Spirit Realm Gateway
The Spirit Realm Gateway was a machine built by Frankenstein-818 and Technophile-963.
Nature
Resembling “a computer server” with “an enormous ring attached to the top of it”, the Spirit Realm Gateway exploited a natural spirit path which manifested every Halloween and widened it into a gateway which allowed Copper-Colored Cupids in Fog Ships to travel to and from the Spirit Realm of the Prime Universe, while preventing any spirits from crossing through the Gateway into the Cupid Homeworld. When Frankenstein-818 originally designed it, it did allow spirits to cross into the Homeworld, and had the additional functionality of somehow running a 50% chance of turning corporeal users into ghosts when they passed through, but these features were removed by Technophile-963 during beta-testing. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
History
The Spirit Realm Gateway was created some years before 2019 by Frankenstein-818, with Technophile-963 stepping in towards the end of the process to add some much-needed safety features. It became tradition for the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids that Frankenstein would activate it every year on Halloween, allowing Cupid volunteers to journey into the Spirit Realm, romanticise a number of spirits, and then return safely.
In 2019, however, when the time came, the Gateway malfunctioned. Frankenstein insisted on “repairing” it himself despite not understanding what had caused the malfunction, and did so by haphazardly removing a bunch of parts. Conscious that it may not actually work, he added a holographic projector to fake the appearance of some ghosts, though this didn't fool anybody. Predictably, once switched on, the Gateway collapsed into a full-blown, two-way dimensional rift which allowed the Great Ghost's legion to cross into the Cupid Homeworld, from which they stole a fleet of Fog Ships, heading off into the Multiverse to find bodies to possess. After they left, Frankenstein built a portable One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gateway that could send them back if activated in their presence.
However, the spirits soon returned to the Homeworld, hoping to summon more of their own, only to find that the Department of Rifts had successfully closed the Rifts. This drove them to abduct Frankenstein-818 to force him to build a Reverse Spirit Realm Gateway in an abandoned Prime Earth theatre, which would only allow spirits to cross from the Spirit Realm into the Prime Universe, and not the other way around. In the end, however, this device proved their undoing because Frankenstein had built it as an exact reversal of his original designs, including the turning-Cupids-into-ghosts setting, which meant that the Reverse Gateway instead turned every spirit who passed through it into a small clockwork toy version of itself.
Unabated, as soon as he returned to the Cupid Homeworld, Frankenstein built yet another variant on the same basic design, a gateway to the Demon Realm. The rest of the Cupids were less than thrilled by this development. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
