Hi there!
First of all I'd like to thank you for all the time and effort you guys take with this project.
Now for my question:
The list with the gate towns in the outlands is found in the encyclopedia, in the campaign setting etc.
But is there such a list for the towns on the other side of the gate as well?
The entry for the Plane of Infinite Portals mentions Broken Reach as a gate town, but for the other planes/layers I checked, I found no such entry.
Darkspine is a former Gate Town to Baator, you can find it in Avernus. Where, as far as I recall, most of the locals are hunted down by Abishai. Not to mention that the constant rain of fire doesn't improve the state of the old town's neighbourhood.
- Kris
I figured, for simplicities sake you'd want to keep the same name since, if the old gate town ever shifts back to the Outlands you'd end up with a city within a city, where the inner city would have a different name than the one that surrounds it.
-420
That's really something to ponder. There have been cases of Gatetowns shifting from the Outlands into their 'parent' planes, namely Plaguemort, Fortitude, and Ribcage. On the other hand, I can't think of any known precedents of them sliding back. From Fires of Dis, we know what happens to the previously slid gate-towns, at least in Baator... they sort of migrate a few miles in a particular direction and continue their slow demise. I'm sure that on other planes it happens differently, namely less demise on the Good planes and less particular directions on the Chaos planes.
What happens when they slide back, though? I think that the old towns either appear in the Hinterlands (sucks for them, but at least they finally get some peace and quiet) or are somehow integrated into the new town. What always confused me is that when a new town appears, does it appear with all new citizens? If so, where the hell do they come from? Likely, the new town just appears empty and is then quickly settled by people from the neighboring outer plane and surrounding area of the Outlands. After all, a free kip is no thing to waste.
Note that the portals don't shift, only the towns around them do. So whenever one of the towns does shift, there will be just a portal, waiting for some new bashers to settle around it. (Often this could be those people, who are fast enough to manage to return to the outlands before the denizens of the plane come to explore their new lands.) And such a lonely permanent and reliable portal will surely soon attract enough people to erect a new town.
It's this way in PS:Torment after the shift of Curst - that may be not canon, but I think it's the most likely explanation. I don't believe there is a "lesser power of gate towns" providing those bashers with free housing, however, they'll have to build them themselves.
I always thought the gate towns on the outlands take the same name as the former town. That's what the encyclopedia says, too.
To clarify my original question:
I always thought the the portals within the gate-towns are two-way. So there'd be a portal on the other side, too. Around those portals surely towns will form, too, (Except perhaps in Limbo and in the Beastlands). Is there any complete list of those gate towns, as it is for those sitting in the outlands.
As far as I know that isn't always the case, though exceptions such as Broken Reach do exist.
Here's my take on it, please bear with my silly example:
If you've ever seen the Stargate SG-1 series, you'll know that Earth theoretically has a single working stargate. Earth's stargate is locked up somewhere in the Cheyenne Mountain facility, whereas the alien gates are usually found out in the open.
Now the way I figure it, the same applies to the Gate Towns in the Outlands. Each of the towns were built around a gate, on the other side of the gate, however, you'll just end up somewhere on the corresponding plane.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the actual portal (on Baator) to Ribcage is just guarded by a few baatezu, nothing else. Which leads me to believe that there isn't always a Gate Town on the flipside of the portal.
- Kris
Okay, after checking up on it:
A Player's Primer to the Outlands says rather clearly that when towns slide, they disappear and reappear on the adjoining plane. Some towns are naturally copied, a brand new version appearing in the Outlands ready for settlers, while others do not and must be rebuilt by hand. Which town is of which persuasion is left dark. Sigil and Beyond from the boxed set gives the example of Plaguemort as one of the towns that has slid numerous times into the Abyss and yet pops back up almost immediately every time.
What lies on the other side? Well, few of the books have the answer to that, at least that I remember. The Plaguemort gate leads either to or near to Broken Reach.
