WoozyMrSloop

I guess I should start by explaining the story if I'm going to be posting about it... Godless follows a character named Alex as they travel through Hell to help their family who recently died and were wrongly condemned. Along the way they face horrors both physical and physiological as they navigate deeper into Hell as well as some more angelic challenges. not all horrors are the same, some scream and claw and others are much more subtle, and their nature depends on the layer they're in. Alex isn't exactly a good guy, or even a good person depending on how you see them, and they're left fairly vague throughout the story. you get some insight as to how they think but most of their motives are left up to whoever's reading. The story follows as they're antagonised by demons and condemned souls as they do their best to find their family. The story's main antagonist is God, who becomes more and more frustrated with Alex as they progress through Hell but, also views them as a source of entertainment for the most part. He doesn't directly interfere with Alex until the very end where he stands in the way of Alex and their family in Hell.

Chapter 1: How it starts

The Stargates are strange things. Nobody really knows how they work, how they connect two points across space instantly, how they don’t seem to have any adverse effects. They’re human constructions, but the engineers are working blind, like building an engine while blindfolded, trying to find where you dropped the 10mm by sound alone. It doesn’t matter if nobody knows, though. They work, and they work well. They connect two points like a doorway, even over tens of lightyears, letting people, animals, ships, anything, pass through like they’re walking into another room. One’s never failed before, so why bother worrying when billions of people use them every day?

Tedaki station is a frontier outpost. It’s beyond the edge of what humanity would consider civilised space. It’s isolated, quiet, like a rural town in the middle of nowhere, and when you have Stargates connecting every point in space, that’s really saying something. its only purpose is to be a waypoint, or a stopover for frontier colony development. It’s small, tiny compared to the stations in the Core, mostly cargo space, it’s like a fancy and expensive storage box. It’s operated by a skeleton crew, maybe 15 people at most, minimal living space, not much to do. Not exactly a retirement plan. Contact with Tedaki station was lost months ago, probably just an equipment failure, it happens all the time around there. It’s not an issue, just send a crew through the Stargate to fix it. Only Tedaki, like all frontier stations and colonies, doesn’t have a normal Stargate.

Stargates on stations that far out are different from the ones back in the Core systems. Stargates are extremely intensive to operate, they need constant cooling, power, adjustment, they need to be watched 24/7, and they’re very, very expensive. When you have a crew so small, you can’t do that, so they cheap out on them. Stargates on stations like Tedaki are timed, not on demand. Every few months, for a few hours, the gate will open. This is the only window where crews can be rotated and maintenance done. The gate cannot be opened any other time, at least not from Tedaki’s side. It’s just cheaper that way.

Stargates vary in size, but the commercial ones, the ones used for transport between stations, are huge. Squares five hundred meters wide that transport cargo, people, ships, automatons, just about everything. When inactive the opening is covered with a strange fabric-like material. It’s not placed there by people, it’s made by the Stargate itself. An odd, impenetrable, moss coloured sheet that folds in on itself and disappears when the Stargate is activated, only to return when inactive. The events that happen when a gate is activated are hard to comprehend, so it’s normally advised to look away before activation and only look back when it’s stable to avoid something called Stargate sickness.

To anyone wondering Currently, Raz's favourite thing in the damn universe is the camera I spend so much money making this enclosure nice and being like "Oh, look at all these things. He'll love them." all for him to be like "mmmm... camwa." Chances are that when I look through the camera to see what he's up to; it's just his ass, right up against the lens.