The Polar Gates were massive constructed designed by the Old Ones place at the top and bottom of the World.
The Old Ones decreed that the world would have a central place in their unknowable plans and stellar gates at either pole were created to allow easy access to this hopeful new colony. Before the designs for their newest planet could be fully set in motion, the Old Ones had to reshape it to better fit their needs. Using powers beyond mortal comprehension, they shifted the planet’s orbit towards the warming sun. In time, the ice sheets retreated, verdant forests soon growing to cover over the newly revealed land.[1a]
All was not well with the world, however. Distressing signs began to manifest outside the gateways at the planet’s poles. They were but portals to another dimension, and it was from there that trouble arose. In the swirling madness of that otherworldly realm, nascent beings stirred, malign intelligences that resented the Old Ones’ trespasses. Disaster came suddenly. Whether due to enemy attacks or structural failure, the Old Ones’ great polar gates, the means by which they traversed the stars, collapsed upon themselves. The eldritch machineries of the gates crashed down upon the world in a burning hail of star-metal. Simultaneously, the poles of the world imploded, opening rifts into the beyond. Chaos spewed forth from the spirit realm.[1a]