For a more concrete example, however, Fires of Dis says that on the other side of the Ribcage gate to Avernus lies what remains of Darkspine, the previous burg that slid over from the Outlands (suggesting that the previous towns sometimes had different names, if Darkspine was called that when it was still in the Outlands, that is). The sorry place is not much more than crumbling ruins and has little in the way of hospitality, but it is as good as any a place to avoid the fiends on the rest of the layer. The sods that call it kip have given up all hopes of going back to the Outlands, so they've barricaded themselves against the surrounding hell. Thus, it is true that few fiends guard the gate, for whatever inexplicable reason, it is not entirely the case that the Baatorian side of the portal is plopped down in the middle of a desert. Also, as I mentioned earlier, even older gate towns stretch in a string of progressively dingier pearls away from the current gate and toward a major tributary of the Styx (that according to Planes of Law, which also implies that Ribcage has joined the string of pearls but otherwise gives no details, lies at the center of the infinite layer) and in the direction of Tiamat's realm. If you do not include Ribcage as having slid, which seems unlikely given all of the anti-fiend laws described in other sources, there are four other ruins between the Styx and Darkspine, bringing the number of slides into Baator up to five. From Fires of Dis it seems that either Tiamat, or more likely the portal to Dis by which she lairs, makes all nearby roads lead directly to her/it. While the distance between the ruins is not noted, it does seem that with each slide the total land area between the gate and the Styx increases by more than the city itself. Infinity can grow, berk, deal with it.
So, with all those examples out of the way, I can only suggest that you pick up a copy of A Player's Primer to the Outlands and Sigil and Beyond. They are the most likely to give you information about the gate towns and whatever lies on the other side. Other sources might be more particular, such as Fires of Dis, but I can't give you a list off the top of my head.
As far as I know that isn't always the case, though exceptions such as Broken Reach do exist.
Here's my take on it, please bear with my silly example:
If you've ever seen the Stargate SG-1 series, you'll know that Earth theoretically has a single working stargate. Earth's stargate is locked up somewhere in the Cheyenne Mountain facility, whereas the alien gates are usually found out in the open.
Other than that, it's not guaranteed that the portal will always go to the same place on the plane the gatetown is connected to. Portals can shift, and if a gatetown slides over it could likely cause the portal to shift.
And I specifically remember something about Faunel's portal not going to any town, simply because there isn't much in the way of civilization in the Beastlands. Along with the fact that the Faunel isn't much of a town either.
I think Broken Reach growing up around the "flip-side" of Plaguemort is an exception rather than a rule. For once, you'd think that the lawful planes had more stable portals and therefore towns on both sides of a gatetown's gate...but most of the canon doesn't seem to bear that out.
The thing that does seem common is that a Gatetown slipping into its parent's plane doesn't seem to happen that often, either. Maybe with the exception of Xaos and Limbo, because who the heck knows what's going on there anyway? But in all seriousness the Gatetowns don't seem to slip that often (like Darkspine slipping into Baator) or the gates themselves would seem to have new towns all the time (again, with Ribcage instead of Darkspine version 11 or something). A Gatetown slipping would seem to be the effect of some outside force, at least for game reasons, outside forces like an invasion of Harmonium or the inability of PCs to fight off Tanar'ric influences in Plaguemort.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that in my opinion, gate towns shouldn't just slip into their parent plane without some major upheaval just to keep players interested in the setting. Knowing that their own actions can have an affect on a whole town as opposed to something that's just going to inevitably happen on its own just seems better for players in the setting itself, not to mention a DM who doesn't want to re-invent the wheel every other cycle or so. And just because there is a gate town on the outland side of a two-way portal, doesn't mean that the planar inhabitants on the parent side care one whit about starting a town on the other side. Broken Reach is a weird example because the 1st layer of the Abyss is just lousy with portals to everywhere, and the chances of saying that "this" portal is important enough to form a fortress around is something of an oddity. Other planes might not care to form a gate town, such as petitioners being too blissful to care in Elysium or just to wild to build towns such as on the flip side of Faunel. Folks in Bytopia may not WANT a town around the side of a parent plane's gate simply because the area isn't zoned for a town 
at that site. Who knows what the archons want guarding a portal to Mt. Celestia, or even if a guard is necessary given the nature of the plane itself and its ability to defend itself from evil.
