction with her impossible to tell—that the game and reality would soon unite in a Revelations-esque cataclysmic disaster event. In the coming destruction and rebirth, the sinful non-believers—i.e. ordinary people who viewed Saana as a game, who made healthy distinctions between their characters and themselves, and who would adopt such conventional ethical positions as ‘if you, as a dude, are hooking up with a chick character being roleplayed by another dude who in real-life doesn’t look, dress, talk, behave, or conceive of himself on any dimension of sexuality or gender as anything but a dude, as in the dude sports a beard and circles ‘Mr’ So-and-So on legal documents, then isn’t you hooking up with this dude at least a little bit gay? Like, at minimum, 15% gay?’—these bigoted troglodytes would be annihilated for their outdated, ‘40s-era beliefs. As the two worlds fused, unprepared by their lack of faith, they, The Many, would get enslaved by those who'd believed in The Oneness of Saana and Earth. (Here, again, one discerns the anticipated mutation from The Cripple's 1vMany doctrine and PLH's Monsters Are People Too doctrine). Their new masters would be the faithful, i.e. hardcore Virtual-Reality-embracing roleplayers, the type who’d answer the previous moral conundrum with, ‘Me and my girlfriend are both 100% heterosexual, you insensitive prick! Her voice is gruff because a warlock cursed her vocal cords!'. This enlightened minority would ascend to their rightful throne in The Third Gate’s prophesied future. Their dominion would be everlasting and very Real when the Virtual and the Real collided and combined into the Holiest Ideal of Virtual Reality: a Virtuality that was, in fact, Real. (Obviously, no other Virtual Realist would believe this crackpot nonsense. Even virtually speaking, the merger prophecy contradicted whatever elaborate lore each roleplayer had made up for their own character, the VR community plagued in this regard by more sectarian in-fighting than Neo-Neo-Protestants. Nevertheless, the VRists were moved by something in the depth and conviction of The Third Gate’s roleplay, her travels extensive, her speeches elaborate, her acting unbroken. Thus, the community had promoted her as a symbol of the real struggle within their virtual struggle. She eventually became their own crazy but holy mascot. Like a Joan of Arc, spearheading the crusade with her schizophrenic visions. Wherever she and her madness happened to pop up, the Virtual Realists cheered for her and their own wretched, dirt-stained spirits envisioned within her.)

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Re-re-returning to the brief history of Saana’s Second Gate.

And now, with her nature firmly grasped, this crazy lady roleplayer extraordinaire, The Third Gate, student and child of an imposter of The Cripple-Turned-Second-Gate, is here. She's travelled the seas to confront one of her progenitors, The Father Who Has Begotten The Names of The Tyrant, The Cripple, The Second Gate, and A Thousand Others of Their Familial Likeness.

As for what ends she seeks in this conflict, us lore connoisseurs—and that includes yourselves, initiated into The Names of The Unknown—we could conjecture a multitude of reasons from these past deeds remembered. To reunite with her mentor returned from the annals of Saana? To carry out the fatwa of her ‘true’ master the second Second Gate against this imposter imposter? To inquire into the whereabouts of our sorely-missed Uncle PLH…

[AN: More rhetorical questions summarising all that’s been stated and building eventually to a crescendo in the form of a speech on the beauty of ‘the wild adventures in lore’, honouring the brave who’d lost their minds in its pursuit.]

…we will NOT forget them!) However, we endanger ourselves as They once did by speaking so much on the forbidden. So, instead, we’ll leave you as guidance in your own ponderings on what happens next with an old quote from Him in His divine aspect of The Second Gate, translated roughly into English, “Know ye, who seek The Gates of Getting Goodness, that the criterion that separateth The Tensai No Tensai No Tensai from The Tensai No Skill shall not appear until The Promised Day of Duelling.” There’s honest wisdom in that parody maxim. Before the duel, we can speak much on its history but nothing on what follows. For the rest to unfold between these two sages, re-connected by so many indistinct threads of Fate, including the intermediate sage ranting outside, the very deepest realities will only be established in and by and from their coming duel.

Thus, my brothers in discovery, my sisters in mystery, thus concludes this one lore-binger’s testimony. Thus has been re-read one forgotten paragraph from The All-Named’s all-encompassing chronicle. Thus has been told to the best of our ability The Saga of The Sage Becoming Many.

Returning, at last, to Suchi.

“'…at last, to Suchi.’ So, yeah, that’s the identity of this dirt-smeared homeless lady challenger, The Third Gate,” the hunchback finished up, his eyes lost in the mystical stupor of one who’d momentarily synced with the universe’s most arcane vibrations and who’d been molested by their touching back. “What’s before us is basically an epic showdown between The Second and The Third Gates, between The Cripple and his insane daughter-in-law – his daughter-in-lore, if you will.”