In the long run, my own opinion is that while Gate Towns may be the rule in the outlands, each plane will police its portals however it sees fit. Fiends may want to check and list each berk entering Baator, but the folks coming in to fight and drink in Ysgard can come in anonymous hordes (at least until they've earned a name for themselves in the days' battles ).
Well Celestia ends up dumping you in an ocean of holy water so that sorts out the worst of the newcomers but there is a town nearby, can't remember the name of it off the top of my head but it's in 'The Great Modron March".
Thanks for your answers, that was very helpful
You're most likely right and there is not always a gate town on the other side of the gate.
*going back to the design of my PS adventure*
I actually made a list of these a while back:
Ecstasy - You emerge from a dark cavern on the shore of the River Oceanus, a day's travel from the guardinal city Release From Care.
Sylvania - Thrassos (there's a portal in the square, and also a mention of vineyards near Sylvania sliding to Thrassos)
Glorium - Himinborg. You have to cross the sea to reach it, but this is the first city anyone sees in Asgard, since it exists to watch over the only gate through Asgard's wall. Since the main portal is a maelstrom in the middle of Glorium's fjord and you end up in the sea in Ysgard, there aren't going to be former Gloriums right near where you are unless they're underwater. Those who travel to Ysgard using Yggdrasil's root are also likely to end up in Himinborg.
Plague-Mort - Broken Reach
Torch - Void's Edge (I made this one up; canonically, it seems likely that you end up in a subterranean cavern above a bottomless pit)
Ribcage - Darkspine
Excelsior - Heart's Faith (on the shore)
Rigus - The Battle Cube. There's no town nearby, though there are orc and goblin cities on the other faces. See Lord of the Iron Fortress.
Automata - The 1st edition Manual of the Planes says the Outlands gate to Mechanus leads to Regulus, on the smooth underside of Primus's gear. The Player's Primer to the Outlands says where they come out depends on the time of day, the position of the gears, and many other arcane factors, so The portal shifts to many other parts of Mechanus as well. Haven is another confirmed possible destination (Planes of Law).
Fortitude - The woods between the citadels of the Lightning and Wind Kings.
Faunel - Signpost? Wrath can send you pretty much anywhere in the plane, but Signpost would be a good first stop.
Tradegate - Yeoman is the most likely place, though the Master Trader can send you anywhere in Bytopia if the price is right.
Bedlam - The Madhouse, perhaps. There are actually a half-dozen gates to Pandemonium, and it's likely they lead to at least that many different places.
Xaos - Random, of course.
Curst - Unknown. I'd put them near the Bastion of Last Hope, but it could just be the ruins of a former Curst.
Hopeless - Day's march from the Field of Nettles
There's a list of gate-town portals here, though it misses some of the above. It doesn't show the portal from Plague-mort ending up beneath Broken Reach, for example - and maybe it doesn't. It's perfectly possible that both are one-way portals, though I'd rather think of them as a single two-way portal.
The town is Heart's Faith, the town that gets trampled by the early modron march because they went all "chaotic" and changed the streets up from the way the modrons had agreed to march in the past...
Here are the descriptions of what the portals of the Great Road look like on the various Outer Planes, as recounted in the 1st edition Manual of the Planes.
Acheron: Portals take the form of spheres that hum when they're activated; Acheron's cubes slowly orbit around them. Discordant spheres lead to Baator, harmonious ones lead to Mechanus, and silent spheres lead to the Outlands. Planes of Law says there are also portals on the surface of the cubes, so you don't always have to get there by flying or falling; the portal from Rigus is one of those, on the surface of the Battle Cube, looking very much like the Lion's Eye gate does in Rigus itself. The gate-town to Baator is Eight Devils Laughing in Resounding Thunder. The gate-town to Mechanus, also in Resounding Thunder, is Nihao.
Mechanus: Light-green circles lead to Arcadia, deep-red circles lead to Acheron. The portal to Automata is on the featureless underside of Primus's gear. Planes of Law says there's also a portal to the Outlands in Haven, and that there are portals to Baator, Acheron, the Outlands, Arcadia, and Mount Celestia in Regulus. It seems the modrons like to control the main portals to their plane.
Arcadia: Portals are arched trellises of white ivory or black steel, with a color pool open within them 10% of the time. If the portal within is black it leads to the Outlands, if it's white it leads to Mount Celestia, and silvery pools lead to Mechanus.
Mount Celestia: Portals resemble large blocks of finished stones. Black granite shot with gold leads to Arcadia, white granite shot with silver leads to Bytopia, and red blocks spattered with blue flecks lead to the Outlands. The portal to Excelsior looks like a bobbing light hovering over the ocean, according to Planes of Law; you have to chase it down. According to that book, the gate-town to Arcadia is called Nemmiron, the gate-town to Bytopia is Soul's Desire, and the gate-town to the Outlands is Heart's Faith.
Bytopia: Portals appear as caverns with patterns shining within. Concentric circle patterns lead to Mount Celestia, radiating lines lead to Elysium, and spiderweb patterns lead to the Outlands.
Elysium: Portals are dark caverns with no clues to which plane they lead. Those that swallow the River Oceanus always lead to the Beastlands, however.
Beastlands: Portals are large openings in hollow trees. These can be any kind of tree, but the same tree always leads to the same plane.
Arborea: Portals are crimson disks, usually surrounded by stone walls or iron gates. Planes of Chaos says the portal to Sylvania in Thrassos is in a rotunda with rounded pillars; only the town elders can open it.
Ysgard: Portals are wells. They are often marked, but tend to be unreliable.
Limbo: Portals may be wells, doors, pools, bottomless openings in chaos, archways, etc - they are usually more stable than the surrounding plane.
Pandemonium: Portals are flat squares on the sides of caverns. Yellow ones usually lead to Limbo, red to the Abyss, and black to the Outlands, with a 1 in 5 chance of error.
Abyss: Portals look like huge holes in the ground, just like the portals to lower layers.
Carceri: Portals are obelisks. Those taller than they are wide lead to the Gray Waste. Those wider than they are tall lead to the Abyss. Those with equal heights and widths lead to the Outlands. Planes of Conflict adds that they have tortured faces carved into them, and suggests these might be imprisoned spirits trying to escape.
Gray Waste: Portals to Gehenna are great spinning coins of copper, silver to the Outlands, or gold to Carceri. They're visible for miles, and often have iron fortresses built around them.
Gehenna: Portals are deep beneath the surface of the plane, appearing as black chasms in the floor.
Baator: Portals are huge hoops of reddish light, guarded by abishai and amnizu.
Very very handy - thank you. *bookmarks*
I know this is bit off topic (not to metion that it has passed 4 yrs. since last post :shock: ), but I have one question: what does fabled "Labirinth Portal" of Mechanus look like?
They metion it in "Planes of Law" box (I think), but there is no description.
Is it some sort of Modron machine, or some wierd sublayer of Mechanus (sort, of Hyperspace or Infinite Staircase) that acts as shortcut to any gear of Mechanus?
The Labyrinthine Portal is just a network of portals and conduits connecting the various gears. They're ordinary portals and planar conduits; they're called "labyrinthine" because transversing them can be very complex and mazelike. For example, a given portal might lead to the Fortress of Disciplined Enlightenment if you take a right turn entering it, or to Rudra's realm if you take a left. It's important to follow the directions exactly, or you're going to end up some place seemingly random.