Like a salmon whose body immediately rots after spawning its life’s seed, the hunchback, finishing the tale for whose purpose he’d been born, collapsed. Between the legs of the crowd, he fell, his broken and blood-soaked form crashing back first into the hot dirt. (Having delayed the mending of the spinal injury and other duelling damage to tell this story, his character was tragically on the verge of death.)

The hunchback, his face paling at an impending sense of doom, his weakening vision held on the confused audience staring down, spent his body’s last strength on a final impartation of wisdom. “(Although, to be precise, within the ethical framework of some Virtual Realists, The Tyrant would, in fact, not be The Second Gate anymore, having forfeited his character rights when he stopped playing it for too long. Some VR factions would allow him to resume the persona as the original creator. Others would expect him to compromise with the imposter who’d claimed it during his absence, such as through the joint creation of an evil twin Second Gate plotline or a clone Second Gate multiverse plotline. Personally, I think the divine resolution is hidden somewhere in the original time skip between The Cripple and his return as The Second Gate The Elder. The age-progressing wormhole could easily have produced multiple Second Gates, allowing anyone to roleplay the character if they wished. Remember that, my lovers of lore, there is in this world no physical limit on the number of sages, only on the willingness of each individual's spirit to transform themselves into a sage. (Of course, whether The Cripple and The Second Gate The Elder constitute the same character is its own ethical conundrum.))”

To the man’s brain fried to charcoal on lore recaps, that odd tangent had seemed critical for the full picture’s comprehension.

His piece said, the saga of the sages told, the hunchback then closed his truth-glimpsing eyes and awaited his end. Slowly, his disintegrating consciousness reached for the nirvana of enlightenment beyond this mystified plane. As it did so, its fingers stretched out laden with only one paltry ring of regret.

(By delaying his treatment, he was about to de-level beneath the requirement for his trainee armour. This would get him kicked from the stadium and forced to farm dungeons again.)

This epic duel between The Gates, as arranged by The Universe in its comedic reverie, its finale would be denied to himself, its most loyal student, the preacher of its history and its virtues.

But wasn’t such the way of all knowledge into The Lesser Known? Insight into the world’s innermost treasures could not be had without some offering up of blood, and those who laboured to discover heaven often never sampled its golden delights.

"Fine then," pronounced the dying hunchback bitterly to the heavens, a tooth spilling out with the blood from his smashed mouth. "This role you've assigned me...to be Wisdom’s sacred price...to be...The Gates...to the lore...but not...to pass...through...my...self......fine......I......" He gasped in tearful anguish. "I.......ac......cept.........it."

Thus, the man expired, a hero.

The martyr's ruined body dispersed as mist, and from the worldly grime emerged his soul, pristine and glowing. Its sparkling lights, freed of all further earthly burden, floated past the gates of the stadium, floated on towards those greater Gates of The Beyond.

London Tremor, throughout that deranged explanation, had been squinting at ‘The Second Gate’ and ‘The Third Gate’ meeting in the arena, his vision flickering with baffled stream chatter. As he’d listened to the details of their secret past, the elevated mood after his own 1v1 with HF had deflated. All that earlier praise, about the fanny packs and his own redemption, lost its charm coming from someone behind such a ridiculous encounter.

What’s more, to the intern’s sleep-deprived mind, the two stories seemed uncomfortably similar in a hard-to-define manner. Both resonated with the same lunatic motif. Some common thread murmured between the themes of multiplicity, of embeddedness, of unspeakability, of revival.

The Second Gate…The Hydra of Infinite Titles…The Whatever of The Whatever…

Why, London Tremor grieved, couldn’t this kid just duel like a normal player? Wasn’t it enough to restrain this avant-garde instinct for the ‘More’ to the arena, to his bewilderingly-complex style? Not every aspect of life called for or benefited from having multiple layers.

When the intern looked to the duellist himself, however, HF didn’t seem to have recognised the abomination spawned by his forgotten hijinks. During that lore recap, he’d been busy giving pointers to the pro-player Whitefrog, the pair whacking each other with juggled weapons. Now, the teen, producing a bag of Stamina-restoring candy floss and blithely pulling a pink tuft, flicked a confused gaze between this unwashed Earthfriend wench preaching to the audience and the roleplayers shouting back at her in worry. Whatever impression stirred behind his flat expression remained unreadable. Perhaps, with a dim awareness, HF was perceiving his moral responsibility to answer for some vague crime against humanity. Perhaps he was merely devising another weird method for humiliating this latest roleplayer.

After a bit of deliberation, the teen at the centre of this madness finally spoke.

“Nope. Whatever this is, I am NOT interested. I’m assigning you one quick beating as punishment. Then you leave. Pick the map.”