This is described in the Mechanus book in Planes of Law.
I also notice, paging through Planes of Law, that the portal from Fortitude leads to the woods near the Citadel of the Lightning King in Arcadia (presumedly the previous Fortitude is there), and that the town of Haven in Mechanus, as well as Regulus, is confirmed as being one of the possible destinations of the Automata portal. The Automata portal (which is essentially part of the Labyrinthine Portal) leads to many, many possible places in Mechanus, however, so it's important to navigate the bureaucracy surrounding it if you want to get anywhere near where you want to go.
Ok, thanks Rip, you are one in a million.
Some of them are two-way, but some just drop you somewhere on the other plane and force you to find your own way back.
The portals in Automata, Fortitude, Excelsior, Ecstasy, Sylvania, Glorium, Bedlam (probably), Curst (probably), Hopeless (you hope), Torch (probably), Ribcage, and Rigus are all more or less two-way. Getting back to Sylvania is very different from getting to Arborea, and this might be true between Plague-mort and Broken Reach, too. Automata's portal is very complicated, and getting back the same way you came depends on adhering to a rigid schedule and specific directions. The portals in Tradegate, Faunell, and Xaos can drop you literally anywhere on the adjoining plane, so you'll have to find another way back.
It seems like there should be at least a place to buy and sell boats near the portal to Ecstasy - a port and shipyard, and porters, caravan guards, and sailors you can hire to make the day's journey to Release From Care. Or maybe everyone just relies on balaenas/elsewhales, so boats aren't needed.
I added some more detail to my posts above, by the way.
Thanks Rip!
In this case the gate from curst is most likely not two-way.
Getting into carceri is supposed to be way easier than getting out.
After reading a bit:
"Unlike many other gates to the lower planes, the four-sided arch at Curst is seldom used by folks leaving Carceri. [...] perhaps the gate is too hard to find." (Sigil and Beyond)
I guess while a gate may or may not be two way, normally there is a portal back into this gate from the connected plane.
I think the idea is that while each portal in every gate-town is both a door out and a door in, the place where it drops you off and the place where it picks you up is not always the same, depending on the Plane. Mechanus is so lawful its chaotic for anybody that hasn't tumbled to the pattern, Carceri is like a roach motel, and Limbo is purple kittens on stilts. Plus some portals might be used less than others. For instance, few would likely want to drop into Carceri unless they are drunk or have something to prove (which usually go hand in hand), few would want to leave Elysium because everything else is just less than heavenly, and there's no point of leaving the Grey Wastes... or living... just no point.
Now I really want someone to make an adventure where the PCs have to help fortify the evil of an Upper Planes gate town to save the residents from sliding over and dropping into a huge body of water, like in Rip's write-up of Glorium. Either form a slave-trading ring in a secret Glorium warehouse or everyone in the town dies at sea.
In a PS game I did, the gate of Curst is stable on the outlands side, but shifts on the other side every time it is used. Of course, the Gerelith, as wardens of Carceri, knew where it shifted to in short order every time. An (ongoing, incidently, tho quiescent now) adventure involved "something happening" in Carceri where someone else has learned how to locate the gate, and is waiting for it to pop onto his orb, meanwhile building an empire of exiles and demons in preparation to sieze Curst when it does.
Perhaps someone should fire his sage 
"[A portal] only stays open for a few seconds, just long enough for up to six folks to step through." (Sigil and beyond)
Well, that should not be enough time for a big army, especially if the portal moves away after using it once. But then rules only apply when they don't disturb the storyline, so it won't really matter ...
Well, seeing as how gate towns can shift between the Outlands and whatever outer plane they link to. It's safe to assume that there are some old gate towns on the far side, probably of the same names as their Outlands counterpart.
-420